Gaze attack
A gaze attack is a form of offense that some monsters in NetHack have, which enables them to attack by glaring at you.
You can protect yourself from these by blinding yourself in advance. Additionally, a blind or cancelled monster cannot successfully use a gaze attack. Blinding yourself is more reliable, however. A monster's gaze is also rendered impotent if it is invisible, provided the victim cannot see invisible. Finally, since 3.6.0, hallucinating has a 3/4 chance of protecting you from any gaze attack.[1][2]
The following monsters have gaze attacks:
- Floating eye (passive paralyzing gaze)
- Pyrolisk (fiery gaze that burns objects in your inventory)
- Archon (radiant gaze that blinds and stuns you)
- Umber hulk (confusing gaze)
- Medusa (petrifying gaze)
- Baalzebub (stunning gaze)
Variants
SLASH'EM
The following new SLASH'EM monsters have gaze attacks:
- Glowing eye (same as Archon)
- Bloodshot eye (same as Baalzebub)
- Blinking eye (blinking gaze that teleports you)
- Catoblepas (fatal gaze)
- Planetar (same as Archon)
- Solar (same as Archon)
- Water hulk (same as umber hulk)
- Chasme (sleep-inducing gaze)
- Babau (poisonous gaze)
- Cthulhu (same as umber hulk)
- Rhaumbusun (active paralyzing gaze)
- Beholder (same as catoblepas, Baalzebub, umber hulk, and chasme; also has a gaze that deals direct damage)
References
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
