# Minotaur

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10, claw 3d10, butt 2d8

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10, claw 3d10, butt 2d8

Base level

15

Base experience

504

Speed

15

Base AC

6

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

0 (Not randomly generated)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

1500

Nutritional value

700

Size

Large

Resistances

None

Resistances conveyed

None

A minotaur:

 has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso.
 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 is normally generated hostile.

 is nasty.
 is strong.

 has infravision.
 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

monst.c#line1445

A minotaur, H, is an especially deadly monster that appears in NetHack. They are carnivorous, humanoid animals that are notoriously difficult to fight and deal out incredible amounts of damage with their clawing attacks and heabutt, leading to many deaths at their hands from even experienced players. Minotaurs are the strongest of the giant humanoid monster class, and are also infamous for being one of the few monsters to ignore Elbereth.

Contents

1 Generation
2 Strategy

2.1 Defeating minotaurs
2.2 As pets
2.3 As polyforms

3 History
4 Origin
5 Messages
6 Variants

6.1 UnNetHack
6.2 SLASH'EM
6.3 dNetHack
6.4 GruntHack
6.5 EvilHack

7 Monster stats by variant
8 Encyclopedia entry
9 References

Generation
Minotaurs are not randomly generated; one or two minotaurs may be generated on creation of a normal floor that is a full-level maze.[1] A sleeping minotaur is generated on the Ranger quest home level.[2] Two minotaurs are generated on the Plane of Earth, including one in the cavern you enter from, and another appears on the Plane of Fire.[3][4][5]
Minotaurs are eligible forms for polymorph, and can also be summoned by the summon nasties monster spell.
A minotaur has a 1⁄3 chance to generate with a wand of digging; the minotaurs on Plane of Earth are guaranteed to generate with one.[6]

Strategy
Minotaurs are slightly faster than an unhasted hero at 15 speed, and have a natural AC of 0; their three attacks have the highest damage ceiling in the game, short of the Riders themselves. Minotaurs represent such a gigantic physical threat that there is an entire section of the article on armor class dedicating to estimating how badly a minotaur can stomp a player at a given AC threshold. Be ready to employ some of the strategies listed below, and be sure to scan your inventory thoroughly when making last-ditch efforts in a worst-case scenario.
Thankfully, unless a hostile monster gets a "lucky" polymorph, you likely won't encounter a minotaur until you're near or in Gehennom. As minotaurs are not intelligent, they cannot make use of weapons, armor or various other items, including the wand of digging they often generate with - minotaurs also have no monster MR and lack any intrinsic resistances, making them very vulnerable to magic and other effects. One of the quickest ways to "handle" a hostile minotaur is to use a scroll of taming or other similar item; see the below section for more information on that. They are also extremely susceptible to conflict, which can turn their fearsome strength on other hostile monsters in the area, possibly including an unwitting summoner that generated one next to you.

Defeating minotaurs
A very fast spellcaster should be able to keep at a safe distance and wear the minotaur down, and other roles that can reach Expert skill in daggers and/or bows are capable of the same - the jumping spell or jumping boots can aid you in either case, though be careful not to get backed into a corner. While any strong enough player can theoretically outdamage a minotaur in melee, it is generally a bad idea to rely on raw damage alone - a minotaur can kill even highly-armored melee players like Valkyries carrying the Orb of Fate if they are particularly unlucky.
Attack wands can weaken or impair a minotaur somewhat efficiently, especially if you have a wand of slow monster to reduce its speed (and thus its damage) or a wand of sleep to immobilize it; the wand of lightning can blind the minotaur as well as damaging it, and most wands can be made more effective by rebounding their rays off maze walls. Minotaurs are even a worthy candidate for a wand of death or finger of death charge - be careful where you aim, as without magic resistance or reflection a rebound may inadvertently solve the problem harder than you intended. If all else fails, slow monster and sleep wands can also make it easier to escape, as can a wand of digging.
Tools such as an expensive camera or a tooled horn are capable of scaring minotaurs, and the camera can additionally blind them - a blind minotaur is much less likely to hit you, significantly increasing your chance of surviving against one. A scroll of scare monster can also keep non-blinded minotaurs away, though be sure not to have other monsters burn it away from under you - they can also walk over the scroll when you are not standing on it. Boulder forts and acid blob formations can reliably keep a minotaur away while you prepare other counter-measures.
If you have free action, a thrown or (much more preferably) wielded potion of paralysis can buy you approximately 3-12 turns to kill it, run away, or prepare some of the other options mentioned. If all else fails, zap yourself or the minotaur with a wand of teleportation and hope that you can avoid encountering it down the line before you are ready to take it on again.
Beware of running into a minotaur during a dig for victory, especially in the undiggable Castle maze.

As pets
Due to their lack of monster MR, minotaurs can easily be tamed; their high damage and HP make them formidable fighters and somewhat popular pets. However, minotaurs lack resistances and most other properties, and their inability to wear equipment leaves them vulnerable to various monsters and traps, especially in the late game. Even so, their high damage can usually batter other monsters into submission before they can get a swing in, and keeping them fed is relatively easier in Gehennom, where you usually have most or all of the resistances you need at that point. Keeping them alive on the Planes, on the other hand, is a fairly tall order, especially on the poison cloud-laden Plane of Fire.
A minotaur's strength makes them a tempting candidate for credit cloning in shops, though they are much likelier to try and kill the shopkeeper unless you are careful or have a magic whistle on hand.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Monsters can now gain intrinsics from eating corpses, making it possible for a minotaur to obtain poison resistance and fire resistance among others and increase their survivability.
As polyforms
Minotaurs are sometimes chosen as polyforms for their high speed and strength, though they cannot wear most armor save for helms, and only cloth and leather helms can fit their head shape; they also lack other utilities such as flight or regeneration, and are often passed over in favor of fellow nasties such as the master mind flayer, who shares their natural AC of 0.

History
The minotaur is first present in Hack121, a variant of Jay Fenlason's Hack, and also appears in Hack 1.0. From this version of Hack to NetHack 2.3e, minotaurs used the m glyph. NetHack 3.0.0 moves the minotaur to the H glyph; NetHack 3.0.5 introduces their immunity to Elbereth.
From NetHack 3.0.5 to 3.4.3, including some variants based on these versions, minotaurs are also not affected by the scroll of scare monster. This behavior was explained in the following comment from the source code:[7]

 /* Note: minotaurs must be immune to scare monster
  * to avoid abuse from creating them and taking
  * their wands, then polymorphing 60 or so
  * wands to get wishing...
  */

As of NetHack 3.0.8, it is impossible to produce a wand of wishing by polypiling, and the note was removed in 3.1.0. The behavior remained unchanged until NetHack 3.6.0, where minotaurs began respecting scrolls of scare monster while the player is standing on the scroll.
Minotaurs were formerly capable of being generated in the mazes within the Big Room and the Catacombs variant of Mines' End; this was changed in NetHack 3.6.1, as this often constituted severely out-of-depth monster generation.[8]

Origin

Wikipedia has an article about:
Minotaur

As indicated by the excerpt from Edith Hamilton's Mythology, the minotaur originates in ancient Greek folklore from the punishment of King Minos of Crete. The word "minotaur" derives from the Ancient Greek Μῑνώταυρος, a compound of the name Μίνως (Minos) and the noun ταῦρος "bull", translated as "(the) Bull of Minos"; the word was originally a proper noun in reference to this mythical figure, and only became a common noun in 20th century fantasy works to refer to members of a generic "species" of bull-headed creatures.
After ascending the throne of the island, Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a beautiful snow-white bull as a sign of favour; Minos was to sacrifice the bull to honor Poseidon, but then decided to substitute a different bull and keep the original as his own. Poseidon retaliated by cursing Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, with a mad passion for the bull; Daedalus built her a wooden cow that she climbed inside in order to mate with the bull. The result of this union was the Minotaur, also known as Asterion or Asterius, born with the body of a human and the head of a bull. Following advice from the oracle at Delphi, Minos had Daedalus construct a gigantic Labyrinth to hold the Minotaur located near his palace in Knossos (hence the tendency of NetHack minotaurs to appear in mazes); Daedalus and his son Icarus were then imprisoned to ensure no one would ever know the secret of the Minotaur or how to escape the Labyrinth.
The most famous story of the Minotaur outside of his origin is likely the tale of Theseus and his encounter with the beast-man, a subject of many classical artworks and media. As the Minotaur had no natural source of nourishment beyond nursing from his mother, he became ferocious as he grew older, devouring humans for sustenance. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sacrificed every seventh or ninth year (or every year in some accounts) to be sent into the Labyrinth and devoured by the Minotaur. On the third such occasion, Theseus volunteered to stop this horror, taking the place of one of the youths; in Crete, Minos' daughter Ariadne fell madly in love with Theseus and helped him navigate the labyrinth, usually with a ball of thread that allowed him to retrace his path. Theseus found the Minotaur at the heart of the labyrinth and (depending on the source) slew it with his bare hands, his club, or a sword. He then led the young Athenians out of the labyrinth, and managed to escape with them and Ariadne.

Messages
You notice a bovine smell.
A shapeshifter or other monster has turned into a minotaur (or rothe), and you cannot see them.
Variants
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, minotaurs respect Elbereth as of version 4.0.0.[7]

SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the minotaur hits monsters as a +2 weapon and gains intrinsic resistance to death magic, removing the wand of death as an option against them.

dNetHack
In dNetHack, minotaurs can no longer be tamed, and may additionally turn on you should you somehow tame one. dNetHack also adds the minotaur priestess, who uses clerical monster spells in lieu of claw attacks (though it is still not considered intelligent).
A minotaur and minotaur priestess are generated in the shrouded dispensary inhabited by Illurien of the Myriad Glimpses.

GruntHack
GruntHack introduces the elder minotaur in version 0.2.3, a much stronger minotaur that also appears in Gehennom and replaces the minotaurs found on the Planes. Elder minotaurs have more powerful claw and headbutt attacks alongside a crushing bearhug that prevents escape; they cannot be tamed or pacified.

EvilHack
In EvilHack, minotaurs can send a target flying with their headbutt attacks. EvilHack also adds the elder minotaur from GruntHack and gives their heabutt attacks the same ability, along with a similar chance to generate with a wand of digging.

Monster stats by variant

dNetHackEvilHack

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10 physical, Claw 3d10 physical, Butt 2d8 physical

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10 physical, Claw 3d10 physical, Butt 2d8 physical

Base level

15

Base experience

564

Speed

15

Base AC

6

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

1 (Very rare)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

2200

Nutritional value

800

Size

large

Resistances

shock

Resistances conveyed

shock

A minotaur:

 has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso.
 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 is a giant.

 is normally generated hostile.

 is nasty.
 is strong.

 has infravision.
 can be seen through infravision.

 appears only in Gehennom.

 may turn against you when tame.
 cannot be tamed.

Reference

dNetHack 3.21.3 monst.c, line 3817

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10, Claw 3d10, Head butt 2d8 knock-back damage

H minotaur 

Difficulty

17

Attacks

Claw 3d10, Claw 3d10, Head butt 2d8 knock-back damage

Base level

15

Base experience

429

Speed

15

Base AC

6

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

0 (Not randomly generated)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

1500

Nutritional value

700

Size

Large

Resistances

None

Resistances conveyed

None

A minotaur:

 has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso.
 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 is normally generated hostile.

 is nasty.
 is strong.

 has infravision.
 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

EvilHack 0.7.1 monst.c, line 2026

Encyclopedia entry

The Minotaur was a monster, half bull, half human, the offspring of Minos' wife Pasiphae and a wonderfully beautiful bull....  When the Minotaur was born Minos did not kill him. He had Daedalus, a great architect and inventor, construct a place of confinement for him from which escape was impossible. Daedalus built the Labyrinth, famous throughout the world. Once inside, one would go endlessly along its twisting paths without ever finding the exit.
[ Mythology, by Edith Hamilton ]

 

References

↑ src/mkmaze.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 766

↑ dat/Ranger.des in NetHack 3.6.6, line 69

↑ dat/endgame.des in NetHack 3.6.6, line 56

↑ dat/endgame.des in NetHack 3.6.6, line 103

↑ dat/endgame.des in NetHack 3.6.6, line 351

↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 707

↑ 7.0 7.1 Why did the Minotaur cross the Elbereth? | UnNetHack &amp; NetHack-De

↑ Commit 32305ac: Prevent minotaur in mines end and bigroom mazes