One of the most popular items in
Nethack. One even worth expending a
wish on, though one may be created by wearing the scales of a gray
dragon and reading a non-cursed scroll of
enchant armor (for best results,
Take off all other
armor before reading the
scroll). At +0, the scale mail grants 9 points of
AC decrease, which in the strange
AD&D armor system is
a good thing. This is a great improvement over the basic set of scales, which only grants 3. Both scales and armor grant intrinsic
magic resistance, a relatively rare
intrinsic quite helpful in the latter stages of the game.
With the advent of Nethack 3.3.0, many Hackers have come to use Silver Dragon Scale Mail instead, which grants reflection instead of magic resistance.