# Talk:Yeenoghu
I first met Yeenoghu while sacrificing something as a chaotic player. I was much less experienced with NetHack back then, having then read few spoilers; that was before the first game in which I reached the Rogue level. Yeenoghu stepped into the path of my ranged weapons, thus I died in that game to missiles. I had been careful to have Yeenoghu follow me down staircases, not knowing that keeping Yeenoghu around was useless. The only reason to have Yeenoghu made peaceful is to avoid a fight in Gehennom. --Kernigh 04:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I first met Yeenoghu at dungeon level 11 or something. He had 3 other demon minions with him (barbed devils). How the hell did this happen? --Azzkikr 09:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone might have left Yeenoghu on the bones level, and because Yeenoghu is a demon, it can have summoned other demons. --Kernigh 15:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

So I was dipping some potions into a fountain so that I could get some holy water.  I'm in the Gnomish Mines, and a Water Demon shows up.  "Crap," says I.  Then out of nowhere I get blasted by the Invisible Yeenoghu.  How the heck did a Water Demon summon Yeenoghu?  
EAKugler 21:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeenoghu is a demon lord and any demon that can summon has a small chance of summoning him.--Ray Chason 22:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Indeed this happened to me some years ago when Yeenoghu still had the touch-of-death bug.  The fountain was at the Oracle's place.  I zapped an unknown wand out of desperation; a lightning bolt shot out, hit Yeenoghu, played off the opposite wall, hit Yeenoghu again, hit me and toasted half of my wands.  Yeenoghu zapped right off to the upstairs.  I made tracks for the downstairs and narrowly escaped YASD.  Alas, I don't remember how that game ended.--Ray Chason 22:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Is Yeenoghu tameable? Also is playing as a chaotic and sacrificing him a good idea?
Yeenoghu is not generally tamable (though perhaps a magic trap would do the trick?).  Sacrificing him is not possible since he never leaves a corpse.  Sacrificing to summon him isn't really significant; it saves you a fight later on, but he's not a particularly difficult demon lord.  The fact that he hangs around you like some giant demented demonic puppy can be irksome.  Moreover, summoning Juiblex (which is also possible when chaotic and sacrificing your race) can be detrimental if you wish to use him to quickly travel across his swamp.  So, basically, I'd rate summoning him with a giant "meh."

I was practising with my lance against a water demon in the gnomish mines when it summoned Yeenoghu. YAAD. &gt;_&gt;

Contents

1 "always starts as hostile"
2 Yennoghu bones story
3 Magic Resistance?
4 "Weapon 2D8 Confusion"?

"always starts as hostile"
I can't edit the attributes box on the right side of Meanie Yeenie's entry because it's done using tags instead of plaintext, but it states he "always starts as hostile." This is not technically true for a chaotic self-race sacrifice. Is there a way to modify the wiki tag code to say something like "starts as hostile in Gehennom" for accuracy's sake? Perhaps a special-case (for Juiblex too) tag like "hellhostile=1" that could also modify the "appears only in Gehennom" attribute as well? The new tag itself could accomplish both tasks at once for both Lords, though handling foocubi appearing in the Mines and the Dungeons would be a little trickier. Way beyond my ken, but it's certainly worth considering for clarity's sake.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.249.241.32 (talk • contribs) 

(Please add a new section at the bottom of the talk page next time; there's an add topic link at the top, too. It allows people to edit just the specific section.)
"starts" might indeed be inaccurate there. Whether it happens in Gehennom or not, though, doesn't matter. Perhaps "is normally generated hostile" might be better? It implies "unless some special case applies", IMHO.
(By the way, this is more relevant to Template:Attributes than it is to Yeenoghu as that is also where these descriptions are defined.) —bcode&nbsp;talk&nbsp;|&nbsp;mail 16:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
This is a more fundamental problem. On the one hand, there are so many mechanisms to create monsters. Each of these has its own set of exceptions. On the other hand, the vast majority of monsters result from run-of-the-mill random monster creation. So it's natural to neglect anything else. If you can think up a newbie-friendly way to solve this conundrum, please tell. --Tjr (talk) 17:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm the original poster of this topic (finally made an account!) and I just had a brain-fart: make it possible to manually add attributes outside of the tagging system! That way, this unique aberration as well as ANY others could be properly annotated for any monster or item. The Wiki style guide could be amended to make these manual edits conform to an accepted standard. Thoughts?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 孟謙 (talk • contribs) 
The list of manually curated exceptions will be very long: angels/elementals/demons as divine minions or from same-race sacrifice; 269 eligible polytrap results; spellcasters and Rodney summon hostile nasties, many egg-hatching species, and gazillions of other code paths listed in the extinctionism spoiler. IMHO we should find some general solution. --Tjr (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
(Please remember to sign your edits to talk pages. Also, if you add something new to a talk page, you might want to avoid marking it as a minor edit.)
These are not really exceptions; it's just that there's no universally understood term for the normal mechanism of monster generation – it's a bit unfortunate that way. That's why I suggested "normally generated" above. —bcode&nbsp;talk&nbsp;|&nbsp;mail 20:55, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the Wiki editing tips, bcode--I'm still new here and I appreciate your patience and guidance. I've been thinking about your "normally generated" idea and I think that's probably the simplest way to deal with the myriad of exceptions that Tjr mentions. A player will just have to interpret it as yet another example of NetHack's "infinite diversity" (to quote a Vulcan proverb.)--孟謙 (talk) 14:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
I've updated Template:Attributes to use "is normally generated". —bcode&nbsp;talk&nbsp;|&nbsp;mail 21:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Yennoghu bones story
I summoned Yeenoghu on my first reasonably powerful character, a level 14 barbarian. I summoned him by sacrificing a Keystone Kop in Minetown after murdering the cross-aligned priest and all the shopkeepers. Later, I realized I couldn't do my quest even as chaotic - I had murdered too many innocents, whaaaat?! So I went back to Minetown, started sacrificing more Keystone Kops. Then I got a bit cocky and figured I'd try to sacrifice Yeenoghu since he was teleporting in my way and it was getting annoying. I burned an Elbereth into the ground next to the altar and started beating his face... foolishly didn't read the spoiler close enough to realize he teleports up a level to heal! So after getting tired of that nonsense, I made a dash for the stairs to engrave another Elbereth and try to kill him there. Long story short - he came back down and beat my face in before I made it to the stairs. Now he periodically returns in my bones files to slaughter my poor low level adventurers the second they step foot in Minetown!

Commiseration. If you can, you might want to leave the level with an escape item. Engrave Elbereth to make sure he doesn't follow you. Once you're on the stairs up on a burnt Elbereth, you can kill him with impunity. --Tjr 17:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Magic Resistance?
I'm trying to tame Yeenoghu in SLASH'EM by abusing the genetic engineer polymorph. I've used this several times so I know the trick works... but I can't polymorph Yeenoghu. When I try I just get the standard sparkle, as if I tried it against a gray dragon. Same when I try magic missile, although I don't remember ever having this problem when playing as a wizard in Vanilla. The article doesn't state that he has magic resistance and I can't find any indication that he's magic resistance in the source, but I also can't find anything to set magic resistance for a gray dragon so magic resistance must just be set somewhere other than monst.c. Is Yeenoghu magic resistant? And for future reference, where is that determined in the source code? -- Qazmlpok 02:56, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Turns out he is, peculiarly.  See SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/mondata.c#line86; it looks like gray dragons, Yeenoghu, the Oracle and Angels are all magic-resistant.  Or at least, they resist magic missiles (which makes sense, since they can all attack with them), and the source code checks for that in zap.c for the wand of polymorph.  This would seem to be true in vanilla too, by the way. -Ion frigate 12:55, April 24, 2010 (UTC)
Actually it's anything with a magic missile attack, a random breath weapon, a magic missile breath weapon, or a baby gray dragon.  Gotta love the way that nethack codes magic resistance.  This also explains why crystal and, evidently, diamond golems would be magic resistant in SLASH'EM.  I have no idea if that was an intentional side effect or not. -Ion frigate 12:58, April 24, 2010 (UTC)
Ah, so that's how it works. Man, they do some quirky stuff in the source code sometimes. Granting fire, shock, etc resistance when eating a corpse is determined by a MR_FLAG, but teleporitis/Tcontrol is granted automatically if the monster possesses it. Oh well, guess I can't fulfill my goal of ascending with all 8 demon princes as pets. I guess I'll have to settle with stoning him and ascending with the statue. -- Qazmlpok 12:16, April 26, 2010 (UTC)
"Weapon 2D8 Confusion"?
Shouldn't this be "Gaze Confusion"? -Actual-nh (talk) 02:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The attack is AT_WEAP in the source code. It's a melee attack using the equipped weapon that also causes confusion. -- Qazmlpok (talk) 00:11, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Weird; the rest of the article talks about a gaze. -Actual-nh (talk) 00:14, 7 April 2021 (UTC)