How to Melee Nazgul

[feathin]

There always seems to be some confusion around as to how to melee Nazgul/Ringwraiths. Lots of people seem to be so scared of them that they completely avoid them. In my experience, I've always hunted them.

The problems with meleeing Nazgul are that they tend to disenchant and destroy weapons, resist damage by most weapons, and give you the Black Breath.

Black Breath is given when you hit them with a melee weapon (bare-handed combat does not give Black Breath!), or when they hit you in melee. Black Breath is by no means fatal or even very bad, you can travel around in wilderness mode with it and have nothing more than a little experience drained and stats unpermanently drained. It is curable with Sprigs of Athelas, Herbal Healing in Gondolin, and "The Elfstone 'Elessar'".

When meleeing a Nazgul, you get the message "Foo is IMPERVIOUS to the mundane weapon!" if the weapon does not have a 'slay evil', 'slay undead', or '*slay undead*' flag. But actually, it does not mean what it appears to mean. Any damage that the weapon itself does is negated, but bonuses from your skill, rings of damage/slaying, gloves of slaying, etc are applied. Thus, if your character has +60 to damage (shown on charsheet) and is wielding a Broad Sword (2d5)(+15,+10), it will do exactly 50 damage every blow, as if you were wielding a Broad Sword (0d0)(+15,+0). (since the base dice of the weapon is made 0d0, critical hits and other brands such as fire do not upgrade damage) If the weapon has any of those three brands, it will do full damage against the Nazgul.

Meleeing a Nazgul with most weapons will immediately destroy the weapon. Artifacts have a saving throw (pretty high) against being destroyed. This means that one feasible way to melee Nazgul is to use an artifact weapon that you don't care about having possibly destroyed. A weapon flag called RES_MORGUL, which reads "It can resist being shattered by morgul beings" on the weapon after *ID*, exists on some weapons of Westernesse (approximately 50%) and the artifact Demonblade of Gothmog. A weapon (ego or artifact) with this flag will not be destroyed by meleeing Nazgul.

Meleeing a Nazgul with any weapon other than an ego-weapon with the RES_MORGUL flag will cause the weapon to be disenchanted. Artifacts with the RES_MORGUL flag will still be disenchanted. This looks like a bug to me, one way or the other, that artifacts should be less powerful than ego-weapons. So in standard ToME, only weapons of Westernesse will not be disenchanted by meleeing Nazgul.

The downside to weapons of Westernesse is that they typically do not have any of the flags needed to prevent the Nazgul from being "IMPERVIOUS". Of course, they still do damage to the Nazgul, depending on your own skill and +s to damage other than your weapon's +s.

The ultimate weapon against a Nazgul is a Spectral weapon of Westernesse (with RES_MORGUL), which will have the 'slay undead' flag and resist shattering and disenchantment. Second-best to this is the Demonblade of Gothmog, which will be disenchanted to (+0,+0) but has the 'slay evil' brand, allowing the weapon's (4d6) and brand bonus to come into play. Third-best is a weapon of Westernesse (with RES_MORGUL) which will not be destroyed or disenchanted (though its + to damage is useless anyway, but the + to accuracy may still apply). Fourth-best is a "junk" artifact, especially with a slay evil/undead brand (I put this after plain Westernesse because it would be really bad in a fight to suddenly have your weapon disappear, unless you happen to have yet another junk artifact on hand).

Lastly, disenchantment resistance on a weapon does not prevent or lessen its chances of being disenchanted by meleeing a Nazgul.

Most of this I just verified by running a debug char, charsheet here. The charsheet has a record of all the tests I ran with the character.

I'll probably be transferring this to the wiki Spoilers, with some editing, once I figure out just where to put it (perhaps a subpage of Uniques).

[Maylith]

Nice work!

A subpage under base uniques, perhaps?

[Nerdanel]

My current character runs away from the Nazg?l. She is wielding the Gothmog set and is not going to let the demonblade get disenchanted. It's not that the Nazg?l give that good drops anyway, compared to wyrms which are much less annoying to kill. And I really don't want to waste slots for a stack of *Remove Curse* and a swap weapon.

When I killed Sauron for the first time with that character there was a ringwraith standing next to me most of the time. I just kept hitting Sauron and ignored the wraith's feeble attacks.

Overall I think Nazg?l are more trouble than they are worth. I like killing them only with ranged attacks.

[Maylith]

I can't remember ever having run from a Nazgul. (I'm sure I have, I just can't think of a time.) Anyway, I kill them whenever possible, but I always use a ranged attack of some kind. If I have a junkart of light absorption (one of my favorite toys in the whole game), I'll use that, then follow up with a ranged attack if necessary.

[zasvid]

I like to develop new tactics to dispatch Nazgul. My favourite so far was using Melkor's Curse repeatedly. I cursed Witch-King hundreds of times on Dim Gates (he was rendered almost non-moving quite quickly) and then I blasted him with 2d6 Cammithrim's magic missile

[Serin]

I just make sure I have some randarts, then go after them. Depending on the type of character I am playing, depends on what I use.

[Sly]

I usualy carry a randart weapon to eradicate them, but if I have a junkart of "Light Absorbtion" I carry it instead (take most of them down in one shot).

I like to develop new tactics to dispatch Nazgul. My favourite so far was using Melkor's Curse repeatedly. I cursed Witch-King hundreds of times on Dim Gates (he was rendered almost non-moving quite quickly) and then I blasted him with 2d6 Cammithrim's magic missile

Melkor's Curse spell has cululative effects

Silly me, I never tried because I was sure it wouldn't (seemed too powerfull)

[Maylith]

I like to develop new tactics to dispatch Nazgul.

That's hilarious, zasvid! (*makes note to self to try thatwith my Haftedmaster once I get enough piety built up*)

[petebull]

When you get the "The Ringwraith is IMPERVIOUS to the mundane weapon." message, you can't catch the black breath due your attack. ( I know that from the source code.)

So a nice to-hit sword of westernesse should kill a Nazgul, right? Of course with all the magic to--damage help you can get.

[Atarlost]

I haven't fought nazgul for a while (not doing so well in 2.3.x) but I used to use junkarts, high level mindcraft, pets, or some combination thereof. I usually played demonologists, necromancers, priests, or loremasters. I had some mages where I was planning to use summon animal and geyser, but they died stupid deaths.

[Falconis]

I just tend to carry round a spare artifact weapon. (Often Glamdring).