Cockatrice egg

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A cockatrice egg is simply an egg laid by a cockatrice, which makes it very dangerous—but also very handy.

Generation

In addition to randomly generated eggs having a chance to be cockatrice eggs, they may rarely appear in cockatrice nests.

Polymorphing into a female cockatrice and using the #sit command lays an egg.

Effects

As a cockatrice egg, it will induce delayed petrification if you try to eat or are hit with one; cockatrice eggs are the only eggs monsters will throw at you. Throwing an egg at a monster will stone them if it hits and the monster is not resistant to petrification; if wielded, the cockatrice egg will stone whatever monster you hit it with. In either case, the egg will break as normal; hitting a monster with a stack of eggs will break all of them, not just one.

Strategy

Cockatrice eggs can be stockpiled and used as makeshift "grenades" to instantly stone monsters that are particularly troublesome monsters; in a pinch, they may even be a viable wish, similar to a chickatrice corpse. The easiest method by far to obtain them is to lay them while polymorphed into a female cockatrice; it is also possible but tedious to obtain them via polypiling meatballs. Keep in mind that breaking your own laid eggs costs you 1 point of Luck per egg (up to a maximum of 5 at once).

Like real eggs, cockatrice eggs need some special care, as an egg that is just carried will hatch after a short while; stashing the egg in a container (e.g. a sack) until their hatching time passes will ensure that you are not surprised by the hatchling (and possibly stoned). You can test for a rotted cockatrice egg after retrieving it from the container by picking up more than one egg after; if they stack in your inventory, they will not hatch.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.