Black pudding

P black pudding
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Bite 3d8 corrosion, Passive corrosion

P black pudding
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Bite 3d8 corrosion, Passive corrosion
Base level	10
Base experience	221
Speed	6
Base AC	6
Base MR	0
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	Very rare
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	900
Nutritional value	250
Size	large
Resistances	Cold, shock, poison, acid, petrification
Resistances conveyed	Cold (22%), shock (22%), poison (22%)

The black pudding, P, is an amoeboid NetHack monster. Its most noteworthy characteristic is its ability to divide when hit by an iron item, leaving two black puddings (a process which also corrodes the weapon). It is the more powerful of the two monsters that can do this (the other being the brown pudding). It is precisely this characteristic that gives rise to the practice of pudding farming.

Kicking a sink has a chance of summoning a black pudding. The message for this is, "A black ooze gushes up from the drain!"

Strategy

Black puddings can be encountered early in the game due to sinks. It can be a good idea to kick sinks for this reason, as they are slow making their powerful bite easily avoidable and if you attack them from a distance, their XP value will be certain to gain you a level.

On the other hand, kicking a sink can also summon a foocubus of opposite sex to the adventurer ("The dish washer returns!"), and one of the possible negative seduction effects is a level drain ("You feel out of shape"). Level 1 adventurers should never kick sinks, as being drained from level 1 is an instadeath. Those with a few more levels should weigh the risks.

When a pudding splits the current HP are divided equally between the two new puddings, so each split produces weaker ones until it dies attempting to split its last hitpoint. So if things threaten to get out of hand kill the newer ones first before they have time to regenerate.

Their corpses are acidic, but they have a chance of providing Cold, Shock and Poison resistance.

Protect your armor

The bite of the black pudding can corrode your copper or iron armor. Before allowing the pudding to bite you, consider if it will damage your armor.

• Rustproof iron armor will not corrode.
• A corrodeproof bronze plate mail (the only copper armor) will not corrode.
• Body armor concealed under a cloak or robe will not corrode.
• You might let your uncursed or blessed +0 orcish helm corrode if you have a replacement available.
• You could step away from the pudding and remove your vulnerable armor; black puddings do not corrode what you do not wear.

A good strategy is to fight using ranged attacks, but many players will not have these armor problems; maybe you will not encounter a black pudding before you rustproof your armor.

Don't use iron weapons

Black puddings can corrode iron weapons. If you would wield an iron weapon and hit a black pudding, then the pudding might split and the weapon would corrode. (That is good if you want to block a wide path, but bad if the multiple puddings thoroughly corrode your armor.)

Switch to that elven dagger, throw rocks or junk darts, or employ rustproof or non-iron weapons against those black puddings.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

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