I just identified "5 +0 mithril daggers of scream" that I had carried
with me all the time unidentified. Now I'd have liked to know what
they actually do, but I seem to not easily find any information about
that property. The Hack'EM page in the Wiki just says "Added scream /
sonic property for weapons and armor", and the EvilHack page does not
list that property. In the source code I got a match in mhitu (where
monsters hit the player), but not in uhitm (player hit monsters). Now
for a specific monster I read "Added scream attack that causes fear"
on the Hack'EM page. This might be a hint how it works; _if_ it works
for humans against monsters. - Has anyone experiences or knowledge
about the effects of such "daggers of scream"? - If all they do would
be to wake up monsters, that's of course not very interesting to use.
Or do they have any advantage?

Janis

PS: On my encounter with Vlad he did not even come adjacent after I
started to throw multi-shot shurikens at him. Picked up the remains
(the Candelabrum, and the super-heavy Lifestealer [for the stash])
from the floor. Only minor nuisance was that some summoned gelatinous
cube ate my missiles (but I got them back later), and some high-level
'n' repeatedly zapped (and maybe emptied) some wand of death at my
displaced image.

On Wednesday, May 31, 2023 at 1:42:20 AM UTC+2, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> I just identified "5 +0 mithril daggers of scream" that I had carried
> with me all the time unidentified. Now I'd have liked to know what
> they actually do, but I seem to not easily find any information about
> that property. The Hack'EM page in the Wiki just says "Added scream /
> sonic property for weapons and armor", and the EvilHack page does not
> list that property. In the source code I got a match in mhitu (where
> monsters hit the player), but not in uhitm (player hit monsters). Now
> for a specific monster I read "Added scream attack that causes fear"
> on the Hack'EM page. This might be a hint how it works; _if_ it works
> for humans against monsters. - Has anyone experiences or knowledge
> about the effects of such "daggers of scream"? - If all they do would
> be to wake up monsters, that's of course not very interesting to use.
> Or do they have any advantage?
>
> Janis
>
> PS: On my encounter with Vlad he did not even come adjacent after I
> started to throw multi-shot shurikens at him. Picked up the remains
> (the Candelabrum, and the super-heavy Lifestealer [for the stash])
> from the floor. Only minor nuisance was that some summoned gelatinous
> cube ate my missiles (but I got them back later), and some high-level
> 'n' repeatedly zapped (and maybe emptied) some wand of death at my
> displaced image.

Hey Janus! Late response, but the scream property for weapons simply adds extra sonic damage to the attack. I do like the idea of sometimes scaring enemies though, that would be pretty neat. Although currently anything that does sonic damage is resisted by very few monsters in the game so it's probably the best choice. It will occasionally destroy glass objects as well (potions, some rings/wands, etc), so that can be a drawback.