Evil food
Evil food, also known as bad food, is a monster class that appears in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM, and is represented by the percent symbol glyph (%). Evil food is designated internally by the macro S_BAD_FOOD.[1]
The class contains the following monsters:[2]
Common traits
All evil food monsters are neutral carnivores that are unbreathing, mindless, lack any MR score, and move at 9 speed; due to resembling normal comestibles (to the point that their tiles are the exact same as each item they are based on), they lack any form of limbs, eyes or a head.
Evil food monsters attack solely using bites. Though they resemble food items, they do not actively imitate them like a mimic does, and lack any special interactions (e.g. with digestion attacks), generally behaving like most other monsters—similar behavior can be observed in evil coins.
In Hack'EM, evil food monsters have acid resistance and a vulnerability to fire. They can also pass between iron bars with the exception of the killer food ration.
Generation
Evil food monsters are not randomly generated except in aligned areas such as Sokoban, the Gnomish Mines, and the Oracle level. They are normally created hostile, and will not appear in Gehennom.
Bad food shops are special rooms that contain only evil food, and have a 1⁄15 chance of being placed in a suitable shop-like room at level creation for dungeon levels at or below 13:[3] the evil food is always generated hostile and asleep.
Evil food can generate in The Chamber of Gluttony within the Lawful Quest at level creation, with a minimum of one guaranteed killer food ration.
Evil food monsters do not leave a corpse upon death, and except for the bad egg they have a 1⁄3 chance of dropping an actual food item that they correspond to: killer tripe rations can drop tripe rations, while killer food rations can drop food rations.[4][5]
Strategy
Evil food can be easily distinguished from their mundane counterparts by using the far look command—additionally, they are normally only found in bad food shops, which occur in specific locations on a dungeon level, and can also be spotted with a form of monster detection or warning. The evil food monsters are also not too threatening individually, and a hero can handle even a room full of evil food with relatively little difficulty by taking advantage of the speed system (except in Hack'EM) and not carelessly being surrounded by them.
History
The killer rations are introduced in NetHack-- 3.1.3, while the bad egg first appears in SLASH 6.
