Spellbook of create monster
| spellbook of + create monster 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | random |
| Abundance | 3.56% |
| Base price | 200 zm |
| Weight | 50 |
| Turns to read | 3 |
| Ink to write | 10–19 |
| Spell type | clerical |
| Level | 2 |
| Power cost | 10 Pw |
| Direction | non-directional |
| Equivalent | scroll of create monster wand of create monster |
In NetHack, the spellbook of create monster allows you to learn the spell of create monster.
Generation
Randomly generated spellbooks have a ~3.56% chance of being a spellbook of create monster. Aligned priests have a chance of being generated with one among their set of spellbooks.
Priests may begin the game with a spellbook of create monster as one of their two starting spellbooks, while wizards have a chance to receive this as their starting non-force bolt spellbook.
Effects
The spell of create monster is a clerical spell; when cast, it has a 72/73 chance of creating a single monster or horde, and a 1/73 chance of creating 2-5 miscellaneous monsters, as with an uncursed scroll of create monster. The monsters will almost always have a difficulty level at or below your current level, and a monsters normally generated in groups (such as orcs or ants) will count as a single monster for the purposes of this spell.
Strategy
- See also: farming
Create monster is a very useful utility spell, and is primarily employed for various types of farming. The most common such use by far is farming at altars: using repeated sacrifices, a player can drive up their Luck, obtain sacrifice gifts, and/or gather divine favors through prayer. While much more reusable compared to the scroll, spells cannot be cast while confused to create hordes of non-threatening acid blobs.
If you plan to farm in place, a coaligned temple with the door locked is often best to prevent the summoned monsters from escaping; for lone altars, a lasting (usually burnt) Elbereth is highly recommended, as well as a means of teleportation or other on-command escape. Be sure not to trap yourself in a corner, especially with the chance of summoning hordes or groups granting high YASD potential! Lower-level players can also use this spell to farm for experience and/or items, e.g. to reach experience level 14 for the quest, or to procure spare armor (such as elven leather helms) and/or polyfodder.
Though much less reliable, the spell can also be used are a source of food and intrinsics. Freshly generated monsters can be killed and served to a hungry pet (or pet-to-be); keep carnivorous pets away from shapeshifter corpses unless you're fine with allowing them to polymorph, and be mindful of monsters with passives. While it can also provide food for the caster, casting the spell still uses up nutrition, and not all generated monsters will leave suitable corpses if they leave one at all; using this for intrinsic gain is similarly unreliable. However, this is dependent on the role, particularly due to the mechanics of quest branch monster generation.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
Pets will no longer eat shapeshifter corpses unless they are starving or on the verge of untaming.Extinction
The spell of create monster is the central spell for extinctionist players, as it is by far the most reliable method to create large amounts of monsters for the challenge. Wizards and Priests are not only the most adept casters for the spell by far, but can also farm wraiths with some reliably in order to increase their level and power reserves.
Variants
FIQHack
In FIQHack, this spellbook is replaced with the spellbook of summoning.
