Heaven piercer
p heaven piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 20 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 18 |
| Base experience | 580 |
| Speed | 8 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 3 (Rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 3000 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | medium |
| Resistances | fire resistance, cold resistance, acid resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | fire resistance (6,000+), causes hallucination |
|
A heaven piercer:
| |
| Reference | dNetHack 3.26.0 - src/monst.c, line 1696 |
A heaven piercer, p, is a type of monster that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The heaven piercer is an insectoid piercer that is eyeless and uses earthsense to perceive their surroundings like other piercers, and can similarly hide by clinging on the ceiling, dropping from their hiding spot to try and land on targets below them. A heaven piercer deals (ML)d6 damage if they fall from the ceiling and land on the hero, which damage is reduced to ML - 53 if the hero is wearing a hard helm, they are a clockwork automaton (including an Android), or they are currently polymorphed into one of a clockwork automaton, android, gynoid, commander, or operator. Heaven piercers have 10 points of 'special' AC.
A heaven piercer has a bite attack that inflicts stunning. Heaven piercers resist slashing and piercing damage, and possess fire resistance, cold resistance and acid resistance.
Eating a heaven piercer's corpse or tin–or quaffing its blood–grants temporary fire and cold resistance for a duration of 6,000 turns before physical size modifiers, and will always cause hallucination upon finishing consumption.
Heaven piercers can be warded by the Elder Sign and the hallucinatory Cerulean Sign.
Generation
Randomly-generated heaven piercers are always created as hostile, and are only generated normally in Gehennom.
Strategy
Though heaven piercers are much stronger and faster than glass piercers and are capable of both dealing significant damage by landing on the hero and stunning them with their bite, they are still fairly slow at 8 speed and very unlikely to be much of a challenge for most players that reach Gehennom.
Origin
A piercer is a snail-like gastropod that first appeared in Dungeons & Dragons. It has a shell that resembles a stalactite, and clings to the ceiling of caverns and dungeons, mimicking a stalactite and falling down to impale anything that passes underneath. The "bestiary of Xygag" mentioned in the encyclopedia entry is an in-universe equivalent to the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual—the excerpt originates in "The Ecology of the Piercer" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edward, published in issue #72 of Dragon magazine.
