How to find out which weapon is better?

So I started playing Nethack. But I wonder: How can I see which weapon is better if equipped?

For armor, I can at least switch it and look how the "AC" indicator changes.

Solution 1:

Comparing between similar types is usually fairly straightforward, I'll use daggers (1d4 to small) and short swords (1d6 to small) as an example.

Orcish equipment is usually weaker than its counterparts, doing 1 fewer max damage to small monsters. (1d3 for dagger, 1d5 for short sword.)

Elvish equipment is the opposite, dealing more damage to small monsters (1d5, 1d8.) Elvish equipment is also non-metal, except for the mithril coat. The weapons are wood.

Dwarvish equipment is similar to elvish, but metal. In general their armours helps one additional point, while their weapons range from slightly stronger (spear) to slightly weaker (short sword). They do not have a special dagger, but their shortsword deals 1d7 points to small monsters.

Silver weapons are identical to standard versions, but deal an extra 1d20 to certain creatures. (werewolves, shades, demons)

Comparing across types is more complicated, there isn't a great rule of thumb, and it is highly dependent on the weapon skills you have. Usually the weapon skills worth having or using, if available, are Long Sword(includes Katana), Dagger, Saber (Grayswandir or silver saber with twoweapon), and Mace (Scepter of Might). There are times when you will be using other skills, of course, but given two weapons that seem equal, one that trains/uses these skills will usually be superior to one that does not.

Solution 2:

There are a number of solutions:

Find a scroll of identify or other source of identification, and cast it on the weapon. This'll tell you how enchanted it is, but there are other bonuses to hit as well, depending on the size of the monster you're attacking, your skill with the weapon's type and so on.

You could simply just get a feel for it and just use it a bunch of times, and try to work out what's more effective. Beware of cursed weaponry, especially two-handed ones.

Or, for the lazy, you could look it up on the nethack wiki. It's what I do.

Solution 3:

The only real unspoiled way to compare weapons quantitatively is to get yourself a stethoscope (or, less effectively, a wand of probing) and compare how much damage you do with each weapon. Over a lot of trials, because of the random factors.

Beyond that, you could base your assessments on a vague sense of how fast you're killing monsters with each weapon, although this gets even further from the "just look at my AC and have immediate numerical information about this piece of equipment" that you're looking for.