Monster starting inventory
In NetHack, certain types of monsters may be created with objects in their starting inventory appropriate to their species - a monster's starting inventory may also contain a random offensive item, miscellaneous item, and/or defensive item.
The items that spiders and snakes are generated with during initial level creation are not part of their starting inventory, as they are created for the monsters to hide under.
Description
Monster starting inventory is distributed to each applicable monster at level creation, as well as each time a new monster is created.[1] Monsters generated in bones files will have whatever inventory they were carrying at the time of its creation; monsters created by reverse genocide always have empty starting inventories.
A pretty comprehensive spoiler can be found here.
Weapons
A humanoid monster that has a weapon attack, is not being placed on the Rogue level, and does not have any specific rules governing its starting inventory can be generated with one of the following five weapon sets, with an equal probability of each depending on whether it is strong:[2]
| strong | not strong |
|---|---|
| battle-axe | 3-14 darts |
| two-handed sword | crossbow, 3-14 bolts |
| bow, 3-14 arrows | |
| long sword | 3-5 daggers |
| lucern hammer | aklys |
The probability of receiving any weapon is 514 - N, where N is the sum of: 2 if the monster is a lord, 4 if it is a prince, and 2 if it is nasty. The final probabilities of the possible attribute combinations are:
| not nasty | nasty | |
|---|---|---|
| normal | 35.71% | 41.67% |
| lord | 41.67% | 50% |
| overlord | 50% | 62.5% |
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"List the species-specific rules for monster weapons. If this would be too long, maybe pare it down to the "important" ones."
Armor
In addition to any other items, monsters can also get armor, including mercenaries in particular: members of the Yendorian army, guards, watchmen, watch captains.
For mercenaries, armor items spawned are based on a complex mechanism to approximate the target AC of the given creature:
Saddle
Ponies, horses, and warhorses have a 1% chance of being generated saddled.
Death drops
Monsters killed by the player will drop their inventory, along with random objects that are generated upon their death. Some monsters also leave behind certain non-random body parts, such as unicorn horns or dragon scales.
Strategy
Monster starting inventory can provide valuable hints at the true identities of objects with randomized appearances.
References
- Makemon.c#line1017 a few special cases
- Makemon.c#m_initweap mostly weapons and elven items
- Makemon.c#m_initinv armor and most other objects
- Muse.c#rnd_defensive_item magical defensive item
- Muse.c#rnd_misc_item magical "misc item"
- Muse.c#rnd_offensive_item magical offensive item
- Mplayer.c#mk_mplayer player monsters
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 576
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 512: Default set of cases for monster weapon generation
