Tools in Slash'EM

The new tools in Slash'EM are magic candles, torches, medical kits, fishing poles and four types of lightsabers. Unicorn horns are also covered here because their behaviour is different in Slash'EM and Nethack.

Magic Candles

A magic candle is an everlasting light source, but unlike a magic lamp it cannot be used to give a wish. It is easy to pseudo-identify a magic candle. When you light it, it will illuminate an area of radius 3 rather than 2, and will not appear partly used in your inventory. Magic candles are much more expensive than ordinary candles, but if you try to sell one (in a shop which accepts tools) the shopkeeper will seem uninterested.

Torches

A torch is a light source providing 600-899 turns of light which must be wielded before it can be lit. A lit torch can be used as a weapon - this will do fire damage to monsters, but also use up the torch more quickly.

Unicorn Horns

Unicorn horns can cure sickness, blindness, hallucination, vomiting, confusion, stunning, and loss of attributes. They cannot cure stoning, strangulation, wounded legs, sliming, or lycanthropy. Cursed unicorn horns will cause sickness, blindness, hallucination, confusion, stunning, or loss of an attribute. All this is the same as in vanilla Nethack.

However, the probability of a unicorn horn working is different in Slash'EM, and depends on the enchantment of the horn. A blessed unicorn horn will try to fix all problems, each with the chance given in the table below, while an uncursed horn will try to fix one problem with the same probability.

Medical Kits

A medical kit will appear as a leather bag when unidentified, but can only hold pills, bandages and phials. A newly created medical kit will contain up to 60 of these items in total, and you can determine the contents of a medical kit by looting it. There is no way of refilling a medical kit.

Anyone can apply a medical kit to swallow a pill from it, but unless you are a Healer or the kit is blessed, this is not very likely to work. Healers can also use the bandages to bandage their wounds as part of the surgery technique. Vampires can use the phials to draw off their own blood, creating an uncursed potion of vampire blood at the cost of an experience level. The blessed/cursed status of the medical kit makes no difference to either of these techniques.

If you apply a medical kit which contains no pills, you will receive a message to that effect, and nothing else will happen. Otherwise, the game will determine whether you are able to use the medical kit correctly. The probability is affected by your class and the blessed/cursed status of the kit. Unless you are a Healer using a non-cursed medical kit, there is some chance that it will fail. The probabilities of success are shown in the table below.

If the kit fails, it will either have no effect, make your condition worse (lose 10-19 HP), or make you sick if you weren't sick already.

If it works, it will cure one of the following troubles: sickness, blindness not caused by a thrown cream pie, hallucination, vomiting, confusion, stunning, and lack of hit points (it will heal you by 10-19 HP but won't increase your max HP). The trouble cured will be the first one in the order stated.

Since a medical kit is fairly expensive (500 GP), it can be used to acquire all a shopkeeper's gold with the help of a pet. If you're not a Healer or Vampire, you may find that this is its most important use, at least until you can bless it.

Fishing Poles

A fishing pole can be used in combat like a polearm, and has no minimum range unlike other types of polearm. To apply it, you must not be swallowed and must be able to wield it. You must then choose a spot to hit which you can see and which is within your maximum range. If this is all OK, there are six possible random effects:

1. You hook yourself and lose 10-19 HP.
2. If you were fishing (you aimed the pole at water) and there's a monster there, you attempt to reel it in. Big/strong monsters have a 1/2 chance of reeling you in instead.
3. You snag an existing object (useful for picking things up while levitating).
4. If you were fishing, you catch a pair of low boots. If you aimed at a sink or toilet, you catch a sewer rat.
5. If you were fishing, you catch tonight's dinner (a cram ration).
6. No effect - there is a comment that this should attempt to untrap the spot you aimed at.

If no effect applied, this is treated as an attack.

Lightsabers

Lightsabers come in four varieties: green, blue, red single and red double. Red double lightsabers do not appear to be generated in the current version. Applying an ordinary lightsaber will switch it between the lit and unlit modes, and applying a red double lightsaber in single-bladed mode will activate dual bladed mode.

A lit lightsaber is a high-damage weapon, but has a -3 to-hit penalty (-4 for double lightsabers) and is restricted for all classes. An unlit lightsaber can be used as a weapon and doesn't seem to give a ``bashing'' message but doesn't do much damage.