Wood golem
' wood golem 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 8 |
| Attacks |
Claw 3d4 |
| Base level | 7 |
| Base experience | 92 |
| Speed | 3 |
| Base AC | 4 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 900 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | sleep, poison |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A wood golem:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line2064 |
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 1⁄4 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]
Contents
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.
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 encyclopedia entry for the wood golem is an excerpt from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", a 1797 balled written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the poem, an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform; when the apprentice tires of fetching water by pail, he enchants an old broomstick to do the work for him, but is not fully trained in this magic - he soon finds he cannot stop the broom, and attempting to chop it apart with an axe simply results in two animate brooms forming instead. Before long, the entire room quickly begins to flood, and when all seems lost the old sorcerer returns and quickly breaks the spell, telling the apprentice that only a master should invoke powerful spirits.
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 '.
xNetHack
In xNetHack, wood golems can drop various items with an object material of wood upon death, with quarterstaffs acting as a fallback to replace invalid items generated this way.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, wood golems can drop various items with an object material of wood upon death, with quarterstaffs acting as a fallback to replace invalid items generated this way.
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!
translation by Edwin Zeydel ]
References
- ↑ include/mondata.h in NetHack 3.6.7, line 79
- ↑ src/weapon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 324
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2525
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2411
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1118
- ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1875
- ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1458
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3158
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1981
- ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1316
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 400
- ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1125
- ↑ makemon.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2249
- ↑ monst.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3528
