Giant beetle
a giant beetle 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 6 |
| Attacks |
Bite 3d6 |
| Base level | 5 |
| Base experience | 56 |
| Speed | 6 |
| Base AC | 4 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 3 (Rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 10 |
| Nutritional value | 10 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | Poison |
| Resistances conveyed | Poison (33%) |
|
A giant beetle:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line128 |
A giant beetle, a, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is the slowest of the insects, but also has the strongest single attack among them.
A giant beetle has a strong bite attack, and possesses poison resistance.
A giant beetle corpse is poisonous to eat, but eating a giant beetle corpse or tin has a 1⁄3 chance of granting poison resistance.
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.
Giant beetles now weigh 200 and provide 50 nutrition.Contents
Generation
Randomly generated giant beetles are always created hostile.
Hostile giant beetles can be generated by the summon insects monster spell.[1]
Giant beetles appear among the a that are part of the first quest monster class for Valkyries and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters that are randomly generated on the Valkyrie quest.
Strategy
Despite moving at only 6 speed compared to other insects, giant beetles hit fairly hard with their bite attack, making lingering near one dangerous for an early character with low HP or AC. Their low speed can still be taken advantage of to bring them down, ideally at a distance - a giant beetle's 4 AC may make melee tricky even for an otherwise better-armored early character. Giant beetle corpses are a decent source of poison resistance for characters who lack the intrinsic, but have an external source on hand and/or a tinning kit to make them safe to eat.
On some systems, dark gray items and creatures will be monsters as blue instead. This makes it easy to confuse giant beetles with their much more dangerous cousins, soldier ants.
History
The giant beetle first appears in Hack for PDP-11, which is based on Jay Fenlason's Hack, and is included in the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0. From these early versions to NetHack 2.3e, the giant beetle uses the b glyph. NetHack 3.0.0 introduces the ant or other insect monster class, moving the giant beetle to a.
Origin
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera in the superorder Holometabola. They make up the largest of all orders, with about 400,000 described species constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal species - new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates; some are serious agricultural pests, while others eat crop-damaging pests.
Beetles are distinguished from most other insects by their front pair of wings, which are hardened into wing-cases: their general anatomy is quite uniform, although there are several examples of adaptations, such as water beetles that trap air bubbles under the wing-cases for use while diving. Some beetles have a marked sexual dimorphism, with males often possessing enormously enlarged mandibles which they use to fight other males. Many beetles have bright colors and patterns that warn of their toxicity, while others are harmless mimics, and most have effective forms of camouflage.
The titan beetle (Titanus giganteus) is one of the largest known species, with the largest reliable measured specimen having a body length of 16.7 cm (6.6 in). This is comparable to the Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules), a type of rhinoceros beetle (subfamily Dynastinae, family Scarabaeidae) whose males can occasionally grow up to a length of 17.5 cm (6.9 in), but have a smaller body than the titan beetle, with the enormous horn found on the pronotum or thorax making up around half of its total length. Another notably large beetle is the endangered giant Fijian long-horned beetle (Xixuthrus heros), which can reach a length of 15 cm (5.9 in). Beetles are prominent in human culture, from the sacred scarabs of ancient Egypt to beetlewing art, to their use as pets or as fighting insects for entertainment and gambling; giant versions of existing or fantastic insects are also a common form of creature in fantasy and science fiction media.
Dungeons & Dragons features several types of giant beetle, with the qualities of the NetHack giant beetle based on the giant rhinoceros beetle of the 1st edition. Giant rhinoceros beetles are uncommon monsters and have a horn that extends about six feet; they appear in groups of up to 6, and reside in tropical and subtropical jungles where they roam in search of fruits and vegetation (unlike the carnivorous giant beetle of NetHack) and try to crush anything in their paths. Their movement speed is half that of humans, making them quite slow, but they have an armor class of 2 compared to the giant beetle's 4 AC.
Variants
SLASH'EM
SLASH'EM introduces the killer beetle, a stronger variant of the giant beetle.
Encyclopaedia entry
[ The Creator ] has an inordinate fondness for beetles.
The common name for the insects with wings shaped like
shields (_Coleoptera_), one of the ten sub-species into
which the insects are divided. They are characterized by
the shields (the front pair of wings) under which the back
wings are folded.
