About elements and resistance...

[Laie]

I've got rings that provide resistance to fire and acid, and just now I came across a young acidous dragon and something that cast a fireball. Both events were moderately painful and cost me some equipment... the dragon even destroyed a good sword of slay animal that ought to have fetched a nice price in town.

What do resistances do? Only reduce the HP taken, or is there more to it?

And what bothers me more right now, wanton destruction of items in my pack could well prove disastrous. I just can't carry a spare of everything. Is there any way to protect my belongings?

A quick search was rather unconclusive... but I gathered that the game version seems to matter. I'm still with 3.0.9 at any rate.

[EpicMan]

Resistances only reduce the damage of attacks, not item destruction in your version. I believe the laterst versio
Makes resistances reduce item destruction somewhat. Also, 'high' resistances (stuff other than
Fire, electricity, acid, and cold ) also stop or weaken side effects of damage, like poisoning.
Later in the game, items granting immunity will protect from item damage.

Mostly you just have to be careful and accept occasional item loss. When you find strength
Potions you will be able to carry more. Just avoid meleeing acid and disenchantment monsters,
As they will ruin your weapons.

Also, you will die many times. It's ok, we all die (or died) a whole lot before winning (I have
Been playing for years and have yet to win). Good luck!

[Derakon]

Resistance reduces the damage you take. For acid, electricity, fire, and cold (the "basic four"), and for poison, resistance reduces damage to one-third normal, which is quite significant! For other elements, like light, confusion, nether, nexus, and so on, resistance reduces damage by various oddball and sometimes random amounts. However, in those cases the resistance also protects you from side-effects; for example, resistance to confusion means you can't ever be confused, and resistance to chaos protects you from hallucination.

In 3.0.9, resistance doesn't help you with inventory damage whatsoever. The development version of Vanilla has some features that help resistances mitigate inventory damage, but a) that version's not available yet, and b) resistances don't provide 100% protection. The only way to protect your inventory is to have absolute immunity, which is very hard to come by. Otherwise, just get used to carrying backups.

In more detail on the damage system: any time you take damage from one of the basic four elements, items in your pack may be destroyed (different kinds of items depending on the element in question). If you take less than 30 damage, then the chance is 1% per item, so e.g. if you had a stack of 50 arrows in your pack and you got hit by a Giant Salamander's fire breath (8 damage), then you should expect to lose an arrow half the time. If you take more than 30 but less than 60 damage, then the chance is 2% per item; otherwise, it's 3%. Unfortunately, this is done before resistances kick in (this will be changed in the next version).

[Timo Pietilä]

I've got rings that provide resistance to fire and acid, and just now I came across a young acidous dragon and something that cast a fireball. Both events were moderately painful and cost me some equipment... the dragon even destroyed a good sword of slay animal that ought to have fetched a nice price in town.

What do resistances do? Only reduce the HP taken, or is there more to it?

And what bothers me more right now, wanton destruction of items in my pack could well prove disastrous. I just can't carry a spare of everything. Is there any way to protect my belongings?

A quick search was rather unconclusive... but I gathered that the game version seems to matter. I'm still with 3.0.9 at any rate.

Item destruction is calculated based on damage you got before any resists are counted, however there are immunities for all basic four elements and that protects vulnerable items from being damaged.

Note that both acid and disenchantment resistances stop your wielded/worn equipment from being damaged, and those are the only two elements that do affect your wielded/worn items.

Disenchantment doesn't damage items in your inventory, only wielded/worn ones.

Note that immunity to cold protects items against shards too, fire and electricity against plasma, acid against...hmmm...water? etc.

High elements are more a side-effect protectors than damage protectors:

Chaos against hallucination against any source and confusion and XP-drain from chaos only, sound against stunning (not melee), confusion against confusion from any source including chaos, dark/light against blindness from them, blindness against blindness from any source, nexus against nexus-based teleports, stat scrambling and level-teleports from any source, shards against cuts and item destruction (potions), disenchantment against disenchantment (obviously), nether against XP-drain from nether.

Poison is something between basic4 elements and high elements. Unlike high elements it's resist is not variable but constant 1/3 and it can have double resistance increasing it to 1/9 unlike any high element, but OTOH it doesn't affect your gear, has lower damage cap than basic 4 (800 instead of 1600) but higher than any true high element (550) and has an side-effect which is getting poisoned (obviously). Because that high damage cap this can actually kill you without resist and because the way resist works this is damage reduction resist, not side-effect resist.

From (other) high-elements consider side-effects before damage reduction when you choose your gear. Confusion and blindness are the most desirable ones (with those you can always cast spells), then perhaps nexus until you have either perfect saving throw or maxed stats (you get saving throw against stat-scrambling and level teleports) and very close to that is sound against stunning. Others are not needed but nice to have (and even those mentioned are not needed if you just choose your fights, detection and evasion before any resistance).

High element resistance damage reduction is variable, not constant. The less potential reduction the higher the max damage. For nether that is most damaging of them damage you can get is 6/1d6+6, IE 6/7 of max damage 550 = 471. Same calculation to chaos, disenchantment, sound and shards with cap 500. Others I don't remember.

(note that "nexus Q" teleports are not actually nexus-based, just teleports).