Throne room

A throne room is a type of special room that appears in NetHack, and contains an assortment of monsters, a throne, and a chest.

Generation

A throne room is generated with a ¹⁄₆ chance on ordinary rooms-and-corridors levels from dungeon level 5 onwards, and will only generate if the level does not already have a shop. The monsters in the throne room will always be generated as hostile and asleep.

The list of throne room monsters is as follows:

• dragons (on level 15+)
• giant humanoids (13+)
• trolls (10+)
• centaurs (6+)
• orcs
• bugbears
• hobgoblins
• gnomes
• kobolds

Deeper levels are skewed to harder monsters. The limits for ordinary random monsters (based on the average of your and the dungeon floor's level) do not apply. Extinct or genocided monsters from a monster class will be replaced with ordinary random monsters, with the exception of hobgoblins and bugbears.

Additionally, the throne will have one of the following monsters occupying it based on monster difficulty, and they are generated with a mace in addition to their usual starting inventory:

• ogre king
• Elvenking
• dwarf king
• gnome king

Special levels with throne rooms

There is a guaranteed throne room in Fort Ludios (if the Fort is generated at all), with Croesus seated on the throne.

While there are also guaranteed thrones in the Castle and in Vlad's Tower, the rooms they are located in are not considered throne rooms.

Strategy

Fighting all the monsters when they are awake can be dangerous for low-level characters, as most of the monsters can generate with wands to use against you. Additionally, it is possible for early throne rooms with an otherwise-out of depth monster on the throne to generate - beware the Elvenking who rules over the sixth level!

If you have stealth, you can carefully pick off the denizens of a throne room one by one—most throne room monsters are slower than an unhasted player, making them vulnerable to hit-and-run, ranged attacks and/or funneling them into outside hallways. Centaurs are the fastest throne room monsters that can generate, and pose the biggest obstace to the above strategies—they often generate with ranged weapons of their own, and may hit you several times per turn in melee.

If luring throne room monsters into a hallway to fight, beware of monsters zapping a wand of digging down and leaving a hole between you and the throne room.

History

Throne rooms first appear in NetHack 1.3d. From this version to NetHack 3.6.0, "royal" monsters could generate randomly in throne rooms, but a specific ruler was not placed on the throne (with the exception of Croesus). NetHack 3.6.1 adds rulers to throne rooms via commit 4d7d638 and gives them a mace; this is based on a patch by Leon Arnott.

Messages

You hear the tones of courtly conversation.
You hear a sceptre pounded in judgment.
Someone shouts "Off with <his/her> head!"

An occupied throne room is present on the level; the pronoun used matches that of the player character.

You hear Queen Beruthiel's cats!

As above while hallucinating.

You enter an opulent throne room!

You entered an occupied throne room.

Variants

Some variants based on NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions place a "royal" monster on the throne, and some of them additionally provide the monster with an enchanted mace or similar weapon.

GruntHack

GruntHack always generates a king or queen racial monster on the throne of a throne room - this implementation is much different from the L patch that was eventually merged into vanilla NetHack.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, ³⁄₄ of throne rooms have a specific ruler with a court of particular monsters accompanying them. Rulers are chosen according to their monster difficulty: a chosen ruler will not have a difficulty greater than the average of your level and the dungeon level difficulty + 5, and will not be lower than ²⁄₃ of the dungeon level difficulty. If no prospective ruler fits these criteria, dNetHack will fall back on the standard set of throne room rulers.

The ruler types and corresponding monsters for each room are as follows, roughly sorted in order of monster difficulty:

• Kobold lord (difficulty 3): Kobold shaman, large kobold, kobold, lemure, imp.
• Gnome king or gnome queen (difficulty 6): Gnome lord, gnome lady, gnome, gnomish wizard, tinker gnome, dwarf, dwarf lord, dwarf cleric, hobbit, leprechaun, homunculus.
• Orc-captain (difficulty 7): Orc shaman, Mordor orc, hill orc, hobgoblin, goblin, manes, quasit.
• Dwarf king or dwarf queen (difficulty 8): Dwarf lord, dwarf cleric, dwarf, gnome, gnome lord, gnome lady, gnomish wizard, hobbit, leprechaun.
• Ogre king (difficulty 11): Ogre mage, ogre lord, ogre, orc-captain, Mordor orc, tengu, troll, random H.
• Elvenking or Elvenqueen (difficulty 14): Elf-lord, elf-lady, Grey-elf, Green-elf, Woodland-elf, quickling, dryad, naiad, Coure Eladrin, Noviere Eladrin, Bralani Eladrin, Firre Eladrin, Shiere Eladrin, doppelganger, wood troll.
• Vampire lord or vampire lady (difficulty 14): Vampire, random Z, random M, flesh golem, werewolf, floating eye, gargoyle, winged gargoyle, quasit, black pudding, wraith, phantasm, ghost, maid, weeping willow, swamp nymph.
• Drow matron (difficulty 15): Unearthly drow, hedrow wizard, hedrow warrior, drow, sprow, swamp nymph, giant spider, cave lizard, large cave lizard, quasit.
• Titan (difficulty 20): Storm giant, fire giant, frost giant, hill giant, stone giant, giant, son of Typhon, dryad, naiad, oread, deminymph.
• Embraced drowess (difficulty 27): Drow alienist, hedrow blademaster, edderkop, hedrow wizard, hedrow warrior, drow mummy.
• Deepest one (difficulty 33): Deeper one, deep one, human, mind flayer, dark young, umber hulk, stumbling, wandering, and shambling horrors.
• Orc of the ages of stars (difficulty 37): Deep wyrm, red dragon, white dragon, black dragon, blue dragon, angband orc, hedrow blademaster, succubus, incubus, olog-hai, siege ogre, hell hound.

SlashTHEM

In SlashTHEM, a royal monster always occupies the throne of a throne room, and is always given an ornate mace.