The Royal Jelly

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

For a list of all jellies, see list of jellies. For the obsolete item, see royal jelly (item).

the Royal Jelly J
HP	152-308
HD	21
XP	14247
Speed	14
AC	8
EV	4
Will	180
Attack1	50 (hit: acid)
Attack2	30 (hit: acid)
Resistances	rPois+ rAcid+++ rDrown
Vulnerabilities	Silver
Habitat	Land
Intelligence	Brainless
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Large
Type	jelly, jelly
Flags	Destroys doors See invisible Unbreathing Unblindable Unique Acidic flesh Web immune

A particularly rich and golden gelatinous thing. Smaller jellies swim and pulse just below its surface, ready to burst forth at the slightest touch.

Useful Info

The Royal Jelly (or TRJ) is the jelly boss of the Slime Pits, located on Slime:5. It has an impressive amount of HP, powerful acidic melee attacks, exceptional speed, and an unusual defense mechanism: whenever it's damaged, it spawns various powerful jelly-type monsters to attack you (azure jellies, quicksilver oozes, rockslimes, and acid blobs). These monsters don't count as summons, but aren't worth XP. Unlike most other monsters, TRJ can choose to actively retreat behind its other jellies.

Killing the Royal Jelly causes two things to happen:

• The translucent walls of the four central vaults that the Royal Jelly guarded will come crumbling down, allowing you access to the slimy rune of Zot and the piles of treasure.
• Jiyva, the god of slimes, immediately ceases to exist once its biggest sentient worshiper dies. You can prevent this by worshiping Jiyva yourself before killing TRJ, but killing such a high-ranking jelly will result in penance. Note that you can't escape divine wrath by killing TRJ.

TRJ can't pursue you through stairs, allowing you to abort attempts at killing it that you don't feel confident you can complete.

Strategy

The Royal Jelly is a formidable foe. Trying to run at it with an axe will likely lead to your death, even with rCorr, as you'll be quickly surrounded by 8 high-level jellies.

Many strategies exist to take on TRJ. No matter what you're doing, it is recommended to have corrosion resistance, clear the rest of the floor, and use all sorts of buffs (haste, might, brilliance...). These not only increase your chance of winning, but also help you if something goes terribly wrong.

• Corridor fighting. Fighting a group of monsters in a corridor is usually a good idea, and TRJ isn't any different. The corridors available might not be perfect, but they can allow you to fight 2-3 slimes at a time instead of 8 - already a huge improvement.

By using summons (scroll of summoning, phantom mirror, spells...) in the corridor, you can prevent TRJ's reinforcements from attacking you, turning it into a fight in your favour. Summons can also prevent TRJ from retreating. Melee, ranged weapons, and single-target spells (like Iron Shot) all work well in this position. See the Gallery section for a demonstration.

• Torment + Immolation. Slimes are natural monsters, so they are vulnerable to torment's half-HP effect. TRJ spits out other jellies, which are perfect targets for immolation's explosion effect. See TRJ at the edge of sight, torment once, use immolation, then find a way to ignite it (usually a strong ranged attack, preferably piercing). Some characters will want/need to use torment a second time.

The big risk of this strategy is that torment also reduces your HP by half (unless immune). A potion of lignification gives torment immunity, though it also melds armour and makes you stationary. If you are confident in your damage, doing this "raw" or with some rN+ can work out fine. Also, note that rockslimes are resistant to fire and won't take much damage from immolation explosions.

• Snakebombing. Summons and zombies are also affected by immolation. Use the strategy listed above, but after tormenting, create lots of summons (or Wretches, for Kiku followers). Then, once they are close enough, immolate them. Inner flame jellies and inner flame allies will fight, and one will die, causing the other to be hit by an explosion. A lot of summons (e.g. multiple scroll of summoning, Haunt...) may be needed. A scroll of butterflies can work in theory, but is unpredictable. Note that Death Channel's spectres cannot be immolated, due to their infinite willpower.

• Blasting it from range. A powerful piercing/AOE/smite-targeted ranged attack can be strong enough to kill TRJ from full LOS range, whether on its own or when combined with immolation. Fire Storm and Chain Lightning will work as you'd expect, but other spells can be used too.
  • Ignition turns the fight into a cakewalk; since jellies always spawn near TRJ, the boss is hit by 9 Ignition explosions at a time. Immolation isn't required here.
  • Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling doesn't have AOE, but instantly kills any monster, TRJ included. Stand on an upstairs, use MCC when TRJ is as far as possible, then retreat upwards to escape the aftermath. Then enter Slime:5 from another staircase, luring the residue one by one.
  • Discord. Turns spawned jellies hostile to each other. Immolate and you win.
  • Eringya's Noxious Bog. Immolation creates a flame cloud every time damage is dealt, including poison damage. So you can haste up, create a bog, and kite TRJ. Once enough jellies have spawned, use immolation, which will eventually trigger an explosion. Ideally, you'll have Ignite Poison to cause the immolation chain reaction (though Ignite Poison isn't needed).
  • For melee characters, throwing javelins at high skill (+ immolation) can be used to the same effect. TRJ is vulnerable to silver, so silver javelins are especially effective. Throw until you create a couple slimes, use immolation, then throw to activate the fireworks.
  • Lower level spells, such as high-power Plasma Beam, can be used, too.

• Scroll of vulnerability. At 180 willpower, it's normally hard to use Hexes. Using vulnerability cuts that in half, making it reasonable for repeated hexes to get through. Be very careful; since vulnerability also cuts your will in half, golden eyes and great orbs of eyes can inflict nasty statuses.
  • Standard high-tier stab hexes (paralysis, Petrify) work. These are best used in a corridor, since slimes still spawn when TRJ is disabled.
  • Polymorph turns TRJ into something else. You usually get a shard shrike, titan, dragon or, if especially lucky, a death yak. This creates a mass of jellies still, but once you deal with them, no more will spawn from the polymorphed TRJ.
  • Lugonu's Banish sends TRJ to the Abyss. Banish doesn't count as a kill, meaning the stone walls won't open. Lugonu worshippers have a way to open stone walls (Corruption), however.

• Opening the chambers yourself. The chambers are blocked by stone walls. There are a few ways to break them (Shatter, Fedhas' Overgrowth, Lugonu's Corruption). Shatter is extremely loud and will attract just about everything, though you can lure monsters away and take the loot for yourself. Note that Shatter is poor as a combat spell, since jellies are resistant to it.

• Misc. methods of killing:
  • Dedicated stabbers can attempt to stab TRJ while its sleeping. It often isn't advisable, since you can always fail to one-shot, meaning you'll have to face TRJ and a huge mass of slimes. Even if you do kill, you'll still have to deal with the leftovers.
  • Many god abilities can kill TRJ (see "Blasting it from range"). Qazlal's Disaster Area + immolation, Beogh's smites, or a surge of cards from Nemelex may be enough to kill.

• Jiyva. Of course, if you wish to avoid this entire mess, you can simply worship Jiyva and waltz in at 6* of piety. Most of the treasure will inevitably get eaten, but you'll at least be able to make off with the rune and whatever artefacts were present. As per usual with Jiyva, Apportation may come in handy.

Escaping

• Take great care around quicksilver oozes. They can engulf you, rendering unable to use spells, scrolls, or god abilities until you move a tile or kill the ooze. Being surrounded by 8 jellies is already deadly, being unable to blink or teleport out makes it even worse.
  • Amphibious and unbreathing characters are immune to engulf.
• Haste can let you run away from most jellies if you are not already in melee range. Only quicksilver oozes are outright faster than a hasted Human, though TRJ is only slightly slower than that. Both haste and Swiftness can be used to outrun these two. If you can get to the stairs without any adjacent jellies, you're safe.
• TRJ will not follow you upstairs, but its generated slimes will. If you plan on running back upstairs mid-fight, expect some of its spawns to follow you.

If you've accidentally created an army of jellies and need to abort, heal up and stair dance so you can clear out the reinforcements without dealing with too many of them at a time. Entering the floor from different staircases will let you avoid being immediately surrounded.

Tips & Tricks

• TRJ retreats behind its spawned jellies periodically. Use piercing, AOE, or smite-targeted attacks that can hit TRJ past its reinforcements. Otherwise, you'll need to fight through or reset the fight.
• Watch out when using distortion. Banish doesn't count as a kill, so if you banish TRJ without a way to break through stone walls, you'll need to go to the Abyss and kill it.

Gallery

• 

  Fighting TRJ in the original "slime_pit" vault with melee/single-target spells.
  Get TRJ in the corner (while hasted), position yourself as shown, then create summons to prevent jellies from hitting you and to prevent TRJ from escaping.

• 

  Some layouts, such as "jellycorners", have obscure and/or bad corridors.
  A wand of digging had to be used to open up the corridor. Also, this area is worse than the other example. Jellies can spawn within 2 tiles of TRJ, so here, summons won't adequately block jelly spawns.

History

• In 0.31, TRJ became immune to throwing nets. Also, many new Slime:5 layouts were added. As some don't have convenient corridors, certain strategies are harder to use. Previously, there was only one vault.
• Prior to 0.27, death oozes were created, instead of quicksilver oozes and rockslimes.
• Prior to 0.23, exploding the Royal Jelly with Uskayaw's Grand Finale didn't generate any jellies.
• Prior to 0.19, the Royal Jelly could eat items and could heal itself when shot with anything other than stones.
• Prior to 0.16, the Royal Jelly did not immediately spit out a large number of jellies when polymorphed, making it a viable combat strategy.
• Prior to 0.15, hitting the Royal Jelly could generate brown oozes as well.
• Prior to 0.11, the Royal Jelly was not able to regenerate naturally. This made the fight much easier to complete over several small assaults.