# A

Printable ASCII characters

~

!

@

#

$

%

^

&amp;

*

(

)

_

+

space

`

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

-

=

{

}

 |

Qq

Ww

Ee

Rr

Tt

Yy

Uu

Ii

Oo

Pp

:

"

[

]

\

Aa

Ss

Dd

Ff

Gg

Hh

Jj

Kk

Ll

?

;

'

Ctrl

Zz

Xx

Cc

Vv

Bb

Nn

Mm

,

.

/

&lt;

&gt;

Alt

In NetHack, the letter A serves the following purposes:

a represents an insect:
a&nbsp;giant ant
a&nbsp;killer bee
a&nbsp;soldier ant
a&nbsp;fire ant
a&nbsp;giant beetle
a&nbsp;queen bee
A represents an angelic being:
A&nbsp;couatl
A&nbsp;Aleax
A&nbsp;Angel
A&nbsp;ki-rin
A&nbsp;Archon
It is also used for the following keyboard controls:
Press A to use or apply an item.
Press shift&nbsp;+ A to take off multiple items at once.
Press ctrl&nbsp;+ A to redo the previous command entered.
Contents

1 Historical uses
2 Variants

2.1 SLASH'EM
2.2 SporkHack
2.3 UnNetHack

Historical uses
In hack121 and PDP-11 Hack, variants of Jay Fenlason's Hack, acid blobs and giant ants used the a and A glyphs respectively, and continued to from Hack 1.0 to NetHack 2.3e.
In NetHack 3.0.0, acid blobs were moved to b, and giant ants were moved to a with other insects including the giant beetle (formerly b prior to 3.0.0); A was instead used for the apelike creatures, the ape and carnivorous ape. NetHack 3.1.0 introduces the angelic being monster class and gives them the A glyph, moving apelike creatures to Y.

Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, there are 14 new monsters that use a and 5 that use A:

a insect:
a&nbsp;assassin bug
a&nbsp;black wasp
a&nbsp;giant flea
a&nbsp;giant louse
a&nbsp;giant tick
a&nbsp;giant wasp
a&nbsp;killer beetle
a&nbsp;migo drone
a&nbsp;migo queen
a&nbsp;migo warrior
a&nbsp;snow ant
a&nbsp;spitting beetle
a&nbsp;tsetse fly
a&nbsp;yellow jacket
A angelic being:
A&nbsp;movanic deva
A&nbsp;monadic deva
A&nbsp;astral deva
A&nbsp;Planetar
A&nbsp;Solar
SporkHack
SporkHack adds a new monster that uses the a glyph:

a insect:
a&nbsp;locust
UnNetHack
UnNetHack adds new monsters that use the a and A glyphs:

a insect:
a&nbsp;snow ant
a&nbsp;locust
A angelic being:
A&nbsp;Dark Angel
A&nbsp;weeping angel
A&nbsp;weeping archangel