Giant shoggoth
P giant shoggoth 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 46 |
| Attacks |
Claw 5d10, Claw 5d10, Touch corrosion, Touch corrosion, Passive corrosion, Engulfing 8d10 acid |
| Base level | 36 |
| Base experience | 2007 |
| Speed | 20 |
| Base AC | −10 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | −10 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 2500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | cold, electricity, poison, acid, petrification |
| Resistances conveyed |
poison (20%), cold (20%), teleport control (20%), electricity (20%), causes teleportitis (20%), Cures stoning |
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A giant shoggoth:
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| Reference | SLASH'EM_0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line2999 |
A giant shoggoth, P, is a type of monster that appears in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM. Like the regular shoggoth, a giant shoggoth is a strong, omnivorous ooze-like monster that can also eat metal, and possesses infravision, enhanced regeneration, and the ability to hide on the ceiling. It can also pick up and collect items, favoring magical ones, and will follow you to other levels if it is adjacent.
A giant shoggoth has two strong claw attacks, two corrosion-inducing touch attacks, a powerful acidic engulfing attack, and a passive corrosive attack. Giant shoggoths possess cold resistance, poison resistance, shock resistance, acid resistance, and stoning resistance, as well as teleportitis and teleport control.
In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, eating a giant shoggoth corpse or tin has a 1⁄5 chance each of conveying cold resistance, poison resistance, shock resistance, teleportitis, or teleport control, and also cures stoning.
Generation
Randomly generated giant shoggoths are always hostile. A shoggoth can grow up into a giant shoggoth.
Giant shoggoths may appear among the random P that are generated in the lair of Demogorgon at level creation.
Strategy
While not necessarily the most dangerous monsters that can appear in their variants, giant shoggoths are certainly among the strongest: they have a staggering AC of -10 and a ton of HP, can move at the same 20 speed as an unburdened very fast character, and can inflict severe damage with its claw attacks and engulfing on top of causing significant inventory damage. A giant shoggoth also possesses an MR score of 50, making magic and wands much harder to utilize against it. On top of everything, if a giant shoggoth decides to flee after taking damage, it will teleport away as soon as it can.
Thankfully, giant shoggoths have the same tendency to hide as their lesser kin, making it possible to avoid them: warning and telepathy make it much easier to spot a giant shoggoth's hiding place ahead of time and steer clear. Unfortunately, chameleons and doppelgangers can also turn into giant shoggoths, as can any monster that steps on a polymorph trap - this is likely to become a game-ending circumstance, even for a player that is alert and cautious. A wand of death or finger of death is one of the quickest ways to deal with a giant shoggoth, though its -10 AC can make it difficult to hit with the ray; while being engulfed guarantees that attacks from within will hit, this should only be a factor for a death zap if you are already engulfed.
Otherwise, as with regular shoggoths, characters that are strong and confident enough to engage a giant shoggoth should do so from a distance, using non-corrosive weapons and armor while keeping vulnerable items bagged if at all possible, and should also have acid resistance along with very good AC - the lab coat and yellow dragon scale mail are ideal sources. While giant shoggoths are vulnerable to sleep inflicted by wands and other items, their 50 MR will make it difficult for the effects to stick, and they can close into melee range much faster than normal shoggoths. As giant shoggoths are solid, an engulfed character can use a wand of digging or dig spell to escape and hopefully kill it in short order, though they are very likely to be re-engulfed before they can attack or move away.
Some careful, well-prepared players elect to reverse genocide giant shoggoths for the intrinsics provided by their corpses: they will always drop corpses when killed, and those corpses can convey teleport control and teleportitis, which are especially useful properties when combined with each other; the corpses also have higher odds of the intrinsics compared to tengu, which are the source of choice for teleport control in NetHack. Of note is that both teleport control and teleportitis typically become less useful around the time a character begins to regularly encounter giant shoggoths, which is often around the time they are close to making a push for the Amulet of Yendor - in the variants where giant shoggoths appear, the Amulet prevents all forms of teleportation. A player preparing a location for reverse genociding of giant shoggoths should use a non-teleport level with permanently engraved and well-placed Elbereth squares in order to prevent them teleporting away - they should also have a tinning kit or amulet of magical breathing on hand, due to the corpses' high nutritional value.
As a pet
Giant shoggoths are among the best possible pets available for a character: while nowhere near as powerful as a Planetar or Solar, they possess powerful attacks and regeneration, high movement speed, great AC, and can easily be fed with most corpses and even metallic objects.
Unfortunately, giant shoggoths are difficult to control like normal shoggoths: outside of the chance that a pet giant shoggoth may betray you, their tendency to hide and ability to eat nearly anything means they will often stop in their tracks, on top of eating almost everything they come across - a magic whistle is all but necessary to keep a giant shoggoth pet close by and/or away from potentially valuable objects. Despite their offensive power, giant shoggoths are also incapable of directly damaging monsters with enchantment resistance - while this will usually not put it at risk of death, it typically requires your intervention to deal with certain monsters, often including the more powerful monsters within the dungeon. A giant shoggoth is difficult to tame with the charm monster spell or taming scrolls due to its 50 MR: it is usually easier to tame a normal shoggoth and raise it into a giant shoggoth.
As a polyform
For any character with polymorph control and a source of polymorph, especially doppelganger characters, the giant shoggoth is one of the best available forms for melee combat: in addition to high HP, speed and powerful attacks, its -10 AC more than makes up for the inability to use armor, and it is also immune to stoning. However, it is blind as well, though warning and telepathy can mitigate some of the worse aspects; it is also limbless and incapable of manipulating containers or performing any other actions that require hands, making it impractical for general-purpose travel. Conversely, the polyform excels in areas where dealing with doors and containers will typically be of little concern.
Post-quest Monks are more capable of utilizing the giant shoggoth polyform, since they can use the astral vision from the Eyes of the Overworld, and doors can be blasted away using force bolts - this may make shopping somewhat difficult, though you can teleport in or out of shops as necessary if you do not elect to simply kill the shopkeeper.
On the note of shopkeepers, while even a shoggoth polyform is enough for prospective robbers, the giant shoggoth polyform uniquely enables a character to rob the black market in particular later on: a character in the form of a giant shoggoth will have more than enough hit points to weather One-eyed Sam's attacks, and is in no danger from Thiefbane due to being headless and of a different monster class (which prevents them from being cancelled). Their stoning immunity will also protect them from cockatrices, including the two that guard the black market, and their other attributes make the remaining assistants trivial.
Origin
The shoggoth is a creature that originates from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, where they appear as massive and occasionally intelligent amoeboid creatures made out of iridescent black slime, with multiple eyes floating on the surface. An average shoggoth measures 4.5 meters (15 feet) across while spherical, though they can become much larger.
Encyclopedia entry
"... in the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where
the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate -
I saw a shoggoth - it changed shape ..."
It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway
train -- a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly
self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and
un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-
filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic
penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and
its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. Still came
that eldritch, mocking cry -- "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" and at
last we remembered that the demoniac Shoggoths - given life,
thought, and plastic organ patterns solely by the Old Ones ...
