Giant bat
B giant bat 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 3 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 2 |
| Base experience | 22 |
| Speed | 22 |
| Base AC | 7 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 30 |
| Nutritional value | 30 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | stuns the hero |
|
A giant bat:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1127 |
A giant bat, B, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The giant bat is a type of small carnivorous bat that is slightly stronger and larger than the standard bat, and like other bats and birds it is capable of flight and can be seen via infravision. Giant bats have a tendency to wander, with a 1⁄3 chance of the monster moving in a random direction during each of its turns.[1]
A giant bat has a single bite attack.
Eating a giant bat corpse or tin will stun the hero for up to 30 (more) turns.[2] A hero polymorphed into a giant bat is stunned indefinitely while they are in that form.[3]
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated giant bats are always generated hostile. A bat can grow up into a giant bat.
Giant bats appear among the random B that are part of the first quest monster class for Wizards and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Wizard quest.
Giant bats generated in Gehennom are given 2 extra points of movement speed.[4]
Strategy
The giant bat has the same high speed as a regular bat with a stronger bite, making it more dangerous for starting heroes to deal with if they are weak or not yet proficient enough in combat to be accurate. Their movement style makes their trajectory somewhat random and hard to predict, including whether or not they will attack, and unlike regular bats they will always be hostile as well.
History
The giant bat first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.
Origin
"Giant bats" generally refer to bats of the genus Pteropus (suborder Yinpterochiroptera), which are among the largest bats in the world and are commonly known as fruit bats or flying foxes, among other colloquial names. They live in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, East Africa, and some oceanic islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with at least 60 extant species in the genus. Most flying foxes (but not all) are nocturnal.
Unlike the carnivorous giant bats of NetHack, flying foxes eat fruit and other plant matter, though they also occasionally consume insects as well. They locate resources with their keen sense of smell and navigate with keen eyesight, as they cannot echolocate. They have long life spans and low reproductive outputs, with females of most species producing only one offspring per year. This makes their populations vulnerable to threats such as overhunting, culling, and natural disasters; flying foxes are often persecuted for their real or perceived role in damaging crops, and six flying fox species have been made extinct in modern times by overhunting.
Like other bats, flying foxes are a source of disease, particularly rare-but-fatal disease agents including the rabies-causing Australian bat lyssavirus and the Hendra virus, with seven known human deaths resulting from these two diseases—the Nipah virus also transmitted by flying foxes has over 100 attributed fatalities. Flying foxes also assist in the regeneration of forests via seed dispersal and pollinating plants. Flying foxes are of cultural significance to various indigenous peoples, with appearances in traditional art, folklore, and weaponry; their fur and teeth were used as currency in the past, and some indigenous cultures still use their teeth as currency in the present day.
The increased speed of giant bats generated in Gehennom is a play on the phrase "like a bat [on its way] out of hell".[4]
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, giant bats appear among the random B that are part of the first quest monster class for Necromancers and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Necromancer quest. This also applies to SlashTHEM.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, chiropteran heroes that are not Convicts are given a tame giant bat as their default starting pet.
Giant bats are much heavier in weight at 500 aum, and their corpses grant 200 nutrition, though they are still small in size. Giant bats can grow up into battle-bats.
Giant bats generated in the future (i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest) are zombified, and are always generated with plasteel armor.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, giant bats will grudge and attack flying insects and xans. Gollum will attack giant bats and some other monsters in order to eat their corpses.
Two giant bats are generated within Gollum's Cave in Goblin Town at level creation.
Encyclopedia entry
A bat, flitting in the darkness outside, took the wrong turn
as it made its nightly rounds and came in through the window
which had been left healthfully open. It then proceeded to
circle the room in the aimless fat-headed fashion habitual
with bats, who are notoriously among the less intellectually
gifted of God's creatures. Show me a bat, says the old
proverb, and I will show you something that ought to be in
some kind of a home.
[ A Pelican at Blandings, by P. G. Wodehouse ]
