Slymdra

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.

slymdra J
HP	26-54
HD	18
XP	4830
Speed	10
AC	10
EV	3
Will	120
Attack1	33 (hit: acid)
Attack2	33 (hit: acid)
Attack3	33 (hit: acid)
Attack4	33 (hit: acid)
Resistances	rPois+ rAcid+++ rDrown
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Amphibious
Intelligence	Brainless
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Giant
Type	jelly, slymdra
Flags	Eats doors See invisible Regenerates Unblindable Amorphous No skeleton Herd

A quivering amalgam of viscous slime, its many pseudopods gnashing at the air like a throng of reptilian maws. It rapidly absorbs nearby slime creatures into itself, growing a new 'head' for each one and becoming even more resilient. Whether through convergent evolution or genetic memory, it also shares the hydra's most infamous trait: lopping off a head with a bladed weapon will just make it grow two more unless the wound is cauterised by a flaming weapon. When not stalking prey, its constituent slimes may separate from it again, perhaps to seek new food sources on their own.

Useful Info

Slymdra are the highest-tier slimes found in the Slime Pits, possessing the strongest base melee of any pre-extended monster with acid brand hits on top, and combine slime creature and hydra mechanics in distinct ways.

• Like slime creatures, they come in bands with other slime creatures, and skip turns to absorb nearby slime creatures to become bigger, gaining +30 hp each time. They also will have those slime creatures split off when left wandering unaware of the player.
  • Unlike slime creatures, this process gains heads for more attacks rather than more damage on the one attack.
• Like hydras, they come with heads corresponding to the number of attacks they may do in a turn, and can attack additional target with their remaining heads when their original target is killed. Cutting off their heads with non-fiery blades will grow two more heads (for a net +1 head, +1 attack, and +30 hp gained). They have a cap of 20 heads, and will instantly die when their last head is cut off.
  • Unlike hydras, they are not cold-blooded, and have very high Willpower as do most top-tier slimes. Extra heads made by players will still split off into slime creatures after forgetting about the player, but those slime creatures will always be marked as providing no experience.

They come by default with 3 to 5 heads, and band with three or four other slime creatures by default, but tend to come by themselves on Slime:5. They can get even more than nine heads without any player intervention if they find another slime creature band on the floor. Unlike hydras, they have tiles depicting up to eight heads:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

Tips & Tricks

• Always be ready to reset slymdra encounters: unlike nearly every other slime encountered in the Slime Pits, these are speed 10 monsters that frequently stop to absorb slime creatures, and you can gauge just how big they'll get with nearby slime creatures before they can start attacking at all. Using Translocations to dive to staircases or scrolls of teleport when there's a significant number of other slime creatures can prevent having to deal with their incredibly lethal melee.
  • Try not to forget about any slymdras present when trying to stairdance the Slime:1 entrance or when going back up from Slime:5, as they can end up absolutely destroying a character still going up a staircase.
• Nearly every character shouldn't hit them with non-flaming edged weapons: it takes exceptional damage to outpace the health and damage gained with each added head.
  • Melee characters with high defenses and lacking a decent flaming edged weapon can consider swapping out for mediocre cross-trained edged weapons against slymdra with <6 heads, as this will rapidly lower the threat with each hit.
• Characters with destructive spells, Invocations, or high Evocations can focus on using AOE or targeted effects to kill slime creatures before they merge with the main slymdra.
• Weaker allies without a lot of additional assistance will frequently die fairly fast to slymdra bites, so they'll need some assistance. Zombified and spectralized slymdra make for very powerful allies, however.

History

• Slymdra were added in 0.34-3a65169 as part of its update to the Slime Pits.