# Forum:A black dragon at Mines? Really?
&lt; Forum:Watercooler

I was a human lawful Valkyrie. I felt confident for Gnomish Mines. I even had a plate mail at the early game, and since I like to do two-weapon combat, I chose a random pick-axe as a second weapon. I got both long sword skill and pick-axe skill to Skilled, and was happy doing two-weapon combat. And when I got past Minetown and going to Mine's End...
... A dark red 'D' appeared. I thought, Dark red D? It must be just a baby dragon, is it? Let's farlook it. 
black dragon
 Wait, it's an adult? And black? Black? BLACK???? OH SHI- 
(I use dark red (#6D0000) as dark grey.)
I nearly panicked. Since I possessed neither disintegration resistance nor reflection, I decided to melee it, because dragons never use their breath weapon to adjacent enemies. But I had no chance to it, even a prayer didn't help. DYWYPI?
Moral of the story #1: A pick-axe is not a good choice for the second weapon.
Moral of the story #2: Dip for Excalibur first.
Moral of the story #3: You can escape an enemy while avoiding its line of fire.
Besides, I was only XL 7 at that time. It must be unlikely such high-level monster to appear there, right? Have you ever had such an experience? --NDos (talk) 13:19, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

That was most likely caused by a polymorph trap or a chameleon. I've seen silver dragons on the Mines before; unfortunately I died before I could get scales from it.  - Andrio Celos (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I had a level in Gnomish Mines that has some flavor of Lich that constantly created new monsters, acting very like the Titan on the Medusa level, and Black Dragons were included.  Would have created a truly massive bones level except those Black Dragons kept disintegrating much of it.
Eventually I learned to expect the possibility I'd run into it, tried to bounce back up before getting killed, and finally built up a character good enough to deal with the situation.
And it was a polymorph trap that had created the Lich.

Martyf (talk) 22:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)