# Chromatic Dragon

D Chromatic Dragon 

Difficulty

23

Attacks

Breath 6d8, spell-casting, claw quest-artifact-stealing 2d8, bite 4d8, bite 4d8, sting 1d6

D Chromatic Dragon 

Difficulty

23

Attacks

Breath 6d8, spell-casting, claw quest-artifact-stealing 2d8, bite 4d8, bite 4d8, sting 1d6

Base level

16

Base experience

586

Speed

12

Base AC

0

Base MR

30

Alignment

-14 (chaotic)

Frequency (by normal means)

Unique

Genocidable

No

Weight

4500

Nutritional value

1700

Size

Gigantic

Resistances

Fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, poison, acid, stoning

Resistances conveyed

Fire (17%), cold (17%), sleep (17%), disintegration (17%), shock (17%), poison (17%)

The Chromatic Dragon:

 has no hands.

 has a thick hide.

 can see invisible creatures.

 is poisonous to eat.
 is carnivorous.

 is not a valid polymorphable form.

 is female.

 is normally generated hostile.

 can follow you to other levels.
 is nasty.
 is strong.

 likes gold.
 likes gems.

 can pick up magical items.

 wants your quest artifact.
 waits for you to come.

 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

monst.c#line3210

The Chromatic Dragon, D, is the Caveman quest nemesis. She is a unique dragon that guards the Bell of Opening and The Sceptre of Might. The Chromatic Dragon is referred to as Tiamat in the encyclopedia and the data for the quest branch's goal level. 
The Chromatic Dragon possesses the breath attacks of all of the other types of dragon as well as their resistances, including reflection and magic resistance. She is covetous and stoning-resistant like all quest nemeses, and is also capable of spellcasting. 

Contents

1 Generation
2 Strategy

2.1 Combat

3 History
4 Origin
5 Variants

5.1 UnNetHack
5.2 dNetHack
5.3 EvilHack

6 Encyclopedia entry
7 References

Generation
The Chromatic Dragon is generated in the middle row of her chamber on the goal level, and awaits you on the left side of the room, with the Sceptre of Might and the Bell of Opening underneath her.

Strategy
The goal level you encounter the Chromatic Dragon in is a large and open hexagon-shaped level with a few shriekers, which may wake her from her meditative sleep if she is already not alerted to your presence.
It is probably best to stay on the upstairs and let her teleport to you, especially if you lack reflection. Using a scroll of scare monster is also advised, as are ordinary methods of waking monsters, such as beating a drum; you can also idle on the upstairs with s or . and allow the shriekers on the level to come to you, with one of them eventually shrieking and causing her to wake up. If you can bring a pet into the lair, it may attack the Chromatic Dragon for you while you wait on the upstairs.

Combat
Shaman Karnov's advice to "keep moving" when fighting the Chromatic Dragon will likely prove counterproductive: stepping away from her exposes you to her breath weapons if you line up with her, which can mean taking serious damage up to and including instadeath by possible disintegration. Her covetous behavior generally ensures that she will stay within melee range, and moving over to attack her will likely cause her to warp to the stairs, leaving her to possibly swarm you with repeated castings of summon nasties.
Reflection and magic resistance are optimal for the fight against the Chromatic Dragon, though they may prove difficult to obtain; Dragonbane may prove to be a decent sacrifice gift for this purpose, though other gifts from sacrifice or crowning such as Excalibur may be preferable in terms of damage. Reflection will solve the problem of her breath weapons should she get away from you, while magic resistance will reduce the hindrance from the curse items spell. and standing on a burnt Elbereth or scroll of scare monster will deter her from casting most of her spells, including destroying your armor; magic resistance can be foregone if you are confident you will be able to remain standing on the scroll. While risky, her breath attacks can also be avoided by staying out of her line of fire (i.e. any straight line in the eight cardinal directions from her); she will also not use her breath attacks within melee range.
Once she is dead, the player can secure and invoke the Sceptre of Might for conflict if necessary to help deal with any remaining summoned monsters.

History
The Chromatic Dragon first appears with most other quest nemeses in NetHack 3.1.0.

Origin

Wikipedia has an article about:
Tiamat (Dungeons &amp; Dragons)

Wikipedia has an article about:
Tiamat

In Dungeons &amp; Dragons, Tiamat is a supremely strong and powerful draconic goddess and the queen and mother of evil dragons. A member of the setting's default pantheon, Tiamat was introduced to the game in the first supplement Greyhawk, where she was only known as "the Dragon Queen" and "the Chromatic Dragon", but did not yet have a personal name. Her name is derived from the Mesopotamian religion, where Tiamat (Akkadian: 𒀭𒋾𒊩𒆳 DTI.AMAT or 𒀭𒌓𒌈 DTAM.TUM, Ancient Greek: Θαλάττη, romanized: Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, often portrayed as a sea serpent or dragon, symbolizing the chaos of primordial creation.
In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities; when her husband Apsu correctly assumes that they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, he makes war upon them and is killed, enraging Tiamat into continuing the wars against her husband's murderers. Tiamat births the first dragons, whose bodies she filled with "poison instead of blood", and births multitudes of other monsters; she is finally slain by Enki's storm-god son Marduk, who uses her body to craft the heavens and the earth.
In the Dungeons &amp; Dragons settings, Tiamat's symbol and most common appearance there is that of a five-headed dragon, each corresponding to five chromatic dragons: black, blue, green, red, and white. Tiamat's body is a blending of various chromatic dragon forms with an appropriately multicolored hide, a poisonous stinger-tipped tail, and the powers of those respective chromatic dragons; she has also been known to manifest as a dark-haired human sorceress. Some settings also describe her as a denizen of the Nine Hells, with her lair containing the main gate to the second of the Nine Hells, Dis; others additionally include tales of her battles with the Babylonian god Marduk and her opposite number, the metallic dragon Bahamut. Tiamat is also one of the first deities to have aspects, or lesser avatars, which may appear as either powerful versions of her chromatic children or as versions of her own five-headed form.

Variants
UnNetHack
UnNetHack renames the quest nemesis to Tiamat, and she will always drop chromatic dragon scales upon death unless her corpse has been revived before.[1]
"Generic" chromatic dragons can be encountered on the last level of the Dragon Caves, and killing them can produce scales (and thus armor) which are resistant to multiple types of attacks; this new armor provides reflection and fire, cold, sleep, disintegration, shock, poison, acid and stone resistance.[2]

dNetHack
In dNetHack, non-Caveman players have a chance of encountering the Chromatic Dragon on her special level in Gehennom. She also drops chromatic dragon scales, which are an artifact in dNetHack. They provide a bunch of resistances, but no magic resistance or reflection. 
This is somewhat less useful than it appears, however, as eating the Chromatic Dragon's corpse is guaranteed to permanently give the player all of the six possible vanilla intrinsics. (Of note is that most corpses in dNetHack only give temporary intrinsics, but unique monsters are an exception to this rule.) However, the scales may still prove useful to certain dietary conduct players.

EvilHack
In EvilHack, the Chromatic Dragon is replaced as the Caveman quest nemesis by Annam, a monster with similar AC and resistances - Tiamat is made into one of the demon princes whose lair can appear in the third tier of Gehennom. Starting in version 0.7.0, Tiamat has a 1⁄3 chance to drop chromatic dragon scales upon her defeat, but does not leave a corpse, and the scales also cannot be wished for. Wearing the scales provides all the base extrinsics of each dragon in the game minus celestial dragons (including reflection, magical resistance and light); due to her size, chromatic dragon scales are large enough that they can even be worn by giants, and they can be grated onto body armor just like other dragon scales. 

Encyclopedia entry

Tiamat is said to be the mother of evil dragonkind. She is extremely vain.

 

References

↑ src/mon.c in UnNetHack revision 1986, line 209

↑ src/do_wear.c in UnNetHack revision 1280, line 608