Floating eye

e floating eye
Difficulty	3
Attacks	Passive paralysis

e floating eye
Difficulty	3
Attacks	Passive paralysis
Base level	2
Base experience	17
Speed	1
Base AC	9
Base MR	10
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	5 (Common)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	10
Nutritional value	10
Size	Small
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	Telepathy (100%)
A floating eye: can fly. can survive underwater. cannot pick up items. has no limbs. has no head. does not eat. (*) is neither male nor female. is normally generated hostile. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line322

A floating eye, e (e in UnNetHack), can be one of the most dangerous NetHack monsters if handled incorrectly — it possesses a passive paralysis gaze attack.

The DevTeam does not consider the lack of any warnings about hitting a floating eye to be a bug. The encyclopedia entry does warn even unspoiled players of the danger.

Gaze attack

The floating eye has a passive gaze attack which causes paralysis. Every time you attack a floating eye with a melee attack, there is a 2/3 chance that it will use its gaze attack against you if your attack did not kill it. If the floating eye has been cancelled, is blind, or if you cannot see the floating eye, it cannot use its gaze attack. If you have reflection or free action, the paralysis will not affect you.

There is a 1/500 chance that you will lose one point of Luck if you attack a blind floating eye.

Paralysis

The length of paralysis depends on your wisdom and LEV (the floating eye's level, typically 2 or 3). You are paralysed for (LEV + 1)d70 turns if your wisdom is greater than 12. Otherwise, there is a 75% chance of the same length of paralysis and a 25% chance of being paralysed for exactly 127 turns.

Telepathy

Eating a floating eye corpse always conveys telepathy. Only 50% of floating eyes will leave a corpse.

The intrinsic telepathy acquired in this manner is permanent, but one can lose it by murdering as a neutral or lawful, or having a gremlin steal it.

Upon getting the intrinsic power, "You feel a strange mental acuity" (or "You feel in touch with the cosmos" if hallucinating).

Strategy

If you are affected by the floating eye's gaze, you will be paralyzed for many turns, during which you are likely to be killed by even the weakest monsters such as newts or grid bugs. Because of this, floating eyes are the cause of many YASDs. Nonetheless, if you avoid hitting them in melee they are entirely harmless, although they are not peaceful.

To kill a floating eye, it is best to use ranged weapons, polearms, or spells. If you do not have a powerful ranged attack, throw junk weapons or rocks. If you are in a room with the floating eye (rather than a corridor) and no other monsters are around, you can keep throwing your melee weapon at it and waiting for it to move so that you can retrieve your weapon. Finally, if wasting turns is not an issue, you can place yourself between the floating eye and an obstacle of some sort (locked door, boulder, a passive creature, et cetera) so the paralysis will cause no lasting damage other than wasting turns.

Floating eyes cannot harm you if you are blind. Thus you may kill them in melee if you just first blind yourself, for example by wearing a blindfold or towel. Blinding the floating eye is also effective, but there is a 1/500 chance of a -1 Luck penalty for hitting a blind floating eye. Another option is to zap it with a Wand of make invisible or otherwise make it invisible, as long as you cannot see invisible.

You can apply a mirror to paralyse a floating eye, but this is not particularly useful as it will still be able to paralyse you. (They say that a mirror will freeze a floating eye but you can still see it, from rumors.tru.)

If you have a source of reflection or wear a ring of free action, floating eyes will be unable to paralyse you.

Floating eyes can also be cancelled with a wand or spell of cancellation.

Variants

dNethack

The duration of the paralysis effect is shortened to 2 - 12 (2d6) turns in this variant, making them safer to melee. However, it is still safest to attack them from range, as 12 turns is still enough time for other weak monsters to appear and kill a character.

NetHack4

In NetHack 4, the floating eye will not paralyze players who accidentally move into it, however, it is impossible to attack it in melee without being protected from its gaze in some way. Monsters can still attack floating eyes normally and suffer paralysis. This was implemented to prevent aggravating deaths from early game movement mistakes, as an accidental button press would often mean instant death.

UnNetHack/xNetHack

Floating eyes are given as a light green e in UnNetHack and as a light blue e in xNetHack in order to improve visibility. In other regards, they are unchanged.

Slash'EM Extended

Eating a floating eye in SLASH'EM Extended is not guaranteed to give telepathy. The paralysis effect from attacking them also has a much shorter time in this variant, making it much less dangerous to melee them.

Encyclopedia entry

Floating eyes, not surprisingly, are large, floating eyeballs
which drift about the dungeon. Though not dangerous in and
of themselves, their power to paralyse those who gaze at
their large eye in combat is widely feared. Many are the
tales of those who struck a floating eye, were paralysed by
its mystic powers, and then nibbled to death by some other
creature that lurked around nearby.

References

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

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-361}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.