Engulfing

An engulfing attack is one which involves you being caught inside a monster, whether by being swallowed whole (for example, by a purple worm or trapper) or by simply being drawn into a nonsolid or amorphous monster such as a vortex. Each turn you are inside the monster, you will take damage of some kind.

Engulfing is an attack type rather than a damage type. The type of damage caused depends on the monster doing the attack.

Engulfers

Monsters with engulfing attacks can be divided into three general categories:

• Whirlies: Unsolid monsters composed of a single element, which attack by drawing you inside and exposing you to their constituent element. All of these monsters share the whirly monster attribute. The air elemental and all vortices are whirly engulfers. Vortices (such as the fog cloud or dust vortex) are likely to be the first engulfing monsters you encounter in the Dungeons of Doom. They vary widely in their composition and attacks, so they range from being fairly harmless to being a nuisance even to experienced adventurers.

• Blobs: Amorphous monsters that can absorb you. The ochre jelly and the demon lord Juiblex belong to this category, having acidic and illness-causing engulfing attacks, respectively.

• Digesters: Living monsters that swallow and attempt to digest you. Digestion is a special damage type that can instakill you if you do not escape the monster's digestive system in time.

A list of monsters with engulfing attacks, and the type of damage dealt by their attack:

Monster	Damage type
fog cloud	physical
dust vortex	blinding
ice vortex	cold
energy vortex	shock and drain energy
steam vortex	fire
fire vortex	fire
trapper	digestion
lurker above	digestion
purple worm	digestion
air elemental	physical
ochre jelly	acid
Juiblex	disease

Gameplay while engulfed

Any directional spell cast while engulfed will always hit the engulfing monster ("The <spell> rips into the <monster>!"). Ray-based attacks do not travel beyond the confines of the monster. Also, any melee attacks on a monster engulfing you will always hit.

You may not engrave while engulfed, although trying may elicit a humourous reply.

Escape

There are a variety of ways of escaping an engulfing monster, but some are only applicable to certain types of monster.

Methods that can be used on all engulfing monsters:

• Kill or destroy the engulfing monster. This is the best way to be rid of an engulfing monster, but it may not be an option if your player is near death and cannot survive a few more turns inside the monster.
• Use "opening" magic (a wand of opening, the spell of knock, the Bell of Opening).
• Scare the engulfing monster using a tooled horn, a drum, or Magicbane.
• Polymorph yourself into a monster that is too big to be engulfed (size Huge or larger).
• Polymorph the engulfing monster. A monster with an engulfing attack that is polymorphed into one without an engulfing attack will release its prey immediately (and have its health reduced to one point by the physical trauma). However, if by chance the new form is also an engulfing monster, you will remain engulfed.
• Teleport yourself out (this will not work on non-teleport levels).
• Teleport the engulfing monster, if you are on a non-teleport level. The monster will disappear and you will be left behind. If this is used on a level where teleportation is allowed, you will be teleported with the monster.

Methods that are applicable only to certain monsters:

• Whirlies and blobs will eventually release you, giving you a chance to escape, if you wait. If you wait inside a digester, however, it will digest you completely.
• Whirlies will release you if you zap them with a wand of slow monster or the slow monster spell.
• Non-whirlies can be ruptured if you zap a wand of digging or the dig spell at them. The trauma sets their health to one point.
• Live engulfing monsters such as digesters can be killed quickly with a wand of death or finger of death. This will not work on vortices, which are nonliving.
• Digesters will immediately spit you out if you put on a ring of slow digestion.
• Most engulfing monsters can be pacified or tamed using the charm monster spell or a scroll of taming.
• Non-acidic engulfing monsters can be petrified with a wielded footrice corpse. You will escape by "jumping through an opening" in the resulting statue. This will not work on ochre jellies or on Juiblex, both of which inherently resist petrification because of their acidity.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Juiblex now only loses half of his HP when hit with digging magic from inside.

When you are expelled from an engulfing monster, you are subject to any traps on the square you are released to. If the engulfing monster has moved you, this may trigger traps that you have not discovered yet. A flying engulfer may also drop you over water or lava.

After expelling you by any means, the monster will unable to engulf you again for the next 1d2 turns. Instead it will gain an 1d6 attack, either a fire/cold/shock/acid touch corresponding to the engulfing attack, or a physical "claw" attack otherwise.

Strategy

Because melee attacks will always hit when engulfed, this can be useful for practicing melee weapon skills at low levels. Low-level engulfers such as fog clouds and dust vortices are preferred for this.

Wearing a ring of slow digestion prevents digesting attacks. Instead of being swallowed, "You get regurgitated! Obviously the <monster> doesn't like your taste." and you are expelled.

The time you will be engulfed is shortened by high monster level, and lengthened by good (low) AC. This means digesters will fully digest you faster if they are high level or you are poorly armored. The effect is perhaps unintuitive for other engulfers, however. The minimum number of (the engulfer's) turns you will be engulfed is 2 (including the one on which you are swallowed), which means at normal speed you are guaranteed at least one to attempt to escape a digester.

Elemental vortices, especially the energy vortex, can be unexpectedly dangerous just after releasing you, because the touch attack they briefly get can damage your inventory, unlike the normal engulfing.

Variants

SLASH'EM adds new monsters with engulfing attacks: the yellow jelly, orange jelly, rancid jelly, shoggoth and giant shoggoth.

In GruntHack, adult dragons have digestion attacks.

See also

• Pacifist § Engulfing monsters

References

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

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

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