ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Just wondering, did Uvatha cause my weapon to break - it was a Gondolin +3 weapon... I have never seen this happen in Angband. I can only imagine that something in Tolkein's works said that Uvatha would break weapons that hit him or something. I took him down with missile ammo, but that kind of surprised me. How can a weapon break? Any other "surprises" later on? It may be spoiler-ish, but that is just unfair, like my first encounter with the Phial of Undeath un-ID'ed.

Yes. You need a weapon which "resists being shattered by Morgul beings". In practice that means "of Westernesse" or an artifact. Beware that if the *Identified* artifact description doesn't specifically say "resists being shattered..." then it may still break -- the chance of breaking in that case is very low.

Does that mean ANY black-colored wraiths can break my weapons? Anything I can do to the weapon to make it unbreakable? Any special "resist" from another object? I have just fallen in love with my sword because it does 900+ HP per round and I haven't found anything that was above 800 yet. I did find something of Westernesse already, but sold it.

So, even artifacts can break if they do not mention "resists being shattered"? Tough... I can just see the day I actually find Ringil (assuming it is as good in ToME as Angband) and then it shatters.

If you don't mind reading spoilers you can check out the wiki entry on Nazgul:

http://wiki.t-o-m-e.net/Spoilers/Unique/Nazgul

With their disenchant/shatter combination you shouldn't melee a ring wraith unless it's some throw away artifact that you don't care about. Look for junkarts of light absorption or carry lots of wands of manathrust or arrows/bolts otherwise. If I have a melee character that I want to hunt Nazgul with I save any westernese weapons with the resist morgul flag (or "of Tulkas" in Theme).

No, it's just the Nazgul that can shatter weapons like this. Short of being an Alchemist I can't recall any way of making a specific weapon Nazgul-proof.

The best way I've found to deal with Nazgul is to:

1) Avoid fighting them like the plague until you've destroyed the Ring.
2) Destroy the Ring.
3) Specifically hunt them all down while lugging around an expendable artifact weapon or two.

If you're paranoid and don't want to get stuck having to fight a ringwraith on a special level (or having to abandon a lucrative vault) you can always just lug around a couple or expendable artifact weapons.

Light-absorption junkarts are the way to go, IMO, especially if you have a source of Enlightenment to provide lighted squares. The junkart will remove light from all squares in a fairly large radius, and then fire a bolt of light that deals damage proportional to the number of squares absorbed. Ringwraiths are weak to bright light. A properly-used junkart can one-shot all but the strongest of them.

The shattering effect is a bit cruel to melee-oriented characters. It's far from the only thing that's cruel to such characters, though; many of the special levels really have it in for characters that can't create LOS-blockers or fight at range.

IIRC there's precisely one artifact that's resistant to shattering: Gothmog's demonblade.

Even if they don't shatter, the disenchanting is annoying. I thought artifaces were completely immune to all damage, so unfortunately I learn't this the hard way.
I have found an artifact caller "Vorpal Blade", was (+30something,+30something). After fighting my first ringwrath it was down to about (+5,+3). Very dissappointing.

Ouch. Vorpal Blade's an endgame weapon. Why didn't you remove it after the first round of melee? It shouldn't have lost more than a half-dozen plusses at the very most.

Derakon wrote:Ouch. Vorpal Blade's an endgame weapon. Why didn't you remove it after the first round of melee? It shouldn't have lost more than a half-dozen plusses at the very most.

Because I'm not very smart, and was doing most of my combat with the space bar held down. I had my demons, he had is minions, so there were a LOT of messages in every round of combat, and I was too lazy to read them all. And yes, I know that's bad - was properly reprimanded about the risks in that play style in another thread. I got what I deserved

Either lug around a junk artifact (Longsword of Dawn springs to mind) or invest in some long range weapons and scrolls of Phase Door.