Glowing dragon scales
| [ glowing dragon scales | |
|---|---|
| Appearance | glowing dragon scales |
| Slot | body armor |
| AC | 1 |
| Special |
|
| Base price | 500 zm |
| Weight | 40 |
| Material | dragon hide |
- This article is about the dragon scales in UnNetHack with the default appearance of "stone dragon scales". For the dragon scales in SlashTHEM, see stone dragon scales (SlashTHEM).
- For gold dragon scales as they appear in other variants, see gold dragon scales.
Glowing dragon scales are a type of body armor that appear in UnNetHack—in DynaHack, they are known as gold dragon scales. They are made of dragon hide like all dragon scales.
Contents
Generation
Glowing dragon scales are not randomly generated, though they can be wished for or found in bones.
A glowing dragon that is not killed by disintegration has a 1⁄3 chance of leaving behind dragon scales, while a dragon revived by the wand of undead turning or spell of turn undead only has a 1⁄20 chance to leave behind scales. Glowing dragon scales dropped this way are always generated as +0 and uncursed.
Description
While worn, glowing dragon scales grant 1 base AC and act as a light source, along with granting the appropriate elemental resistance property for the corresponding dragon that is randomized to appear as a glowing dragon—e.g., if the glowing dragon has a fire breath weapon, then its scales will grant fire resistance and act as a light source. Reading a non-cursed scroll of enchant armor that targets worn glowing dragon scales will convert them into glowing dragon scale mail, with a blessed scroll adding a point of enchantment.
Uncontrolled polymorph while wearing glowing dragon scales will turn the wearer into a glowing dragon, and doing so while wearing the scale mail will additionally revert them to scales.
Strategy
All dragon scales and dragon scale mail in UnNetHack and DynaHack have randomized powers and appearances in each game: in order for a hero to wish for dragon armor or scales based on their corresponding power, either type of armor must be formally identified first, e.g. by using a scroll of identify on dropped dragon scales (which identifies the matching scale mail along with it) or by witnessing the dragon use its breath weapon.
In other words, it is possible to wish for the scales (or the scale mail) of a particular dragon by the name of that dragon without any of the above being necessary, but the armor will not always grant the same primary property between games—glowing dragon scales are something of an exception, in that they will always be a light source in addition to their randomized property. This makes the scales generally useful across games and worthwhile as a wish candidate, especially if they happened to also randomize into magic dragon scales or reflecting dragon scales.
History
In early versions of UnNetHack, glowing dragon scales and scale mail always grant stoning resistance while worn. This is changed in version 5.1.0, where the breath types and resistances of all dragons (except the chromatic dragon) are randomized, including the resistances granted by each dragon's scales.
