Winter wolf cub
d winter wolf cub 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 7 |
| Attacks |
Bite 1d8, Breath cold 1d8 |
| Base level | 5 |
| Base experience | 64 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 4 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | -5 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 250 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | Cold |
| Resistances conveyed |
Cold (33%) |
|
A winter wolf cub:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line275 |
A winter wolf cub, d, is a is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a small carnivorous canine that has an affinity to cold.
A winter wolf cub has a bite attack and a frost breath attack capable of freezing and shattering potions in the inventory of monsters hit by the blast, unless they have reflection. Winter wolf cubs possess cold resistance.
Eating a winter wolf cub corpse or tin has a 1⁄3 chance of conveying cold resistance.
Winter wolf cubs are considered "children of the night" for the purpose of talking to vampires.[1]
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated winter wolf cubs are always created hostile, and can appear in small groups. They will not randomly generate in Gehennom. A winter wolf cub can grow up into a winter wolf.
Winter wolf cubs appear among the random d that are part of the first quest monster class for Samurai and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Samurai quest.
A comment in role.c indicates that the winter wolf cub was considered as a default starting pet for the Valkyrie role. [2]
Strategy
A group of winter wolf cubs can make for a distressing encounter: they can appear quite early and will usually be encountered before a character has a known source of cold resistance, and the rays of frost breath can deal significant damage and destroy valuable potions if there is no convenient container to stash them in. They also cannot be seen via infravision, making them worse to deal with in darker areas. While Valkyrie characters have little to fear in terms of damage, they will not appreciate losing potions to the cubs' breath.
Winter wolf cubs lack any MR score, so wands and spells that can slow down or immobilize them can help to close the distance. They are also especially vulnerable to the wand of fire and other sources of fire damage, such as a lit potion of oil. Winter wolf cubs also respect Elbereth like other canines and can be scared off with ease - beware that they can still use breath attacks as they flee from you.
Players that happen upon an early source of cold resistance or reflection can face down the wolf cubs with relatively little trouble - the ability to deal with breath attacks and other rays from early hostiles is often an argument in favor of choosing silver dragon scale mail from an early wish. Once they are dealt with, characters not observing vegetarian or foodless conduct can use any corpses they leave as a potential source of cold resistance, making future encounters much less troublesome.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
A dwarvish cloak protects your inventory from heat and cold 9⁄10 of the time, making encounters with hostiles such as winter wolf cubs more bearable. Pets can also gain intrinsics from corpses, allowing them to become cold resistant by eating a winter wolf cub's corpse.History
The winter wolf cub first appears in NetHack 3.3.0.
Origin
The winter wolf and its cub originate from Dungeons & Dragons, where winter wolves are creatures of greater size than worgs that possess similarly foul disposition. Winter wolves are immune to cold but vulnerable to fire, and can breathe gusts of cold as well as bite and trip enemies; they can also speak like worgs can, and are even capable of speaking the worg language along with Common, Giant and their own bestial language. Winter wolves are sometimes found as allies and guardians of frost giants, white dragons, and other evil arctic beings.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the Ice Mage's starting pet is a winter wolf cub.
Winter wolf cubs appear among the random d that are part of the second quest monster class for Yeomen and make up 6⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Yeoman quest.
All of the above information also applies to SlashTHEM and Hack'EM.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, winter wolf cubs can generate as minions of Skadi.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, winter wolves are given a third stage of growth: a winter wolf pup can grow up into a winter wolf cub, and then a winter wolf. The winter wolf pup also acts as the default pet for Valkyries, fulfilling the role of the winter wolf cub that is commented-out in vanilla NetHack.
