Salamander

: salamander
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Weapon 2d8, Touch 1d6 fire, bearhug 2d6, bearhug 3d6 fire (scrolls, potions and spellbooks may be affected)

: salamander
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Weapon 2d8, Touch 1d6 fire, bearhug 2d6, bearhug 3d6 fire (scrolls, potions and spellbooks may be affected)
Base level	8
Base experience	159
Speed	12
Base AC	-1
Base MR	0
Alignment	-9 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	No
Weight	1500
Nutritional value	400
Size	Medium
Resistances	Fire, Sleep
Resistances conveyed	Fire (53%)
A salamander: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. has a serpent body. has a thick hide. is poisonous to eat. does not eat. (*) is normally generated hostile. can follow you to other levels. can pick up weapons and food. can pick up magical items. can be seen through infravision. appears only in Gehennom.
Reference	monst.c#line2689

A salamander, :, is a type of monster in NetHack. Salamanders are the strongest of the lizard monster class, and the only member of the monster class that is not an animal.

A salamander has four attacks - a weapon attack, a fiery touch and two bearhug attacks, the second of which is also fiery. Salamanders resist fire and sleep, and are immune to genocide and sliming. Eating a salamander's corpse or meat has a 53% chance of conveying fire resistance, though their corpses are poisonous.

If you chat to a salamander, they will "mumble incomprehensibly".

Generation

Salamanders are only randomly generated in Gehennom; eight salamanders are generated upon reacing the Plane of Fire.

Salamanders are generated with either a spear (⁶⁄₇ chance), a trident (²⁄₂₁ chance), or a stiletto (¹⁄₂₁ chance).

Strategy

Salamanders are usually not too difficult to face for a player that has reached Gehennom, though being caught in their bearhug may leave you vulnerable to more vicious monsters in the air unless you kill them or break their grip quickly. However, a salamander has no MR score, leaving it vulnerable to wands as well as various tools - this makes scaring one into releasing you fairly trivial.

Salamanders can eat a glob of green slime to cure stoning, as they are the only monsters able to pick them up and use them without subjecting themselves to sliming.

As a polyform

If you are using polymorph to cure sliming, a salamander is the best fiery monster form available - salamanders are both humanoid and slithy, have the same base speed as you, and a good base AC of -1; they can wield weapons and wear all armor minus boots. Salamanders are the only fiery monster forms that possess limbs of any kind and are not eyeless; you can also safely eat globs from green slimes to cure stoning as a salamander.

Of note is that you can safely quaff a lit potion of oil as a salamander, which exercises wisdom.

History

The salamander first appears in NetHack-- 3.1.3, and are among the many monsters from that variant added to SLASH 6. Salamanders make their vanilla NetHack debut in NetHack 3.2.0.

Origin

A salamander in NetHack is very different from a real-life salamander; it has the torso of a man atop the body of a great snake. This appearance is based on the monsters from Dungeons & Dragons.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, salamanders are guaranteed polyforms for Dopplegangers at experience level 8, and are a solid choice for similar reasons as in vanilla.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, one of One-Eyed Sam's assistants in the black market is a salamander named Izzy; the black market was adapted from SLASH'EM, where Izzy was originally a rhaumbusun.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, player drow are capable of applying saddles to salamanders and using them as steeds.

SlashTHEM

In addition to SLASH'EM notes above, SlashTHEM makes salamanders the second quest monster for the Firefighter quest, and 14% of the monsters randomly generated in that branch will be salamanders; the lizard monster class is also the second quest class for Firefighters, and salamanders may appear among the 3% of randomly generated monsters selected from this class. Five salamanders are generated on the home, locate and goal floors at level creation; one salamander is placed within the upper filler level(s) upon their generation; and two are placed within the lower filler level(s) upon their generation.

SpliceHack

In SpliceHack, the black market uses the same layout as in SLASH'EM, and includes Izzy the salamander as one of the assistants.

Ten hostile salamanders are generated upon entering the City of Brass.

notdNetHack

notdNetHack adds the salamander as a playable starting race.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, salamanders can move through lava and will attempt to drown players in the lava with their bearhug, similar to pythons and eels in water. This is significantly more dangerous, as a successful attack will usually destroy most of the player's inventory along with killing them outright.

EvilHack also adds the frost salamander, a stronger icy counterpart of the salamander that only appears in the Ice Queen's Realm; it uses the same hit dice and attack routine as a vanilla salamander (though with cold damage), and thus cannot drown you.

Encyclopedia entry

For hundreds of years, many people believed that salamanders were magical. In England in the Middle Ages, people thought that fire created salamanders. When they set fire to damp logs, dozens of the slimy creatures scurried out. The word salamander, in fact, comes from a Greek word meaning "fire animal".

[ Salamanders, by Cherie Winner ]