# Talk:Magicbane
Contents

1 Magicbane vs Spellcasting mosters
2 Engraving Elbereth
3 Always, always remember...
4 Chance of arch-liches having Magicbane
5 Conveying Resistances
6 Randomization of messages when hallucinating?
7 Silly farming trick

Magicbane vs Spellcasting mosters
As my favourite sacrifice artifact, I have noticed that occasionally there is an additional special attck against spellcasting foes, along the lines of "You hit 

<monster>. You absorb magic energy!" with a small boost to Power. Where would the detail for this be found? It makes seeking out kobold shaman...s (shamen?)  more worthwhile... -- Kalon 03:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

That's part of the cancel a.k.a. purge attack. You gain 1 Pw and 1 max Pw every time Magicbane successfully cancels a monster that has a magic attack. ContraDuck 10:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Engraving Elbereth
When Engraving with Magicbane (and maybe with other athames, too), you can engrave Elbereth twice (Elbereth Elbereth) in one turn. This gives you more leeway in spelling it correctly and moving around on the square. Renx 13:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Monsters can attack you while you write if you try to engrave more than 10 characters at once with an athame, and monsters attacking is the leading cause of death amongst @'s. Also magicbane will never fail to engrave elbereth unless you have some sort of status effect. In other words, don't do this, write your elbereths one at a time. ContraDuck 10:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Always, always remember...
ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE IT!!! I played an elven wizard on NAO once - perfect starting. Ring of slow digestion, and altar to Anhur on dlvl 1. I altar scummed for Magicbane, and died on the Oracle level because I misspelled Elbereth twice.
I feel stupid. Fredil Yupigo 22:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, Lord, the dumb things I've done...carried the Orb of Fate the first time I ascended (in a Bag of Holding, where I was safe from its powers)...thought I had to wear the Eye for its powers, so I didn't wear my Amulet of Life Saving...I don't think you'd make my top ten.--Ckbryant 00:05, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Chance of arch-liches having Magicbane
Does anyone know the reasoning behind the figure given on this page? My calculations indicate:

1/3 chance of arch-lich having a weapon
2/3 chance of that weapon being an athame
1/13 chance of that athame being eligible to be generate an artifact
1/20 chance that it will actually be an artifact
This gives a total probability of 0.000854701 (i.e. 0.0854701%), which is pretty far from the value given on this page. Thoughts? -- Killian 13:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

*shrug* I read on another page that the probability of an arch-lich being generated with MB was 1/260, which comes out to the 0.3%. Maybe they ignored the first two probabilities? Fredil Yupigo 21:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, 1/260 would be the chance of an arch-lich's (assumed) athame being MB, as opposed to the chance of an arbitrary arch-lich having an athame and that athame being MB (which is a more useful statistic). -- Killian 15:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I read the source the same as Killian.  Have edited the main page accordingly.  Marcmagus 05:18, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Cheers&nbsp;:) I'm not a source reader, so I'll just go along with you guys&nbsp;:) Fredil Yupigo 21:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Conveying Resistances
I noticed that if magicbane is wielded as a secondary weapon it does not convey curse resistance. Is this also true of magic resistance.Ndwolfwood 20:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Is this true of all artifact weapons that confer a resistance such as Excalibur?Ndwolfwood 21:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes.
Most artifact resistances/extrinsics are handled by set_artifact_intrinsic in artifact.c, which is not called for quivered or secondary weapons Source:Worn.c#line68,Source:Worn.c#line88.
Magic resistance is handled in resists_magm in Mondata.c and also checks only for Magicbane as the primary weapon.
Curse resistance is special-cased in rndcurse in sit.c and also only checks for the primary weapon. --Tjr 10:40, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Randomization of messages when hallucinating?
The article asserts that messages are randomized when hallucinating. It doesn't seem to be so. 217.27.130.45 15:00, 3 December 2014 (UTC)`

Looks like you're right: the messages are changed, but not randomized.  I've edited the article to correct that.  --Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Ps. An amusing detail I noticed while testing this is that, if you insightfully probe something with Magicbane while hallucinating, it will say that "The prod is insightful."&nbsp;:-)
The magic-absorbing blade prods the baby yellow dragon!  The prod is insightful.
Status of the ettin zombie (neutral):  Level 4  HP 2(13)  AC 8.
The giant spider is not carrying anything.  You kill the killer bee!

--Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:17, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Silly farming trick
The die roll for determining magic effects is the same as determining to-hit. Cancellation occurs on the lowest (best) to-hit rolls possible, and has the permanent bonus of providing +1 max energy when used against a spellcasting monster. Thus it is possible to rig your to-hit such that only rolls of 1, 2, and 3 will land at all, letting you cancel with almost every hit and farm a trapped spellcasting monster for max energy while doing minimal damage.
This is of course silly and horribly inefficient. But the more practical effect is that if you're low level and can't reliably hit monsters, magicbane will do more damage than expected, as the times you do hit will get bonus damage more often. -- Qazmlpok (talk) 19:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

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