Wikihack
Register
Advertisement
[   dwarvish mithril-coat   Dwarvish mithril-coat
Appearance dwarvish mithril-coat
Slot body armor
AC 6
Special
Cost 240 zm
Weight 150
Material mithril
[   elven mithril-coat   Elven mithril-coat
Appearance elven mithril-coat
Slot body armor
AC 5
Special
Cost 240 zm
Weight 150
Material mithril

The dwarvish mithril-coat and elven mithril-coat are two types of body armor found in NetHack. While neither is as effective as a good suit of dragon scale mail, they are both much lighter than other high-AC suits. They are also the only suits of body armor that provide MC3.

Being made of mithril, they are immune to erosion, though they will still hinder spellcasting.

While the dwarvish mithril-coat has one higher natural AC than its elven counterpart, it can only be safely enchanted to +5 as opposed to +7 for the elven version. Thus, a dwarvish coat is slightly superior when unenchanted, but an elven coat is slightly superior when fully enchanted.

Strategy[]

Mithril-coats are very helpful in the early game because of their high AC and low weight. They will often provide as much AC as the rest of the adventurer's armor combined, and the extra carrying capacity is particularly useful for early characters with low strength and no bag of holding.

Players will usually exchange their mithril for dragon scale mail when it becomes available, which makes them reluctant to spend scrolls of enchant armor on their mithril-coats. For this reason the dwarvish variety is usually considered better, though the difference between the two is small.

Because mithril-coats are metallic, characters proficient in combat spellcasting (such as Wizards) will often ignore them and wear studded leather armor instead. If this is not available, it might be a good idea to temporarily sacrifice spellcasting for the increased protection afforded by mithril.

Generation[]

Encyclopedia entry[]

_Mithril_! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like
copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make
of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel.
Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty
of _mithril_ did not tarnish or grow dim.

[ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]

References[]

Advertisement