Vampire
- For the monster class, see Wraith (monster class).
V vampire 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 12 |
| Attacks |
Claw 1d6, bite 1d6 drain life |
| Base level | 10 |
| Base experience | 327 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 1 |
| Base MR | 25 |
| Alignment | -8 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 (human corpse) |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Sleep, poison |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
A vampire:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1840 |
A vampire, V, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. Vampires are human undead that are breathless and capable of flight and regeneration, and possess sleep resistance and poison resistance.
Vampires can polymorph at will into vampire bats or fog clouds - they often disguise themselves as the former when outside of the player's sight and shift into the latter to flow under locked or inaccessible doors, and revert to vampire form if killed in either of these forms. Standing on any altar scares vampires, similar to standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.[1]
Players in the form of a vampire will turn into vampire bats if they polymorph without polymorph control.
Contents
Generation
In addition to random generation, vampires are a somewhat uncommon find in graveyards. All vampires are hostile.
Human characters killed by a member of the vampire class arise as a vampire instead of a ghost in any bones file that is created.[2]
Strategy
Vampires often make for annoying fights, due to their ability to rob you of experience levels unless you have drain resistance, e.g. from an artifact weapon like Excalibur; MC 3 is the next best option in the event you lack this resistance. They can wear armor to bolster their base AC of 1, though this is usually only a concern with bones files - most vampires will approach you as a vampire bat or be found in fog cloud form, and will revive in vampire form once you dispatch their weaker guises.
Vampires that shapeshift retain their current HP between forms, making it possible to bring them to low health and wait for them to assume their humanoid forms before finishing them off. A silver weapon with decent enchantment and/or skill level can bring them low in a few hits, and the bonus damage applies regardless of their current form.
As pets
Vampires are decently strong as pets, and only require two experience levels to grow up into vampire lords. However, pet vampires will shapeshift as normal - in their other forms they are weak fighters that cannot wear armor, and will not shapeshift back unless killed or forced back to normal by your wearing a ring of protection from shape changers. Players planning to keep vampire pets should identify this ring as soon as possible.
While you wear the aforementioned ring, vampires' good base AC and access all armor gives them the potential for high survivability - though their hitdie in humanoid form are somewhat mediocre, it remains their strongest form by far. However, their silver weakness and lack of elemental resistances can easily work against them.
As a polyform
Vampires are a decent polyself form for players - they have the same base speed, can wear the same armor as the player and allow wielding of any non-silver weapon, and you can easily compensate for the lack of elemental resistances. You can also take advantage of their innate regeneration, flight, and effective magical breathing for various purposes. The silver weakness is just as much a danger to you in this form as it is to other vampires, however, and you will need to avoid engaging certain monsters such as cockatrices in melee, lest your bite attack lead to YASD. Additionally, most players capable of controlled polymorph will usually opt for the similar-but-stronger vampire lord.
Variants
Many variants add the vampire as a playable race and make some changes to the vampire monster.
SLASH'EM
Vampires are a starting race in SLASH'EM. In addition, player vampires and other races polymorphed into vampires cannot eat solid food and have to rely on fresh blood from corpses as their source of nutrition; they can also drain blood for nutrition using their bite attack. A corpse's blood is only fresh for a few turns before it coagulates and becomes useless as a nutrition source. While blood consumed in this manner provides a very small nutritional value, the drained corpses are still eligible for sacrifice, reducing the need to weigh staying full against sacrificing. The usual penalties apply for draining other humans, as well as dogs and cats.
Randomly generated vampires and their stronger forms are often generated with opera cloaks, and can provide a valuable method of farming said cloaks, especially if it is the randomized appearance of a cloak of magic resistance - the tradeoff lies in these vampires being made harder to dispatch, depending on the cloak. The acid stream spell is a good substitute for the magic missile spell in such scenarios.
UnNetHack
As with SLASH'EM, UnNetHack also adds the vampire as a starting race, and randomly generated vampires are also often generated with opera cloaks.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, vampires are also a starting race. Pet vampires will drain corpses for nutrition the same way a player vampire does, with similar conditions (i.e. corpses must be less than 3 turns of age and have blood).
Encyclopedia entry
He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship
arrival in Whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as
bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at Whitby, and as
friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as my
friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy. He can come
in mist which he create--that noble ship's captain proved him
of this; but, from what we know, the distance he can make this
mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. He come on
moonlight rays as elemental dust--as again Jonathan saw those
sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small--we
ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a
hairbreadth space at the tomb door.
[ Dracula, by Bram Stoker ]
The Oxford English Dictionary is quite unequivocal:
_vampire_ - "a preternatural being of a malignant nature (in
the original and usual form of the belief, a reanimated
corpse), supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking
the blood of sleeping persons. ..."
