Dragon
A dragon, represented by D, is a very powerful mid-game monster in NetHack and coveted for the scales they sometimes drop. With some superficial differences, they are nearly identical. Each of them has a nasty breath associated with their resistance. Red dragons breathe fire, green poison, gray magic missiles, etc. The exception is the silver dragon, which breathes cold vapours.
Baby dragons exist in the NetHack dungeon, and are hatched from eggs.
Each dragon has a specific resistance associated with it. Eating some dragon corpses can give you the associated intrinsics; others can give you the extrinsic ability by enchanting their scales to make dragon scale mail. (Note that dragon corpses are very filling so using a tinning kit is often a good idea.)
Dragon Resistances
- Blue: shock resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Black: disintegration resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Gray: magic resistance
- Green: poison resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Orange: sleep resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Red: fire resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Silver: reflection
- White: cold resistance (can be intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Yellow: acid resistance
The Chromatic Dragon, the Caveman quest nemesis, is a special sort of dragon. Eating its corpse conveys a random resistance.