Rock piercer
p rock piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 4 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 3 |
| Base experience | 28 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 3 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 4 (Uncommon) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 200 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A rock piercer:
| |
| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 800 |
A rock piercer, p, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The rock piercer is a carnivorous animal that is the most basic form of piercer: it can hide itself by clinging to the ceiling 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]
A rock piercer has a single bite attack.
A hero that is polymorphed into a rock 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 rock piercers are always created as hostile.
A rock piercer is placed on the Plane of Earth during level creation.[5]
Strategy
Rock piercers are extremely slow with a movement speed of 1 and are generally not too threatening to most heroes, though their 3 AC can make it an annoying target for early heroes with poor combat skill. Some early pets are also at risk of dying from a rock piercer's bites if the piercer retaliates and hits often enough, since counter attacks are not restricted by movement speed. Rock piercer corpses are adequate meals for non-vegetarian heroes and meat-eating pets.
History
The rock piercer first appears in NetHack 3.0.0. In Jay Fenlason's Hack, Hack for PDP-11 and versions from Hack 1.0 to NetHack 2.3e, the piercer appears as an individual monster that is nearly identical to the rock piercer—NetHack 3.0.0 introduces the piercer monster class and formally replaces the piercer monster with the rock piercer.
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, rock 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. Rock piercers have 7 points of natural AC and 6 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.
Rock piercers can be warded by the Elder Sign and the hallucinatory Cerulean Sign.
Two rock 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 rock 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.
