Nanokey Ring

The keyring or nanokey ring is a usable item in Deus Ex. It is an L-shaped handheld item, vaguely resembling a handgun, with a yellow grip and a purple protrusion extending past the user's hand with an LED located in the middle.

Unlike traditional keys that have been used for thousands of years, where a solid, specifically-shaped "key" is inserted into a matching aperture, this keyring uses nanites to lock and unlock doors, containers, or anything else that can be "locked" by shaping themselves into the key's shape. The keyring uses "nanokeys", blue cylinders that must be collected for a keyring to access a target. The LED will turn green when a door is locked or unlocked successfully, and red when the required key ID ("code") is not available to the keyring, or the door cannot be unlocked by the player regardless. The keyring is always in the player's inventory and item queue, even during the introductory training level and after they are captured by Majestic 12, and it cannot be dropped or removed from their item queue. Neither it nor nanokeys take up space in the player's inventory.

A mover will always return "Your NanoKey Ring doesn't have the right code" if a key ID can be used but isn't available within the keyring. Movers that cannot be unlocked using nanokeys will return "It's locked" instead.

Nanokeys use a specific key ID (invisible to the player) that can be reused. This causes nanokeys with a different description (but the same key ID) to not be added if the keyring already acknowledged that key ID. Keys without a description will have a description error string but still remain fully functional when using the keyring.

The keyring is the predecessor to the softkey ring used in Deus Ex: Invisible War.