Stone golem

' stone golem
Difficulty	15
Attacks	Claw 3d8

' stone golem
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
A stone golem: does not breathe. is mindless. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. has a thick hide. does not eat. (*) is normally generated hostile. is strong. never leaves a corpse.
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.

Generation

Randomly-generated stone golems are always created hostile. Stone golems are always generated with 60 HP.

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. 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. 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. 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 a1b76593, stone golems generate with 100 HP.

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. Heroes that encounter 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 - this also applies to the statues that stone golems leave behind upon being 'destroyed'.

Remember that 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.

From NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.4.3, including some variants based on those versions, a hero in stone golem form that casts stone to flesh at themselves while wielding a footrice corpse without gloves will become a flesh golem as expected, but will not be affected by the wielded corpse - this is fixed in NetHack 3.6.0 via commit b99f8a0e so that the hero will immediately become a stone golem again in this case.

Additionally, casting stone to flesh at a statue or figurine of a stone golem produces a single meatball, since any golem other than the flesh 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 30d81e90 so that animating a statue this way produces a live flesh golem, and via commit d8a0f734 so that the same occurs for figurines.

Origin

The gōlem is an animate, anthropomorphic being that originates from Jewish folklore, and is created entirely from inanimate matter, usually clay or mud. The most famous golem narrative is "The Golem of Prague", which tells of the late 16th century rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and his creation of a golem using clay from the Vltava River, which he brought to life to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks and pogroms. In modern popular culture, the word became generalized to refer to any crude anthropomorphic construct that is made of inanimate material and brought to life by some means, with the method of animation and the resulting creation's sapience and/or sentience varying wildly.

The stone golem is a being that appears in Dungeons & Dragons, debuting in the first Monster Manual. Stone golems are constructed from a single piece of carefully chiseled stone to serve as guardians, with the most elegant of stone golems doubling as art pieces - they are generally made with a bipedal and humanoid shape, stylized to suit their creator. The average stone golem is about 9 ft (2.7 m) tall and weighs approximately 2,000 lb (910,000 g). A stone golem always fights with its brute strength and fists and will dutifully obey whoever constructed it, being able to understand simple commands; this included falling into a dormant state to await and attack any other creatures that showed signs of hostility. Stone golems are immune to magic and resistant to un-enchanted weaponry, with the exception of spells designed to work against stone and earth - "stone to flesh" in particular temporarily weakened a stone golem, rendering it vulnerable to normal weapons.

Messages

<The stone golem> is heating up!

A stone golem was hit by a flaming attack.

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).

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." ...

[ The Golem, by Gustav Meyrink ]