Dragon
A dragon, represented by D, is a very powerful mid-game monster in NetHack and coveted for the scales they sometimes drop. With some superficial differences, they are nearly identical. Each of them has a nasty breath associated with their resistance. Red dragons breathe fire, green poison, gray magic missiles, etc. The exception is the silver dragon, which breathes cold vapours.
Baby dragons exist in the NetHack dungeon, and are hatched from eggs.
Each dragon has a specific resistance associated with it. Eating some dragon corpses can give you the associated intrinsics; others can give you the extrinsic ability by enchanting their scales to make dragon scale mail. (Note that dragon corpses are very filling so using a tinning kit is often a good idea.)
Dragon Resistances
- Blue: shock resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Black: disintegration resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Gray: magic resistance
- Green: poison resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Orange: sleep resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Red: fire resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Silver: reflection (eating confers cold resistance instead)
- White: cold resistance (can be gained as an intrinsic by eating the corpse)
- Yellow: acid resistance and petrification resistance
The Chromatic Dragon, the Caveman quest nemesis, is a special sort of dragon. Eating its corpse conveys a random resistance.
History
Hack 1.0 has a dragon that does not have an explicit color. This early dragon breathes fire and its corpse confers fire resistance, making it equivalent to the modern red dragon.
NetHack 2.3e introduces all of the modern dragon types except silver. The corpse is still just a "dead dragon", without reference to the color, and eating it confers fire resistance, regardless of the type of dragon. Black dragon breath causes instadeath, and there is no reflection, disintegration resistance, or amulet of life saving, making genocide tempting; but fire resistance is necessary to enter Hell, and there's no way to genocide only black dragons.
NetHack 3.0.0 introduces baby dragons, makes the corpses separate, and also introduces dragon scale mail. Dragon scale mail is obtained by polymorphing a dragon corpse. Reflection is now available and black dragon breath is toned down a bit. It also becomes possible to genocide only black dragons.
NetHack 3.1.0 introduces dragon scales, and with them the modern method of obtaining dragon scale mail. This version also adds the Quests, and with them the Chromatic Dragon. Fire resistance is not necessary to enter Gehennom.
NetHack 3.3.0 adds the silver dragon and corresponding scales.
