Inscription general rules/guide

[TheQuest]

Hi! I can see a lot of items in ladder characters dump havint items inscribed with bunch of symbols, like SlIf, PoDkNt, Ac, El.. Well I was wondering is there is any guide, or maybe some commonly used abbreviation used, so that I can start to understand what people are inscribing.
I am correct that as I understand it is up to any player to inscribe an object, and this inscription in informational only?

[fph]

You can inscribe an object with the `{` command. The inscriptions you cite are purely informational, because some people are too lazy to use the `I` command every time they want to know the properties of an item and prefer to inscribe them. I presume that in their code `El` means "gives resistance to electricity", Dk=dark, Nt=nether, etc.

Some special inscriptions, though, have a gameplay effect:
- `!` followed by a letter: asks for confirmation every time you give the object as argument to the command given by the inscribed letter. Common example: `!q` on a potion asks confirmation before you drink it. Variant: `!*` asks for confirmation for every command applied to the object. Common example: `!*` on a potion of life.
- `@` followed by a number: allows you to specify the object by this number instead of its inventory letter. Common example: `@1` on a scroll of word of recall, so `r1` recalls to town.
- `=g`: autopickup. Common example: `=g` on arrows.

Common combination example: `@m3@G3@b3!s!d!k!v` on the third spellbook, so you can cast a spell with `m3b` instead of `mcb`, with the advantage that this works even if you drop all your copies of the first two books.

Remark: even if you use the roguelike keyset, you still have to use letters in the inscriptions as if you were using the traditional keyset, which can be confusing.

[Nomad]

There's a thread here with a bit of a guide to the various special inscriptions with gameplay effects that people use. Those always start with a symbol, like @ ! or ^.

Other types of inscriptions are just people's personal 'note to self' reminders of any important properties a piece of equipment has, so they can see that at a glance when checking the inventory without having to go into the Inspect screen. So there's no standard form, but generally they'll be the same or similar to the abbreviations on the grid that shows all your resistance coverage and special abilities (e.g. "rPois" for poison resistance or "pConf" for protection from confusion). You should be able to work them out by comparing the inscription to the full list of object properties beneath.

[wobbly]

If you look at mine or clouded's poscheng dumps up at the moment the inscriptions are fairly standard (they were auto-inscribed by the game). Below is a table showing what gear is giving what resistance. So if you look at the equiped item then look at the table you should be able to work out what they are. Some won't be in vanilla just because it's a variant.

[TheQuest]

Thank you for answers!