TomeNET

(3.4b) Item basics                                                              
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When you've logged in and look at your inventory (your backpack, basically),
ie the items your character starts with, you will see various item names that
give you some sort of idea what the item is good for, along with some cryptic
numbers and brackets.
The meaning of these will be explained here:

a Ration of Food {+,0}
    Pretty straightforward, this is an item that you can consume if you get
    hungry. To do so, use SHIFT+e to 'eat' this item.
    The {..} part means the following:

    The number in it is the level required to use this item. 0 means that it
    was given to a character by the system on birth, or some other special
    event and cannot be traded to other players.

    The '+' symbol means that you own the item. If it was someone else's ration
    then you would see his name written there instead of the '+', for example:
    a Ration of Food {Gandalf,0}.
    If the owner died and the item hasn't been picked up yet by someone else
    who meets the level requirements, it will display a '-' instead of a name,
    meaning it has been owned, but the owner died. Example:
    a Ration of Food {-,0}.

    If you own an item or found an item, then the level requirements won't
    matter. Even if they are much higher than your level, you can still use it.

    The level requirements are only important for TRADING an item:
    If the character who receives the item is too low to match the level
    requirement, he won't become the owner of the item and therefore will be
    unable to use the item until he reaches the level. He can still carry the
    item in his inventory though, but it will be displayed in dark grey to him,
    indicating that it isn't usable yet.

    Note that you usually can neither trade nor sell items that are level 0.
    Food (and possibly some other very basic items such as torches) is an
    exception to this rule, since it can be traded (but not sold) even if it
    is level 0.

    For those interested in more details, that item level is roughly determined
    based on the following factors:
     - Base item level (the dungeon depth where it starts popping up)
     - A slight increase for when it's found on even much deeper floors
     - An increase depending on ego powers it possesses.
    Some items have special level requirement calculations, for example the
    level of a ring of speed is directly tied to its +speed value.

a Chain Mail {+,0} (-2) [14,+0]
    The {..} part is already known, it's the same as for the ration described
    above. What's new is the [..] part, which all types of armour have:

    The (-2) part is a to-hit malus. This armour reduces your to-hit value by
    2, because of its bulkiness. Lighter armour has -1 or no to-hit malus,
    heavier armour may have even more than -2.

    Rectangular brackets [..] describe 'Armour Class' or short AC. AC is a
    number that tells you how well the item helps to protect you when a monster
    (or a player whom you duel) hits you.

    The first number stands for the item's 'base AC'. All 'Chain Mails' have
    the same base AC of 14. All 'Metal Caps' have a base AC of 3, and so on.

    The second number, here a +0, can vary: It is this item's magical
    enchantment. It is simply added to the base AC to determine the total AC
    this item provides.

    For example a Chain Mail [14,+3] is magically enchanted 3 times, and
    therefore will provide you with 17 AC instead of just 14, ie 14+3.
    Armour class helps for both: Reducing the chance to get hit, and reducing
    the actual damage you suffer in case you are hit.

    Likewise, if you fight an acidic monster for example, the acid might damage
    your Chain Mail, and turn it into for example a Chain Mail [14,-2].
    This Chain Mail only provides you with 12 AC. You could 'repair' it
    by buying two 'Scrolls of enchant armour' from store 5 in town to enchant
    it back to +0, but the cheaper way would be to use the 'repair' service
    instead which is offered in the armoury (and also at the weaponsmith's).
    Note that enchanting items by using scrolls to anything above +0 has a
    chance to fail, depending on how high it has already been enchanted.

a Small Metal Shield {+,3} [17%]
    Shields are special in that they do not provide AC (armour class) but
    instead a base block chance, specified in [..] brackets.
    This chance is modified by various factors such as character class and type
    of attack, to determine the real case-by-case block chance.
    In general, characters that are 'superb' at blocking (see table in (7.5))
    will use this chance as base in all blocking calculations, while anyone
    worse than 'superb' will mean that the character gets this base block
    chance somewhat reduced.
    Example values of the actual chance can be checked in 'm' menu.
    For a complete rundown on parrying and blocking, see (7.11).

a Long Sword {+,0} (2d6) (+0,+0)
    Again the {..} part is already know. What's new for all types of weapons is
    the (2d6) and the (+0,+0) part:

    Like in Dungeons & Dragons, on which rules some aspects of the game are
    loosely based, when your character attacks a monster (or another player),
    dice are cast to determine the amount of damage your blow deals.

    The (2d6) mean that when you hit someone with this weapon, two dice of six
    sides each are cast, so you may deal anything from 2 to 12 damage randomly.
    (The real damage the target suffers can possibly be further reduced by the
    target's armour class or protective magic.)

    Similar to armour, weapons can be enchanted too. This is the second pair of
    brackets: (+0,+0).

    The first +0 means that this weapon has no magical enchantment to its hit
    chance, ie how likely it is to hit a target.

    The second +0 means that this weapon has no magical enchantment to the
    damage it deals. Example:
    a Long Sword (2d6) (+5,+6) would add 5 to your hit chance, which isn't very
    much, but still better than nothing. Probably worth more is the fact that
    it also adds 6 to your damage dealt!
    This means on each attack it will deal 2d6 +6 damage, which would be
    anything from 2+6 to 12+6, ie 8..18. As you can see, this is a considerable
    improvement over 2..12 of an unenchanted Long Sword.

    Note that training weapon-related skills will also add to your overall
    +damage bonus. So your character might have +34 to-damage using a mere
    Long Sword (2d6) (+9,+15), with the remaining +19 damage coming from your
    'Sword-mastery' skill that you trained.

    Also note that often it can be better to wield lighter weapons instead of
    heavier weapons, if you can attack more often during each round with them.
    Example: A light dagger might allow you to attack 3 times, while a heavy
    two-handed sword will only allow you one swing each turn. Here you will
    have to do some math with the weapon dice, your total +damage from weapon
    and skill, and the number of blows/round you get with each weapon, to find
    out which setup is best for your character at a given time.

a Long Bow {+,0} (x3) (+0,+0)
    Ranged weapons all have a 'multiplier' given in the first pair of round
    brackets, and the (+hit,+dam) enchantments already known from normal melee
    weapons.

    The multiplier, here x3, means two things:
    a) how far you can shoot
    b) by how much the damage dealt by your arrow (or shot or bolt, depending
       on the weapon type) will be multiplied.
    This means that enchanting a ranged weapon's damage is especially effective
    because the +damage bonus will also be multiplied by the weapons's factor!
    Example: a Long Bow (x3) (+2,+4) will actually add not +4 but 3x+4 = +12
    damage to each shot! This is why archers should try to visit store 5 as
    soon as possible to buy some 'Scrolls of enchant weapon to-dam' from it,
    to enchant their bows or other ranged weapons.

a Wooden Torch {+,0} (with 2500 turns of light)
    Not much new here, except that this item has a 'timeout' given in turns.
    After having this item equipped for 2500 turns (about half of that in
    seconds, very roughly), the torch will be depleted and not produce any
    more light, so you can drop/destroy/sell it, or press SHIFT+f to add
    a fresh torch from your inventory to your almost depleted one, thereby
    refueling it (this makes sense if you are using a torch that provides
    special magic powers).

Finally, about digging tools: If you buy a shovel or pick from store '1' to
dig up treasure veins, it looks like this:
a Pick {+,1} (0,+2) (+1)
    The to-hit and to-dam bonus slightly increase the item's digging power.
    The main factor though is the (+1). For digging tools, this bonus describes
    their main digging power. (Each (+1) point is worth 20 points of either
    to-hit or to-dam enchantment effect regarding digging.)
    Also, the weight of your digging tool also has some effect, the heavier the
    better (each lb is worth as much as 1 point to-hit or to-dam enchantment).
Later on in the game you might find 'ego' digging tools, for example:
a Pick of Digging {+,9} (+5,+9) (+1) (+3)
    It's basically same as the normal pick, except it has a second (+3) mod at
    the end. This belongs to the 'of Digging' suffix and, same as the (+1),
    further increases the digging ability, in the same way the (+1) does.
    So overall you can just view it as if it was a Pick (+4) (1 plus 3).
(See (5.17) for details about digging.)

While you can (via Shift+w) equip a digging tool in your weapon slot and then
use it as both, a weapon and a digging tool, you won't get mastery-specific
boni applied as digging tools count as neither of any of the weapon classes.

Asides from basic items with simple enchantments as shown above, you will also
find items with "ego powers" (such as the aforementioned Pick of Digging).
These have "named" powers added as prefix and/or suffix to their name. Each
item can have up to two ego-powers that way, one prefix and one suffix. Items
with two ego-powers are dubbed "double-egos" in TomeNET slang.

Finally, at the top of the item pyramid you will find "artifacts". These can
have way more powers than most ego items, even more than double-egos.
There are two types of artifacts, true (or 'static') artifacts and random ones.
While true artifacts are predefined in a list (you can invoke it with ~ 6), are
unique (only one instance of each true artifact can exist in the world at a
time) and expire after a certain time after having been found, random artifacts
never expire and are completely randomly generated so you cannot predict its
powers when you find one, you will have to use *identify* on it to find out.

For more information on item types see (5.7).