Pudding or ooze
The pudding or ooze is a monster class that appears in NetHack, and is represented by the uppercase P glyph (P). Puddings and oozes are designated internally by the macro S_PUDDING.[1]
The monster class contains the following monsters:[2]
Common traits
Puddings and oozes are neutral, amorphous and omnivorous amoeboids: as amoeboid monsters, they are unbreathing and lack limbs, eyes or a head. Each pudding or ooze is generally slower-moving than an unhasted and unburdened hero, and their bodies are acidic, allowing them to burn through webs while granting them acid resistance and stoning resistance—they also have a minimum of cold resistance and poison resistance as well.
Most of the puddings and oozes use bite attacks, and are capable of inducing erosion in objects made of certain materials, either actively with their bites or passively via contact with their bodies. The green slime is the exception in both cases: it uses a touch attack that does not affect the materials of weapons or worn armor, in favor of turning a target into slime.
Generation
Randomly generated puddings and oozes are always created as hostile.
Puddings and oozes are considered to be corpseless, and leave behind globs instead of corpses upon death: globs are fleshy and acidic comestibles that cannot be revived or sacrificed, and take much longer to decay, though they can merge with other globs of the same material and still become tainted from age—eating a tainted glob causes food poisoning as normal.
History
The pudding and ooze monster class first appears in NetHack 3.0.0, which introduces the gray ooze and both puddings, while the green slime is introduced in NetHack 3.3.0.
From NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.4.3, including some variants based on those versions, puddings and oozes leave behind normal corpses: this makes it possible for players to engage in pudding farming, by splitting puddings repeatedly as much as possible using a weak weapon before killing them for their death drops and corpses, and then using those corpses as sacrifice fodder to maximize luck and amass several artifact gifts—see the article on pudding farming for more detailed information.
Pudding and ooze globs first appear in NetHack 3.6.0, and are introduced as a means of ending pudding farming as a practice.
Origin
The pudding or ooze monster class corresponds to the "ooze" creature type in Dungeons & Dragons, with similar abilities to erode and eat through certain types of material.
Variants
In most NetHack variants based on NetHack 3.4.3 and prior versions, puddings and oozes leave corpses behind upon death rather than globs, and may leave behind death drops as well. Some of these variants may also implement their own means of weakening pudding farming or outright preventing it.
SLASH'EM
SLASH'EM introduces three new monsters to the monster class:
As a variant based on NetHack 3.4.3 and prior contemporary versions, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, which is based on NetHack 3.4.3, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
SporkHack
In SporkHack, which is based on NetHack 3.4.3, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
UnNetHack
UnNetHack introduces one new monster to the monster class:
As a variant based on NetHack 3.4.3, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
dNetHack
dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack add several new monsters to the monster class:
- P flux slime
- P living mirage
- P darkness given hunger
- P sparkling lake
- P flashing lake
- P smoldering lake
- P frosted lake
As a variant based on NetHack 3.4.3, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
SpliceHack
SpliceHack adds two new monsters to the monster class:
- P blood pudding
- P gel
As a variant based on NetHack 3.7.0, puddings and oozes leave behind globs upon death.
SlashTHEM
SlashTHEM retains the monsters added in SLASH'EM and adds two more to the monster class:
As a variant based on NetHack 3.4.3, puddings and oozes leave behind corpses upon death.
Hack'EM
Hack'EM adds some new monsters to the monster class from other variants:
- P blood pudding
- P gel
- P moldy pudding
- P shoggoth
- P giant shoggoth
As a variant based on the NetHack 3.6 series, puddings and oozes leave behind globs upon death.
Encyclopedia entry
These giant amoeboid creatures look like nothing more than puddles of slime, but they both live and move, feeding on metal or wood as well as the occasional dungeon explorer to supplement their diet.
But we were not on a station platform. We were on the track ahead as the nightmare, plastic column of fetid black iridescence oozed tightly onward through its fifteen-foot sinus, gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re-thickening cloud of the pallid abyss vapor. It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train -- a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.
