Chromatic Dragon
D Chromatic Dragon 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 23 |
| Attacks |
Breath 6d8, spell-casting, claw quest-artifact-stealing 2d8, bite 4d8, bite 4d8, sting 1d6 |
| Base level | 16 |
| Base experience | 586 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 30 |
| Alignment | -14 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 4500 |
| Nutritional value | 1700 |
| Size | Gigantic |
| Resistances | Fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, poison, acid, stoning |
| Resistances conveyed |
Fire (17%), cold (17%), sleep (17%), disintegration (17%), shock (17%), poison (17%) |
|
The Chromatic Dragon:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line3210 |
The Chromatic Dragon, D, is the Caveman quest nemesis. She Chromatic Dragon guards the Bell of Opening and The Sceptre of Might. The Chromatic Dragon is referred to as Tiamat in the encyclopedia and the data for the quest branch's goal level.
The Chromatic Dragon possesses the breath attacks of all of the other types of dragon as well as their resistances, including reflection and magic resistance. She is covetous and stoning-resistant like all quest nemeses, and is also capable of spellcasting.
Contents
Generation
The Chromatic Dragon is generated in the middle row of her chamber on the goal level, and awaits you on the left side of the room, with the Sceptre of Might and the Bell of Opening underneath her.
Strategy
The goal level you encounter the Chromatic Dragon in is a large and open hexagon-shaped level with a few shriekers, which may wake her from her meditative sleep if she is already not alerted to your presence.
It is probably best to stay on the upstairs and let her teleport to you, especially if you lack reflection. Using a scroll of scare monster is also advised, as are ordinary methods of waking monsters, such as beating a drum; you can also idle on the upstairs with s or . and allow the shriekers on the level to come to you, with one of them eventually shrieking and causing her to wake up. If you can bring a pet into the lair, it may attack the Chromatic Dragon for you while you wait on the upstairs.
Combat
Shaman Karnov's advice to "keep moving" when fighting the Chromatic Dragon will likely prove counterproductive: stepping away from her exposes you to her breath weapons if you line up with her, which can mean taking serious damage up to and including instadeath by possible disintegration. Her covetous behavior generally ensures that she will stay within melee range, and moving over to attack her will likely cause her to warp to the stairs, leaving her to possibly swarm you with repeated castings of summon nasties.
Reflection and magic resistance are optimal for the fight against the Chromatic Dragon, though they may prove difficult to obtain; Dragonbane may prove to be a decent sacrifice gift for this purpose, though . Reflection will solve the problem of her breath weapons should she get away from you, while magic resistance will reduce the hindrance from the curse items spell. and standing on a burnt Elbereth or scroll of scare monster will deter her from casting most of her spells, including destroying your armor; magic resistance can be foregone if you are confident you will be able to remain standing on the scroll. While risky, her breath attacks can also be avoided by staying out of her line of fire (i.e. any straight line in the eight cardinal directions from her); she will also not use her breath attacks within melee range.
Once she is dead, the player can secure and invoke the Sceptre of Might for conflict if necessary to help deal with any remaining summoned monsters.
History
The Chromatic Dragon first appears with most other quest nemeses in NetHack 3.1.0.
Origin
Tiamat is a supremely strong and powerful draconic goddess in Dungeons & Dragonsrole-playing game, where she is the queen and mother of evil dragons and a member of the setting's default pantheon. Her symbol and most common appearance is that of a five-headed dragon, each corresponding to five chromatic dragons: black, blue, green, red, white. Tiamat's body is a blending of various color dragon forms with an appropriately multicolored hide, a poisonous stinger-tipped tail, and the powers of the respective chromatic dragons she appears as.
Her name is derived from the Mesopotamian religion, where Tiamat (Akkadian: 𒀭𒋾𒊩𒆳 DTI.AMAT or 𒀭𒌓𒌈 DTAM.TUM, Ancient Greek: Θαλάττη, romanized: Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, and is often portrayed as a sea serpent or dragon, symbolizing the chaos of primordial creation. In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities; when her husband Apsu correctly assumes that they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, he makes war upon them and is killed, enraging Tiamat into continuing the wars against her husband's murderers. Tiamat births the first dragons, whose bodies she filled with "poison instead of blood", and births multitudes of other monsters, but is slain by Enki's son, the storm-god Marduk, who uses her body to craft the heavens and the earth.
Variants
UnNetHack
UnNetHack renames the quest nemesis to Tiamat, and she will always drop chromatic dragon scales upon death unless her corpse has been revived before.[1]
"Generic" chromatic dragons can be encountered on the last level of the Dragon Caves, and killing them can produce scales (and thus armor) which are resistant to multiple types of attacks; this new armor provides reflection and fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, poison, acid and stone resistance.[2]
dNetHack
In dNetHack, non-Caveman players have a chance of encountering the Chromatic Dragon on her special level in Gehennom. She also drops chromatic dragon scales, which are an artifact in dNetHack. They provide a bunch of resistances, but no magic resistance or reflection.
This is somewhat less useful than it appears, however, as eating the Chromatic Dragon's corpse is guaranteed to permanently give the player all of the six possible vanilla intrinsics. (Of note is that most corpses in dNetHack only give temporary intrinsics, but unique monsters are an exception to this rule.) However, the scales may still prove useful to certain dietary conduct players.
Encyclopedia entry
Tiamat is said to be the mother of evil dragonkind. She is extremely vain.
