The Royal Jelly

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

royal jelly J
HP	230
HD	21
XP	14176
Speed	14
AC	8
EV	4
Will	196
Attack1	50 (hit: acid: 7d3)
Attack2	30 (hit: acid: 7d3)
Resistances	rPois+, rAcid+++, rConstr, rWater, Asphyx
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Land
Intelligence	Plant
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Medium
Type	jelly, jelly
Flags	Eats items Acidic flesh No stairs Sense invisible Unique

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 is the jelly boss of the Slime Pits. Located in the center of Slime:6, it will not emerge until you've entered the stone structure it resides in (or you make enough noise nearby to awaken it), giving you plenty of time to clear the rest of the floor first.

It has an impressive amount of HP, powerful acidic melee attacks, exceptional speed, and an unusual defensive mechanism: whenever it's damaged, it spawns various powerful jelly-type monsters to attack you (azure jellies, death oozes, brown oozes, and acid blobs). Like other jellies, allowing it to consume items or shooting ammunition at it will restore its HP. Fortunately, it cannot pursue you up stairs, allowing you to abort attempts at killing it that you don't feel confident you can complete.

Killing the royal jelly causes three things to happen:

• Teleport control is no longer forbidden on the floor.
• The four central vaults that the royal jelly guarded turn from stone to transparent rock, making it easy to dig or teleport your way in.
• Jiyva, the god of slimes, immediately ceases to exist once its only sentient worshiper dies. You can prevent this deicide by worshiping Jiyva yourself before killing TRJ, but killing such a high-ranking jelly will result in penance.

Tips & Tricks

How To Kill It

• Haste and a potion of might/potion of brilliance are recommended to help you deal lethal damage to TRJ before its reinforcements make life unbearable (while berserking also works, you run the risk of having it run out halfway through the fight).
• Fighting TRJ in one of the central stone corridors is a valid strategy, as only TRJ and two or three other monsters will be able to reach you. Just be prepared to deal with an angry jelly mob once you're done, possibly including giant eyeballs that heard the commotion and can suddenly see you through the now-transparent treasure vault walls...
• TRJ retreats behind its spawned jellies periodically, forcing you to fight through them before you can damage it again. This can be avoided by summoning your own allies while adjacent to it to box it in before attacking. Works best in the corridors.
• Ranged weapon fighters will have a hard time with this fight, as most ammunition heals it. There are exceptions, however. Sling users can fire stones safely, though their damage isn't terribly impressive. Exploding sling bullets are much better, especially as its burst cuts through TRJ's low-AC spawns well. Bow-users can use dispersal arrows, as these break upon mulch every time, though this results in a lot of obnoxious blinking around. Crossbow-users can use penetration-branded bolts, so long as the final tile it lands in is unoccupied. As for throwing weapons, penetration is again your best bet, unless you're capable of hurling large rocks.
• Banishing TRJ via Lugonu's ability is only advisable if you have some way to deal with stone walls, as the banishing will not turn the vaults' stone into diggable rock or allow teleport control. Failing that, a trip to the Abyss to kill TRJ would be necessary. Alternatively, corrupting the floor will open the vaults easily, but you'll need to move fast if you want to collect any of the non-artifact loot.
• TRJ is technically a natural creature, and is thus vulnerable to sources of torment. Hitting it with two or three scrolls of torment will drop it to near death, and a few Bolt spells or smite-targeted attacks will finish it off in spite of the army around it. Just be prepared to have your own HP be affected too (rN+++, Statue Form, or undeath are advised)!
• Repeatedly blasting TRJ with a wand of draining or Bolt of Draining will gradually whittle away its max HP and HD. Even if you have to abort your attempt, this HD damage (and the accompanying drops in HP and magic resistance) is permanent. 21 successful drains will reduce it to 0 HD, causing it to die instantly, though you'll likely kill it through raw damage before that point.
• Freezing Cloud will reliably kill TRJ in 10 or so turns. If you you can hold your own versus TRJ's reinforcements (say, with your own wave of summons), you can cast Freezing Cloud early and let it do its job. Just be ready to run if things go south.
• With only 4 EV, TRJ is fairly susceptible to Bolt of Inaccuracy. A hasted character with modest Evocations training can heavily injure or even kill TRJ by the time their rod of Inaccuracy runs out of charges, but don't be surprised if it only gets half the job done. Finishing it off with attack wands, Bolt spells, or other attacks that can bypass the wall of summoned jellies will likely be necessary.
• If you are a ranged magic user and take the summoning route, you really can't do better than Summon Dragon. Dragons are fast and do superlative melee and range attacks. Interspersing these with other high-level summons can create a wall of units capable of matching TRJ's allies. You'll need to plan ahead, of course: an 18 or 19 Summonings skill, high intelligence, a ring of wizardry, and Recall are the bare minimum. Worshipers of Trog can also benefit from this approach; a small pack of berserk iron trolls or stone giants should survive long enough to deal tremendous damage to TRJ before being melted away.
• Hit TRJ 1-2 times so it spawns jellies/oozes, then read a scroll of immolation, then kill any of the spawns to touch off a satisfying chain reaction. This strategy entails an element of risk, as the fireball chain can engulf you too. To minimize risk of glorious self-immolation, ensure that you can kill one of the spawns at a distance. For example, Conjurations and Spellcasting at 20 means that Orb of Destruction reliably kills Death oozes in one hit. A more risky variation is to damage a spawn, blink away and then finish it off. The most risky variation is to have rF+++ and just embrace the burn. The beautiful irony of this strategy is that it literally turns TRJ's spawning abilities against it: instead of having to face down numerous spwans after an exhausting and dangerous battle with TRJ itself, this strategy literally turns TRJ's spawning against itself.

How To Escape It

• 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 need to escape the floor without pursuing jellies following you up, Haste will also allow you to make a fairly safe escape; TRJ will keep up with you, but nothing else will. If you wish to actually outrun TRJ, you'll likely need both Haste and Swiftness.
• If you've accidentally created an army of jellies and need to abort, heal up and then 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.
• Don't panic and expect a scroll of blinking to save you; until TRJ is dead, controlled blinking is impossible on this floor. Of course, if you're surrounded by jellies on every side and the only available tiles to blink to are beyond the mob, even an uncontrolled blink should get you clear of them, and a hasted character should be able to outrun them.
• If you have high-powered Lee's Rapid Deconstruction or Shatter, you can avoid fighting TRJ by breaking open the stone wall loot vaults. Just be sure to grab any useful non-artifact items before the floor's jellies eat them. Be aware that both spells are loud and will attract attention.
• Summon Butterflies can be a lifesaver for the character who finds himself otherwise fatally adjacent to a lone TRJ. Alternatively retreating and casting Summon Butterflies can be a solution, provided you can withstand the several hits TRJ will deal you. Just remember not to damage TRJ at all or he'll spawn his auxiliary slimes, negating your retreat.
• Of course, if you wish to avoid this entire mess, you can simply worship Jiyva and open the vaults with a wand of digging.

History

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.