Koala

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A koala, z, is a type of animal that appears in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM, SpliceHack, and Hack'EM. It is a herbivorous domestic zouthern animal that can see invisible, and possesses a unique calming touch attack that can abort techniques against you and renders monsters peaceful, and deals no direct damage in either case.[1]

A koala's diet consists entirely of eucalyptus leaves, and throwing the leaves at a koala will tame them.

Strategy

To the player themselves, koalas are harmless: their ability to disrupt techniques is insignificant, and their attacks deal no direct damage. The koala's primary threat lies in its ability to untame any pet that it hits with its touch attack, which can include rare and difficult-to-tame pets. Players who rely heavily on pets should make taking out koalas a priority, as even a peaceful Solar is about as useful as a dead one to most pacifists; peaceful koalas are just as dangerous since pets will still attack them, giving the koala a chance to retaliate and potentially untame them. Notably, the attack does not check monster magic resistance or any other property, meaning that the only defense pets have against this attack is AC to avoid being hit by it in the first place - and even that is never a guarantee.

A koala's poor AC and low monster MR of 10 (which makes it the only monster among the zouthern animals to have any) makes them easy to take down, although their higher-than-expected base level means doing so will take a few hits. While the koala's calming ability could make it a powerful pet in theory, in practice its slow speed and poor defenses combine to make it fairly impractical as one.

Origin

The koala, sometimes called "koala bear", is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is found in coastal areas of the mainland's eastern and southern regions, inhabiting Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. A koala is easily recognizable by its stout, tailless body and large head with round, fluffy ears and large, spoon-shaped nose. Koalas typically inhabit open Eucalyptus woodland, as the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet - this diet has low nutritional and caloric content, and the leaves contain toxic compounds that deter most other mammals from feeding on it.

References

  1. mhitm.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1768: The only monsters that resist are those that cannot normally be made peaceful anyway.