Vampire

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A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"More accurate/numerical information on vampire shapeshifting from 3.6.0?"

Vampires are a class of monster represented by the overall symbol V, all of whom possess a characteristic life-draining bite. They will always be generated hostile and possess the abilities of flight and magical breathing. They are vulnerable to silver weapons.

The members of the vampire class are:

#chatting with vampires can give humorous messages.

Standing on an altar scares vampires as if you were standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster[1]. Any altar will have this effect, including an altar to Moloch.

As of NetHack 3.6.0, vampires and vampire lords are capable of self-polymorph into vampire bats or fog clouds; the latter of the two forms may be used at will to flow underneath locked doors. Vampire lords may also polymorph into wolves. Killing/destroying these alternate forms will cause the monster to resurrect in its vampire form.

Vampire (monster)

The vampire, V, is the weakest example of this class of monsters.

Note that in dNethack, pet (but not monster vampires) will drain corpses for nutrition the same way a player vampire does (<3 turns of age, has blood).

Polymorphed

Players polymorphed into any V polymorph into vampire bats when the player polymorphs without polymorph control.

In SLASH'EM and UnNethack, players polymorphed into a vampire can fly and do not need to breathe, but they cannot eat solid food and have to rely on blood as their only food source. They must drain the fresh blood of corpses. If they wait too long, the blood will coagulate, becoming useless as a nutrition source. They may also get nutrition from combat if they have a bite attack that drains life. While the enemy blood has a very small nutritional value, the vampires have the advantage of being able to sacrifice even those corpses they have fed upon. The usual penalties apply for draining other humans as well as dogs and cats.

Variants

SLASH'EM

Vampires are a starting race in SLASH'EM. See the article "Vampire (starting race in SLASH'EM)" for more details.

They are three new types of Vampires:

Notably: Vampire mages can cast the summon nasties spell. Fire and star vampires are not undead, but extraterestials of Lovecraftian origin. Fire vampires are extremely fast and can cast unreflectable fire balls. While star vampires have six attacks per turn.

Undead vampires (not star vampires and fire vampires) are often generated with Opera cloaks. The effect is a bit ambiguous depending what it is.

If it's a cloak of magic resistance, then this cloak can easily be found, instead of been very rare. On the other hand, vampires are also magic resistant this way. This is an annoyance for spellcasters. Among other things, the spell of magic missile, the special spell of wizards, cease to function on the ones generated with a cloak. This is of particular importance when dealing with a Vampire mage, that is alredy though. In that case, the acid stream spell is a good substitute that doesn't destroy potential loot.

UnNetHack

Vampires are a starting race in UnNetHack. See the article "Vampire (starting race in UnNetHack)" for more details.

Enemy vampires are also often generated with opera cloaks.

Encyclopedia entry

The Oxford English Dictionary is quite unequivocal:
_vampire_ - "a preternatural being of a malignant nature (in
the original and usual form of the belief, a reanimated
corpse), supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking
the blood of sleeping persons. ..."

References

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

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.