Engulfing

An engulfing attack is one in which you are surrounded by the monster, whether being swallowed whole by it (in the case of e.g. purple worms and trappers) or simply being drawn into it (vortices and air elementals).

Monsters with engulfing attacks:

• ochre jelly
• fog cloud
• trapper
• lurker above
• dust vortex
• ice vortex
• energy vortex
• steam vortex
• fire vortex
• purple worm
• air elemental
• Juiblex

Several types of damage can result from being engulfed:

• Digestion - monsters that have swallowed you whole will digest you slowly over the course of several turns. A ring of slow digestion protects against this ("Obviously the purple worm doesn't like your taste."). Digestion attacks will kill you rather than expelling you when the timer runs out.
• Physical - possessed by fog clouds ("You are laden with moisture and can barely breathe") and air elementals ("You are pummeled with debris!").
• Fire, cold, shock, blinding - these result from the vortices.
• Disease - Juiblex's speciality.

To be expelled and escape from an engulfed state, you can wait it out (which may kill you first), kill the engulfing monster (best done with e.g. a wand of death), zap a wand of digging or spell of dig (which also sets the monster to one hit point and in a state where you can kill it with one hit, but only works on ochre jellies, purple worms, trappers, lurkers above and Juiblex) or wand of opening or spell of knock, ring the charged Bell of Opening, scare the monster with a tooled horn or drum (other methods rely on line-of-sight and thus do not work when engulfed), polymorph yourself into something too large to be engulfed (Size Huge or larger) or zap a wand of slow monster or spell of slow monster, which only works on vortices and air elementals. A directional spell will always hit the monster engulfing you ("The <spell> rips into the <monster>!"), although ray-based attacks do not travel beyond the confines of the monster.

Take note that when you are expelled from an engulfing monster, you are subject to any traps on the square you are released to. If the engulfing monster has moved you, this may trigger traps that you have not discovered yet.

On levels that allow teleport, you can also teleport yourself out by the usual methods. On a non-teleport level, you can teleport the engulfing monster instead (on levels that allow self-teleport, you will teleport with the monster).

If you have any free time while engulfed, you might try searching or engraving.

The time you will be engulfed is shortened by high monster level, and lengthened by good (low) AC. This means digesters will fully digest you faster if they are high level or you are poorly armored. The effect is perhaps unintuitive for other engulfers, however. The minimum number of (the engulfer's) turns you will be engulfed is 2 (including the one on which you are swallowed), which means at normal speed you are guaranteed at least one to attempt to escape a digester.

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

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