Orange dragon
D orange dragon 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 20 |
| Attacks |
Breath 4d25 sleep, bite 3d8, claw 1d4, claw 1d4 |
| Base level | 15 |
| Base experience | 460 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | -1 |
| Base MR | 20 |
| Alignment | 5 (lawful) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 4500 |
| Nutritional value | 1500 |
| Size | Gigantic |
| Resistances | Sleep |
| Resistances conveyed |
Sleep resistance (100%) |
|
An orange dragon:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1161 |
An orange dragon, D, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is an adult dragon associated with sleep. Like all dragons, orange dragons are strong, carnivorous, oviparous, thick-skinned, can see invisible, and are capable of flight - they will also seek out gold, gems and magical items to pick up.
Orange dragons have a sleeping gas breath weapon, a strong bite attack, and two claw attacks - the breath weapon deals no damage, instead putting affected monsters to sleep for 4-100 turns. Orange dragons possess sleep resistance.
Eating an orange dragon corpse or tin always grants sleep resistance.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
Orange dragons and other dragons gain the additional extrinsic effects conferred by their scales.Contents
Generation
Randomly generated orange dragons are always created hostile. A baby orange dragon can grow up into an orange dragon.
Hostile orange dragons can be generated by the summon nasties monster spell. Characters and monsters that polymorph while wearing orange dragon scales or orange dragon scale mail will turn into orange dragons.
Orange dragons may appear among the hostile D generated in throne rooms at dungeon levels 15 and below, and can also appear among the monsters randomly generated by looting a throne while confused and carrying gold (provided there is no chest on the level).[1]
Orange dragons have a 1⁄3 chance of dropping a set of uncursed +0 orange dragon scales upon death unless disintegrated, and the chance is reduced to 1⁄20 if the dragon was revived.
Strategy
Orange dragons can be especially dangerous for characters without sleep resistance: unless they have reflection, the breath attack may spell certain doom if the character is put to sleep in the midst of hostile territory. Conversely, a character with sleep resistance and/or reflection can approach the dragon at their leisure if they are otherwise capable of weathering the dragon's melee attacks.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
Orange dragons gain extrinsic free action from their scales, making them highly resistant to paralysis, and they and other large enough monsters can also inflict knockback with their melee attacks, making them exceedingly dangerous to fight near pools or lava and capable of forcing characters back into breath weapon range.
While paralysis is rarely employed against orange dragons in previous versions, free action is a fairly valuable property for some characters and may be worth obtaining a set of scales from a dragon to make scale mail with.History
The blue dragon first appears in NetHack 2.3e.
From NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.0.10, including variants based on those versions, polymorphing an orange dragon corpse produces regular dragon scale mail. NetHack 3.1.0 introduces the current method of obtaining orange dragon scale mail.
Variants
Variants of NetHack often subject dragons to extensive changes, including the orange dragon.
Biodiversity patch
In the biodiversity patch, the orange dragon is renamed to the lung dragon.
SLASH'EM
As with all other dragons in SLASH'EM, baby orangedragons have a base level of 4 instead of 12, and can be encountered via random generation in ordinary levels with a frequency of 2; they are also eligible for creation on many levels that generate random D on level creation. Adult orange dragons have a base level of 18 instead of 15.
Baby orange dragons hit as a +1 weapon, and adult orange dragons hit as a +3 weapon.
Adult orange dragons have a chance of turning traitor while tame; interestingly, it is the only lawful-aligned dragon that can do so.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, all dragons have their breaths, resistances, and colors randomized, allowing any non-chromatic dragon to appear as orange.
Encyclopedia entry
In the West the dragon was the natural enemy of man. Although preferring to live in bleak and desolate regions, whenever it was seen among men it left in its wake a trail of destruction and disease. Yet any attempt to slay this beast was a perilous undertaking. For the dragon's assailant had to contend not only with clouds of sulphurous fumes pouring from its fire breathing nostrils, but also with the thrashings of its tail, the most deadly part of its serpent-like body.
"One whom the dragons will speak with," he said, "that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It's not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk to you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you're a dragonlord."
