Giant ant
a giant ant  
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|---|---|
| Difficulty | 4 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 2 |
| Base experience | 20 |
| Speed | 18 |
| Base AC | 3 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 3 (Rare) |
| Genocidable | yes |
| Weight | 10 |
| Nutritional value | 10 |
| Size | tiny |
| Resistances | none |
| Resistances conveyed | none |
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A giant ant:
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| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 89 |
| giant ant (alternate tilesets) | |
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| Default (32x32) | 
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| Absurd (128x128) | 
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| RLTiles | 
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| PixelHack | 
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| NeXTSTEP | 
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| Abigaba | 
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| Geoduck | 
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| lagged | 
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A giant ant, a, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The giant ant is a carnivorous and oviparous animal that is the most basic monster of the ant or other insect monster class. Despite being the weakest among its group, the giant ant is still a frequent cause of early deaths due to its speed and tendency to appear in groups.
A giant ant has a single bite attack.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated giant ants are always created hostile, and may appear in small groups of 2-4.
Hostile giant ants can be generated by the summon insects monster spell.[1]
Giant ants can appear among the a that are part of the first quest monster class for Valkyries and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Valkyrie quest.
An anthole has a 1⁄3 chance of being populated entirely by giant ants.[2]
Strategy
Giant ants are very fast monsters that are one of many notable major obstacles to early heroes, and are adept at running down the under-prepared, especially with their 18 speed: a giant ant's AC of 3 can also make them tricky to hit for characters that do not have trained-up and/or enchanted weapons. If you spot an oncoming ant swarm, you can avoid being surrounded by getting into a corridor as soon as possible, or else positioning yourself to block a corridor that ants are traveling through—you can also use doors to block off pursuing ants if you can close them quickly. Take note of the location of up and/or down stairs and be prepared to retreat there if things get out of hand, and avoid being burdened if possible to maximize your movement speed.
Ranged weapons, along with offensive spells and wands, are your best bet for handling a giant ant or a swarm of them before they can hem you in, and magic in general also works against giant ants since they have no MR score. All of these attack methods are especially effective if you can contain the giant ants to a corridor: though their speed is still enough to make them a nuisance, they are not as threatening in one-on-one combat. A means of putting the ants to sleep or slowing them down, such as wands of sleep and slow monster, can turn the tide against a lined-up swarm, and may even give you room to escape a group of ants if you cannot reliably fight them off. Wands of magic missile and stronger offensive wands can help thin out a group of lined-up ants, and chain lightning with sufficient energy can make short work of them. Elbereth can reliably drive off attacking ants as well and may leave them open to your ranged attack of choice.
Keep any and all escape items handy if all else fails, particularly ones that can get you to the stairs or off the dungeon level faster. In addition to wands of sleep and slow monster, scrolls of teleportation and wands of teleportation can also put distance between you and the ants; cursed scrolls of teleportation can warp you to another level, but are not as reliable. Cursed spellbooks can sometimes cause teleportation, but should only be used as a last resort. Upon escaping a group of ants, it may be wise to steer clear afterward until you are better prepared to handle them.
A hero that reaches the mid-game in particular is usually equipped enough to handle giant ants from that point forward: ants created by the summon insects spell in particular are usually of no real trouble to most heroes, and can even serve as a limited form of buffer, e.g. against monsters in Moloch's Sanctum or the Astral Plane—due to slower HP regeneration at higher experience levels it may be best not to idle (even with the regeneration property), unless you have a method of healing yourself thoroughly and need the time and space to apply it reliably. Similarly, they can also provide a vector for chain lightning spells, although the amount of hostiles a hero will be facing in late-game situations where insects are summoned means that significant power drain will usually occur—heroes conserving their energy for other spells should utilize this as a form of last resort.
History
The giant ant first appears in Hack 1.21 and Hack for PDP-11, which are based on Jay Fenlason's Hack, and is included in the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0. From these versions to NetHack 2.3e, the giant ant uses the A glyph and is more similar in behavior to the modern soldier ant. NetHack 3.0.0 introduces the ant or other insect monster class, and the giant ant is moved to this monster class at a and given its current behavior, while the soldier ant is introduced alongside it.
Origin
Giant ants–specifically, ants or ant-like creatures that are human-sized or larger–are a popular form of insectoid in science-fiction media, codified by works such as the 1905 H. G. Wells short story Empire of the Ants and the 1954 film Them!, and other notable examples include the Bugs of Starship Troopers, the Formics of Ender's Game, and the ants that accompany Marvel Comics super hero Ant-Man. Like other ants in various forms of fiction, they are commonly portrayed as a hive species, which is a common misconception regarding ant colonies.
The giant ant of NetHack is also derived from Dungeons & Dragons, where they make their debut in the first Monster Manual. In this first appearance, 9⁄10 of ants encountered will be workers, and they can appear in groups of up to 100: twice as many can appear in giant ant nests, including 1 "warrior" per 5 workers; these nests also contain a single queen whose chamber holds the nest's treasures, and the egg chamber is guarded by 5 warriors and 5-50 workers. If the queen is killed, the other ants will become confused for six melee rounds before fleeing the nest.
While the giant ant does not seem to be based on any particular species, one of the largest known ant species is Dinoponera, a South American genus of ant in the subfamily Ponerinae that are commonly called "tocandiras" or "giant Amazonian ants". Females of the genus can reach a total body length of 3–4 cm (1.2–1.6 in) or more.
Variants
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, giant ants are a lawful species and can follow scents as well as using normal vision. Giant ants can be commanded by formian taskmasters.
Giant ants make up 3⁄10 of the monsters randomly generated on the Arcadian Roads of the Law Quest, and may appear among the random ants and other insects that are placed during level creation for those floors.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, the summon animal spell can summon a giant ant if the hero casts it while Unskilled in evocation spells.
Encyclopedia entry
This giant variety of the ordinary ant will fight just as fiercely as its small, distant cousin. Various varieties exist, and they are known and feared for their relentless persecution of their victims.
