Stone golem

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A stone golem, ' is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is one of the stronger types of golem, and possesses sleep and poison resistance like other golems along with stoning resistance.

While you are polymorphed into any other type of golem, any attack or action that would petrify you will instead turn you into a stone golem - see that article for details.

Generation

In addition to random generation, stone golems are created if you polypile a square full of enough mineral items; this also occurs sometimes if there are enough platinum objects in a pile. Stone golems are always generated with 60 hit points.[1][2]

Four stone golems are placed just outside of Medusa's room on the second variant of her island at level creation, and four more will be generated upon reaching the Plane of Earth.

Stoning any other type of golem - e.g. hitting them with a cockatrice egg or corpse, or else attacking or being attacked by a live footrice (typically via conflict) - turns them into a stone golem.[3][4][5]

Stone golems leave a statue of themselves behind as a special death drop instead of a corpse - any inventory it was carrying becomes the contents of that statue.[6][7] Casting stone to flesh on a statue of a stone golem will not animate the statue, as the golem is not a fleshy monster, and instead creates a single meatball.

Strategy

Stone golems have a fairly powerful attack and slightly more AC than most golems, but they move half as fast as an unburdened player and lack most resistances outside of the usual ones for golems, so they should not be too difficult to defeat.

Casting stone to flesh on a stone golem will turn it into a flesh golem: while this makes it faster and more resistant, as well as giving it more damaging attacks, the flesh golem also has worse AC and base HP. Players meeting stone golems through normal generation are usually well-equipped to handle flesh golems, and can use the spell if available to try and gain certain intrinsics from the corpse.

Breaking the statues of stone golems for loot after killing them is usually not worth it, as they are mindless and do not pick up items—finding any items in a stone golem's possession is usually an indicator that it was created via polymorph. Randomly-generated statues of stone golem in the dungeon may still contain one spellbook.

History

The stone golem first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, stone golems have their based HP raised to 180. Additionally, they are vulnerable to rays from a wand of digging, which halves their HP.

Turning a golem to stone can be used to weaken the far more dangerous gemstone and steel golems introduced in SLASH'EM if you happen to have a petrifying corpse or egg handy.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, sixteen statues of stone golems are placed around the locate level of the Archeologist quest; one of the special levels in Gehennom included from the Heck² patch generates three stone golems and five clay golems. A fifth stone golem is added to the Plane of Earth on level creation, and another is generated on the Plane of Fire on level creation.

SlashTHEM

In addition to SLASH'EM changes, a stone golem is generated asleep in one variant of Mines' End, and two stone golems appear in the throne room closets on Ruggo the Gnome King's special level. SlashTHEM also uses the same special level from the Heck² patch as dNetHack.

Encyclopedia entry

"The original story harks back, so they say, to the sixteenth century. Using long-lost formulas from the Kabbala, a rabbi is said to have made an artificial man -- the so-called Golem -- to help ring the bells in the Synagogue and for all kinds of other menial work.
"But he hadn't made a full man, and it was animated by some sort of vegetable half-life. What life it had, too, so the story runs, was only derived from the magic charm placed behind its teeth each day, that drew down to itself what was known as the `free sidereal strength of the universe.'
"One evening, before evening prayers, the rabbi forgot to take the charm out of the Golem's mouth, and it fell into a frenzy. It raged through the dark streets, smashing everything in its path, until the rabbi caught up with it, removed the charm, and destroyed it. Then the Golem collapsed, lifeless. All that was left of it was a small clay image, which you can still see in the Old Synagogue." ...

[ The Golem, by Gustav Meyrink ]

References

  1. makemon.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 918
  2. makemon.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 1534
  3. dothrow.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 763
  4. mthrowu.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 414
  5. uhitm.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 2193
  6. mon.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 259
  7. mkobj.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 929: mkcorpstat() calls mksobj_at() which may add spellbooks to the statue. But then mkcorpstat() calls save_mtraits() which will override the contents of the statue and transfer previous killed monster's inventory to the statue.