Big Room

Big Room
Location	Level 10–12 of the Dungeons of Doom
Probability	40%
Bones	Yes
Mappable	Yes
Teleportable	Yes
Diggable floor	Yes
Diggable walls	No

The Big Room is just that. A big room. It is filled with monsters and random items scattered throughout. Because of its size, it is easy for a player to inadvertently find himself surrounded by monsters; therefore, caution should be exercised, especially for weaker players.

The Big Room will not be generated in every game. It has a 40% chance of appearing in the dungeon. If it does appear, it will be on dungeon level 10, 11 or 12.

It is possible for the Big Room to contain the upstair to Sokoban.

It is possible for the Big Room to be the same dungeon level as the entrance portal to your quest. However, one should not assume that seeing a monster disappear indicates the quest portal; it is also possible that it wandered into a teleportation trap or a level teleporter, so make sure the portal you are about to enter is the correct one. (This is true whenever you are searching for the quest portal, but especially so in the Big Room where you are particularly likely to find a portal though seeing a monster vanish.)

The big room contains 6 random traps, 15 random objects, and 28 monsters. The walls are not diggable.

Strategy

Upon your arrival, hostile monsters will spot you from much or all of the room, and will immediately move toward you. It is easy to find yourself surrounded. Conflict is extremely effective, because of the large crowd of monsters that will be near you and each other. Elbereth will of course be very useful as well.

Initially do not move off the stairs, so that you can leave the level quickly and heal if necessary-- and be cautious of those monsters which can follow you up or down. If you fell into the level through a hole or trap door and are nowhere near the stairs, it may be wise to dig through the floor and return from the down stairs.

Another useful idea can be to use a scroll of earth to create a boulder fort around the upward stairs. Fire through the boulders with ranged attacks, or create a one-square gap in the fort so that only one square is free for the monsters to approach.

In desperate situations, breaking wands can be an effective but dangerous last resort. A wand of lightning or wand of fire can be broken to deal massive damage to multiple monsters. However, these wands will also hurt the player, possibly resulting in death, so this is only recommended for prepared players. In addition, wands of lightning can destroy your wands and rings when broken, and wands of fire can burn scrolls and boil potions.

Beyond these pointers, the usual tactics for dealing with multiple foes apply.

Maps

These are the Big Rooms for NetHack 3.4.3. All Big Rooms have nondiggable walls, though digging through the floor is possible -- and may often be a good idea.

Each Big Room has 15 random objects, six random traps, and 28 random monsters.

The NetHack General Public License applies to screenshots, source code and other content from NetHack.

This content was modified from the original NetHack source code distribution (by splitting up NetHack content between wiki pages, and possibly further editing). See the page history for a list of who changed it, and on what dates.

Big Room #1

This is the simplest Big Room, a large, fully-lit rectangular room.

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Big Room #2

This is identical to Big Room #1, except that portions of it are dark.

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Big Room #3

This Big Room has niches in the outermost walls and two large columns within it. The initial monsters appear in positions marked M.

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|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|  
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|.....|M|.|.|M|---|.|.|.|M|..........M........|.|M|.|.|.|---|M|.|.|M|.....|  
|.....|--------   --------|...................|----------   --------|.....|  
|.....|M|.|.|M|---|.|.|.|M|..........M........|.|M|.|.|.|---|M|.|.|M|.....|  
|...............|.........................................|...............|  
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|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|.|.|.|.|.|M|  
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Big Room #4

This one has a "butterfly" shape and four non-magic fountains.

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|....{....|-----------|                             |-----------|....{....|  
|-|...................|----------|       |----------|...................|-|  
  -|.............................|-------|.............................|-    
   -|.................................................................|-     
    -|...............................................................|-      
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  -|.............................|-------|.............................|-    
|-|...................|----------|       |----------|...................|-|  
|.....{...|-----------|                             |-----------|....{....|  
|.........|                                                     |.........|  
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Big Room #5

This one has an oval shape.

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              -------................................-------                 
                    ---------................---------                       
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History

Big Room #1 first appears in NetHack 3.1.0. The others first appear in NetHack 3.2.0.

UnNetHack

UnNetHack contains a large number of additional variants for Big Room, and they all now contain a few guaranteed candles scattered throughout the level

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.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.