Slime creature

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slime creature J
HP	43-76
HD	11
XP	264
Speed	10
AC	1
EV	4
Will	40
Attack1	22 (hit: plain)
Resistances	rPois+, rConstr, rDrown, rWater, Asphyx
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Amphibious
Intelligence	Plant
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Small
Type	jelly, slime creature
Flags	Herd Regenerates

An icky glob of slime, which slithers along the ground, occasionally merging with other nearby globs... “The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.” -Samuel Tayor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. 1798.

Useful Info

Slime creatures, a common sight in multiple mid-game branches, can combine to form larger and larger slime creatures. Two slime creatures combined form a “large slime creature”, three a “very large slime creature”, and so on (see below). As their size increases, so does their HP and damage:

Name	Image	# of Slimes	HP	Damage
slime creature	J	1	40 - 80	22
large slime creature	J	2	80 - 160	44
very large slime creature	J	3	120 - 240	66
enormous slime creature	J	4	160 - 320	88
titanic slime creature	J	5	200 - 400	110

A high AC can render you nearly immune to five single slime creatures, but five combined into a titanic slime creature will do enough damage to overwhelm nearly anything. As they merge and grow, the experience they grant also rises, though their HD and MR do not increase, which is relevant for many enchantments. Note that you do not get more experience for killing one titanic slime than for killing five normal ones: you in fact get less.

Tips & Tricks

• If you’re fighting them in a corridor, you can expect them to merge immediately. If you’re otherwise surrounded, or the closest position is already filled by a slime creature, they’ll merge. Occasionally, if you are positioned diagonally away from a group, they’ll merge.
• There are also a few circumstances under which they’ll separate. If you leave their LOS, they'll soon split up. If the closest move to you is an empty space, there’s a chance that they’ll separate. In practice, if you’re fighting a merged slime creature and there is an adjacent space that is free, they will likely separate.
• Don’t fight them in corridors and try not to fight them once they’ve merged, as they’ll likely be doing much more damage than multiple single slime creatures would. Thankfully, merged slime creatures are easy to spot: their glyphs are a light green, as opposed to the dark green of single slime creatures.
• If the slime creatures are already grouped together, kill the ones in the middle first if you can; slime creatures cannot merge if they are separated by a tile or more.
• The usual tactics of luring individuals away from groups and killing them are vital here. It helps that slime creatures can't make noise.
• Be aware that merged slime creatures have the same HD, and hence the same MR, as unmerged ones. Confuse, Slow, and Ensorcelled Hibernation will all work just as well on the ginormous blobs as on the little ones. Be wary, however, of attempting to stab disabled enormous or titanic slime creatures: even disabled, they are quite capable of obliterating you (in the case of sleeping ones, their HP may be high enough that you fail to stab them to death in one hit). Such hexes are best used to keep out of melee range and pelt the slime creature from afar. Be aware their MR of 44 is high enough that they may resist spells some of the time
• Agony is also very effective, since, as noted, merged slimes have no more MR than normal ones. Using Agony is effective both when luring slimes off one at a time, or to quickly wear down a titanic slime creature, should you accidentally allow one to be created. Be very careful around merged slimes; 110 damage is enough to one-shot many necromancers when they first meet slime creatures.
• Conjure Flame or Freezing Cloud also does a number on them in corridors, especially if you've got some way to stall them in the flames.
• You probably don't want to Polymorph a larger slime creature, unless you like the idea of suddenly fighting two storm dragons, a giant orange brain, a ghost moth, and a great orb of eyes. A merged slime creature has an 80% chance of splitting and having each resulting slime polymorphed separately. The final number of creatures depends on size:

Size Category	Number of Creatures
	1	2	3	4	5
Normal	100%
Large	20%	80%
Very Large	20%		80%
Enormous	20%		16%	64%
Titanic	20%			16%	64%

Note that a slime which fails to split will polymorph into the same sorts of monster as an individual would. That is, you always get the same possibilities based on a "slime creature", but you have a 20% chance of getting one monster regardless of size, and for four-and five-fold merges, you have another 16% chance of losing one in the transformation.