Salamander
: 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:
| |
| 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".
Contents
Generation
Salamanders are only randomly generated in Gehennom, though they are also a valid form for polymorph, e.g. from polymorph traps. 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).[1]
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 are the only monsters that will eat a glob of green slime to cure stoning, as they are fiery and not subject to sliming.
As a polyform
If you are using polymorph to cure sliming, a salamander is the best fiery monster form available, as they are not eyeless and possess arms to pick up and wield items. Salamanders are humanoid, slithy and move at the same base speed - they have a natural AC of -1 and can also wear all armor minus boots. As a salamander, you can safely eat globs from green slimes to cure stoning.
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
"Salamander" refers to both a real-life species of animal and a fantastic creature. Real-life salamanders are amphibians characterized by their lizard-like appearance: slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and a tail. All ten families of salamander - including Salamandridae, whose members have bodies without the grooved sides typical of others, and are mostly known as newts - are grouped together under the order Urodela, and their traits vary widely by species.
Most salamanders have at most four toes on their front legs, and at most five on their rear legs; some species have fewer, while others may even lack hind limbs. Salamanders typically lay eggs in water and have aquatic larvae, but some species in harsher environments may even reproduce while still in the larval state. Some species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, others take to the water intermittently, and still others are entirely terrestrial and become capable of regenerating lost limbs and other damaged parts of their bodies in adulthood.
Some salamanders have have poison-secreting skin and bright warning coloration to advertise their toxicity - this trait was noted as far back as Ancient Greece, where writers such as Theocritus and Pliny the Elder believed that salamander secretions were used in medicine and poisons. Salamanders often prefer habitats that are in or near cool, damp and/or watery areas, and species diversity is highest in eastern North America.
Salamanders in fantasy
Though the default tileset makes it resemble the animal, the salamanders of NetHack are derived from Dungeons & Dragons, whose salamanders are reptilian humanoids with a pair of arms and a tail that originated on the Elemental Plane of Fire - a significant population migrated from there to areas such as the Firelands and the Peaks of Flame via portal. Their culture is known for metalsmithing and creating weapons that utilized the power of flame, and they often wielded spears and used their tails to constrict their enemies; their skin was so hot that even the merest touch caused burns.
Some of these traits and other qualities associated with "fantastic" salamanders by classical, medieval and renaissance lore are themselves derived from real salamanders: Certain writings of Pliny the Elder's time exaggerated the salamander's poisonous skin to the extent that a single salamander could supposedly taint the fruit of any tree that it climbed, and any water from a well that it fell into would become lethal. This is likely the basis for the burning skin that the salamanders of Dungeons & Dragons have - and may also be why the salamanders of NetHack are poisonous to eat and have "burning" touch and hug attacks.
The Talmud also describes the salamander as a product of fire, whose blood grants immunity from fire to anyone smeared in it; Hermeticist beliefs originating in Renaissance Europe considered salamanders fiery creatures as a result of them "mysteriously" appearing when the rotting logs they hibernated in were brought indoors and put on a fire. The philosopher Saint Augustine argues in The City of God that salamanders are proof of eternal punishment, since the flames they inhabited could be used to burn sinful humans forever - this may partly explain why NetHack salamanders typically only appear in Gehennom.
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.
The Chaos Temple variant of the Chaos Quest generates two salamanders in the domain of Kary, the Fiend of Fire.
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".
