Black pudding
P black pudding 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 12 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 10 |
| Base experience | 221 |
| Speed | 6 |
| Base AC | 6 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 900 |
| Nutritional value | 250 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, acid resistance, stoning resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | cold resistance (22%), shock resistance (22%), poison resistance (22%) |
|
A black pudding:
| |
| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 2113 |
A black pudding, P, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The black pudding is a type of pudding with an acidic body, and it is eyeless, amorphous and mindless like all amoeboids. A black pudding will divide if it has more than 1 HP and takes a non-lethal melee attack from an iron or metal melee weapon[1][2][3]—this includes pounding with a lance or polearm, but does not include melee attacks with weapons that are ammunition, projectiles, or a hero's lance used for jousting that breaks on impact.[4][5] A divided black pudding will have its current HP halved rounding up (after damage is applied), and the 'lost' HP is given to the clone pudding along with the original pudding's name and maximum HP.[6]
Puddings cloned by a hero's attack may create clones that are hostile depending on that pudding's own tame or hostile status: clones created from a hero dividing a pet pudding have a luck-based chance of being tame, while clones created from dividing a peaceful pudding have a luck-based chance of being peaceful, and otherwise the resulting clones will be hostile.[7][8] Puddings that are created from polymorphing from a shopkeeper, guard or aligned priest and then dividing them will produce clones that do not retain the original's memory of their initial form, though puddings that are polymorphed from minions and then divided will produce clones that are minions.[9][10] A hero in the form of a black pudding that is divided abuses strength and always creates a tame clone pudding.[2][11]
A black pudding has a bite attack that can corrode iron and bronze armor, and also has a passive attack that can corrode iron and bronze weapons and armor (including boots and gloves) used to hit the black pudding[12][13]—iron items that cause splitting will trigger passive corrosion as well, and corrosion does not occur if the pudding is cancelled.[14][15] Black puddings possess cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, acid resistance, and stoning resistance.
Globs of black pudding are acidic to eat, and eating a glob of black pudding cures stoning on the first bite and has a 2⁄9 chance each (22%) of granting cold resistance, shock resistance or poison resistance. Unlike other globs which break vegan conduct, black pudding globs also break vegetarian conduct.
Generation
Randomly generated black puddings are always created as hostile. Pudding division does not respect extinction.
Kicking a sink has an effective 1⁄15 chance of generating a black pudding if they are not extinct or genocided and the sink has not yet produced one, and generating a pudding this way exercises dexterity.[16]
Black puddings do not leave a corpse upon death, and instead have a chance of dropping a glob of black pudding.
Strategy
Black puddings can be encountered early in the game via sinks, and their low speed makes their strong bite attack avoidable in theory, providing a tempting source of experience for early heroes (especially those with ranged attacks). However, in addition to taking damage and possibly injuring the hero's leg, kicking a sink may also summon an amorous demon, whose interference could leave you unarmored and vulnerable to the pudding's bite as well as other nearby monsters.[17]
Heroes fighting black puddings in general should protect their armor and weapons—rustproof any iron armor and weapons you plan to use long-term, and use a cloak to cover your body armor if you have one available. You can also step away and remove the armor in question if this would not impact your AC too much, or else wear a substitute junk item (e.g. a non-cursed +0 orcish helm) if possible. As for weapons, you can also use disposable projectiles such as rocks or darts, or non-corroding weapons such as elven daggers or a silver saber.
As splitting a pudding halves their HP, each split produces weaker ones until the pudding dies from hit point loss—they still retain their bite attack's power, however, and division can quickly result in a careless or under-equipped hero being overwhelmed. If things threaten to get out of hand, kill the newer puddings first before they have time to regenerate, or run away to recover if all else fails.
With significant care, splitting puddings can be used to obtain several globs of black pudding for intrinsics—remember that adjacent globs on the floor will coalesce into a singular mass, as will globs that are added to your open inventory if at least one glob is already present there. Additionally, you can split a pudding pet and lead the resulting clones onto a polymorph trap, making sure to rename each clone as they split; take care to use a Puddingbane, lest you kill your pet(s) and suffer a significant alignment record penalty, and see the tameness article section on abuse for the ramifications of attacking and splitting your pet.
History
The black pudding first appears in NetHack 3.0.0. From this version to NetHack 3.4.3, including variants based on those versions, black puddings leave behind corpses upon death, making them a target of pudding farming strategies: they can be split and then killed for their corpses and death drops, or else subjected to taming and then polymorphed to amass an army of pets—this is also true of brown puddings, which are less commonly farmed since black puddings can be reliably generated by kicking a sink. The speed system used in these versions also makes it somewhat trivial to avoid serious damage to HP and armor from black puddings via the use of hit and run tactics.
NetHack 3.6.0 changes black puddings to leave glob instead of corpses when they are killed, which is done to make pudding farming much less useful since globs cannot be sacrificed, revived or tinned. A bug that prevents globs from giving resistances when eaten is fixed in NetHack 3.6.1.
Origin
The black pudding is derived from Dungeons & Dragons, where it appears in all editions, making its debut in the "Monsters & Treasure" of the original 1974 boxed set. "Black pudding" is also a term used to refer to the blood sausage used in British and Irish cuisine; the NetHack black pudding's default tile gives it a sausage-like appearance as a visual pun, and is the reason eating one breaks vegetarian conduct.
In Dungeons & Dragons, the black puddding is a type of ooze that usually resembles a bubbling, heaping pile of thick dark goo—it is a mindless, underground-dwelling hunter and scavenger, and when it is not wandering and absorbing whatever it finds, it positions itself in a dungeon hallway like a shadow and waits for unsuspecting prey to approach.
Black puddings can consume various types of metal and other usually-organic matter, but prefer living and breathing targets; they attack by grabbing and constricting prey directly into their amorphous mass. Like other oozes, they secrete a deadly acidic substance which strongly and quickly dissolves weapons, clothing, and organic tissue alike. A black pudding splits into two smaller puddings when slashed or pierced, and all split puddings will split under the same conditions until the resulting puddings are too small and weak to continue dividing.
Messages
- A black ooze gushes up from the drain!
- You kicked a sink and caused a black pudding to emerge, which exercises dexterity and occurs once per sink.
- You hear a gushing noise.
- As above, while blind.
- <The black pudding> divides as you hit it <with your weapon>!
- You split a black pudding by attacking it with an iron or metal weapon or another wielded object.
- You divide as <the monster> hits you!
- You were split from being attacked by an iron or metal object while in the form of a black pudding.
- <The black pudding> divides as <the monster> hits it!
- A black pudding was split by a monster that attacked it with an iron or metal weapon or another wielded object.
Variants
In most NetHack variants based on NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, black puddings leave corpses behind upon death rather than globs, and typically also implement their own means of weakening pudding farming or outright preventing it.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, a variant based on NetHack 3.4.3 and prior contemporary versions, black puddings leave corpses upon death, though they do not produce death drops. They also have death resistance, hit as +2 weapons and are not generated normally in Gehennom.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, which are all variants based on NetHack 3.4.3, black puddings are mostly identical to their appearance in 3.4.3, and leave behind corpses upon death.
Black puddings can appear among the court of a throne room ruled by a vampire lord or vampire lady.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for amoeboid.
References
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1603-L1634: hmon_hitmon_splitmon() function for dividing monsters via combat
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4091-L4105: hero pudding being split by attacks
- ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 456-L470
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1553-L1563: "minor side-effect: broken lance won't split puddings"; this occurs due to the lance being broken before the check for splitting occurs
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1619-L1620
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 835-L944: clone_mon() function for monsters split from other monsters
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 896-L905
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 909-L915
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 889-L893
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 916-L927
- ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2615-L2638: cloneu() function for monsters split from hero
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2337-L2360: mhitm_ad_corr() function
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4806
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5969-L5979
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 6174-L6178
- ↑ src/dokick.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1209-L1223
- ↑ src/dokick.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1224-L1234
