# Dragon hide
Dragon hide (or dragonhide)[1] is a material for items that appears in NetHack. 
Dragon hide is the material that composes all dragon scales and dragon scale mail, and is inherently fixed.[2] While it is not a sufficiently organic material that can normally be eaten by a gelatinous cube, you can eat dragon hide while in the form of a gelatinous cube, which breaks vegan conduct.[3]
Oddly, polypiling enough dragon hide objects may result in the creation of a straw golem.

Contents

1 History
2 Variants

2.1 GruntHack
2.2 dNetHack
2.3 EvilHack

3 References

History
Dragon hide items were introduced to NetHack in NetHack 3.0.0 with the addition of dragon scale mail; dragon scales first appeared in NetHack 3.1.0.

Variants
Some variants add new dragon scales and scale mail, which are made of dragon hide. Others implement an object materials system that also make it possible for certain items, usually leather or cloth-based ones, to be made of dragonhide; though dragonhide-material items are distinct from dragon-scaled armor (i.e. you will not polymorph into a dragon if wearing dragonhide versions of normal armor), the material is the same for both. Dragonhide is inherently fixed/erosion-proofed and cannot be deteriorated through normal means; as a material it is typically highly rare and expensive, and offers the most AC of non-metallic armor materials.

GruntHack
In GruntHack, cloth or leather items can be made of dragonhide, but do not occur randomly; they can still be wished for or found in bones files.

dNetHack
In dNetHack, dragonhide is also used as a "catch-all" in the code of objnam.c for special cases involving other items made of a special leather or similar material.[4] Leo Nemaeus hide is an example of a "dragonhide" item that is flavored as being a cloak made of skin from a Nemean lion via this special case.
Cloth or leather items can very rarely generate with a dragonhide material: there is a 1% chance that a random leather item will be made of dragonhide, and a 0.1% chance for cloth items to randomly generate as dragonhide. Hard objects can be made of dragonhide as well, which is described as dragonbone (or dragon-bone). Dragonhide and dragonbone armor grants the highest bonuses to AC and defense rating among materials (usually a 60% increase compared to the base material of the object), while dragonhide and dragonbone weapons gain bonuses to piercing damage.
Many dNetHack artifacts are made out of dragonhide, dragonbone or similar material:

Dragonlance is an artifact weapon lance made of dragon-bone.
Xiuhcoatl is an artifact that has an atlatl and bullwhip form; the bullwhip is made of serpenthide.
The Lifehunt Scythe is an artifact scythe made of dragon-bone.
The Beastmaster's Duster is an artifact dragonhide jacket.
The Platinum Dragon Plate is an artifact silver dragon scale mail, and is made of the default dragon hide.
The Chromatic Dragon Scales are an artifact set of black dragon scales, and are made of the default dragon hide; they can also be made into dragon scale mail or a dragon scale shield like other scales.
Of note is that The Steel Scales of Kurtulmak, a set of artifact gray dragon scales, are made of iron rather than dragon hide.
In addition to random generation, various monsters can generate with dragon-made objects:

Neanderthals in the Caveman quest can be generated with dragon scale mail and scale shields, alongside other dragon-made items such as dragonbone clubs or aklyses.
Eladrin that are summoned by Dracae Eladrin, and are not Uiscerre Eladrin, will generate with dragonbone long swords.
One of the lillend created in the lair of Lamashtu generates with a dragonbone scythe.
Gray intoners generate with dragonbone long swords.
Occultists generate with an inventory full of dragonbone items.
Mammon will generate with dragonhide and dragonbone armor.
Hell vaults containing a Jrt Netjer may have dragonhide armor among its spoils.

EvilHack
In EvilHack, dragonhide is as rare and expensive as in other variants, and various cloth and leather items can rarely generate as made of dragonhide.
Like in many other variants, dragonhide objects usually cannot be deteriorated, with the exception of the revamped destroy armor monster spell. The destroy armor spell can remove a piece of armor's fixed status, including the inherent fixed property of dragonhide armor, and inflict up to three levels of erosion (or one with magic resistance). Artifacts are immune to erosion in this manner.
The following artifacts are made of dragonhide:

Dragonbane is an artifact pair of dragonhide gloves.
The Bag of the Hesperides is an artifact dragonhide bag of holding.
References

↑ src/decl.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 268

↑ src/objects.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 375

↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2411

↑ dNetHack 3.21.4 objnam.c, line 1441 - special cases for dragonhide objects