Drow (starting race)
Drow, sometimes known as "dark elves", are a playable race of hero that appears in some NetHack variants. They are most commonly implemented as a type of elf that are dark counterparts to standard elves, with a similar spread of attribute caps.
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"dNetHack section still has stuff to sift through. SLASH'EM item subs as well"
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, drow serve as chaotic same-race counterparts to the elves:[1] the elves of SLASH'EM are usually lawful and can be played as lawful or neutral, as opposed to being chaotic like in NetHack. Drow can be played as Barbarians, Flame Mages, Ice Mages, Necromancers, Priests, Rangers, Undead Slayers, or Wizards.
According to the Guidebook:
Drow are the dark elves of the sunless realm. Well-suited to the dungeon environment, they have much in common with standard elves, but their specialty is their sleep attack.
SLASH'EM benefits and restrictions
- For other qualities of drow monsters (including the hero) in this variant, see Drow (monster attribute)#SLASH'EM.
A drow hero engaging in bare-handed combat can sometimes put monsters to sleep. Like elven heroes, drow gain sleep resistance at experience level 4.[2] Unlike elves, drow heroes do not have infravision and cannot be seen via infravision themselves, and they are also incapable of two-weapon combat.
SLASH'EM attribute caps
| Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | 18 | 16 | 20 | 20 | 18 |
Drow attribute caps are identical to those of elves: they excel in mental attributes and are tied for the highest intelligence and wisdom caps at 20, while they have the lowest constitution cap among playable races of hero at 16, and their strength is tied with hobbits for the lowest at 18.
SLASH'EM strategy
The drow's sleep-inducing bare-handed attacks make the race enticing for players new to SLASH'EM: during the early game, drow heroes can survive well if they know when to fight bare-handed, and can keep monsters asleep with repeated strikes—this also enables them to more effectively fight multiple opponents or flee into a corridor as necessary. Drow heroes with high bare-handed combat skill and fortunate enough rolls can even take down shopkeepers in hand-to-hand battles without taking a hit. The trade-off for this remarkable power is the lower damage output imposed by the inability to two-weapon, as well as the limits on attributes shared with standard elves.
A drow Barbarian is an easy race-role combination that allows the player to begin fighting bare-handed before switching to a better weapon, such as a battle-axe or any artifact weapon.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, drow have several substantial differences from elves, which begin as early as starting alignment: female drow heroes start the game as chaotic, while male drow or "hedrow" heroes are neutral. The quest a drow hero undertakes also differs between genders as well, and is also dependent on their role.
Drow can take the role of Anachrononauts, Binders, Convicts, Healers, Madpeople, Nobles, Pirates, Priests, Rogues, Rangers, Troubadours, or Wizards.
dNetHack benefits and restrictions
- For other qualities of drow monsters (including the hero) in this set of variants, see Drow (monster attribute)#dNetHack.
Like elves, drow gain sleep resistance at experience level 4. Drow can see perfectly in the dark, but cannot see into lit areas and are virtually 'blind' in the light: light-blindness is much different from ordinary blindness in that a drow hero can still see (and thus will not have intrinsic telepathy trigger), but they can only see items and engravings directly at their feet, along with items in their own inventory. Drow heroes can create a patch of darkness using the #monster extended command, which costs 10 energy (or all of it if their maximum energy is below 10).
All drow heroes can reach Grand Master skill level in bare-handed combat.
The default starting pet for a drow hero has a 2⁄3 chance of being a cave spider, and will otherwise be a baby cave lizard. Drow Healers start with a tame knight, while hedrow Nobles start with a saddled small cave lizard, and female drow Nobles start with a saddled giant spider.
Drow houses
Drow heroes and nearly all drow monsters, except for any of the Changed, are generated as belonging to a particular "house": this can usually be determined by the house symbols engraved on black signet rings and heavy droven armor. Drow from houses that are aligned against each other will be mutually hostile, and will be hostile towards a drow hero of an opposing faction—conversely, drow of the same house, or of different houses that are aligned with each other, will be peaceful towards each other and towards drow heroes of allied factions.
dNetHack attribute caps
| Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | 20 | 16 | 20 | 18 | 20 |
Drow and elves share similar attribute caps, including boosted dexterity (20 compared to 18 in NetHack), but exchange their higher wisdom for higher charisma.
dNetHack starting equipment
Drow have several replacements made to the starting equipment of their role, and often have different starting inventories between genders—their starting inventory may also differ outright from that of other races playing the same role.
| Standard item(s) | Replacement item(s) | Affected roles |
|---|---|---|
| robe | droven plate mail | Priest |
| athame | droven dagger | Wizard |
| dagger | Noble, Ranger, Rogue | |
| knife | droven crossbow | Pirate |
| short sword | droven short sword | Rogue |
| bow | droven crossbow | Noble, Ranger |
| arrow | droven bolt | Noble, Ranger |
| mace | droven greatsword | Priest (male only) |
| khakkhara | Priestess (female only) | |
| buckler | droven helm | Priests |
| leather cloak | droven chain mail | Troubadour |
| apple | tripe ration | Noble, Troubadour |
| torch | shadowlander's torch | Rangers, Rogues |
| quarterstaff | khakkhara | Wizards (female only) |
All drow heroes start with a black signet ring, which is a randomized appearance for rings that allows the ring to function as a means of injecting poison: when dipped into an eligible potion, the ring absorbs 30 doses of poison, which can be inflicted on opponents by attacking them in bare-handed combat while wearing the ring without any type of gloves on; if two signet rings are worn, both apply their poison. A drow hero's starting signet rings are pre-loaded with doses of drug-injecting, sleep-inducing poison, and will always be of a valid ring type for their role. Signet rings also bear specific crests, sometimes including the silvered holy symbols of drow deities: rings that have a spiderweb design on them add +5 damage to unarmed attacks, while rings with holy symbols count as silver rings when attacking silver-hating monsters.
Droven weapons have higher base damage than most starting weapons, and are made of obsidian except for the droven crossbow: the droven crossbow is made of silver and bears the holy symbol of Lolth. All obsidian droven weapons in a drow hero's starting inventory will be drug-coated (i.e. covered with the same sleep-inducing poison as used for rings).
Droven plate mail and chain mail are made out of shadowsteel: shadowsteel is even lighter than obsidian and other metallic materials and is quite durable, but slowly evaporates with each step taken in a lit square until it is eventually destroyed; the odds of evaporation can be reduced by wearing a cloak over it that grants magic cancellation (with higher MC cloaks offering more reduction in the chance of evaporation), and fixed shadowsteel will even gradually auto-repair in unlit squares.
Droven cloaks are made of cloth woven from spiderwebs: they grant no base AC but offer MC3, and can be applied by a hero of any race to either create a web on an adjacent square or remove a web from that square—creating webs decreases the cloak's MC by 1, using it up when it reaches 0, and removing webs with it restores 1 MC.
Due to being acclimated to life in the darkness, many drow heroes start with shadowlander's torches, which emit darkness rather than light; as noted above, any light sources such as standard torches and sunrods that are in a drow hero's starting inventory are replaced with shadowlander's torches. Drow Nobles in particular start with a chunk of fossil dark, which has a smaller radius of darkness than a shadowlander's torch but lasts indefinitely.
Rank titles
Drow are given their own rank titles on the status line for the corresponding experience levels:
- XL 1-2: Wiu/Ligrr
- XL 3-5: Wanre/Wenress
- XL 6-9: Glenn/Kyorl
- XL 10-13: Elg'hasek/Venta'kyorl
- XL 14-17: Beldrar/An'kin
- XL 18-21: Helothann/Jallil
- XL 22-25: Linthar/Sil'in
- XL 26-29: Kas'ka/Qu'ess
- XL 30: Zil/Val'sharess
Lolth
Lolth is the primary drow goddess, and acts as the chaotic deity for drow and hedrow pantheons.
When engraved, the name "Lolth" is a drow-specific alternative to the full-power Elbereth for elves (i.e. vanilla NetHack 3.4.3 Elbereth). Like full-power Elbereth, it works on the vast majority of monsters except for the following:
- shopkeepers
- guards
- the Wizard of Yendor
- blind, peaceful or tame monsters
- @ human or elf
- the elder priest
- Great Cthulhu
- Chokhmah Sephirah
- Lamashtu
- the Riders and any monster that shares their revival ability (e.g. Axus)
Like Elbereth, it only has a chance of affecting some other monsters: it has a 1⁄2 chance of working on Chaos, a 1⁄3 chance of working on Demogorgon, and a 1⁄9 chance of working on Asmodeus. Unlike Elbereth, Lolth does work on minotaurs, as well as lawful angels and minions. The downside compared to Elbereth is that if the monster is of a higher level than the drow hero, it will drain their alignment record, and it ceases to function if that hero's alignment record is not positive.
Lolth does not work in the future, i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest. Lolth also does not work for drow heroes of gnostic (void) alignment, i.e. Binders.
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"Lolth also only works when following certain drow gods - detail which gods they are."
dNetHack strategy
A drow's light-blindness makes it all too easy to inadvertently attack pets and peaceful monsters, and their ability to create dark areas is often limited without the aid of other items. As a result, the first couple levels of the dungeon can be slow while obtaining the energy required to create darkness and waiting for it recharge, and gaining experience will likewise take time.
In terms of starting inventory, droven weapons are high-damage but brittle, and should be handled with care in lit areas. Both droven crossbows and signet rings can be used against silver-hating hostiles in a pinch, and the sleeping poison for both rings and weapons can be fairly reliable in immobilizing particularly troublesome opponents that lack sleep resistance. Shadowlander's torches are a generally useful aid for quickly navigating lit rooms.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, drow are considered an elven subrace similar to other variants: their starting attributes and caps are the same as other elves, they share an aversion to iron, and other elves count as the same race for purposes of cannibalism and sacrifice. Drow can be played as Convicts, Infidels, Dark Knights, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Ranger, or Wizard—with the exception of the unaligned Infidel, drow are always chaotic.
EvilHack benefits and restrictions
- For other qualities of drow monsters (including the hero) in this variant, see Drow (monster attribute)#EvilHack.
Drow start with sleep resistance and ultravision (allowing them to see in the dark as if it were a lit area for any other race), and they gain intrinsic poison resistance at experience level 5 and intrinsic searching at experience level 9. Drow characters have a natural ability to move through webs effortlessly like spiders are able to, and can cast an aura of darkness via the #monster command for 10 energy as long as they are not impaired (e.g. stunned or confused).
While drow in EvilHack can tolerate being in the light, they are subject various penalties while in a lit square: their hit points regenerate three times slower, their spell power regenerates two times slower, and they take a −3 to-hit penalty across the board. In dark squares, drow receive a ((XL/ 3) + 2) bonus to-hit when using drow weaponry or attacking bare-handed. Drow racial armor and weapons are made of adamantine (weapons and heavy armor) or spider silk (light armor).
Most drow heroes start the game with a large spider as their default pet, with the following exceptions: a Dark Knight starts the game with the standard tame and saddled lesser nightmare for the role; a drow Convict starts with the standard tame sewer rat; and a drow Wizard starts with the standard pseudodragon.
Drow heroes are the only ones that can tame spiders and cave lizards using food and ride them as steeds.
EvilHack attribute caps
| Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | 20 | 16 | 20 | 20 | 18 |
Drow share the same attribute caps as elves in EvilHack: they excel in mental attributes and are tied for the second-highest intelligence and wisdom caps at 20, and share the same high dexterity cap of 20 with elves and many other races. While their strength cap of 18 is still low, it is fairly high in comparison to hobbits (16) and illithids (10). Similarly, their constitution cap of 16 is second-lowest after the illithid's cap of 12.
EvilHack starting equipment
All drow heroes start the game with knowledge of drow items and the potion of drow poison. Drow have several replacements made to the starting equipment of their role which are listed in the table below, with bolded entries signifying the use of a separate starting inventory rather than a normal substitution:
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, drow heroes retain all applicable traits from SLASH'EM, with their additional benefits, restrictions and changes listed below. In addition to the roles available to drow heroes in SLASH'EM, they can choose from the roles of Acid Mage, Bard, Convict, Diver, Electric Mage, Lunatic, Ninja, Noble, and Pirate.
SlashTHEM benefits and restrictions
Drow heroes can reach a minimum of Basic skill level in saber, Basic in musicalize spells, and Skilled in bows. All other benefits and restrictions from SLASH'EM apply.
Origin
The dNetHack implementation of the drow race is based in part on the drow of SLASH'EM, with the poison-injecting signet rings of the former being their answer to the latter's sleep-inducing melee attack.
Encyclopedia entries
dNetHack
Myths exist for a purpose - To explain the unexplainable.
Because man fears the unknown.
Murdering our kin. Our children.
Butchering our towns.
Devouring our flesh.
Enslaving our people.
Whispering of incest.
Desecrating our lands.
These mythical black demons with red eyes, embodying all
the sins of men.
But what if those demons truly exist?
What are they, who are they?
Do they dream?
Do they hate and love?
Do they have their own demons that represent
everything they despise and fear?
Also known as dark elves, drow are a depraved and evil
subterranean offshoot of the elvish species.
White is the most common hair color among drow, but almost
any pale shade is possible. Drow tend to be smaller and
thinner than other sorts of elves, and their eyes are often
a vivid red.
References
- ↑ monst.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3757: drow have M2_ELF flag
- ↑ attrib.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 135
