Baby gold dragon
D baby gold dragon 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 13 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 12 |
| Base experience | ? |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 2 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | Huge |
| Resistances | Fire resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | none |
|
A baby gold dragon:
| |
| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 1349 |
- This article is about the monster added in NetHack 5.0.0. For the implementation of the monster in variants, see baby gold dragon (disambiguation).
A baby gold dragon, D, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The baby gold dragon is a type of baby dragon that is associated with the element of light like the adult gold dragon, and emits light from their body in a 3x3 square that is centered on themselves. Like all dragons, they are strong, carnivorous, thick-skinned, and capable of flight, and will also seek out gold and gems to pick up.
Baby gold dragons have a single bite attack.
Contents
Generation
Baby gold dragons are only randomly generated within levels and branches that are biased towards a particular alignment, e.g., the Oracle and Sokoban. Randomly-generated baby gold dragons are always created hostile. A baby gold dragon can grow up into a gold dragon, and gold dragon eggs can hatch into baby gold dragons.
Strategy
While they have decent AC and a somewhat nasty bite, a hero sufficiently prepared for the mid-game should not have much trouble with baby gold dragons. As pets they can be decent fighters and used as flying steeds, but their low speed makes raising them to adulthood and movement while riding time-consuming—making a baby dragon fast raises their speed to a respectable 12, and a magic whistle or blessed eucalyptus leaf may be especially necessary if a character has their own source of speed. Baby dragon corpses can be decently filling for meat-eating pets and heroes.
History
The baby gold dragon first appears in SporkHack, and makes its vanilla NetHack debut in NetHack 5.0.0 via commit 5a09a01a.
A bug that prevents baby gold dragons from properly growing up into adult gold dragons is fixed via commit 1e7155df.
Variants
SporkHack
In SporkHack, the baby gold dragon has fire resistance, and its statistics are close to the baby gold dragon later seen in NetHack (as displayed above), as well as being similar to other dragons in SporkHack.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, baby gold dragons have the same basic statistics displayed above and the same qualities as other baby dragons in the variant.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, baby gold dragons emit light and possess fire resistance, and behave similarly to other baby dragons in the variant.
SlashTHEM
SlashTHEM adds the similar baby golden dragon, which emits light in a 2-square radius around itself and behaves similarly to other baby dragons in the variant.
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, baby gold dragons emit light and possess fire resistance, and behave similarly to other baby dragons in the variant.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for dragon.
