Instadeath

Instadeath stands for instant death. An instadeath causes death in zero time and allows no intervention.

Causes of instadeaths are:

• Stoning by a chickatrice, cockatrice, or Medusa (unless stoning resistant):
  • 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, even if it is already lying on the altar.
  • Falling into a pit, or down a hole or trapdoor while wielding a cockatrice corpse.
    • Includes deliberately flying down a hole, although flying over a pit is safe
  • Falling down stairs due to being burdened while wielding a cockatrice corpse.
  • Attacking a cockatrice while polymorphed into a creature with a contact attack, or when not wielding a weapon and not wearing gloves.
  • Seeing Medusa's gaze, unless blind or reflecting. Invisibility protects her, not you.
  • Having a cockatrice egg thrown upwards hit you.
• Being hit by a death ray while not having magic resistance, and not polymorphed into a demon or undead. 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, and being hit by the ray reflecting off a wall, or a monster's reflection. Reflection will prevent this.
  • Having a monster with a wand of death zap you, typically the Gnome With The Wand Of Death. Reflection can also prevent this.
• Being touched by the touch of death while not having magic resistance, and not polymorphed into a demon or undead. The Wizard of Yendor and high level liches can use this against you.
• Being fatally poisoned, unless you have poison resistance.
• Choking on your food
• Drowning in a pool of water
  • If you fall into a pool of water with no adjacent land, you'll drown unless you have unbreathing or amphibiousness.
  • Stepping into water with excessive encumbrance will drown you even if there is adjacent land.
• Standing near a collapsing drawbridge.
• Genociding your own race, by scroll of genocide or sitting on a throne.
• Stepping into lava without fire resistance.
• Intentionally level teleporting 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. Teleporting to a level "above" 0 will not instakill you if you have levitation or flying, but the game will end anyway.
• Being hit by a disintegration breath (from a black dragon or the Chromatic Dragon) without reflection or disintegration resistance. If you are wearing a shield, it disintegrates, saving you; if not, but are wearing body armor, that and any cloak disintegrate, again saving you (but likely leaving you with a very poor armor class and vulnerable to the rebound).
• 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. An amulet of reflection, shield of reflection or any kind of body armor will not protect you in this case.
• Being hit by Vorpal Blade or The Tsurugi of Muramasa (5% chance, 10% in SLASH'EM).
• Cheating by modifying the save file ("death by trickery").
• Being level drained on 1st experience level
• Eating any of the Riders' corpses
• Digesting any of the Riders

Dying on turn one generates the message "Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids." It is a reference to Monopoly.

Dealing instadeath unto other monsters

In many situations, it is very helpful for your player to have a way to instantly kill other monsters. Here are some methods of instantly killing monsters, listed roughly in order from most common to most obscure. Note that not all methods work on all monsters; for example, undead monsters resist death rays, etc.

• Zap a monster with a wand of death or finger of death
• Hit a monster with a poisoned weapon (10% chance)
• Zap a monster with a wand or spell of polymorph (small chance of fatal system shock)
• Hit a monster with a wielded or thrown cockatrice corpse or cockatrice egg
• Disintegrate a monster with a black dragon's disintegration breath
• Engulf a monster with a swallowing monster such as a purple worm or trapper
• Open, close, or destroy a drawbridge on top of a monster (see dig for victory)
• Attack a monster with Vorpal Blade or The Tsurugi of Muramasa (5% chance, 10% in SLASH'EM)
• Displace a pet into water or lava
• Cause a monster engulfing you to be struck by a lightning bolt from an angry god
• Cause a monster engulfing you to be struck by a wide-angle disintegration beam from an angry god (The monster must survive the aforementioned lightning bolt beforehand)

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM features several new instadeaths. They are:

• Being hit by a gaze of death from a catoblepas or the Beholder.
• Asking a gypsy to read your fortune and drawing Death while not having magic resistance.
• Being hit by Thiefbane. (10% chance)
• Being hit by Serpent's Tongue without poison resistance. (10% chance)
• Being hit by a wooden stake while polymorphed into a vampire and while wearing an amulet of unchanging. (10% chance)
• Invoking the Eye of the Beholder with your luck less than -9.
• Being hit by Houchou, an artifact weapon-tool that is thrown at a target.

See also

Delayed instadeath, which also results in sudden death but allows for emergency intervention.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.