Long worm
w long worm 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 10 |
| Attacks |
Bite 2d4 phyiscal |
| Base level | 9 |
| Base experience | 169 |
| Speed | 3 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | Gigantic |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A long worm:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1004 |
A long worm, w~~~~, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack.
The long worm is a type of worm that is unique among monsters: its body and head can occupy several squares simultaneously, and it can only attack using its head against adjacent monsters, while the rest of its body (which is represented by a tilde of the same color as above) composes its tail and cannot attack, but trails behind the worm as it moves and obstructs other monsters' movement—a long worm's maximum HP is governed by its tail length, though a hero that polymorphs into a long worm will not have tail segments.
Attacking any part of a long worm that is not its head or the last segment of its tail can either "cut off" the tail segments behind the one that was attacked, or cause it to divide into a second long worm at that segment—this occurs even if the attack was performed with a non-slashing weapon (including bare hands). Long worm tail segments are considered to be headless, e.g. holding attacks that act as bearhugs cannot grab a long worm's tail segments, and the tentacle attacks of mind flayers and master mind flayers against long worms can only eat that long worm's brains if their attacks target the head.[1] Similarly, attacking with the wielded Vorpal Blade will only decapitate a long worm if the attack is targeted at the head.[2]
Long worms that are polymorphed and monsters that are polymorphed into long worms have special cases applied so that they are not repeatedly polymorphed by a singular action, e.g. the beam from a wand of polymorph or a polymorph spell coming into contact with more than one of their body parts.[3] Long worms that have at least one tail segment cannot be displaced.[4][5]
A long worm has a single bite attack.
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"There's a lot of long worm-specific details that need to be documented here and updated to 3.6.7."
Generation
Randomly generated long worms are created hostile. A baby long worm can grow up into a long worm.
Long worms that are generated at level creation will be created asleep 4⁄5 of the time unless the hero has the Amulet of Yendor in their inventory.[6]
Long worms that leave a corpse behind upon death (i.e. always, unless it was disintegrated) will also leave behind a worm tooth, and both are placed on the square that was occupied by the head of the long worm.[7]
Strategy
Long worms can be annoying obstructions, but their low speed of 3 and multi-segmented body makes them easy to dispatch: attacking the rear-most segment will not cause the worm to shorten or be divided, and ray-based attacks deal damage to the worm for each segment they hit. Long worms can be deliberately divided as well in order to farm worm teeth.
A long worm technically respects Elbereth and other means of scaring. However, if a worm is frightened but is currently stuck, it will proceed to attack you with its head and all of its tail segments next to you. This is the only way to see this in action, presumably due to a bug.[8]
History
The long worm first appears in Hack for PDP-11, which is based on Jay Fenlason's Hack, and is included in the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0—it may have an ancestor in the mega-worm that is present in Hack 1.21. In either case, it is unknown whether the long worm's behavior was different in these earliest versions compared to modern versions of NetHack.
Before 3.6.0, splitting a long worm could cause the game to crash under certain circumstances (see bug C343-324). This bug was marked "fixed" after NetHack 3.4.3.
Origin
The long worm represents a sandworm from Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels, specifically a small and very young sandworm. This is suggested by the encyclopedia entry, as well as their size and the guaranteed death drop of a worm tooth (which can be made into a crysknife, as in the novels).
In the Dune series, sandworms can grow to over 400 meters in length and may even be ridden occasionally. The worms of Dune also contribute to the creation of the highly useful and desirable Spice, which is homaged in UnNetHack and xNetHack: if you eat a long worm corpse, the taste is described as "spicy".
Encyclopedia entry
[The crysknife] is manufactured in two forms from teeth taken from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "unfixed". An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human body's electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed knives are treated for storage. All are about 20 centimeters long.
References
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2567
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 507
- Jump up ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 227
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 353
- Jump up ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1588
- Jump up ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1318
- Jump up ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 345
- Jump up ↑ monmove.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 555
This page is based on a spoiler by J. Ali Harlow.
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
