Black pudding
P black pudding ![]() | |
---|---|
Difficulty | 12 |
Attacks | |
Base level | 10 |
Base experience | 221 |
Speed | 6 |
Base AC | 6 |
Base MR | 0 |
Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
Genocidable | Yes |
Weight | 900 |
Nutritional value | 250 |
Size | Large |
Resistances | Cold, Shock, Poison, Acid, Stoning |
Resistances conveyed | cold (22%), shock (22%), poison (22%) |
A black pudding:
| |
Reference | monst.c#line1714 |
A black pudding, P, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The black pudding is eyeless, amorphous and sessile like most puddings and amoeboids, and its body is acidic. A black pudding will divide if it has more than 1 HP and is hit, but not killed, by a polearm or any other iron or metal melee weapon (with the exception of a lance that breaks when jousting).[1][2][3][4]
Each hit that divides a black pudding will halve the pudding's current HP rounding up and create a clone pudding that has the same maximum HP and almost the same amount of current HP[5]—any cloned puddings will share the name of the original.[6] Clones created by a hero's attack against a hostile pudding are always hostile;[7] clones created from attacking a peaceful pudding have a luck-based chance of being peaceful and are otherwise hostile;[8] and a clone created from attacking a pet has a luck-based chance of being tame and will otherwise be peaceful.[9] Puddings that are polymorphed from a shopkeeper, guard or aligned priest and then divided will produce clones that do not retain the original's memory of their initial form, though puddings that are polymorphed from minions and divided will produce clones that are minions.[10][11] A hero in the form of a brown pudding that divides when hit abuses strength and always creates a tame clone pudding.[12][13][14]
A black pudding has a bite attack and a passive attack that both corrode iron and bronze objects on contact[15][16][17][18][19][20]—the bite attack can corrode worn armor, while the passive can corrode weapons that hit the black pudding, including boots and gloves. Black puddings possess cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, acid resistance, and stoning resistance.
Globs of black pudding are acidic to eat, and eating a glob of black pudding cures stoning on the first bite and has a 2⁄9 chance each (22%) of granting cold resistance, shock resistance or poison resistance.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated black puddings are always created hostile. Pudding division does not respect extinction.
Kicking a sink has an effective 1⁄15 chance of generating a black pudding if they are not extinct or genocided and the sink has not yet produce one.[21]
Black puddings do not leave a corpse upon death, instead having a chance of dropping a glob of black pudding.
Strategy
Black puddings can be encountered early in the game via sinks, and their low speed makes their strong bite attack avoidable in theory, providing a tempting source of experience for early heroes (especially those with ranged attacks). However, in addition to taking damage and possibly injuring your leg, this may also summon a foocubus, whose interference could leave you unarmored and vulnerable to the pudding's bite as well as other nearby monsters.
Heroes fighting black puddings in general should protect their armor and weapons—rustproof any iron armor and weapons you plan to use for the long-term, and use a cloak or robe to cover your body armor if you have one available. You can also step away and remove the armor in question if this would not impact your AC too much, or else wear a substitute junk item (e.g. a non-cursed +0 orcish helm) if possible. As for weapons, you can also use disposable projectiles such as rocks or darts, or non-corroding weapons such as elven daggers or a silver saber.
As splitting a pudding halves their HP, each split produces weaker ones until the pudding dies from hit point loss— they still retain their bite attack's power, however, and division can quickly result in a careless or under-equipped hero being overwhelmed; if things threaten to get out of hand, kill the newer puddings first before they have time to regenerate, or run away to recover if all else fails.
With significant care, splitting puddings can be used to obtain several globs of black pudding for intrinsics - remember that adjacent globs on the floor will coalesce into one, as will globs added to your open inventory if one is already present there. Additionally, you can split a pudding pet and lead the resulting clones onto a polymorph trap, making sure to rename each clone as they split; take care to use a Puddingbane, lest you kill your pet(s) and suffer a significant alignment record penalty, and see the tameness article section on abuse for the ramifications of attacking and splitting your pet.
History
The black pudding first appears in NetHack 3.0.0. From this version to NetHack 3.4.3, including variants based on those versions, black puddings leave behind corpses upon death, making them a target of pudding farming strategies: they can be split and then killed for their corpses and death drops, or else subjected to taming and then polymorphed to amass an army of pets; this is also true of brown puddings, which are less commonly farmed since black puddings can be reliably generated by kicking a sink.
Starting in NetHack 3.6.0, black puddings leave globs instead of corpses when they are killed, which is done to make pudding farming much less useful since globs cannot be sacrificed, revived or tinned. A bug that prevents globs from giving resistances when eaten is fixed in NetHack 3.6.1.
Origin
The black pudding is derived from Dungeons & Dragons, where it appears in all editions, making its debut in the "Monsters & Treasure" of the original 1974 boxed set. "Black pudding" is also a term used to refer to the blood sausage used in British and Irish cuisine; the NetHack black pudding's default tile gives it a sausage-like appearance as a visual pun, and is the reason eating one breaks vegetarian conduct.
In Dungeons & Dragons, the black puddding is a type of ooze that usually resembles a bubbling, heaping pile of thick dark goo—it is a mindless, underground-dwelling hunter and scavenger, and when it is not wandering and absorbing whatever it finds, it positions itself in a dungeon hallway like a shadow and waits for unsuspecting prey to approach.
Black puddings can consume various types of metal and other usually-organic matter, but prefer living and breathing targets; they attack by grabbing and constricting prey directly into their amorphous mass. Like other oozes, they secrete a deadly acidic substance which strongly and quickly dissolves weapons, clothing, and organic tissue alike. A black pudding splits into two smaller puddings when slashed or pierced, and all split puddings will split under the same conditions until the resulting puddings are too small and weak to continue dividing.
Messages
- A black ooze gushes up from the drain!
- You kicked a sink and caused a black pudding to emerge, which exercises dexterity and occurs once per sink.
- You hear a gushing noise.
- As above, while blind.
Variants
In most variants of NetHack based on 3.4.3 and earlier, black puddings leave corpses behind upon death rather than globs. Some of these variants created before the introduction of globs may also implement their own means of weakening pudding farming or outright preventing it.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, black puddings have death resistance, leave corpses upon death (though they do not produce death drops) and hit as +2 weapons. They are not generated in Gehennom.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, black puddings can appear among the court of a vampire lord or vampire lady-ruled throne room.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for amoeboid.
References
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1208
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 410
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1031
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 805
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 854
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 872
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 879
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 880
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 882
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 858
- Jump up ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 887
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1033
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1039
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2936
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1108
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1550
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1870
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2835
- Jump up ↑ src/uhitm.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3021
- Jump up ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1448
- Jump up ↑ src/dokick.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1178