Baby silver dragon
D baby silver dragon 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 13 |
| Attacks |
Bite 2d6 |
| Base level | 12 |
| Base experience | 200 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 2 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | Huge |
| Resistances | Sleep |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
A baby silver dragon:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1085 |
A baby silver dragon, D, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a juvenile silver dragon that is associated with cold, though its scales have not grown in enough to confer reflection.[1] Like all dragons, baby silver dragons are strong, carnivorous, thick-skinned, and capable of flight - they will also seek out gold and gems to pick up among other items.
Baby silver dragons have a single bite attack and possess cold resistance.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated baby silver dragons are always hostile. A baby silver dragon can grow up into a silver dragon, and silver dragon eggs can hatch into baby silver dragons.
Baby silver dragons are only randomly generated within levels and branches that are biased towards a particular alignment, e.g., the Oracle and Sokoban.
Strategy
While they have decent AC and a somewhat nasty bite, a character sufficiently prepared for the mid-game should not have much trouble with baby silver dragons. As pets they can be decent fighters and used as flying steeds, but their low speed makes movement while riding and raising them to adulthood time-consuming - making a baby dragon fast raises their speed to a respectable 12, and a magic whistle or blessed eucalyptus leaf may be especially necessary if a character has their own source of speed. Baby dragon corpses can be decently filling for meat-eating pets and characters.
History
The baby silver dragon first appears in SLASH 6, the last release of SLASH based on NetHack 3.1.3, and makes its vanilla debut in NetHack 3.3.0.
Variants
Many variants alter the baby silver dragon and other baby dragons to make them more varied and/or threatening.
SLASH'EM
As with most other baby dragons in SLASH'EM, baby silver dragons have their base level lowered to 4 and difficulty lowered to 5. Their MR score is raised to 40 as well. Baby silver dragons can be randomly generated on ordinary levels with a frequency of 2 - this makes them somewhat of an early-game danger for SLASH'EM characters.
Baby silver dragons are also eligible for generation on many levels that place random D at level creation, and can appear in dragon lairs and the Wyrm Caves.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, baby silver dragons have their difficulty slightly increased to 14, and possess two claw attacks and a strong bite attack.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack and DynaHack, all dragons have their breath weapons, resistances, and names randomized each game, allowing any non-chromatic dragon to appear as silver - the default baby reflecting dragon is the baby amphitere.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack, baby silver dragons are not randomly generated on any dungeon levels, and they have the same changes to base level, difficulty and MR score as in SLASH'EM.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, baby silver dragons are lawful like their adult forms, and like all baby dragons they are buffed similarly to GruntHack: they have a strong bite attack and two claw attacks (rearranging the same damage dice from GruntHack).
Encyclopedia entry
In the West the dragon was the natural enemy of man. Although preferring to live in bleak and desolate regions, whenever it was seen among men it left in its wake a trail of destruction and disease. Yet any attempt to slay this beast was a perilous undertaking. For the dragon's assailant had to contend not only with clouds of sulphurous fumes pouring from its fire breathing nostrils, but also with the thrashings of its tail, the most deadly part of its serpent-like body.
"One whom the dragons will speak with," he said, "that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It's not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk to you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you're a dragonlord."
