Stone golem
' stone golem 
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|---|---|
| Difficulty | 15 |
| Attacks |
Claw 3d8 |
| Base level | 14 |
| Base experience | 345 |
| Speed | 6 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1900 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | sleep, poison, petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
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A stone golem:
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| Reference | monst.c#line2252 |
A stone golem, ', is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The stone golem is thick-skinned, and is one of the stronger types of golem.
A stone golem has a single claw attack, and possesses stoning resistance along with the sleep resistance and poison resistance of all golems.
A hero that is subjected to stoning while polymorphed into any other golem will become a stone golem.
Contents
Generation
Randomly-generated stone golems are always created hostile. Stone golems are always generated with 60 HP.[1]
Stone golems can generate as a result of polypiling if there are enough copper, silver, platinum, gemstone, or mineral objects in a pile of items.[2] Stoning any other type of golem will turn them into a stone golem.
The second map for Medusa's Island generates four stone golems just outside of Medusa's room at level creation.[3] Four stone golems are generated on the Plane of Earth at level creation, and two are generated on the Plane of Fire at level creation.
Stone golems leave behind a statue of themselves containing their inventory upon death instead of a corpse.[4] They are not a valid target for genocide.
Strategy
Stone golems have a fairly powerful attack and slightly more AC than most golems, but they move half as fast as an unburdened player and lack most resistances outside of the usual ones for golems, so they should not be too difficult to defeat.
Casting stone to flesh on a stone golem will turn it into a flesh golem: while this makes it faster and more resistant, as well as giving it more damaging attacks, the flesh golem also has worse AC and base HP. Players meeting stone golems through normal generation are usually well-equipped to handle flesh golems, and can use the spell to try and gain certain intrinsics from the corpses - remember that casting stone to flesh at stone golem statues will leave behind a single meatball, rather than turning the statue into a flesh golem.
Statues left over from killing stone golems will not contain any items like randomly generated statues, minus whatever inventory the stone golem already possessed (which only occurs if they were polymorphed from another monster); randomly-generated statues of stone golems in the dungeon may still contain spellbooks as normal.
History
The stone golem first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, stone golems are always generated with 180 HP and are made vulnerable to rays from the dig spell and wand of digging, which halves their HP (reducing it to a minimum of 1).[5][6][7]
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, one of the special levels in Gehennom included from the Heck² patch generates three stone golems at level creation. A fifth stone golem is added to the monsters generated on that Plane of Earth at level creation, and another is added to the monsters generated on the Plane of Fire at level creation.
Sixteen statues of stone golems are placed around the locate level of the Archeologist quest.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, a stone golem is generated asleep in the Boulder Bonanza map of Mines' End, and two stone golems are generated in the throne room closets within Ruggo the Gnome King's special level at level creation. As in dNetHack and its variants, one of the special levels in Gehennom included from the Heck² patch generates three stone golems at level creation.
Encyclopedia entry
"The original story harks back, so they say, to the sixteenth century. Using long-lost formulas from the Kabbala, a rabbi is said to have made an artificial man -- the so-called Golem -- to help ring the bells in the Synagogue and for all kinds of other menial work.
"But he hadn't made a full man, and it was animated by some sort of vegetable half-life. What life it had, too, so the story runs, was only derived from the magic charm placed behind its teeth each day, that drew down to itself what was known as the `free sidereal strength of the universe.'
"One evening, before evening prayers, the rabbi forgot to take the charm out of the Golem's mouth, and it fell into a frenzy. It raged through the dark streets, smashing everything in its path, until the rabbi caught up with it, removed the charm, and destroyed it. Then the Golem collapsed, lifeless. All that was left of it was a small clay image, which you can still see in the Old Synagogue." ...
