Chromatic dragon scale mail (UnNetHack)

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Appearance chromatic dragon scale mail
Slot body armor
AC 5
Special
Base price 2400 zm
Weight 40
Material dragon hide

Chromatic dragon scale mail is a type of body armor that appears in UnNetHack. It is made of dragon hide like all dragon scale mail.

Generation

Chromatic dragon scale mail is not randomly generated, though it can be found in bones; wishing for them with a wand of wishing will give the character a random dragon scale mail instead. Reading a non-cursed scroll of enchant armor that targets worn chromatic dragon scales will convert them into mail, with a blessed scroll adding a point of enchantment.

Description

While worn, chromatic dragon scale mail confers 5 base AC and several properties: fire resistance, cold resistance, shock resistance, sleep resistance, poison resistance, disintegration resistance, acid resistance, stoning resistance, reflection, and magic resistance.

Uncontrolled polymorph while wearing chromatic dragon scale mail will revert them to scales and turn the wearer into a chromatic dragon - in practice, only quaffing a potion of polymorph or zapping a wand of polymorph at yourself will do this. This is one of the only ways in the game for a character or monster to polymorph into a chromatic dragon.

Strategy

Chromatic dragon scale mail is very hard to obtain, with the only sources of chromatic scales being chromatic dragons and Tiamat: Tiamat is a guaranteed source but is only accessible in the Caveman quest, while only a handful of chromatic dragons appear in the game within the Dragon Caves, and have a base 16 chance of dropping scales upon death without being revived (compared to 13 for other dragons); a revived chromatic dragon never drops scales.

The effort required to obtain the scales for how late they occur in the game is well worth it for the benefits they provide: chromatic dragon scale mail is easily one of the best non-artifact armors in the game, providing almost every extrinsic resistance property possible.