harmon_c@h-sc1.UUCP (david harmon) (03/15/85)
A bestiary of the monsters of hack, and the special dangers and uses thereof. "Should" or "may" mean unverified info. A (?) means uncertain info. Edibility information is latest available; it may change over weeks.(?) XP (experience point) values are from experience. A poison attack will do hit point damage and may lower your strength by several points, except the giant ant's sting, which when it affects you always lowers your strength by one point. If you have 18/xx strength, the points are taken from the xx. NR= Net Rumor Last Edit: 3-9/85 a) acid blob: Not edible. Does not attack unless confused, but when you hit it it may splash you with acid or corrode your weapon or armor. (Elven cloaks and leather armor are not affected.) Worth 9 XP, so good for building your levels at first. However, an acid splash can do as much as 8 points of damage. They are slow and easy to fake out. If one is blocking your path in a corridor or door, you can lead it into a room and dodge around it. b) giant beetle: Edible. Nothing else special. c) cockatrice: VERY DANGEROUS!!!! Any hit will turn you to stone. Even if it misses, it has a one in five chance to do so by hissing. Touching a dead cockatrice is also lethal, unless you are wearing gloves. If you threw things at it, do not try to retrieve them until detect food (irony!) tells you there is no corpse underneath. Don't even THINK of eating it. Gloves allow you to handle dead cockatrices, but not necessarily safely (see gloves, and watch the stairs) Any monster turned to stone by a living cockatrice (ring of conflict, polymorphed dog) turns into a pile of rocks. Monsters you hit with a dead one seem to be normal corpses, but I never picked one up. The wand of cancellation DOES NOT stop the petrification! There is a rumor floating around that says that dead lizards may somehow prevent petrification of your character. I don't know how this may be achieved, but it is NOT standing on it (scare monster style), throwing it at the cockatrice, wielding it, or eating it. What else is left? It's almost certainly a fake rumor. (The net seems to concur.) d) dog: your dog, or that of a previous adventurer. If you throw tripe or any- thing else edible (not rotted corpses) at a wild dog, it becomes tame. If you leave a tame dog alone on a level, he instantly goes wild. To take a tame dog to another level, use stairs when he is in an adjacent space. A tame dog will not attack you unless it is confused. He can starve to death, and for a while near the end will be confused (like the *scroll*!) by hunger. If you get "Sad feelings" it means that your dog has died or been killed. If you feel "worried" it means that he's dangerously hungry. Dogs are surprisingly powerful. Note: if the dog falls down a trap door, he will still be tame - he only goes wild if you desert him. Little dogs grow to be BIG dogs as a game goes on. There is nothing except a cockatrice that a big dog cannot at least argue with, and have a reasonable chance of killing. He seems to kill only for food, with a few exeptions such as acid blobs and sometimes kobolds. If you are fighting something and he has a high loyalty quotient, he may get the idea. NOTE: Dogs will not step on a cursed object. Sooo... Tired of bumping into Fido at every turn? Don't have the heart to kill him? Well here's a great way to keep him where you want him: drop a cursed object (rings do well) in a passageway or door. Fido can't follow. Later, come back and get him, no worse for the wear. (CAVEAT: This may apply only to stickeycursed items; my dog stepped on a scroll of destroy armor) Dogs are very fun to polymorph. They remain tame. Ever had a tame cockatrice? NR: eating a dog causes you to thereafter aggravate all monsters. Confirmed: eat your dog, and every monster on the level heads for you with blood in its eye(s). I'm not sure if this effect continues to succeeding levels. e) ettin: in D&D, hard to suprise. In hack, hard to kill (meaner than a troll) f) fog cloud: edible, weak. 24XP. A real bargain. g) gelatinous cube: Occasionally paralyzes by touch (when it hits you!). 23XP h) homunculous: it's bite can put you to sleep. (Rare for wizards) Not edible. i) imp: Poor attack, but very hard to hit. You might starve to death trying to kill one. Edible. j) jaguar: has multiple attacks, but does not inflict much damage. k) killer bee: Like orcs, this denizen of the dungeon appears in swarms. If you get hit, you may find that the bee's sting is poisoned. If you haven't already eaten a killer bee or a scorpion, eat one fast (see hints on foods). This will give you permanent resistance to poison. They also are created in swarms by create monster. Unlike orcs, these are individually medium-tough monsters, and there is no Orcrist for them. Poison resistance, however, takes (pardon the pun) a lot of the sting out of them. l) leocrotta: The leocrotta is a master of hit and run tactics. He tends to take three hits and then step back. The leucrotta is a real headache when you are fighting other monsters. m) minotaur: The minotaur is the king of the mazes which exist on the lowest levels of the dungeon (~27+). One of these bull-headed creatures can be found in each maze level. Kill him and you will find a wand of digging. Don't squander your charges on this wand; it may lead you to the Amulet of Yendor!. n) nurse: tends to a wear a ring, but not always. NR: Eat to restore hit points, but you will then aggravate all monsters Experienced Truth: The nurse does a lot of damage when she hits if you are wielding a weapon, or wearing any armor at all (including shields and helmets). If you are completely naked and defenseless, she heals you and raises your maximum hit points(!). Note: Elbereth works to stop her either way. You can either be truly defenseless, heal yourself, or fight her. Try to avoid her until you have cleared the level. o) owlbear: If the owlbear gets a good hit on you, he will embrace you in a bear hug! You are then unlikely to be able to escape from its clutches short of killing it or teleporting away. p) piercer: can drop from ceiling by surprise (You never saw it until.) If it falls and hits you, it might do up to ~30+HP damage. Once on the ground, however, is not much of a problem. One of the prime reasons to wear a helmet in hack. Edible. 10XP A hanging (hidden) piercer can be found by searching. q) quivering blob: Edible. Weak and slow. r) giant rat: Edible s) scorpion: poisonous sting. Edible for poison resistance. (with poison damage the first time?). Like snakes, scorpions love to hide under objects. You can turn this to your advantage by throwing missiles at him from across the room. He will hide under the first one, then sit still for you to hit him with many more. t) tengu: The tengu tends to engage in guerilla tactics (like the leocrotta). Tengus teleport short distances while in melee, and may even be able to follow you if you teleport away. NR: eating corpse is like eating lep's corpse u) unicorn: DON'T fight! this is a good guy. Throw gems at it. If the gems are valuble, the unicorn will give you something valuble. NR: won't give you anything valuble, but if you throw a gem which is worth something, 'Horny' will graciously accept your gift and (with- out telling you) raise your luck 5 points, which is supposed to be very useful. It won't tell you that, however. If you throw worthless glass at it, it will be insulted and refuse the gift. v) violet fungi: slow, edible w) long worm: Has a long body (~) behind a head (w). Only the head can hit, though you can hit (and destroy) the worm at any segment. Hitting the last segment is by far the best approach. You can get a worm tooth out of the corpse. Enchanting that will produce a crysknife, a very powerful weapon. Long worms tend to hit in long bursts; you may get one that just sits there while you hit it a few times and then hit you 10 or more times. Doesn't seem to do all that much damage per hit -- it's the number of hits he gets in. Watch out when you are gleefully hacking away at a long worm's middle. You may get in double trouble, by divid- ing the long worm in half, in which case you now have 2 shorter worms! I once split a worm, then split each of the halves! For this reason, try tail rather than middle attacks. Find a good running loop (two doors on the same side of a room that connect through tunnels) and sneak around to whack at its tail. You do not have to kill every single segment to kill the whole worm. It is worth 115XP. x) xan: pricks your leg, ruins your load-carrying capacity...potion of speed will cure it. A real bugger. Found under 20th level. Good candidate for genocide. y) yellow light: if it hits, it will blind you and disappear. Blindness is temporary (much shorter than from a potion of blindness). See floating Eye, and potion of blindness. NR: corpse confuses you-if you can get a corpse! z) zruty: nothing special (?). Hits a lot. A) giant ant: poisonous sting can lower your strength. Edible.(?) Moves several times in one turn. B) giant bat: jumps around. Not powerful, but so fast that it can hit you and get out of hand-to-hand range. Eating corpse causes confusion like potion. (No warning message.) Good as dog treat, though. C) centaur: Fast and powerful. Edible, but corpse is very heavy. D) dragon: A mega-monster. Nasty attack or breathes fire. THE best reason to own a ring of fire resistance at high levels. You may also do it the hard way; according to the source, eating a dragon's corpse will give you permanent fire resistance. Unfortunately, a dragon's corpse is an unliftable object. Dragons can flame you even through walls, though probably won't hit you. This is particularly common in mazes (level 27+). A dragon at the back of a zoo can be very useful- they flame at you, and take out any intervening monsters. Dragons can flame you through Elbereth!! The fire seems to be every bit as bad as a bolt of fire. Maybe worse. They and their breath weapon are unaffected by cancel- lation ala wand. E) floating eye: Gaze can paralyze you, leaving you game for monsters. It cannot do this unless you attack it hand-to-hand. Eating corpse makes you sick but bestows telepathy; whenever you are blind, you know what and where every monster on the level is. This turns yellow lights and potions of blindness into potential godsends when you have most of the level mapped out. To get corpse without getting frozen, stand next to it while doggie kills it, then grab corpse before he eats it. (Note for Tourists: use your camera to blind it. A blinded floating eye cannot defend itself. If your dog is deceased, throw things at it. Unaffected by wand of cancellation. Wand of invis- ibility doesn't help either. F) freezing sphere: eating corpse gives protection from cold as ring, but permanent. (but may do poison damage.) Usually gives you a blast. You may kill a freezing sphere with projectiles/ray wands or missile weapons. Exploding freezing spheres leave no bodies. It is rather easy to kill at a distance (two crossbow bolts). Ring of cold resistance will protect you from explosions, as will having eaten a sphere corpse. G) gnome: edible H) hobgoblin: very edible - good food source. Attack can do up to 8 points of damage. I) invisible stalker: this monster is invisible; the letter is what you see with ring or potion of see invisible. (Or telepathy) Eating corpse confuses you and/or allows you to see invisible thereafter (not to mention turn you invisible for a while!) J) jackal: usually edible, but seems to rot fast, or perhaps sometimes start a bit rotten. (not enough to kill you, enough to confuse you.) K) kobold: not edible. L) leprechaun: if it hits while you are carying gold, will do no damage but will teleport away with a lot of gold. If it hits while you have no gold, does damage. Can also pick up piles of gold, even from under your feet. Eating corpse may do poison damage, but bestows teleportation as the ring, but permanently. Usually have a pile of gold on them, including any they took from you. Good for building up experience in the lowest levels (40+ XP!). M) mimic: Poses as object in shop or elsewhere. Step outside shop, the items that vanish are mimics. Once they hit you, they can prevent you from moving off the square until they are dead (or you teleport away). Edible. (When eaten, you mimic a treasure chest for 30 turns) In shops, mimics are usually seen as inverted armor, i.e. if armor looks like this [ then mimics look like this ]. Mimics often mimic doorways (+) or chests of gold ($). They can be discovered by searching, including the ring. Wand of cancellation will also show them up. N) nymph: Seduces you and swipes many possesions, including at least one armor that she talked you into taking off. Or, may just grab an item. Either way, she teleports away. Eating corpse is just like eating a lep's corpse. Kill her, and you get your possesions back. Ignores Elbereth. (but see ring of adornment) You may ignore her charms if you zap her with a wand of cancellation. O) orc: *always* appear in swarms. See one, there are others. Probably right behind the first. Rarely edible. May have personal treasure. Scroll and wand of monster creation (but not polymorph) may create 8-9 of them. Call your weapon Orcrist and whack away. Can carry items around that they find on the floor; ie, in shops. P) purple worm: Not that hard to deal with, by the time you get to that level. Several blows from a good mace, but he doesn't do much in the meantime. P's swallow you and digest you ala the trapper. They digest you faster than trappers do, and towards the end you cannot hit. This is their main attack, and it is dangerous. Q) quasit: FAST! (3 spaces and/or attacks per move) But little damage per blow. R) rust monster: Rusts armor when it hits. Items which will rust: all armor (except leather) and helmets. You will be glad to know that elven cloaks, shields, and gloves are unaffected. An elven cloak will even protect the armor underneath it from rusting! Note that once you start taking off your armor, he cannot harm it, unlike rogue. Takes no hit points. Try wand of cancellation. An item may only be rusted to -3. (?) S) snake: can hide under items on floor. T) troll: in D&D and rogue, regenerates its wounds. Hack Trolls do not seem to be as nasty as Rogue Trolls. Several hits per move. U) umber hulk: chance of confusing you (as potion) if you catch sight of it. Save a potion of blindness (and a potion of healing) for the umber hulk if you detect him beforehand. Unlike rogue, umber hulks seem to have more than one chance of confusing you. Alternately, you can just sit on Elbereth and throw rocks at it as long as you can. Note: an U can definately confuse you even after you've been fighting it for a while. V) vampire: In hack I've yet to lose any experience levels to a vampire. You can drive a vampire away with one hit while wielding a clove of garlic. Confirmed: no life levels lost in our version of hack. Net info seems to indicate otherwise for other versions. W) wraith: in D&D, drains one level/hit. Drops you an experience level if it gets in a good hit. In extreme cases, may take several levels if it hits well several times. When you kill it, you will go back up one level if you've lost any (but won't get the extra experience points). Wraiths usually don't drain levels if you have good armor; Eat corpse to gain experience level--one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase your level. X) xorn: In Hack, a xorn is a fairly tough monster, about the same as attacking a ettin. Y) yeti: gives cold resistance when eaten Z) zombie: edible @) you or a shopkeeper: Shopkeepers will kill you if you get them mad without killing them fast. They are very tough, ie, three+ cold bolts, five+ fire bolts. They ignore Elbereth. If you teleport out with unpaid items, they will not hold a grudge, but later will accept contributions instead of buying items. See shops under "other" for ways of dealing with them. Don't try to genocide shopkeepers. Genociding shopkeepers genocides all humans (@). You are a human (@). Bye-bye! There are stories that killing humans, including shopkeepers or guards, kills your luck, an internal variable. It certainly kills telepathy. (but you can then regain it in the usual manner). Eating a shopkeeper produces the message: "You cannibal! You'll be sorry for this!" Go figure it out. You may encounter a shop on a ghost level which has been robbed by the ghost. In that case, the shopkeeper is likely to take your money for the items stolen by the ghost! NR: eating humans also causes you to enrage all monsters thereafter. ,) a trapper: Unlike its AD & D counterpart, the trapper in Hack does not bother to hide its presence. The trapper does possess a unique attack -- it simply swallows and digests you. After being swallowed by a trapper, you will get the message "The trapper digests you" about every third turn. You can still hit him from within, and stand a fairly good chance of killing him. If you don't, after about six (6) such messages you will get the message "The trapper digests you totally!". If such is the case, better luck with your next character. If you have been swallowed by a trapper, you may polymorph it into some other creature whose digestive tract may be less hostile. (Ever been inside a Nymph?) Wands of digging will blast through his stomach, leaving him very weak. Two bolts of cold didn't seem to faze him too much. Teleport out if you can. When teleporting out of a trapper, a ring of teleport control will let you choose where you want to go as usual, but not let you see the level while choosing. A wand of teleport monster will take you with the trapper. Digesting seems to be cumulative, so if you escape one trapper after 5 digesting messages, be VERY wary of being swallowed by another trapper. He may digest you totally in one turn.. There may be something that cures digestion, like a potion of speed cures xan pricks, but we don't know what it is. (but it isn't extra healing) &) demon: a monster between the strength of a xorn and a purple worm. Once on a high level, I was hit by a pack of 9 demons. (Luckily I had a ring of conflict!) Seems to have a very high armor class and good magic resistance, so good luck hitting it! (Note: demons are not resistant to fire.) Demons are rumored to replicate--that is, one demon will give rise to a second, and a third, etc. The way to deal with this is to back the bunch (or perhaps even just the original) into a dead end and start hacking away-replicas can't appear unless there is room next to the replicator. This could also be useful when you have some spare firepower and need some experience points. Try wand of cancellation to stop replication (and/or destroy replicants) I think they do replicate. I'm not sure about cancellation, exept that it does not destroy replicants. The wand of undead turning makes them turn tail and run. ~) lurker above: In hack, it has yet to manage to do anything special to my characters. :) chameleon: Whereas the mimic will mimic objects, the chameleon will mimic other monsters. When hard pressed, the chameleon will revert to its original form. Also unlike the mimic, the chameleon changes form constantly. So if you see a monster, and then look again and see a different one, its probably a chameleon. WARNING! chameleons have at least some of the powers of the monsters they appear as! I had my leg pricked by a chameleon in xan form, and a chameleon in xorn form hits 4x/move like the real thing. And xan were genocided early that game. If you see a genocided monster it's a chameleon. Additional notes: Chameleons posing as cockatrices turn you to stone. Chameleons posing as Dragons blow flame! Chameleons posing as Invisible Stalkers are invisible. Chameleons posing as unicorns accept gems. " ") (a space) ghost: incredibly hard to hit. Does little damage. Always has "ghost hoard" lying around, which can be obtained by killing ghost or by sneaking around it. Watch out! All items in hoard are sticky- cursed, but *NOT* necessarily minus on protection or to hit! Sneaking around a ghost is MUCH easier than destroying it, because they move slowly and do little damage per hit. Find a good running loop. Don't get caught in a dead end -- you'll either get killed or starve to death. If you're getting clobbered by a ghost, please don't retreat toward an up staircase! If a ghost kills you, you become a ghost on the same level, on the spot where you are killed. If many people get ghosted there, future dungeon-delvers will face up to 5 or 6 ghosts and their dogs, too! This can get them killed before they can escape, which of course aggravates the problem. Ghosts are surprisingly easy to kill if you have a lot of experience (level 11+). Hack away. Worth 175XP. If you are about to die on a ghost level, and you know it, DROP everything so when you become a ghost, your hoard will not be stickeycursed!