# Eating jewelry
Eating jewelry is a method to permanently gain the intrinsics conveyed by wearing some rings and amulets. To eat a ring or amulet, one must first polymorph into a creature that can eat the material of the ring or amulet.
The material of a ring is dependent upon its randomized appearance, not its function. Not all rings are edible, so the set of rings that can be eaten varies from game to game. All amulets are iron, so they are edible by metallivores, specifically rock moles, rust monsters, and xorns.
Eating a ring has a one in three chance of conveying its powers to the eater, while eating an amulet only has a one in five chance of conveying its powers.[1] If the intrinsic is granted, you get the following message: "Magic spreads through your body as you digest the {ring|amulet}" as opposed to the traditional intrinsic gain message.
Eating other objects only confers nutrition.
Artifacts are treated as their base items for eating purposes. This means that you can accidentally eat your great weapon or quest artifact. It will then be lost forever.

Contents

1 Edible rings
2 Effects of eating rings
3 Effects of eating amulets
4 Strategy

4.1 Chargeable rings

5 Limitations
6 History
7 SLASH'EM
8 References

Edible rings
The edible rings, and who can eat them, are given in the following table:

Image

Appearance

Material

Consumable by

iron

iron

any metallivore

twisted

steel

wire

engagement

shiny

bronze

copper

metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals (rock mole, xorn)

brass

copper

silver

silver

gold

gold

wooden

wood

gelatinous cube

granite

mineral

inedible

clay

coral

moonstone

opal

black onyx

jade

gemstone

agate

topaz

sapphire

ruby

diamond

emerald

tiger eye

pearl

bone

ivory

Effects of eating rings

Ring

Intrinsic granted

ring of adornment

+n charisma until unpoly

ring of aggravate monster

aggravate monster

ring of cold resistance

cold resistance

ring of conflict

conflict, hunger

ring of fire resistance

fire resistance

ring of free action

sleep resistance

ring of gain constitution

+n constitution until unpoly

ring of gain strength

+n strength until unpoly

ring of hunger

hunger

ring of increase accuracy

+0–n to-hit bonus (see below)

ring of increase damage

+0–n damage bonus (see below)

ring of invisibility

invisibility

ring of levitation

levitation for d10+10 (more) turns

ring of poison resistance

poison resistance

ring of polymorph

polymorphitis

ring of polymorph control

polymorph control

ring of protection

+0–n AC (see below)

ring of protection from shape changers

protection from shape changers

ring of regeneration

regeneration, hunger

ring of searching

searching

ring of see invisible

see invisible

ring of shock resistance

shock resistance

ring of slow digestion

inedible

ring of stealth

stealth

ring of sustain ability

no effect

ring of teleport control

teleport control

ring of teleportation

teleportitis

ring of warning

warning

In 3.6.0 and later, digesting (positively enchanted) rings of protection, increase damage, and increase accuracy gives diminishing returns if you already have high intrinsic bonus of the same type.[2]  Specifically, if digesting a +n ring would put you above +9, the +n bonus is reduced to a random number between 1 and n; if you have +19 or more, you have a (n-1) in n chance of getting a single extra point (otherwise you get nothing); at +39 or above digesting rings has no effect.
In older versions of NetHack, due to a bug fixed in 3.6.2, eating a ring while wearing another ring of the same type could actually reduce your intrinsic bonus.
Most of these intrinsics can come from sources besides rings, although eating them may still be useful. For example, they provide a pacifist way to obtain resistances, or a safe way to obtain teleport control without the risk of teleportitis from a tengu.
Notably, eating rings is the only source of intrinsic conflict, regeneration, hunger, polymorphitis, polymorph control, protection from shape changers, increased damage or increased accuracy. Furthermore, intrinsic searching and warning are only granted to certain roles at certain experience levels, and stealth is hard to get as an intrinsic, whereas rings may confer them to any player.
However, some of these intrinsics come with downsides. Regeneration and conflict permanently increase your hunger rate in addition to their useful properties; hunger, of course, simply does so with no benefit. These effects are cumulative. Hunger from eating rings of regeneration or conflict is part of the regeneration or conflict effect itself, and thus it cannot be separately removed by a gremlin. Polymorphitis is not a desirable property even for characters with polymorph control: each polymorph still has a 20% chance of polymorphing you into your own race, in which case random stat shuffling can occur.

Effects of eating amulets

Amulet

Effect

amulet of change

change gender

amulet of ESP

gain telepathy

amulet of life saving

no effect[3]

amulet of magical breathing

gain magical breathing

amulet of reflection

no effect[3]

amulet of restful sleep

gain restful sleep

amulet of strangulation

immediately choke

amulet of unchanging

unpolymorph

amulet versus poison

gain poison resistance

cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor

inedible

Amulet of Yendor

inedible

The only amulet which is generally useful to eat is the amulet of magical breathing. All the others either give no effect, a property which is easily obtainable otherwise, or a property which is downright harmful.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Amulets of guarding provide +2 intrinsic protection when eaten. Amulets of flying provide no effect when eaten[3].
Strategy
You will usually need to eat many rings or amulets to get any given intrinsic.
If you are limited in ways to polymorph yourself it's important to have duplicates readily available, so you can eat them all before you revert to your normal form.
Short of polypiling it is unlikely you'll have enough to be almost certain to get the intrinsic for amulets:

Rings Eaten
Likelihood of Intrinsic (%)

1
33.3333

2
55.5556

3
70.3704

4
80.2469

5
86.8313

6
91.2209

12
99.2293

18
99.9323

23
99.9911

29
99.9992

Amulets Eaten
Likelihood of Intrinsic (%)

1
20.0000

2
36

3
48.8

4
59.04

6
73.7856

8
83.2228

11
91.4101

21
99.0777

31
99.901

42
99.9915

52
99.9991

Chargeable rings
If you're trying to get high intrinsic bonus to-hit/damage/AC, you will obviously want to eat rings as highly charged as you can find. However, charging them manually is usually not worth a thought unless you have the Platinum Yendorian Express Card or several spare magic markers. Even then, you need to balance increased charge with a risk of explosion, and because of this consideration, charging beyond +3 is usually a waste: even the blessed scroll will give you a ring with an average of 5 charges 4/7th of the time and nothing otherwise, so the expected charge is 20/7 which is less than 3 you started with; uncursed charging fares even worse.
Enchanting +2 rings always increases expected charge; however, due to how digesting them works, you will want to avoid that if you only have access to uncursed charging (PYEC as non-Tourist) and already have a +8 or higher intrinsic bonus: at this level, +2 rings only give +1.5 to the bonus on average, +3 rings give +2, and 2*5/7 is less than 1.5. Similarly, at +19 or above, +2 rings give +0.5, +3 rings give +0.67, and uncursed charging is undesirable as well. Blessed-charging +2 rings, however, is always fine.
You will obviously want to give first priority to enchanting +0 rings (and +1 rings if your bonus is already +19) as they don't contribute to your bonus at all when digested. Cancel negatively-charged rings instead of trying to enchant them.

Limitations

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"There was an rgrn thread some time ago stating protection does not wrap around, i. e. it is stored in a 16-bit integer and clipped to 8 bit after the fact."

The amount of protection or damage and accuracy bonus you can obtain this way is only limited by the number of rings in the game (provided they have an edible appearance). However, these attributes are stored in a signed char, so you do not want your total bonus (including weapon / armor type and enchantment, skill level, worn rings etc) to exceed +127 lest it wrap around and become negative.
History
In NetHack 3.4.3, rings of protection, increase damage and increase accuracy had no limitations beyond the 33% to acquire the bonus in the first place.

SLASH'EM
SLASH'EM offers five new ring materials and five new functions. Ridged rings can be eaten by any metallivore. The other four, wedding, obsidian, plain, and glass rings, cannot be eaten by any monster. 

Ring

Intrinsic granted

mood ring

no effect

 sleeping

restful sleep

 dexterity

+n dexterity until unpoly

 intelligence

+n intelligence until unpoly

 wisdom

+n wisdom until unpoly

Amulet

Effect

amulet of flying

no effect

amulet of drain resistance

no effect

amulet versus stone

reverses stoning

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.

References

↑ eat.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 1481

↑ bounded_increase in eat.c

↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 A comment in the source says "nice try".