Lamashtu
| & Lamashtu File:Lamashtu.png | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 60 |
| Attacks |
Bite 3d7 vampiric, Touch 3d7 armor teleportation, Touch 3d7 abduction, Cast 0d7 clerical spell, Cast 0d7 clerical spell |
| Base level | 107 |
| Base experience | 12988 |
| Speed | 24 |
| Base AC | −26 |
| Base MR | 95 |
| Alignment | −20 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | huge |
| Resistances | fire, disintegration, poison, acid, petrification, disease |
| Resistances conveyed | |
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Lamashtu:
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Lamashtu, the Demon Queen, appears in dNetHack as a possible Brine Flats demon lord. She is very fast and gets multiple attacks per turn. Her melee attacks consist of a level-draining bite, a touch attack capable of teleporting pieces of armor off your body to a random location on the level, and a touch attack capable of teleporting you to a random location on the level. Of these, only the last is affected my magic cancellation. Lamashtu can inflict a wide variety of harmful effects including disease, hallucination, stun, slippery fingers, as well as cursing inventory items, destroying your armor, and punshing you. She is vulnerable to silver and holy like almost all demons.
Lamashtu casts summon angel, summon devil, summon alien, nightmare, filth, curse items, death touch, and evil eye with equal probability each.
- Summon angel, devil, and alien are self explanatory. The most dangerous one is summon alien, which can summon nasties like uvuudaums.
- Nightmare does damage based on Lamashtu's level, confuses you, stuns you, and makes you hallucinate.
- Filth summons a deluge of filth to rain on you, which makes you sick, greases your hands, blinds you, and makes you vomit. Sickness resistance will block the illness but none of the other effects.
- Curse items and death touch will function like normal.
- Evil eye drains your luck like any other luck draining attack.
Lamashtu does not fully respect any ward. She will respect the following wards 1⁄3 of the time: Fully reinforced (seven-lobed) elder elemental eye, Pentagram, Hexagram, and Heptagram. She will also respect a scroll of scare monster 1⁄3 of the time. She will respect a Gorgoneion ward 2⁄3 of the time, though the base success rate of a Gorgoneion ward depends on the reinforcement (reaching 99% at 3 levels of reinforcement—a trio of Gorgoneia).
Strategy
Here is a ttyrec example in which Lamashtu is taken down.
Some tactical suggestions on how to deal with Lamashtu:
First: Don't. In the majority of games, you have some other option other than actually fighting Lamashtu with the intent to kill her. Out of sight, out of mind. If you have controlled self-polymorph, you can bypass her lair itself both on the way down and on the ascension run. Just phase through the stone along the bottom rows of the map, you shouldn't need to enter the castle at all. If that's not an option, levelporting down and a cursed gain level up for the ascension run will also work to bypass her level. It cannot be stressed enough, avoidance is the best policy.
If Lamashtu is awake, you probably won't be able to kill her, and will have to strand her somewhere else. You can often get her adjacent to her, branchport away, then step back and cursed gain level or levelport away from her to strand her there. Make sure she's not adjacent when you're trying to ditch her. Be careful of stranding her in Sokoban. It's probably a pretty good place to fight her due to the small size, but you won't be able to teleport away from her in a pinch. Levelporting and cursed gain level (then waiting for your branchport artifact to recharge) will still work fine there.
If you still intend on trying to kill her.
- Don't bother too much about armor—you'll just lose it. Instead, go for maximum protection and try to make sure you still have all possible resistances without armor. Also pay attention to your sources of free action and speed. If you don't have sources of both of those aside from your armor, you might as well give up now.
- Curse your weapon and any rings —that will stop them from falling off in the filth.
- If your source of damage isn't a melee weapon, you should seriously reconsider. It may seem like spells or projectiles are good since you don't have to face Lamashtu's melee attacks, but you'll likely spend a lot of the fight stunned or confused due to her spells, or possibly the attacks of her summons. If the RNG really doesn't like you, she'll even summon an uvuudaum just to make sure you really stay confused. Confusion will block your spells, and limits multishot from most launchers to 1, so there goes your damage.
- Try to get as high of a max health pool as possible. 500+ is recommended.
- A stack of potions of full healing, individually named, is a good idea−this minimizes the chance of losing them all to dilution from filth and exposure from acid; full healing will clear illness, hallucination, and confusion. Your unicorn horn is likely to get cursed very quickly.
- You can't teleport on Lamashtu's level itself, so a good strategy is to aggro her and branchport to somewhere like the Mines to actually fight her. Levelporting one level up and descending to fight Lamashtu on her own upstairs also works, but you won't be able to teleport back if you get thrown off the stairs somehow (abduction attacks will do that to you).
- You'll need multiple escape items handy. Cursed teleportation, cursed gain level, and the Silver Key are all good options, but note that all of them will drag an adjacent Lamashtu along for the ride, and all of them are susceptible to being either blanked, stolen, or both. Bring a backup or two. Note that you don't need too many, since it's much more likely you'll die or get stunlocked than you'll have the chance to use them regardless.
- A stethoscope to track damage on Lamashtu can be helpful, but not really required.
- A source of time stop can be invaluable. The Garnet Rod or wages of sloth are both helpful.
- On-hand potions of sleeping or restore ability, or a couple effigies, might be good ideas as well. Lamashtu along with a lot of her summons can torpedo your sanity and cause you to spend a lot of the fight panicking, or possibly incapacitated due to your preexisting madnesses.
- Lamashtu is a clerical spellcaster. Misotheistic pyramids block clerical spellcasting temporarily. Make of that what you will.
- A space may contain both a scroll of scare monster and a ward, so having both on your square can be a good idea. But be wary - priestly spellcasters can cast the flame strike monster spell, which destroys flammable items at your feet, like scrolls of scare monster.
- Finally, remember that Lamashtu's level has multiple drawbridges right outside her inner keep. If you're feeling particularly brave, there's always luring her into standing there and zapping striking. A source of time stop to get situated may help for this.
