Corpseless
Corpseless monsters are those that never leave corpses—such corpses simply do not exist in a normal game, and cannot be formed by any means:
- A angelic beings
- E elementals proper (but not stalkers)
- e spheres (but not eye monsters)
- i manes and lemures
- L liches
- v vortices
- W barrow wights
- W Nazgul
- x grid bugs
- y lights
- Z ghouls
- Z skeletons
- ' golems, excluding flesh golems (though most leave characteristic item "corpses")
- P Puddings, gray oozes and green slime (all since 3.6.0), though they leave a glob
- & demons and djinn, but not the Riders
- @ Ashikaga Takauji
- @ Dark One
- @ Thoth Amon
- ghosts and shades
Nevertheless, it is possible to eat a corpseless monster by swallowing it live and digesting it, for example if you or your pet is a purple worm. Doing so yields no nutrition,[1] confers no intrinsics, and does not break vegan conduct.
Internally, corpseless monsters are tagged with G_NOCORPSE, but the flag is also used for certain undead—zombies, mummies, and vampires—that revert to corresponding tainted ordinary corpses.[2] For example, you cannot successfully wish for a "dead kobold zombie", since killing a kobold zombie simply yields a tainted dead kobold.
It is possible to wish for corpses of corpseless monsters in wizard mode. These act exactly like normal corpses, with the weight, nutrition and intrinsics all drawn from monst.c. This includes monsters such as mummies and zombies, which would normally drop another type of corpse. You must wish for "<monstername> corpse"; the game will not recognize "<monstername>'s corpse."
