A
NetHack item of very mixed usefulness and extreme
power. This item is probably one of the most underrated in the game. Like all
wands, you use it by
zapping it at some target.
A wand of cancellation basically eliminates the magical or special powers of its target. Zapping a wand of cancellation at yourself cancels all of your items (see below) and removes any intrinsics, including luck modifiers. This is highly inadvisable unless you are desperate. It is also the number one reason not to zap yourself with random wands (what about the wand of death, I hear you asking? By the time you find one, you'll be past the zapping-self-with-random-wands phase). I did this once and walked away feeling depressingly mundane.
Zapping a wand of cancellation at an item removes that item's special powers. In particular:
Zapping this wand at a
monster suppresses just about anything that makes that
monster special. For example:
If you put a wand of cancellation inside a
bag of holding, the whole thing explodes, doing you a bunch of
damage. The
bag, the
wand, and all
items that were in the
bag disappear for good. Yes, I did this once too. Don't ever put unidentified
wands inside your
bag of holding.