Objects

ZangbandTK adds 51 artifacts and 18 ego types to Angband’s, along with three weapon properties Angband has no equivalent for.

Three new weapon properties

These are the mechanics most likely to change how you fight, and all three can appear on artifacts or on ordinary ego items.

Vampiric. Drains life from living creatures to heal you. The drain is capped at the damage actually dealt, so a killing blow heals you for the monster’s remaining health rather than for the overkill. Undead and other non-living creatures give you nothing. Found on artifacts and on the (Vampiric) ego.

Vorpal. One blow in six cuts far deeper than it should, doubling that blow’s damage. It multiplies the weapon’s own contribution rather than your damage bonuses, so it favours a large weapon over a heavily enchanted small one. Found on artifacts and on weapons of Sharpness.

Chaotic. One blow in seven discharges an unpredictable effect into whatever you hit — confusion, terror, slowing, stunning, or flinging the target out of reach entirely. That last one is a genuine drawback and is meant to be: a chaotic weapon that only ever helped you would not be chaotic. Found on artifacts and on the (Chaotic) ego.

All three announce themselves in an item’s description, so you will know a weapon has them once you have identified it.

New artifacts

The 51 imported artifacts include the regalia of Amber — Grayswandir, Corwin’s blade, and Frakir, the strangling cord — along with Zangband’s chaos and Mythos artifacts.

A few appear on base items Angband no longer has. Angband retired several object kinds over the years, and where an artifact’s original base was one of them it has been rehoused on the nearest surviving equivalent. Grayswandir is a cutlass here because Angband no longer has sabres. The artifact’s own damage, weight and value are unchanged.

New ego types

Eighteen, including (Vampiric), (Chaotic), of Sharpness, (Ghoul Touch), of Immolation, of the Wild, and the Amber-flavoured (Trump Weapon) and (Pattern Weapon).

Ego items are where most players will actually meet Zangband’s character. Artifacts are rare by design; a vampiric long sword is not.

The Ancient and Foul Curse

Some equipment carries the Curse of Topi Ylinen, and you will know it: the item describes itself as ancient and foul.

What makes it feared is not any single outcome but its shape. Roughly once every hundred turns, a cursed item stirs and one misfortune befalls you — monsters woken, something summoned, experience drained, paralysis, a statistic lost, or your memory torn away. But each of those has a chance of falling through to the next, and the next after that, so a woken monster can escalate into a summoning, into paralysis, into total amnesia, in a single visitation. When it finishes, there is a one-in-three chance it simply begins again.

Free action does not make you immune to the paralysis. It gives you a saving throw, and shortens the paralysis if you fail.

Sometimes the curse stirs and nothing happens at all.

It is worth carrying cursed equipment only if what it gives you is worth this. Often it is.

Activations

Zangband scripted its artifact activations in a scripting language ZangbandTK does not carry. Each has been matched to the nearest Angband activation instead — an artifact that threw a fireball still throws a fireball, and its recharge time is preserved, but the effect is Angband’s version rather than a faithful reproduction of Zangband’s.

Not yet implemented

A handful of Zangband object properties are recorded but inactive: weapons that return when thrown, items that let you pass through walls, and properties tied to luck, which Angband has no equivalent of. Items carrying them work in every other respect.