Carrying a weapon in your backpack does you no good. You must wield a weapon before it can be used in a fight. A secondary weapon can be kept by keeping it in the backpack, and switching it with the primary weapon when needed. This is most often used when switching between two weapons, each of which provides a rare power that the character needs at two separate times. Note that a digging tool need only be carried in your pack, as when you try to dig your best digging tool will automatically be used.
Weapons have two main magical characteristics, their enchanted ability to hit and their enchanted ability to do damage, expressed as ‘(+#,+#)’. A normal weapon would be ‘(+0,+0)’. Many weapons in Angband have bonuses to hit and/or to damage.
Angband assumes that your youth in the rough environment near the dungeons has taught you the relative merits of different weapons, and displays as part of their description the damage dice which define their capabilities. Any damage enchantment is added to the dice roll for that weapon. The dice used for a given weapon is displayed as ‘XdY’. The number X indicates how many dice to roll, and number Y indicates how many sides they have. A ‘2d6’ weapon will thus give damage from 2 to 12, plus any damage bonus. The weight of a weapon is also a consideration. Heavy weapons may hit harder, but they are also harder to use. Depending on your strength, dexterity, character class, and weapon weight, you may get attacks more quickly: high dexterity and strength and low weapon weight are the main factors. Warriors may get up to a maximum of 6 attacks per round: pure spellcasters are limited to only 4: other classes may get up to 5. Your attacks per round with a weapon are displayed as a decimal, e.g. 2.3 or 3.4 etc. The fractions take the form of unused energy which is carried over to your next turn.
Missile weapons, such as bows, have their characteristics added to those of the missile used, if the proper weapon/missile combination is used, and then the launcher multiplier is applied to the total damage, making missile weapons very powerful given the proper missiles, especially if they are enchanted. Like weapons, Inspecting ammunition will tell you how much damage you will do with your current missile launcher.
Finally, some rare weapons have special abilities. These are called ego weapons, and are feared by great and meek. An ego weapon must be wielded to receive the benefit of its abilities. It should be noted that some of these items are considerably more powerful than others, and generally the most powerful items are the rarest. Some items will have an obvious effect, like an increase in infravision, or extra strength. These effects will be noticed as soon as you wield the item. Other effects, like most resistances, will need to be learned. You can learn them by either suffering an appropriate attack, or by using magical means of identification.
Some of the more common ego weapons are described at the end of this file.