Iron piercer
p iron piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 6 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 5 |
| Base experience | 63 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 400 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
An iron piercer:
| |
| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 809 |
An iron piercer, p, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The iron piercer is a carnivorous animal that can hide itself by clinging to the ceiling like other piercers, and will attempt to drop off the ceiling onto targets below them, inflicting 4d6 damage if it makes contact.[1] This "attack" can be avoided more reliably with good AC, and a hero wearing a hard helm will only take 2 HP of damage from the piercer's blow glancing off that helm.[2] If the hero has warning, they will reveal a hiding rock piercer's location when moving adjacent to their square. Tame rock piercers will not attack the hero and harmlessly drop off the ceiling if they walk underneath.[3]
An iron piercer has a single bite attack.
A hero that is polymorphed into an iron piercer can hide on the ceiling using the #monster extended command: they can return to the floor at any time using >, and can fall from the ceiling onto nearby targets in a similar manner as piercer monsters do.[4]
Generation
Randomly-generated iron piercers are always created as hostile.
Strategy
Iron piercers have a stronger bite and a better AC of 0 compared to rock piercers, but still move at the same extremely slow speed of 1. While retaliation attacks ignoring movement speed makes them a potential threat to weaker pets that are careless or unfortunate, most heroes that have at least one of a hard helm, a sufficiently-trained weapon, good armor, or keen perception (e.g. automatic searching, warning, telepathy, etc.) should be able to discover and deal with an iron piercer without much trouble. Iron piercer corpses are decent meals for non-vegetarian heroes and meat-eating pets.
History
The iron piercer first appears in NetHack 3.0.0, which establishes the piercer monster class.
Origin
A piercer is a snail-like gastropod that first appeared in Dungeons & Dragons. It has a shell that resembles a stalactite, and clings to the ceiling of caverns and dungeons, mimicking a stalactite and falling down to impale anything that passes underneath. The "bestiary of Xygag" mentioned in the encyclopedia entry is an in-universe equivalent to the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual—the excerpt originates in "The Ecology of the Piercer" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edward, published in issue #72 of Dragon magazine.
Messages
Variants
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, iron piercers are notably different from their appearance in NetHack: they are insectoid monsters that resist slashing and piercing damage, and use earthsense to perceive their surroundings. Iron piercers have 10 points of natural AC and 10 points of natural DR, and deal (ML)d6 damage if they fall from the ceiling and land on the hero—this damage is reduced to ML - 53 if the hero is wearing a hard helm, they are a clockwork automaton (including an Android), or they are currently polymorphed into one of a clockwork automaton, android, gynoid, commander, or operator.
Iron piercers possess shock resistance: eating an iron piercer corpse or tin, or quaffing its blood, grants temporary shock resistance for a duration of 3,000 turns before physical size modifiers.
Iron piercers can be warded by the Elder Sign and the hallucinatory Cerulean Sign.
Two iron piercers each have a 1⁄2 probability of being generated on each lower filler level within the Convict quest during level creation.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, two iron piercers each have a 1⁄2 probability of being generated on each lower filler level within the Convict quest during level creation.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for piercer.
