Drum of earthquake
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| |
|---|---|
| Name | drum of earthquake |
| Appearance | drum |
| Base price | 25 zm |
| Weight | 25 |
| Material | leather |
| Monster use | Will not be used by monsters. |
The drum of earthquake is a magical drum in NetHack.
Contents
Generation
A drum of earthquake is generated with 4-8 charges.[1]
Effects
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Numbers: minimum experience level to affect that spot.
Red: 1-9, blue 10-19, green 20-29Applying a charged drum of earthquake will will "produce a heavy, thunderous rolling!" This will create several pits around and possibly under you; it will wake up all monsters on the level, unfreezing them as well.[2][3] Monsters hidden on the ceiling will be shaken off.
Monsters within 23.7 Euclidean distance will flee if they don't resist, and peaceful monsters within a 4*((u.ulevel - 1) / 3 + 1)+1 wide square centered on you will become hostile. The Wizard of Yendor and other "meditating" monsters will only be awakened in that square area.
A drum with no charges behaves like a leather drum, except that it doesn't cause deafness.
The power of this item increases massively as you level up[4]; at XL 30 it will create large fields of pits, as opposed to just a few around you.
The pits created by a drum of earthquake can destroy altars similar to applying a wand of digging, and works even on undiggable dungeon levels. The high altars in Moloch's Sanctum and the Astral Plane will be unaffected.
Strategy
The drum of earthquake's random number and distribution of created pits makes it completely unreliable for opening a pit on a specific square. Be very careful using an unidentified drum on levels with peaceful monsters you don't want to provoke - in particular, creating an earthquake in Minetown or on the quest home level is a very bad idea.
For scenarios where you do want to wake up monsters, the drum of earthquake is likely the best means of awakening the Wizard of Yendor without having to cross the Wizard's Tower. Rogues in particular can attract the attention of their quest nemesis, the Master Assassin, by applying the drum while standing at the bottom right square of the left section of the goal level - the earthquake effect will wake him up immediately.
At a high level, it can be useful to immobilize most non-flying monsters on a level, such as the aligned priests and player monsters on the Astral Plane. It also has a niche application with levitation or flying, where it can be used while doing either to slow down pursuing monsters.
The same strategies for a leather drum apply to a drum of earthquake with no charges. Additionally, a spare drum of earthquake is suitable polyfodder as a magical tool, and especially so for pacifist conduct players since opening pits under monsters can kill them, which breaks the conduct.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, it can wake up Vlad the Impaler, to get the Candelabrum without the alignment keys.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for leather drum.
References
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
