Caveman

The Caveman or Cavewoman, sometimes referred to as the Caveperson and abbreviated as Cav, is one of the roles available for a hero in NetHack. They can be of lawful or neutral alignment, and can be humans, dwarves or gnomes. The guidebook has little to say about Cavepeople:

         Cavemen  and  Cavewomen start with exceptional strength but,
         unfortunately, with neolithic weapons.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit 0c3b9642, the role is known as the Cave Dweller, with "Caveman" and "Cavewoman" as gendered role names.

Starting equipment

Each Caveperson starts with the following equipment:

• a +1 club (wielded)
• a +2 sling (alternate weapon)
• 10-22 flint stones
• 18-33 uncursed rocks
• +0 leather armor

The Caveperson's default starting pet is a little dog called Slasher.

Intrinsics

Cavepeople gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• Level 7: speed
• Level 15: warning

Attributes

The Caveperson's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	10	7	8	7	7	6	30
Distribution percentages	30%	20%	30%	6%	7%	7%
Mean w/ standard deviation	18/01.61±2.48	13.19±2.16	16.43±1.76	8.90±1.40	9.21±1.49	7.90±1.40

Skills

Cavepeople have the following skills available to them:

Caveman skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: dagger, pick-axe, morning star, unicorn horn Spells: attack
Skilled	Weapons: knife, axe, flail, hammer, polearms, trident, bow Spells: matter
Expert	Weapons: club, mace, quarterstaff, spear, sling, boomerang
Master	Combat: bare hands

Cavepeople start with Basic skill in clubs, slings, and bare-handed combat, and use the intelligence stat to cast spells. Their special spell is dig.

Special rules

Cavepeople do not suffer any penalty for cannibalism, including the aggravate monster property given from eating domestic canine or feline corpses.

Cavepeople never get nausea from eating tripe rations.

Cavepeople get a +1 multishot bonus when throwing spears or firing proper ammunition from a sling.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Troglodyte
• XL 3-5: Aborigine
• XL 6-9: Wanderer
• XL 10-13: Vagrant
• XL 14-17: Wayfarer
• XL 18-21: Roamer
• XL 22-25: Nomad
• XL 26-29: Rover
• XL 30: Pioneer

Gods

The Caveman pantheon is based on the mythology of Mesopotamia (sometimes known as Babylon).

• Lawful: Anu
• Neutral: Ishtar
• Chaotic: Anshar

Quest

The Caveperson's quest sees them fighting the Chromatic Dragon for The Sceptre of Might, an artifact mace. It has +1d5 to-hit and deals double damage against monsters of a different alignment from the artifact, and grants magic resistance while wielded. Invoking The Sceptre of Might toggles hungerless conflict on or off, and conflict caused by the artifact ends once it leaves the main inventory.

Strategy

Cavepeople are fairly difficult as a role: they are heavily melee-specialized with high starting strength and constitution, but are not as strong as other "traditional" melee roles like the Valkyrie or Barbarian due to lacking their strong weapon selection. Fortunately, Cavepeople are still relatively strong as a role with access to viable weapons that can get them through the early game, and their quest artifact The Sceptre of Might is one of the best in the game.

Character creation

Cavepeople possess the second-largest spellcasting penalty of all roles after the Barbarian and are unlikely to ever cast a spell in their lives, so the primary factor in choice of starting race should be pure physical power. Dwarves are clearly the superior choice, with generous HP growth and the highest possible maximums of dexterity and constitution, with infravision and a relatively peaceful Gnomish Mines as secondary benefits. Humans are a distant second choice due to a more hostile Mines and lack of infravision. Gnomes tend to have the least racial benefits for the role: their maximum strength and HP growth are poor, and their bonus energy and higher maximum intelligence are virtually useless for Cavepeople.

Cavepeople are restricted in most of the strong one-handed weapon skills, so the deterministic nature of lawful sacrifice gifts can be an advantage: your first gift is likely to be an artifact long sword that unrestricts the skill and grants access to Excalibur, or even possibly one of the strongest artifact weapons in Grayswandir. In addition to the lower reliability of neutral sacrifice gifts, only humans and gnomes can be neutral Cavepeople, which carries the aforementioned drawbacks; The Sceptre of Might is also a stronger artifact in the hands of a lawful Caveperson, especially once you reach Gehennom.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

The base item of Demonbane is changed to a mace, which means that a lawful Caveperson is no longer guaranteed to receive a long sword as their first gift.

Early game

After gaining a few levels, Cavepeople should seek to secure some permafood as soon as possible from one of the two early branches: non-human Cavepeople will have a much easier time in the Gnomish Mines, and can use their pet to procure quality weapons and armor; human Cavepeople will have a much more hostile Mines, but will also not be as pet-reliant in finding equipment. Sokoban is also a reasonable option for securing permafood and other loot. In either case, the hero should be able to keep themselves fed with the corpses of monsters they kill.

The Caveperson's sling and accompanying ammo can wear down stronger hostiles at range and circumvent the deadly passive attacks of monsters such as floating eyes—unfortunately, the ammo is also is quite heavy and will make the player want to drop them very quickly; upon finding a replacement ranged weapon or two, the hero can freely drop their sling ammo. The starting club should be just enough to tide the hero over until they can find a better melee weapon:

• The aklys uses the club skill, and while its damage is low, it is prized for the ability to easily pull double duty as a ranged and melee weapon: when thrown while wielded, it returns ⁹⁹⁄₁₀₀ of the time, and will be caught ⁹⁹⁄₁₀₀ of the time if the hero is not impaired.this lets the aklys easily. Most Cavepeople should be well off after locating a non-cursed aklys or two.
• Spears are also solid choices, since they can also double as melee weapons and "traditional" stackable projectiles; Cavepeople can reach Expert in spears, on top of their multishot bonus for thrown spears. The dwarvish spear in particular has the highest base damage of the weapon class, and can usually be found in the Gnomish Mines.

As with most melee-focused roles and character builds, high AC should be a main priority: the starting armor should be dumped as soon as possible for anything better that can be curse-tested and safely worn, with the dwarvish mithril-coat and elven mithril-coat being ideal candidates; Cavepeople are also incredibly poor at spellcasting and cannot twoweapon, leaving them to freely use whichever metal armor and shields are available to them. While non-human Cavepeople are capable of performing a protection racket, this is a much more unreliable strategy for the role.

Mid game

The Caveman quest always has a co-aligned temple on the home level, though the quest leader Shaman Karnov is positioned so that reaching the altar requires walking by him—this will trigger the check for quest eligibility, sending the hero back to the main dungeon if they do not yet qualify. A Caveperson with enough speed to move adjacent to Shaman Karnov before his turn can chat to him; this causes him to begin wandering around the level after returning the hero to the main dungeon, and they can then reach the temple's altar and its aligned priest to use at their leisure.

The quest itself has monster generation that is biased towards bugbears and hill giants, as well as humanoids and giant humanoids—most of the hostiles are unlikely to be much trouble for a Caveperson, and giant corpses can provide boosts to strength, though the hero may encounter mind flayers or even titans if they are particularly unfortunate. The Chromatic Dragon is easily the most difficult hostile a Caveperson will face, and is likely one of the toughest quest nemeses overall: reflection and magic resistance are both very useful for this fight, and can be paired with a scroll of scare monster and/or a reliable means of engraving Elbereth - see the articles on the quest and the nemesis for more specific strategies. Once the Chromatic Dragon is defeated, The Sceptre of Might should be erosion-proofed as soon as possible.

If the hero has not already obtained a viable artifact weapon, they should seek one out: Cavepeople are notably restricted in all sword-related weapon skills, and as discussed above lawful heroes can reliably un-restrict the skill by obtaining a sacrifice gift, allowing them to dip for Excalibur. A well-enchanted spear of any type can still be a viable primary weapon for the mid-game, and soldiers are often generated with spears, which can be used to assemble a stack of projectiles if so desired. A Caveperson should continue to upgrade their armor as necessary: if they come across a wish and have not found a source of reflection from Sokoban or elsewhere, a shield of reflection is a solid wish candidate since it leaves the amulet slot open and proves incredibly useful for the quest.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit dc9fe0d8, the scroll of scare monster and Elbereth no longer affect quest nemeses or other unique monsters.

Late game

Upon reaching experience level 15 and obtaining the warning intrinsic, gaining further levels is not strictly necessary: improved to-hit and HP are always useful, but can also be obtained through other means, e.g. a blessed luckstone paired with high luck, or alchemy to produce potions of full healing. Blessed tins of nurse meat are also an effective healing resource in the late game, especially for human Cavepeople. Even for the rare Caveperson that elects to take up and maximize their spellcasting potential, they are unlikely to make use of their special spell in dig, as a wand of digging serves the same purpose for much less opportunity cost.

A hero should not rely on The Sceptre of Might as the only melee weapon or only source of magic resistance for their ascension kit, since it can be stolen by the Wizard of Yendor—a backup weapon should be prepared before finally facing the Wizard for the first time. In terms of armor, gray dragon scale mail or a cloak of magic resistance are worth wearing as a second source of magic resistance: gray dragon scale mail in particular pairs well with a shield of reflection, keeping the amulet slot free (e.g. for an amulet of magical breathing or life saving).

History

The Caveman first appears in Hack 1.0, where the role is known as the Cave-man - Hack 1.0.2 adds the option to play the hero as female, including the Cave-woman. NetHack 3.1.0 introduces the current spelling of the role's name.

Origin

The Caveman role is based on the stock character used to represent primitive humans in the Paleolithic era, and such depictions date to the early 20th century, when Neanderthals were influentially described as "simian" or "ape-like". The later ranks of the caveman are based on how real life archaic humans such as Neanderthals actually lived nomadic lifestyles, while they did use caves as shelters, they relyed more on moving with the seasons to hunt for food.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Cavepeople are given more benefits compared to NetHack 3.4.3, such as a 2-square vision range, a strong first sacrifice gift in Skullcrusher, a primal roar technique that can empower pets, and the ability to upgrade their starting flint stones into luckstones and healthstones.

UnNethack

UnNetHack gives Cavepeople a bit of help at the beginning: their starting pet is a wolf.

Encyclopedia entry

Human Cave(wo)man

Now it was light enough to leave. Moon-Watcher picked up the shriveled corpse and dragged it after him as he bent under the low overhang of the cave. Once outside, he threw the body over his shoulder and stood upright - the only animal in all this world able to do so.
Among his kind, Moon-Watcher was almost a giant. He was nearly five feet high, and though badly undernourished weighed over a hundred pounds. His hairy, muscular body was halfway between ape and man, but his head was already much nearer to man than ape. The forehead was low, and there were ridges over the eye sockets, yet he unmistakably held in his genes the promise of humanity.

[ 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke ]

Dwarvish/Gnomish Cave(wo)man

'Twas in a land unkempt of life's red dawn;
Where in his sanded cave he dwelt alone;
Sleeping by day, or sometimes worked upon
His flint-head arrows and his knives of stone;
By night stole forth and slew the savage boar,
So that he loomed a hunter of loud fame,
And many a skin of wolf and wild-cat wore,
And counted many a flint-head to his name;
Wherefore he walked the envy of the band,
Hated and feared, but matchless in his skill.
Till lo! one night deep in that shaggy land,
He tracked a yearling bear and made his kill;
Then over-worn he rested by a stream,
And sank into a sleep too deep for dream.

[ The Dreamer, by Robert Service ]