The Royal Jelly

Version 0.34: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

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 Amorphous Unique Acidic flesh

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, void oozes, rockslimes, star jellies, and acid blobs). These monsters don't count as summons, and won't disappear on TRJ's death, but aren't worth XP. Unlike most other monsters, TRJ can choose to actively retreat behind its other jellies.

Killing the Royal Jelly causes the following to happen:

• The upstairs from Slime:2-5 become usable.
• 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, unless you are currently under penance (where Jiyva disappears after penance ends).

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. Void oozes are an especially big threat: they can prevent the use of scrolls, god abilities, and spells, and are faster than a hasted player.

Many strategies exist to take on TRJ. No matter what you're doing, it is recommended to have corrosion resistance, a healthy supply of teleport scrolls, and use all sorts of buffs (haste, might, brilliance...). It is also recommended to clear Slime:4 and as much of Slime:5 as possible. 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 - a big improvement from just fighting in the open. Not all Slime:5 layouts have good corridors to use, though, so this should not be relied as your only strategy.
  • 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 favor. Summons can also prevent TRJ from retreating. Melee, ranged weapons, and single-target spells (like Bombard) all work well in this position. See the Gallery section for a demonstration.
  • Try not to rely on walls that'll fall apart once TRJ dies, or you'll be surrounded quickly upon its defeat.

• Immolation + Piercing/AOE attacks. Because TRJ spawns monsters around itself, a scroll of immolation tends to be brutally effective. Damage TRJ with a ranged attack, causing it to spit jellies, then read immolation, and blast it with strong piercing/AOE attacks. Fire Storm and Chain Lightning will work as you'd expect, but lower level spells like Plasma Beam can work too. Some less conventional options include:
  • Discord. Turn spawned jellies hostile to each other. Spawn jellies, use Discord, immolate, and you win.
  • Eringya's Noxious Bog. The poison triggers immolation's flame cloud each turn, meaning it can take out TRJ despite its poison resistance. Haste up, create a bog, and kite TRJ. Once enough jellies have spawned, use immolation, which will eventually trigger an explosion. Ignite Poison makes the process faster and safer, but it's not mandatory.
  • Fulsome Fusillade. TRJ thoughtfully creates targets near itself for those great overlapping explosion effects. Remember you can back away while channelling it.
  • Many god abilities can kill TRJ with high Invocations skill. Qazlal's Disaster Area and Nemelex's Deck of Destruction (with immolation) are some ways to deal with TRJ.
  • For melee characters, throwing javelins at high skill 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.
  • Snakebombing - your allies can also be affected by immolation. Summon a swarm of allies, and regardless of whether your allies or TRJ's slimes win, everything will explode at the end. Kiku's Wretches are great for this, although Death Channel spectres cannot be immolated.

• Torment is extremely effective, especially when combined with the immolation + ranged attack strategy above, but equally as risky unless you're immune. The undead (Revenants, Poltergeists, Mummies) can use torment with impunity. A potion of lignification can grant the other species torment immunity, although it also prevents movement or teleportation.

• Blasting it from range. High damage piercing/AOE spells can flat out kill TRJ if lacking immolation scrolls (although haste & other buffs are still highly recommended). The following spells are so effective that immolation is superfluous:
  • Ignition turns the fight into a cakewalk. Hit TRJ once with a strong attack or torment, then, since jellies always spawn near TRJ, cast Ignition to hurt TRJ with 9 explosions. No immolation required.
  • Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling doesn't have AOE, but instantly kills any monster, TRJ included. It is recommended to stay in a corridor or on an upstair if possible.
  • Beogh's Smites are a piety-expensive, but effective way to kill TRJ, assuming you have lots of Invocations skill.

• Scroll of vulnerability. Against 180 willpower, Hexes are not very effective. Using vulnerability cuts that in half, making it reasonable for repeated hexes or hex wands 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.

• Stealth stabbing is technically possible, but isn't advisable. There's always a chance to wake TRJ early, and even if you do get a stab, you might fail to one-shot, making you face TRJ with a huge mass of slimes. Even if you do kill, you'll still have to deal with the leftovers.

• 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 void 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 void 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.

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.
• If planning on killing TRJ from afar, it may be helpful to stay on an upstair. That way, if you kill TRJ yet are still surrounded, you can stair dance up, deal with the current crowd, then go down a different stair.

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. Since jellies can spawn within 2 tiles of TRJ, summons won't adequately block jelly spawns here.

History

• Prior to 0.34:
  • Slime did not prevent the use of upstairs before TRJ was killed, thus making the fight safer and more reliable. It also allowed players who could break stone walls (Fedhas Overgrowth, Lugonu Corruption, Shatter) to break into the rune vault without facing TRJ directly.
  • TRJ could be banished, preventing the Slime:5 vault from opening unless you went to the Abyss and kill it.
  • TRJ could not spawn star jellies.
• Prior to 0.33, the amorphous tag did not exist (this had no functional change for TRJ).
• Prior to 0.31, TRJ wasn't immune to throwing nets. Also, there was only one Slime:5 vault, making the fight more consistent.
• 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.