Minotaur

H minotaur
Difficulty	17
Attacks	Claw 3d10, claw 3d10, butt 2d8

H minotaur
Difficulty	17
Attacks	Claw 3d10, claw 3d10, butt 2d8
Base level	15
Base experience	504
Speed	15
Base AC	6
Base MR	0
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	0 (Not randomly generated)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	1500
Nutritional value	700
Size	Large
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	None
A minotaur: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is an animal. is carnivorous. is normally generated hostile. is nasty. is strong. has infravision. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line1445

A minotaur, H, is an especially deadly monster that appears in NetHack. They are carnivorous, humanoid animals that are notoriously difficult to fight and deal out incredible amounts of damage with their clawing attacks and heabutt, leading to many deaths at their hands from even experienced players. They are the strongest of the giant humanoid monster class, and are also infamous for being one of the few monsters to ignore Elbereth.

Generation

Minotaurs are not randomly generated; one or two minotaurs may be generated at level creation on a floor that is a full-level maze. A sleeping minotaur is generated on the Ranger quest home level. Two minotaurs are generated on the Plane of Earth, including one in the cavern you enter from, and another appears on the Plane of Fire.

Minotaurs are eligible forms for polymorph, and can also be summoned by the summon nasties monster spell.

A minotaur has a ¹⁄₃ chance to generate with a wand of digging; the minotaurs on Plane of Earth are guaranteed to generate with one.

Strategy

Minotaurs are slightly faster than an unhasted hero at 15 speed, and have a natural AC of 0; their three attacks have the highest damage ceiling in the game, short of the Riders themselves. Minotaurs represent such a gigantic physical threat that there is an entire section of the article on armor class dedicating to estimating how badly a minotaur can stomp a player at a given AC threshold. Be ready to employ some of the strategies listed below, and be sure to scan your inventory thoroughly when making last-ditch efforts in a worst-case scenario.

Thankfully, since minotaurs are not intelligent, they cannot make use of weapons, armor or various other items, including the wand of digging they often generate with. Minotaurs also have no monster MR and lack any intrinsic resistances, making them very vulnerable to magic and other effects - one of the quickest ways to "handle" a hostile minotaur is to use a scroll of taming or other similar item; see the below section for more information on that.

Defeating minotaurs

A very fast spellcaster should be able to keep at a safe distance and wear the minotaur down, and other roles that can reach Expert skill in daggers and/or bows are capable of the same - the jumping spell or jumping boots can aid you in either case, though be careful not to get backed into a corner. While any strong enough player can theoretically outdamage a minotaur in melee, this is generally a bad idea - a minotaur can kill even highly-armored melee roles such as a Valkyrie carrying their quest artifact, the Orb of Fate.

Attack wands can weaken or impair a minotaur somewhat efficiently, especially if you have a wand of slow monster to reduce its speed (and thus its damage) or a wand of sleep to immobilize it; the wand of lightning can blind the minotaur as well as damaging it, and most wands can be made more effective by rebounding their rays off maze walls. Minotaurs are even a worthy candidate for a wand of death or finger of death charge - be careful where you aim, as without magic resistance or reflection a rebound may inadvertently solve the problem harder than you intended. If all else fails, slow monster and sleep wands can also make it easier to escape, as can a wand of digging.

Tools such as an expensive camera or a tooled horn are capable of scaring minotaurs, and the camera can additionally blind them - a blind minotaur is much less likely to hit you, significantly increasing your chance of surviving against one. A scroll of scare monster can also keep non-blinded minotaurs away, though be sure not to have other monsters burn it away from under you - they can also walk over the scroll when you are not standing on it. Boulder forts and acid blob formations can reliably keep a minotaur away while you prepare other counter-measures.

If you have free action, a thrown or (much more preferably) wielded potion of paralysis can buy you approximately 3-12 turns to kill it, run away, or prepare some of the other options mentioned. If all else fails, zap yourself or the minotaur with a wand of teleportation and hope that you can avoid encountering it down the line before you are ready to take it on again. last-ditch efforts

Beware of running into a minotaur during a dig for victory, especially in the undiggable Castle maze.

As pets

Minotaurs can easily be tamed, as their lack of MR prevents them from resisting taming magic, and their high damage and HP make them formidable fighters. However, unless you get a lucky polymorph, you likely won't encounter a minotaur until you're in or near Gehennom. Minotaurs lack flight, regeneration, and resistances, and do not wear equipment, making them vulnerable to various monsters and traps, so they don't tend to last very long in the late game. Like other carnivorous pets, they're often eating when you need them to fight or follow you across levels.

History

The minotaur was first present in Hack121, a variant of Jay Fenlason's Hack, and also appears in Hack 1.0. From this version of Hack to NetHack 2.3e, minotaurs used the m glyph. NetHack 3.0.0 moves the minotaur to the H glyph; 3.0.5 introduces their immunity to Elbereth.

From NetHack 3.0.5 to 3.4.3, including some variants based on these versions: minotaurs are also not affected by the scroll of scare monster. This behavior was explained in the following comment from the source code:

 /* Note: minotaurs must be immune to scare monster
  * to avoid abuse from creating them and taking
  * their wands, then polymorphing 60 or so
  * wands to get wishing...
  */

As of NetHack 3.0.8, it is impossible to produce a wand of wishing by polypiling, and the note was removed in 3.1.0. The behavior remained unchanged until Their behavior has remained unchanged until NetHack 3.6.0, where minotaurs began respecting scrolls of scare monster while the player is standing on the scroll.

Origin

As indicated by the excerpt from Edith Hamilton's Mythology, the minotaur originates in ancient Greek folklore from the punishment of King Minos of Crete. The word "minotaur" derives from the Ancient Greek Μῑνώταυρος, a compound of the name Μίνως (Minos) and the noun ταῦρος "bull", translated as "(the) Bull of Minos"; the word was originally a proper noun in reference to this mythical figure, and only became a common noun in 20th century fantasy works to refer to members of a generic "species" of bull-headed creatures.

After ascending the throne of the island, Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of favour; Minos was to sacrifice the bull to honor Poseidon, but then decided to substitute a different bull and keep the original as his own. Poseidon retaliated by cursing Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, with a mad passion for the bull; Daedalus built her a wooden cow that she climbed inside in order to mate with the bull. The Minotaur, also known as Asterion or Asterius, was the result of this union, born with the body of a human and the head of a bull. Minos, following advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic Labyrinth to hold the Minotaur located near his palace in Knossos (hence the tendency of NetHack minotaurs to appear in mazes); Daedalus and his son Icarus were then imprisoned to ensure no one would ever know the secret of the Minotaur and how to escape the Labyrinth.

The most famous story of the Minotaur outside of his origin is likely the tale of Theseus and his encounter with the beast-man, a subject of many classical artworks and media. The Minotaur had no natural source of nourishment beyond nursing from his mother; as he aged he grew in size and became ferocious, devouring humans for sustenance. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sacrificed every seventh or ninth year (or every year in some accounts) to be sent into the Labyrinth and devoured by the Minotaur. On the third such occasion, Theseus volunteered to stop this horror, taking the place of one of the youths; in Crete, Minos' daughter Ariadne fell madly in love with Theseus and helped him navigate the labyrinth, usually with a ball of thread that allowed him to retrace his path. Theseus found the Minotaur at the heart of the labyrinth and depending on the source slew it with his bare hands, his club, or a sword. He then led the Athenians out of the labyrinth, and managed to escape with all of the young Athenians and Ariadne.

Variants

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, minotaurs respect Elbereth as of version 4.0.0.

SLASH'EM

Minotaurs gain intrinsic resistance to death magic, so they will not be vulnerable to the wand of death.

Encyclopedia entry

The Minotaur was a monster, half bull, half human, the offspring of Minos' wife Pasiphae and a wonderfully beautiful bull.... When the Minotaur was born Minos did not kill him. He had Daedalus, a great architect and inventor, construct a place of confinement for him from which escape was impossible. Daedalus built the Labyrinth, famous throughout the world. Once inside, one would go endlessly along its twisting paths without ever finding the exit.
[ Mythology, by Edith Hamilton ]