Statue gargoyle
g statue gargoyle 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 5 |
| Attacks |
Claw 1d3 physical, claw 1d3 physical |
| Base level | 4 |
| Base experience | 41 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 900 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | death resistance, poison resistance, sleep resistance, stoning resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A statue gargoyle:
| |
| Reference | SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line729 |
A statue gargoyle, g, is a type of monster that appears in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM. It is a gremlin-like humanoid creature that is an animated statue, and is mindless, unbreathing and thick-skinned.
Statue gargoyles have two claw attacks, and possess poison resistance, sleep resistance, stoning resistance, and death resistance. They are very likely to be the first monster encountered by the hero that has some level of resistance to weapons without enchantment and require a +1 weapon or better to hit, and they also have the implicit ability to hit as +1 weapons.[1] As a monster made of rock, rays from a wand of digging or the dig spell will halve the current HP of any statue gargoyles they hit, which will never leave them at less than 1 HP[2]—additionally, casting stone to flesh on a statue gargoyle will also turn it into a normal gargoyle if gargoyles are not genocided or extinct.[3]
Generation
Statue gargoyles are always generated as hostile, and will not randomly generate normally in Gehennom.
Ten statue gargoyles are generated in fixed locations within The Temple of Moloch at level creation.
Statue gargoyles do not leave a corpse upon death.
Strategy
Statue gargoyles can prove vexing for starting and early-game heroes that encounter them in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM: despite their low attack power, middling 5 AC and 9 speed, their inability to take damage from enchanted weapons can make them hard if not quite difficult to overcome depending on the hero's role, and they are additionally immune to most forms of instant death that a early hero could possibly access. Most heroes' starting pets will be unable to inflict damage either, since a majority of them are domestic animals that do not hit as enchanted weapons. Furthermore, statue gargoyles can appear as early as dungeon level 3, including areas such as the Mall where players spend a lot of time.
The best recourse for any hero if they lack an enchanted weapon is to give the statue gargoyle a wide berth until they can be dealt with at a later point. A hero that can obtain an artifact weapon via sacrifice will find them much easier to deal with: artifact weapons are counted as +2 weapons before factoring in their enchantment for purposes of attacking monsters with enchantment resistance, and any gifted artifact will be at least +0. As before, however, access to an artifact weapon this way also depends heavily on the hero's role and race. Even with access to an artifact weapon or other enchanted weapon, the -4 to-hit penalty for unskilled weapon use combined with the 5 AC of the statue gargoyle typically makes for even further difficulties in overcoming them.
Heroes will often find themselves trying to kill statue gargoyles with their initial inventory. The complexity of this depends on role, and can broadly be divided into three categories:
- Simple: Can essentially deal with them like any other monster.
- Medium: Have a way to damage them, but it is either limited or suboptimal.
- Difficult: Have no viable way to kill them with initial inventory.
Note that "Simple" does not necessarily mean statue gargoyles are trivial for that role: a Tourist can kill them with darts as they do other monsters, but that remains a dicey proposition as it would be with a giant ant. The following roles are always or nearly always classified as Simple:
- Caveman
- Knight
- Monk: Of note is that they can hit as +1 weapons upon reaching experience level 4—an underleveled monk that encounters one early may need to avoid them until they can obtain enough experience.
- Necromancer: Statue gargoyles lack drain resistance, though using the drain life spell can prove energy-intensive.
- Ranger
- Tourist
- Valkyrie
- Yeoman
The remaining roles are listed in the table below using the aforementioned categories. A split rating denotes different complexities based on different possible starting inventories, ignoring inventory variations with a probability of 1⁄10 or lower, e.g. poisoned weapons for chaotics:
| Role | Complexity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Archaeologist | Medium | Can use the bullwhip, but because they are thick-skinned it will only do 1 damage per hit. |
| Barbarian | Difficult | No way to hurt them with initial inventory |
| Flame Mage | Medium | Flame spheres can't hurt them, but the starting quarterstaff and wand of fire can. |
| Healer | Medium | Scalpel damages them normally, but they are immune to the wand of sleep, which is a Healer's standard go-to for difficult monsters. |
| Ice Mage | Medium | Freeze spheres can't hurt them, but the starting quarterstaff and wand of cold can. |
| Priest | Difficult/Medium | 1⁄9 chance of starting with the force bolt spell; can wield their +2 small shield and use the healing spell to survive if all else fails |
| Rogue | Medium | Poisoned projectiles do normal damage, which rogues can always make a stack of; daggers are preferable, but darts will work. |
| Samurai | Difficult | No way to hurt them with initial inventory. |
| Undead Slayer | Difficult/Medium | Roughly half of Slayers cannot hurt them, and the other half have sub-optimal means: +1 low boots allow them to kick the statue gargoyle to death, and a +2 bullwhip can damage them slowly. |
| Wizard | Simple/Medium | Force bolt works as normal, but statue gargoyles are immune to sleep, necessitating the quarterstaff. |
Of note is that two of the strongest melee classes - Samurai and Barbarians - lack any way to hurt statue gargoyles, and will have to come up with another plan.
Fortunately, statue gargoyles have no MR score and no resistance to spells or wands outside of sleep or wands of death, as implied by the table above. A fortuitous hero may need as little as a few well-placed bolts from a wand of striking to easily take them out—wands of digging can also halve their HP, though this is not always practical and engraving Elbereth with that charge might be preferable. A vampire hero can drain a statue gargoyle to death through their bite attack, which may take a while since the drain effect doesn't always trigger. While casting stone to flesh on a statue gargoyle is obviously impractical for early heroes that cannot deal with normal gargoyles, heroes that are mid-game ready at minimum and capable of fighting off gargoyles can use this to possibly obtain corpses for sacrifice from the normally-corpseless monsters.
Of note is that attacking statue gargoyles with unenchanted weapons will still train that weapon's skill, so a hero with sufficient AC or recovery to survive a statue gargoyle's attacks can use them to train various weapon skills. Additionally, in Vulture's Claw, statue gargoyles look like normal gnomes, so keep an eye on the combat log.
