Monsters
========

ZangbandTK's bestiary is Angband's, plus 389 creatures drawn from Zangband.
There are 1013 in total, and the additions are not evenly spread: shallow
levels are much as you remember them, while the deep dungeon holds a great deal
you will not.

Where the new monsters come from
--------------------------------

Angband's monsters are Tolkien's. Zangband layered three further sources on
top, and those are what ZangbandTK imports.

**Amber.** The scions of Roger Zelazny's Amber — Corwin, Julian, Fiona, Bleys,
Gerard, Benedict and their kin — appear as deep uniques, along with their
servants and creatures. They are among the most dangerous things in the game and
are meant to be met late.

**The Cthulhu Mythos.** Nyarlathotep, Hastur, Shub-Niggurath and Tsathoggua
dwell at the bottom of the dungeon, attended by formless spawn and dark young.

**Chaos.** Creatures of raw chaos, unstable and unpredictable, scattered
throughout the depths.

Monsters that are not what they appear
--------------------------------------

Zangband is fond of monsters that impersonate scenery, and ZangbandTK keeps
them. A weapon lying on the floor may be a **death sword**; a cloak may be a
**cloaker**; a door may be a **door mimic**; a patch of floor may be something
considerably worse. Two of these classes are new to this game and display as
Angband has no symbol for them:

- ``#`` — wall monsters: sentient stone, drifting mists, and things that live
  inside the dungeon's structure
- ``|`` — animated weapons, which hunt rather than wait

The rest borrow Angband's own symbols where its bestiary already had a suitable
class: floating spheres display as vortices, ents as trees, standing water as
elementals.

How dangerous are they?
-----------------------

Every monster in the game — Angband's and Zangband's alike — carries 73% of its
Angband hit points and 50% of its armour class. See :doc:`balance` for why, and
for how to change it.

Imported monsters were placed on Angband's own difficulty curve rather than
keeping Zangband's numbers, so a Zangband monster at depth 40 should be a
reasonable match for an Angband monster at depth 40. Where Zangband's version
was unusually tough or unusually fragile for its depth, that relationship was
preserved.

This is the least-tested part of the game. If something at a given depth feels
badly out of place, that is worth reporting.

Rooms full of them
------------------

Angband gathers monsters of a kind into pits and nests, and ZangbandTK's imports
make three more of those possible:

- **Forests** — ents, huorns and the older things of the wood
- **The living dungeon** — sentient walls and the mists that drift between them
- **Elemental** — spirits and elementals of the four elements

Not yet implemented
-------------------

Some imported monsters carry abilities that are recorded but not yet active:
resistance to teleportation, reflecting bolt spells, damaging auras, and the
ability to taunt you. Monsters possessing them behave as though they do not.

A further group of abilities depends on the wilderness, which does not exist
yet: which terrain a monster prefers, which dungeons it inhabits, and whether it
can fly or swim.