Wood golem

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A wood golem, ', is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The wood golem is the slowest of the golems, and is thick-skinned - weapons that use the axe skill deal +d4 bonus damage against wood golems.[1][2]

A wood golem has a single claw attack, and possesses poison resistance and sleep resistance like all golems. A wood golem that is subjected to stoning will become a stone golem.[3]

Wood golems that take damage from fire traps, the fire effect of magic traps and the fire effect of container traps can lose maximum HP up to 14 of that maximum plus one;[4] a wood golem that is hit by a decay attack (i.e. from a brown pudding) will instantly rot away and be destroyed.[5][6] A hero polymorphed into a wood golem can lose the same amount of maximum HP from the aforementioned traps, and dying from a decay attack returns them to normal form, even if they are wearing an amulet of unchanging.[7][8]

Generation

Randomly-generated wood golems are always created hostile. Wood golems are always generated with 40 HP.[9]

Wood golems can generate as a result of polypiling if there are enough wood objects in a pile of items.[10]

Wood golems leave behind 2-8 quarterstaves upon death instead of a corpse.[11] They are not a valid target for genocide.

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.

Per commit e5c73d01, wood golems have a chance of also dropping small shields, clubs, elven spears, and boomerangs alongside quarterstaves upon death.

Strategy

Despite a decently strong claw attack for the point of the game they can be first encountered, wood golems are quite slow at 3 speed and are unlikely to be a threat to most heroes. Be careful not to create a wood golem by accident when polypiling your highly-enchanted elven weapons and armor.

History

The wood golem is introduced in NetHack 3.0.0. From this version to NetHack 3.4.3, including some variants based on those versions, casting stone to flesh at a statue or figurine of a golem produces a single meatball, since any golem other than the flesh golem or leather golem is considered "vegetarian" due to not being composed of normally-edible material - this is fixed in NetHack 3.6.0 via commit d8a0f734 so that doing so produces a live flesh golem.

Messages

<The wood golem> falls to pieces!
A wood golem was hit by a rotting attack and killed instantly.[5]
May <pet> rot in peace.
A pet wood golem was killed as above, while out of your range of sight.[12]

Variants

In variants with object materials systems, wood golems may drop additional wooden items upon death alongside or instead of a pile of quarterstaves.

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, wood golems are generated with 100 HP, possess death resistance and hit as a +1 weapon.[13][14] This also applies to SlashTHEM.

dNetHack

dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack add the living lectern, an animated spellbook on a wooden stand that is somewhat similar to a wooden golem.

FIQHack

In FIQHack, the wood golem's glyph is changed to '.

Encyclopedia entry

Come, old broomstick, you are needed,
Take these rags and wrap them round you!
Long my orders you have heeded,
By my wishes now I've bound you.
Have two legs and stand,
And a head for you.
Run, and in your hand
Hold a bucket too.
...
See him, toward the shore he's racing
There, he's at the stream already,
Back like lightning he is chasing,
Pouring water fast and steady.
Once again he hastens!
How the water spills,
How the water basins
Brimming full he fills!

[ The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
 translation by Edwin Zeydel ]

References