Rot worm
w rot worm 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 4 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 1 |
| Base experience | 15 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 10 |
| Nutritional value | 10 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
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A rot worm:
| |
| Reference | Source:SLASH'EM_0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line1778 |
A rot worm, w, is a type of monster that appears in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM. The rot worm is a small and carnivorous worm that can hide under objects and is capable of passing through iron bars due to its size.
Rot worms have a weak bite attack that can inflict disease on their target.
In Hack'EM, rot worm corpses and tins always cause illness when eaten regardless of their age.
Generation
Rot worms are not randomly generated, and normally-created ones are always hostile.
Hostile rot worms can be created by a monster casting the summon nasties monster spell.[1]
Eight hostile rot worms have a 3⁄5 chance each (60%) of being generated at specific squares within the maze surrounding the swamp area of the Lawful Quest during level creation. In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, five hostile rot worms are placed randomly around the Wyrm Caves during level creation.
In SlashTHEM, eight hostile rot worms are always generated on the Undertaker quest goal level during level creation, with the map being a modified copy of the Lawful Quest's layout.
Strategy
Though rot worms are not randomly created and are quite weak overall in term of both their stats and their low movement speed of 9, an unaware and/or unfortunate hero can be unexpectedly sickened by one hiding in the Lawful Quest or the Wyrm Caves while dealing with more overt threats. Spellcasting monsters also increase the likelihood of dealing with rot worms being placed immediately adjacent to you from the mid-game onward.
Ideally, most heroes that reach the stages where they can potentially encounter rot worms will have at least a couple of options for curing disease on hand, such as an enchanted unicorn horn (for SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM), potions of extra healing and/or full healing, or a sizable stack of eucalyptus leaves. Dealing with rot worms in a timely manner often requires keen awareness of the hero's situation even by the usual standards of an average game in the variants they are present in, especially when it comes to keeping track of the hero's status (which can be difficult in SLASH'EM) and/or quickly handling spellcasting monsters that can create them in the first place. Even with countermeasures on hand, rot worms can prove a tempting target for a single-monster genocide to remove them as summoning targets beforehand.
History
The rot worm first appears in NetHack-- 3.0.10, where it uses its current glyph. It also appears in NetHack-- 3.1.3, where it instead uses the w glyph—from SLASH 6 onward, the rot worm uses the same glyph it has initially in its debut.
In some older versions of Hack'EM, rot worms use the w glyph, with later versions restoring the glyph used in SLASH'EM due to overlapping with the glyphs of acid worms and giant leeches.
