Locust
| a locust (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 11 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 9 |
| Base experience | 151 (EvilHack) |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1 |
| Nutritional value | 5 |
| Size | Tiny |
| Resistances | poison resistance, immunity to sickness (Hack'EM only) |
| Resistances conveyed | poison resistance
|
|
A locust:
In Hack'EM, a locust also:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack - monst.c, line 162 |
A locust, a, is a type of monster that first appears in SporkHack, and is also included in UnNetHack, SpliceHack, EvilHack, SlashTHEM, and Hack'EM. The locust is a tiny insect that is oviparous and capable of flight, and in Hack'EM they are also herbivorous.
A locust has a normal bite attack and a sting attack that can inflict disease upon targets. Locusts possess poison resistance, and in Hack'EM they also have immunity to sickness and a vulnerability to acid.
A locust corpse is poisonous to eat, and eating a locust corpse or tin grants +5% additional poison resistance in EvilHack and Hack'EM, while in other variants it has a 3⁄5 chance of granting poison resistance.
Generation
Randomly-generated locusts are always created hostile, and may appear in small groups of 2-4.
Hostile locusts can be generated by the summon insects monster spell.
Locusts 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 in each variant.
Strategy
Across variants, the locust is notorious for swarming heroes and inflicting sickness with their stings: the repeated stinging will require them to cure it as soon as possible before they die in a handful of turns, and the locusts' AC of 0 will make landing hits difficult unless the hero has sufficiently-trained or enchanted weapons on hand. Locusts remain hazardous throughout a majority of the game even after a hero expands or completes their kit enough to deal with them, and their presence makes hostile clerical spellcasters much more dangerous as well, since they may summon locusts when creating insects to hound you with.
Elbereth can prevent locusts from getting close enough to sting the hero if they have access to it, and a unicorn horn or other sickness cure is all but required to survive encounters with them—if all else fails, hope that you can safely pray after disposing of them. Locusts have no MR score, so any wands or spells that can weaken or kill them outright will prove valuable. Pay close attention to your status bar when fighting, and if the variant allows it, use ctrl + x to view your base attributes and check for terminal illness.
Origin
The term "locust" is used to refer to various species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarming phase. Locusts may also generally refer to cicadas (who are often called locusts when they swarm) or specifically to Magicicada, a genus of cicadas often referred to as "13-year/17-year locusts". The term is derived from the Latin locusta ("locust" or "lobster").
Species of short-horn grasshoppers considered "locusts" are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances they become more abundant and change their behavior and habits, becoming gregarious—the basis for the definition is whether a species forms swarms under intermittently suitable weather conditions, which is a behavior this has evolved independently in multiple lineages, comprising at least 18 genera in 5 different subfamilies. Suitable conditions generally consist of drought followed by rapid vegetation growth, causing the serotonin in their brains to trigger aggregation and other dramatic changes, e.g. abundant breeding and nomadic behavior (loosely described as migratory), when their populations become dense enough. A species of locusts that swarms will form bands of wingless nymphs that later become swarms of winged adults, and both the bands and the swarms move around and consume most of the green vegetation wherever the swarm settles, rapidly stripping fields and damaging crops in the process.
The "plague" behavior of locusts has been known since prehistory, with evidence ranging from the ancient Egyptians to allusions in the Iliad, the Mahabharata, the Bible and Quran: locusts have long been associated with famines, disease and human migrations, to the point that fiction sometimes portrays them as actual direct carriers of diseases and poisons—this is the reason why locusts in variants of NetHack and many other works are poisonous and can inflict sickness with their sting. Normal locusts cannot sting, normally do not bite, are neither poisonous or venomous, and have not only been eaten by humans throughout history, but are considered a delicacy in many countries.
Recent changes in agricultural practices and better surveillance of locust breeding grounds have allowed control measures at an early stage, with newer biological control methods proving effective enough to supplant traditional locust control using insecticides from the ground or air. Swarming behaviour has overall decreased in the 20th century, though swarms can still form with suitable weather and lapses in vigilance.
Encyclopedia entry
UnNetHack
A minute invertebrate animal; one of the class _Insecta_. The
true insects or hexapods have the body divided into a head,
a thorax of 3 segments, each of which bears a pair of legs,
and an abdomen of 7 to 11 segments, and in development usually
pass through a metamorphosis. There are usually 2 pairs of wings,
sometimes one pair or none.
Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will
I bring the locusts into thy coast:
And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able
to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is
escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every
tree which groweth for you out of the field:
And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants,
and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers, nor
thy fathers' fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the
earth unto this day. And he turned himself, and went out from Pharaoh.
EvilHack
And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and
the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and
all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought
the locusts. And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt,
and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they;
before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after
them shall be such. For they covered the face of the whole earth,
so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the
land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and
there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs
of the field, through all the land of Egypt.
The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had
fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to
the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from
it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were
darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts
came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions
of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or
any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal
of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them but
only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered
was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. During
those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will
long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like
horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like
crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces.
