Pestilence
& Pestilence 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 34 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 30 |
| Base experience | 1431 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | −5 |
| Base MR | 100 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 1 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | fire resistance, cold resistance, sleep resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, stoning resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | teleport control (but attempting to eat Pestilence is an instadeath) |
|
Pestilence:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line2752 |
Pestilence, &, is a unique monster that appears in NetHack. Pestilence is one of the three Riders, and like the others they are strong, have infravision, can see invisible, can be seen via infravision, possess enhanced regeneration, and are capable of flight.
Pestilence and the other Riders will revive from their corpse after they are destroyed, which has a 1⁄3 chance of occurring each turn and is guaranteed to occur after 500 turns, and they will also revive in response to an action that would prevent it otherwise, e.g. a tinning kit is applied to the corpse, something attempts to pick it up, the corpse is teleported, or a boulder is pushed or lands onto onto its square.[1][2][3][4]
Pestilence has teleport control, which has a 12⁄13 chance of placing them adjacent to the hero if they are teleported.[5] They also ignore the effects of sanctuary and Elbereth, can unlock doors without an unlocking tool, and can displace other monsters that are in their path unless that monster is occupying a square where a corpse cannot be generated.[6][7]
Pestilence has two powerful touch attacks that deal damage and inflict disease, and if both attacks land, the second attack will instead stun the hero[8][9] the attack has no effect on monsters, though a second successful hit damages and stuns monsters as they do the hero.[10]
Pestilence possesses many elemental resistances: fire resistance, cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, and stoning resistance. Pestilence is healed by potions of sickness and is damaged by potions of healing, extra healing and full healing as well as the spells of healing and extra healing (though Pestilence's standard MR score of 100 means that potion effects are always resisted and spell damage is always halved)[11][12]—Pestilence will actively quaff any potions of sickness they have to restore HP.[13] Disintegration will simply cause Pestilence to instantly reintegrate.
Eating Pestilence's corpse abuses wisdom and is instantly fatal, including subjecting Famine to digestion attacks and attempting to eat their brain, and Pestilence will immediately revive when something attempts to eat its corpse even if the eater survives via life saving.[14][15][16] If Pestilence's corpse is somehow eaten by a hero without killing them or causing the corpse to revive, the hero will always gain teleport control.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 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 017a8687, Pestilence's attack deals damage and inflicts disease against monsters without sickness resistance, as part of resolving issue #594.
Per commit 43f42b35, healing potion effects against Pestilence no longer depend on MR score, and will reliably halve Pestilence's current HP.Contents
Generation
Pestilence is always generated hostile, and is not a valid form for polymorph. They are always created with 10d8 maximum HP, and their current maximum HP is preserved upon death for revival.[17]
Pestilence is always generated on the Astral Plane, where they are placed in the center of one of the three round rooms at level creation. They are always generated with a stack of potions of sickness.[18]
Pestilence always leaves a corpse upon death.
Strategy
Pestilence is generally considered the most dangerous of the Riders: in addition to the standard full monster MR and -5 AC, their disease-inducing attacks are very difficult (if not impossible in practical play) to obtain resistance for, and the stunning that often occurs makes the sickness more difficult to cure. One of the many reasons that players shed as much excess inventory as possible on the Plane of Water beforehand is that a burdened hero will often quickly find themselves with very few turns to live if they encounter Pestilence.
As the primary objective upon reaching the Astral Plane is to find the high altar of the hero's alignment and ascend, it is generally wisest to deal with Famine and the Riders quickly when they are encountered: while killing the Riders repeatedly is unnecessary to do outside of bragging rights strategies, you may end up having to fight them off multiple times if you end up finding the temple of your alignment last. Players often use telepathy to identify which altar is guarded by Pestilence, and then explore the other altars first in hopes of avoiding an encounter.
The quickest way to deal with Pestilence is to successfully hit them with a wand of death or the finger of death spell—when killing them for the first time, be sure to dispose of their potion supply quickly afterward. Like the other Riders, Pestilence can also be dispatched quickly with high damage output (preferably from any ranged weapon) in order to avoid contending with their sickness-inducing touch, and the expensive camera can scare them off. Spellcasting heroes with a high experience level and access to the magic missile spell can bring Pestilence down in a few shots (especially with rebounds), while heroes with highly-enchanted projectiles can also defeat Pestilence with a few volleys. Melee-focused heroes can potentially defeat Pestilence fast enough, particularly if they are twoweaponing, but this method carries a high risk of the hero becoming terminally ill should Pestilence land a successful touch.
In any event, having a reliable cure ready to use for the illness that Pestilence's touch causes is generally wise, and makes up a significant part of Astral Plane strategy:
- Blessed unicorn horns are a standard feature of ascension kits, but may take more than one application to cure sickness, especially if the hero is beset by other applicable troubles.
- Potions of full healing are reliable when non-cursed, but can be targeted and/or destroyed by certain monster spells such as curse items (including the similar harassment from the Wizard of Yendor) or a fire pillar from an aligned priest.
- The cure sickness spell can be lowered to 0% failure rate with skill in healing spells and and/or boosted casting stats, but Pestilence may land both touch attacks and stun the hero, preventing them from casting any spells at all.
- Eucalyptus leaves are a lightweight food at 1 aum that can cure sickness, and a blessed stack of leaves offers protection against item-cursing.
- The Staff of Aesculapius can be invoked to cure sickness, but artifacts can only be invoked every few hundred turns on average.
As far as bragging rights go, it is possible to tame Pestilence using the scroll of taming or charm monster spell after level draining them enough times to lower their MR score—this typically requires several hits with Stormbringer or The Staff of Aesculapius, since their monster MR makes them immune to the drain life spell.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 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.
Green dragon scales and green dragon scale mail grant immunity to sickness, making it possible for a hero wearing the armor to weather Pestilence's attacks much more easily.History
Pestilence first appears in NetHack 3.1.0, which adds the revamped endgame featuring the Riders and the Astral Plane.
In NetHack 3.4.3 and previous versions, including some variants based on them, a hero can polymorph themself into a green slime and turn Pestilence and the Riders to slime, since the sliming touch attack is not considered magical - similarly, a substantial herd of tamed green slimes stands some chance of turning a Rider into a slime, although this is only somewhat less risky; in either case, the resulting green slime can then be tamed. Additionally, a hostile gelatinous cube can engulf Rider corpses without trying to digest them, allowing the hero to steal them from the cube's inventory using a nymphs polyself: a hero that can lift 1450 units of weight can use several methods to dispose of the stolen corpse permanently, such as placing it in a cursed bag of holding and then repeatedly looting it without using up any further turns.
NetHack 3.6.0 makes Pestilence and the Riders immune to sliming and polymorph, prevents gelatinous cubes from engulfing their corpses, and grants the Riders their ability to displace other monsters.
The inability for Pestilence and the Riders to displace monsters located on squares that cannot have corpses created on them (such as a closed door) is added in NetHack 3.6.3, in order to ensure that Rider corpses are created when they are killed.
Origin
Pestilence is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (or the Riders of the Apocalypse), who appear in The Book of Revelation, the last book of most common versions of the Christian Bible. The sixth chapter of the book has verses describing Pestilence and the other Riders as they appear when the Lamb (representing Jesus) opens six of the seven seals of the Apocalypse—these quotes are cited from the New International Version:
- I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.
- Revelation 6:1-2, describing Pestilence.
- They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
- Revelation 6:8-9
However, the White Horseman's identity tends to vary widely with the translation of the passages—he is sometimes given the moniker of Conquest, and other times identified as Pestilence, with the latter being far more commonplace in allegories and portrayals within contemporary literature and popular media. While the description given in the chapter's first two verses is closer to the idea of Conquest, the phrasing of the verse following their introductions does give some credence to the idea of Pestilence being one of the Horsemen.
That said, it is a matter of debate as to whether this passage refers to the fourth rider only, or to the four riders as a collective—among information cited to support the Conquest interpretation, the later appearance of Christ mounted on a white horse in Revelation 19; there is also the recurring motif of the color white, which represents righteousness and the idea of Christ as conqueror throughout the Bible as a whole; and the literal conquest of the early Christian community by the Roman Empire and/or Parthian forces created an association between their conquerors and both archery and white horses.
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's 1916 novel, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, provides an early well-known interpretation of the White Horseman as Pestilence: "The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire. ... While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases."[19] NetHack is among the works that make use of this latter interpretation, as are other roguelikes such as ToME.
Messages
- <Pestilence> looks rather ill.
- Pestilence was hit by a potion of healing, extra healing or full healing.
- <The monster> coughs spasmodically and collapses!
- A monster tried to digest Pestilence and immediately died.[21]
Variants
Some variants of NetHack make significant changes to Pestilence and the other Riders, some of which are in line with their origin.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, Pestilence is mostly unchanged from NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions.
Hitting Pestilence with a potion of amnesia has no other effect beyond printing YAFM:
- Pestilence looks unusually well!
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, Pestilence and the other Riders generate with three times as much health, and cannot be identified as specific monsters (e.g. via far look) until they enter the hero's line of sight, which reveals their identity.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack, Pestilence and the other Riders are all male primordials, and are additionally made amphibious and breathless, given death resistance, and will turn traitor if somehow tamed. If the hero is a Binder, then 3 Binah sephiroth are generated whenever Pestilence or any Rider is generated or revived.
Attempting to sacrifice Pestilence to The Black Mother will anger her and revive the Rider as usual.
xNetHack
In xNetHack, Pestilence's disease-spreading abilities causes them to take extra damage from copper items.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, Pestilence and the other Riders have their monster levels raised to 40, generate with 100 + 10d8 HP, and are given psychic resistance and immunity to sickness. They are capable of instantly destroying boulders that block their path on each turn, and will instantly kill tiny monsters blocking their path to the hero rather than displacing them.
Pestilence is generated atop the White Horse, a unique monster that serves as their steed.
Wielding the Hammer of the Gods can prevent the worst of Pestilence's attacks.
Encyclopedia entry
[Pestilence:] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals,
and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four
beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white
horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given
unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[War:] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the
second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another
horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon
to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one
another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[Famine:] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the
third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black
horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his
hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say,
A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley
for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[Death:] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the
voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and
behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death,
and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over
the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with
hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
References
- ↑ src/do.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1880: revive_mon function
- ↑ src/do.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1900: cases for Rider revival
- ↑ src/mkobj.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1201: In practice, unless there is something wrong with the RNG, this 500-turn limit will never be hit.
- ↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1432: Teleporting a dead Rider always revives them
- ↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1576
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1589
- ↑ src/monmove.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 820
- ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 292: prevent double doinks from disease and hunger attacks
- ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1625: AD_PEST damage type
- ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1449: Unhandled cases default to 0 damage
- ↑ src/potion.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1429: Healing potions have "sickness" effects on Pestilence
- ↑ src/potion.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1445: Sickness potions have "healing" effects on Pestilence
- ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 392
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 553: brain-eating against Riders
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 715: eating Rider corpses
- ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 905: digesting Riders
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 994
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1312
- ↑ Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco (1916). The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (ch V).
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 949
- ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 910
