Dragon hide
Dragon hide (or dragonhide)[1] is a material for items that appears in NetHack.
Description
Dragon hide is a non-organic material that is inherently immune to erosion.
All dragon scales and dragon scale mail are made of dragon hide.[2]
Though a gelatinous cube will not normally eat objects made of dragon hide, a hero in the form of a gelatinous cube can eat dragon hide objects, which breaks vegan conduct.[3]
Polypiling enough dragon hide objects may result in the creation of a straw golem, which acts as a fall-through for all unlisted material types when creating a golem by polypiling.[4]
History
Dragon hide items are introduced in NetHack 3.0.0 with the addition of dragon scale mail, while dragon scales first appear in NetHack 3.1.0.
Variants
Some variants add new dragon scales and dragon scale mail and/or change dragon scale mail to dragon-scaled armor, while others implement an object materials system that also make it possible for certain items, usually leather or cloth-based ones, to be made of dragonhide; though dragonhide-material items are distinct from dragon armor (i.e. a hero will not polymorph into a dragon if wearing dragonhide versions of normal armor), the material is the same for both.
As an object material, dragonhide is inherently fixed and erosion-proofed as in vanilla NetHack, and cannot be deteriorated through normal means - it is typically highly rare and expensive, and offers the most AC of non-metallic armor materials.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, cloth or leather items can be made of dragonhide, but do not occur randomly; they can still be wished for or found in bones files.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, dragonhide is also used as a "catch-all" in the code of objnam.c for special cases involving other items made of a special leather or similar material.[5] Leo Nemaeus hide is an example of a "dragonhide" item using this special case, and is flavored as being a cloak made of skin from a Nemean lion.
Items with a base material of cloth or leather can very rarely generate with a dragonhide material: there is a 1⁄100 chance that a random leather item will be made of dragonhide, and a 1⁄1000 chance for cloth items to randomly generate as dragonhide. Hard objects can be made of dragonhide as well, which is described as dragontooth for weapons and dragonbone (or dragon-bone) otherwise. Dragonhide and dragonbone armor grants the highest bonuses to AC and DR among materials (usually a 60% increase compared to the base material of the object), while dragonhide and dragontooth weapons gain bonuses to piercing damage.
Many artifacts are made out of dragonhide, dragonbone or similar material:
- Dragonlance is an artifact weapon lance made of dragon-tooth.
- Xiuhcoatl is an artifact that has an atlatl and bullwhip form; the bullwhip is made of serpenthide.
- The Lifehunt Scythe is an artifact scythe made of dragon-tooth.
- The Beastmaster's Duster is an artifact dragonhide jacket.
- The Platinum Dragon Plate is an artifact silver dragon scale mail, and is made of the default dragon hide.
- The Chromatic Dragon Scales are an artifact set of black dragon scales, and are made of the default dragon hide; they can also be made into dragon scale mail or a dragon scale shield like other scales.
- The Steel Scales of Kurtulmak, a set of artifact gray dragon scales, are made of iron rather than dragon hide.
In addition to random generation, various monsters can generate with dragon-made objects:
- Neanderthals can be generated with dragon scale mail and scale shields, alongside other dragon-made items such as dragontooth clubs or aklyses.
- Eladrin that are summoned by Dracae Eladrin, and are not Uiscerre Eladrin, will generate with dragontooth long swords.
- One of the lillend created in the lair of Lamashtu generates with a dragontooth scythe.
- Gray intoners generate with dragontooth long swords.
- Occultists generate with an inventory full of dragonbone items.
- Mammon will generate with dragonhide and dragonbone armor.
- Hell vaults containing a Jrt Netjer may have dragonhide armor among its spoils.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, dragonhide is as rare and expensive as in other variants, and various cloth and leather items can rarely generate as made of dragonhide.
Like in many other variants, dragonhide objects usually cannot be deteriorated, with the exception of the revamped destroy armor monster spell. The destroy armor spell can remove a piece of armor's fixed status, including the inherent fixed property of dragonhide armor, and inflict up to three levels of erosion (which is limited to one if the target has magic resistance). Artifacts are immune to erosion in this manner.
The following artifacts are made of dragonhide:
- Dragonbane is an artifact pair of dragonhide gloves.
- The Bag of the Hesperides is an artifact dragonhide bag of holding.
