Human zombie
Z human zombie 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 5 |
| Attacks |
Claw 1d8 |
| Base level | 4 |
| Base experience | 41 |
| Speed | 6 |
| Base AC | 8 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | -3 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Cold, sleep, poison |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A human zombie:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line2149 |
A human zombie, Z, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a zombified human that can follow you to other levels if it is adjacent.
A human zombie has a single claw attack.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated human zombies may occur in small groups of 2 to 4, and are always created hostile.
The human zombie is the first quest monster for Priests, and make up 96⁄175 of the monsters that are randomly generated on the Priest quest. Several human zombies are also generated on various floors of the Priest quest at level creation: twelve are generated on the home level, two are generated on each of the upper filler levels, three are generated on the lower filler levels, and sixteen are generated on the goal level. The Priest quest also has several undead-filled graveyards that include human zombies among their ranks. Human zombies may additionally appear among the zombies and other monsters that are part of the first quest monster class for the branch, and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated there.
One human zombie is generated to the left of Orcus within his lair at level creation, and three more are randomly placed across the level.
Guards, high priests, aligned priests, and Angels are special-cased to become human zombies if the player attempts to animate their corpse or statue by any means, including statue traps and directly creating them in wizard mode.[1] While shopkeepers are also listed among these monsters, this only applies to wizard mode creation since revival is special-cased to work on them.
A human zombie will leave an aged human corpse upon death.[2][3]
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (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.
Human monsters that are killed by a zombie or lich may revive as a human zombie.Strategy
Human zombies have a decently strong claw attack, making groups of them dangerous for early characters who are careless or caught unprepared. Chaotic human characters can use these zombies to convert cross-aligned altars with their corpses, or else summon peaceful demons on co-aligned ones.
History
The human zombie first appears in NetHack 3.0.0, where the various zombies are first distinguished from each other. The "zombie" monster that is present in Hack 1.21 and Hack for PDP-11, and appears from Hack 1.0 to NetHack 2.3e, has essentially the same statline as the human zombie in later versions.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, human zombies can be created by using the raise zombies technique while adjacent to the corpse of any human.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, human zombies are replaced with the zombie racial monster, which humans are eligible to generate as - the monster shares the same stats as the human zombie of NetHack. Any non-undead human monster killed by a zombie will rise as a human zombie.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, most zombies are a form of derived undead that have a template applied to a living monster (e.g. a "xorn zombie"), rather than distinct monsters as in NetHack - human zombies can be created this way, either via random generation or animation from a regular human corpse. A basic "zombie" monster that is near-identical to the human zombie in NetHack serves roughly the same purpose, i.e. a fallback for attempts to create guards, high priests, aligned priests, and Angels in wizard mode, though it can also appear randomly on the Rogue level.
Three of the six rooms on the lower filler level(s) of the Binder quest each contain a human zombie at level creation, and fifteen human zombies are generated within the goal level of the Pirate quest at level creation.
Encyclopedia entry
The zombi ... is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life, -- it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive.
References
- ↑ src/read.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2415
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 147: Converting monster index of undead to corpses of their living counterparts
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 372: Undead corpses and their ages are handled with other "special" death drops
