Floating eye
e floating eye 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 3 |
| Attacks |
Passive paralysis |
| Base level | 2 |
| Base experience | 17 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 9 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Very common |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 10 |
| Nutritional value | 10 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | Telepathy (100%) |
|
A floating eye:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line322 |
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"There are facts in the strategy section unmentioned in the factual part of the article; e.g. defences against the passive gaze attack"
A floating eye, e, can be one of the most dangerous NetHack monsters if handled incorrectly — it possesses a passive paralysis gaze attack.
The DevTeam does not consider the lack of any warnings about hitting a floating eye to be a bug.[1]
Contents
The paralysis
The length of paralysis depends on your wisdom and LEV (the floating eye's level (typically 2 or 3)). You are paralysed for (LEV + 1)d70 turns if your wisdom is greater than 12. Otherwise, there is a 75% chance of the same length of paralysis and a 25% chance of being paralysed for exactly 127 turns[1].
Eating a floating eye corpse
Eating a floating eye corpse always conveys telepathy. The intrinsic telepathy acquired in this manner is permament, but one can lose it by murdering as a neutral or lawful, or having a gremlin steal it.
Upon getting the intrinsic power, the message "You feel a strange mental acuity" shows.
Strategy
If you are affected by the floating eye's gaze, you will be paralyzed for many turns, during which you are likely to be killed by even the weakest monsters such as newts or grid bugs. Because of this, floating eyes are the cause of many YASDs. Nonetheless, if you avoid hitting them in melee they are entirely harmless, although they are not peaceful.
You can kick a floating eye to death if you have no ranged weapons.
To kill a floating eye, it is best to use ranged weapons, polearms, or spells. If you do not have a powerful ranged attack, throw junk weapons or rocks. If you are in a room with the floating eye (rather than a corridor) and no other monsters are around, you can keep throwing your melee weapon at it and waiting for it to move so that you can retrieve your weapon. Finally, if wasting turns is not an issue, you can place yourself between the floating eye and an obstacle of some sort (locked door, boulder, a passive creature, et cetera) so the paralysis will cause no lasting damage other than wasting turns.
Floating eyes cannot harm you if you are blind. Thus you may kill them in melee if you just first blind yourself, for example by wearing a blindfold or towel. Blinding the floating eye is also effective, but there is a 1/500 chance of a -1 Luck penalty for hitting a blind floating eye[2]. Another way is zapping it with a Wand of make invisible or otherwise make it invisible.
You can apply a mirror to paralyse a floating eye, but this is not particularly useful as it will still be able to paralyse you. (They say that a mirror will freeze a floating eye but you can still see it, from rumors.tru.)
If you have a source of reflection or wear a ring of free action, floating eyes will be unable to paralyse you.
Floating eyes can also be cancelled with a wand or spell of cancellation.
Encyclopedia entry
Floating eyes, not surprisingly, are large, floating eyeballs
which drift about the dungeon. Though not dangerous in and
of themselves, their power to paralyse those who gaze at
their large eye in combat is widely feared. Many are the
tales of those who struck a floating eye, were paralysed by
its mystic powers, and then nibbled to death by some other
creature that lurked around nearby.
References
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
