Instadeath

An instadeath, short for instant death, is a mechanism which, when applied, guarantees that you die immediately, even if you had hundreds of HP. If you have a wand of death or finger of death, then you can instadeath some monsters.

Causes of instadeaths are:

• Cockatrices
  • Touching a cockatrice or chickatrice corpse without gloves.
  • Eating a cockatrice or chickatrice corpse, or eating the corpse of Medusa
  • Kicking a cockatrice or chickatrice corpse without shoes.
  • Trying to sacrifice or tin a cockatrice corpse without gloves.
  • Falling into a pit while wielding a cockatrice corpse.
  • Falling down stairs due to being burdened while wielding a cockatrice corpse.
• Being hit by a death ray while not having magic resistance. This can be achieved by:
  • zapping yourself with a wand of death or a finger of death — this will kill you even if you do have magic resistance. ("You irradiate yourself with pure energy!")
  • zapping a wand of death or finger of death at a monster, and being hit by the ray reflecting off a wall, or the monster's reflection.
  • having a monster with a wand of death zap you, typically the Gnome With The Wand Of Death.
  • being touched by the touch of death. The Wizard of Yendor and high level liches can use this against you.
• Occasionally, poison causes an instadeath, unless you have poison resistance.
• Standing near a collapsing drawbridge.
• Being drowned by a sea monster, although this technically takes at least 2 turns.
• Stepping into lava without fire resistance.
• Intentionally level teleport yourself to level 0 or any "higher" level - level 0 is nowhere, -1 to -8 is "above the clouds", -9 is Cloud Nine and -10 and above is Heaven.
• Being hit by a black dragon's disintegration breath without reflection or disintegration resistance.
• Being hit by a lightning bolt from an angry god without reflection or shock resistance.
• Being hit by a wide-angle disintegration beam from an angry god without disintegration resistance.

Insta-dying on turn one generates the message "Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids".

This page is a stub. Should you wish to do so, you can contribute by expanding this page.