# Asmodeus' Lair

Asmodeus' Lair

Location

Level 2–7 of Gehennom

Bones

Yes

Mappable

Yes

Teleportable

No

Diggable floor

Yes

Diggable walls

Maze only

Asmodeus' Lair is a special level somewhere between the 2nd and 7th levels of Gehennom (and therefore between DL 27 and DL 36).
The entire level is no-teleport, and is eligible to leave bones files.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Demon lairs are no longer no-teleport levels, but the presence of the demon lord or prince will block others from teleporting.
Map
---------------------|.............|.....||....^........S.....||---+------------...||.....|.........|-+-----------------------------------|..---|...&amp;.....|....................................||..|..S.^.......|....................................+|..|..|....&nbsp;&amp;&gt;..|....................................||..|..|.........|-+-----------------------------------|..|..-----------...||..S..........|.....|---------------------
The lair itself constitutes the core of the level, and is surrounded by undiggable walls. The remainder of the level is filled with an ordinary Gehennom-like maze, and the upstair will always be on the left-hand side of the maze.
The right-hand room contains three random &amp; as well as a fire trap, a magic trap, and an anti-magic trap; all are placed at random. The room with the downstair is occupied by Asmodeus, a ghost and a horned devil, each of which are generated on the marked squares at level creation. Three random V and a random L are placed randomly within the left side of this area. The marked traps are a fire trap just inside the door of Asmodeus' room and a spiked pit in the top-left chamber; two magic traps, a sleeping gas trap, an anti-magic trap, and another fire trap are placed randomly within the left side of the area, as are three scrolls, two weapons, two pieces of armor, two potions, and a gem (all chosen randomly).

Strategy
This level is notorious for being extremely irritating to navigate: the floor is no-teleport, the walls of the lair core shown above are undiggable, and the stairs are always somewhere to the left of the lair, ensuring that players must always walk all the way to the right side and then back to the left when moving up or down a floor. There are a couple of ways you can circumvent this:

On the way down, you can use a wand of digging or pick-axe to dig a hole near the stairs so you only have to deal with it in one direction.
On the way up, you can quaff a cursed potion of gain level to go directly up one level. You will end up in a random place on the level above as if you had levelported in. This works even with the Amulet of Yendor during the ascension run, although the mysterious force still applies.
In either direction, you can polyself into a phasing monster such as a xorn and pass through the walls. This is rarely useful, as it is time-consuming and annoying to remove armor and polymorph just to cross a single level, and is especially dangerous if you have woken up the Wizard of Yendor and/or your body armor is your primary source of magic resistance.
You could also level teleport past, but this is probably a waste of a teleport scroll, and does not work when you have the Amulet.
SpliceHack
Main article: Asmodeus' Lair (SpliceHack)
SpliceHack changes the layout of the layout of the lair significantly, adding a fortress, a river and drawbridges. 

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:
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