Disintegration

From NetHackWiki
(Redirected from Disintegrated)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Disintegration is an extremely rare form of damage type that occurs in NetHack. Disintegration causes instant death by completely destroying any hero or monster subjected to them without sufficient armor, and uses the flag AD_DISN.

The only monsters that inflict disintegration are the black dragon, who has a disintegrating breath weapon, and the Chromatic Dragon, who can randomly use the black dragon's disintegration breath.[1] A sufficiently angry god can also smite the hero with a wide-angle disintegration beam.

The beholder is a deferred monster with a gaze attack that can disintegrate targets.

Description

Disintegration functions slightly differently depending on the source. If a hero or monster is subject to disintegration, it will check for and destroy the following in order of priority:[2][3]

  1. The victim's worn shield, if present;
  2. The victim's worn body armor, along with their cloak, if present;
  3. The victim themselves, along with their cloak and shirt.

A hero killed by disintegration is not given a death message: a worn amulet of life saving activates as normal, and otherwise the player will proceed to the death screen. Victims of disintegration will never leave corpses, unless a hero hit them with a disintegrating ray while they were engulfing the hero.[4][5][6][7]

For monsters that are disintegrated and killed, each of their former inventory items has a chance of being destroyed as well:[8] the chance is 19⁄20 for mundane objects and 1⁄2 for most artifacts, and the quest artifact of the hero's role and any unique items are completely immune—an amulet of life saving worn by a monster that is not nonliving will always revive them before at this stage if they are disintegrated.

Breath weapon

The black dragon's breath weapon is the only source of disintegration blasts, and can destroy any doors they hit, but will have no effect on any other dungeon features or terrain. Reflection can reflect disintegration rays away from a hero or monster with the property, and disintegration resistance makes them immune to the ray and protects their worn shield, cloak, body armor, and shirt from its effects.[9][10] The Riders are not formally immune to disintegration, but attempting to disintegrate any of them will cause them to immediately re-form with full HP.[11]

Wide-angle disintegration beam

Main article: Wide-angle disintegration beam

The wide-angle disintegration beam of an angry god only occurs when a god is angered enough to smite the hero with lightning, but the hero survives through some means (e.g. a source of reflection or shock resistance).[12] A wide-angle disintegration beam cannot be blocked by reflection, but disintegration resistance prevents its effects from killing the hero;[13] any monster currently engulfing the hero that has disintegration resistance will be unaffected, which requires that they have shock resistance in order to survive the lightning preceding it. While worn armor on the body is not protected from wide-angle disintegration beams, neither worn armor that grants reflection or disintegration resistance nor any armor worn underneath that armor will be destroyed, regardless of if the hero survives.[14][15][16][17]

This is not to be confused with the wrath of Moloch falling upon a hero that first sacrifices the Amulet of Yendor on the high altar in Moloch's Sanctum, then uses life saving to survive his attempt to kill them: Moloch will immediately disintegrate such a hero into a pile of dust with no check for any kind of resistance.[18][19]

Strategy

Disintegration is a very difficult damage property to defend against, with only two sources of potential resistance: thankfully, reflection is more than sufficient for a vast majority of purposes, most players will not invite a god's wrath unless they are unaware or else doing so on purpose, and adult black dragons generate late enough that most heroes will generally obtain reflection before then—conversely, doing so without a source of reflection is generally quite difficult and often requires items and properties that can detect them beforehand, help navigate the area to stay out of their line of fire, and ideally a means of impairing the dragon and/or keeping it within melee range. This also presents something of a strange dilemma, in that a hero that is capable of killing an adult black dragon can either pick up the scales they drop, eat its corpse or apply a tinning kit, and from that point will generally not have to worry about disintegration for the rest of the game.

Certain conducts and character builds can complicate matters in avoiding disintegration, with vegan or even vegetarian conducts locking a hero out of using black dragon meat to obtain the property and leaving it down to whether they can find a source of reflection first. Monks may have the most difficulty in regards to conducts unless they elect to wear silver dragon scale mail or a shield of reflection, or else opt to violate their dietary conduct in order to consume the corpse. Heroes opting to play without reflection will want to genocide black dragons at the first opportunity if their other conducts permit it.

On the other hand, the scarcity of disintegration and methods of resisting it means that a hero can potentially use a black dragon's polyform or obtain a tame black dragon to gain access to their disintegration breath and eliminate many high-level threats, including quest nemeses and various demon lords and princes. Among the many drawbacks to using this approach long-term are the effort required for a slow black dragon to keep up, the black dragon polyform preventing the use of body armor and blocking various commands, and the high frequency of valuable loot being completely destroyed.

Of note is that the energy vortex is one of the few monsters to possess shock resistance and disintegration resistance, making it completely immune to the wrath of an angry god—this can be utilized on purpose to survive a god's smiting at maximum anger, either by polymorphing into the monster or being engulfed by one.

History

The disintegration damage type is formally introduced in NetHack 2.3e with the inclusion of the black dragon: in this version, its breath weapon causes instadeath, and there is no reflection, disintegration resistance or amulet of life saving, making black dragons exceedingly dangerous to encounter and a tempting target of genocide. However, dragons are not distinct enough monsters to where only one type can be removed by genocide, and they are one of the few guaranteed sources of fire resistance.

NetHack 3.0.0 introduces disintegration from the wrath of an angry god. This version also introduces the disintegration resistance and reflection properties, the amulet of life saving, the ability to obtain black dragon corpses and black dragon scale mail, and the ability to genocide a specific type of dragon.

Messages

<The monster>'s <armor> is disintegrated!
A monster was hit by a disintegration ray, and their armor was destroyed.
<The monster> is disintegrated!
A monster was hit by a disintegration ray and completely destroyed.
<The Rider> disintegrates.
<The Rider's> body reintegrates before your <eyes>!
<The Rider> resurrects!
A Rider was disintegrated and completely reformed themselves.
You are not disintegrated.
You were hit by a blast of disintegration, but remained unaffected due to disintegration resistance.
A wide-angle disintegration beam hits you!
You disintegrate into a pile of dust!
You were hit and killed by a god's wide-angle disintegration beam.
You bask in its <black> glow for a minute...
As above, but you were not disintegrated.
A wide-angle disintegration beam aimed at you hits <the monster>!
<The monster> disintegrates into a pile of dust!
A monster engulfing you was hit and killed by a god's wide-angle disintegration beam.
<The monster> seems unaffected.
As above, but they were not disintegrated.
The door disintegrates!
A door was destroyed by a blast of disintegration.
You hear crashing wood.
As above, while outside of your sight.

Variants

Some variants of NetHack introduce additional sources of disintegration, such as implementing the deferred beholder.

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the crystal golem has a random breath attack that can fire disintegration rays.[20]

NetHack brass

In NetHack brass, the anti-matter vortex has an engulfing attack that disintegrates victims.

GruntHack

In GruntHack, beholders have a disintegrating gaze attack.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, the crystal ice golem has a random breath attack that can fire disintegration rays.

The disintegrator has a claw attack that inflicts disintegration on targets—thankfully it is never generated, although a hero can wish for a statue or figurine of one.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, all types of disintegration except wide-angle disintegration beams will instead disenchant armor before destroying it: disintegration resistance protects armor from being disenchanted by disintegration rays, but not from disenchantment by beams or melee attacks that inflict disintegration.

Several monsters in dNetHack have disintegrating abilities:

Rayguns can fire disintegration rays when set to "disintegrate", and invoking The Annulus in its BFG mode can also fire disintegration rays.

The prismatic spray monster spell causes up to seven 6d6 explosions of a random damage type around the target: if the damage type chosen is disintegration, it will not instakill the target, but does check against disintegration resistance for damage.

The active power of the First Word of Creation emits a light that deals increased damage to monsters with disintegration attacks.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, some monsters have disintegrating abilities:

  • Tal'Gath and beholders have disintegrating gaze attacks.
  • The black dragon has an additional passive disintegration attack.
  • Antimatter vortices have engulfing and passive disintegration attacks.
  • Tiamat has a random breath attack that can fire disintegration rays.

Black dragon-scaled armor grants the wearer a passive attack that can disintegrate attackers. The Sword of Annihilation grants its wielder a change of completely disintegrating monsters that they attack unless the target has disintegration resistance. Crystal plate mail is immune to disintegration, though a hero or monster wearing the armor will still take significant damage, and any extrinsic source of disintegration resistance will protect worn armor.

Disintegration is not an instadeath for a hero with at least 50% (1⁄2) partial disintegration resistance—while worn armor is protected in this case, the hero still takes significant damage. Similarly, reflection will protect a hero or monster from disintegration rays, but without disintegration resistance they will also take significant damage.

All artifacts now have a 19⁄20 chance of resisting disintegration, and Dragonbane is also completely immune to disintegration from the breath or passive of a black dragon. The Sword of Annihilation and worn Hand of Vecna are immune to disintegration, and any items required to complete the game (e.g. the Idol of Moloch for Infidels) are also immune.

Hack'EM

In Hack'EM, some monsters have disintegrating abilities:

  • The Beholder has a disintegrating gaze attack.
  • The black dragon has an additional passive disintegration attack, as in EvilHack.

References

  1. ↑ src/mthrowu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 812: uses all valid breath types up to AD_ACID
  2. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3678
  3. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3821
  4. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3852
  5. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4022
  6. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4074
  7. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2286
  8. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3996
  9. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3821
  10. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4002
  11. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4141
  12. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 614
  13. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 640: checks for disintegration resistance occur after armor is vaporized
  14. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 629
  15. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 632
  16. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 635
  17. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 638
  18. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1527
  19. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1539
  20. ↑ mthrowu.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 775: uses all valid breath types up to AD_ACID
Retrieved from "https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Disintegration&oldid=182622"