# Mithril-coat

[   dwarvish mithril-coat   

Appearance

dwarvish mithril-coat

Slot

body armor

AC

6

Special

MC2

Base price

240 zm

Weight

150

Material

mithril

[   elven mithril-coat   

Appearance

elven mithril-coat

Slot

body armor

AC

5

Special

MC2

Base price

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.
Being made of mithril, they are immune to erosion, but they still hinder spellcasting.
While the dwarvish mithril-coat has one higher natural AC than its elven counterpart, it cannot be safely enchanted if above +3, while the elven mithril-coat can be enchanted even at +5. Thus, a dwarvish coat is slightly superior when unenchanted, but an elven coat is slightly superior when fully enchanted.
Equipping or unequipping mithril-coats takes only 1 turn, which is much faster than the 5 turns that it takes for most other body armor.[1]

Contents

1 Strategy
2 Generation
3 Variants

3.1 SLASH'EM
3.2 xNetHack
3.3 EvilHack

4 Encyclopedia entry
5 References

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. Since mithril-coats can be quickly equipped or unequipped, a property not shared by any other metallic body armor, a spellcaster (especially one not wearing a cloak) may still find it useful to wear a mithril-coat, quickly removing it as necessary to cast spells.

Generation
All elven monsters (except elf mummies and elf zombies) have a 1/4 chance of being generated with an elven mithril-coat.[2]
Hobbits have a 1/10 chance of being generated with an elven mithril-coat.
All dwarvish monsters (except dwarf mummies and dwarf zombies) have a 1/12 chance of being generated with a dwarvish mithril-coat.
Variants
Many variants, particularly those based off NetHack 3.4.3, give mithril-coats an MC of 3. Other variants that employ object materials may replace it entirely with a different item.

SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, both the elven and dwarven mithril-coat have an MC of 3, and SLASH'EM adds the dark elven mithril-coat, which has stats identical to the dwarven mithril coat. They are the only suits of body armor that provide MC3.

xNetHack
In xNetHack, mithril-coats are removed and replaced with elven ring mail and dwarven ring mail; mithril-coats are material specific, but were not left as such by the integration of object materials. Mithril body armor will always grant at least MC2.
The elven ring mail grants 2 AC and uses a base material of copper, while dwarvish ring mail grants 4 AC and has a base material of iron as usual; each of these will behave identically to an elven/dwarven mithril-coat if they generate made of mithril. Hobbits that get elven ring mail will always be given one made of mithril, and dwarf lords and kings that get a dwarvish ring mail have an increased chance of it being mithril.

EvilHack
EvilHack takes a similar approach to xNetHack above, but instead uses elven chain mail and dwarven chain mail; when made of mithril, they act similarly to the mithril-coats of vanilla. Mithril body armor grants MC2 when worn, and elves wearing mithril armor are granted MC3; both elves and dwarves gain MC3 from wearing their respective chain mails.

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

↑ src/objects.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 417

↑ m_initweap in makemon.c

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.
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