Price identification is the tactic of using the price of an item to try to identify it. One can use the "buy price", the price of an item in shops, or the "sell price", the price that a shopkeeper offers when you try to sell an item. The sell price is easier to use because it is not affected by your charisma.
It will normally be half the "base price" of the item; there is a random chance that you will only be offered 3/4 of the normal sell price, but you can get around this by repeatedly [d]ropping an item and refusing to sell it, until you have been offered two different prices for it.
General stores are very useful for price identification because they will offer to buy all types of items. However, you can still price-identify any (unbreakable) object in any store by throwing the item in to the shop from outside. Be aware that this will relinquish ownership of the item to the shopkeeper, who will then try to sell it to you. You will need to pay the asking price or steal the item to get it back, but in a pinch, this can provide a price point for an object that the shopkeeper would not normally be interested in.
Further strategies
Common uses
The item which is most commonly price-ided is the scroll of identify, which is far cheaper than the other scrolls.
Also, magic lamps cost more than oil lamps, and enchanted armour costs more than the +0 version.
Price-iding can also be useful to identify bad items. The scroll of amnesia has a base price of 200 GP, ten times as much as a scroll of identify. A potion of sickness has a base price of 50 GP, a potion of hallucination 100 GP, and a potion of blindness 150 GP.
Powerful wands stealing
An expensive wand (base price 500 zm) is either wishing or death. If you have no pet to steal it for you, and you're not concerned about the consequences of killing shopkeepers, try zapping it at the shopkeeper. If it's death, fine. If it's wishing, wish for 2 blessed scrolls of charging and a wand of death, then zap the shopkeeper. Caution: if you do this, be sure either to use the wishes before killing the shopkeeper, or save the wishes for later. Don't use a wish immediately after killing a shopkeeper, because (unless you are chaotic) killing a shopkeeper reduces your luck. You can also wish for a Blessed figurine of an archon. The pet archon will then kill the shopkeeper without any penalties due to alignment.
External links
- Clippy is a handy tool to identify an item.
- The consolidated item tables lists the base price of every single item.
- NetHack Shopping Spoiler