Star 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.

star jelly J
HP	53-108
HD	16
XP	1350
Speed	12
AC	5
EV	12
Will	80
Attack1	34 (engulf: antimagic)
Attack2	18 (hit: plain)
Resistances	rF+ rC+ rElec rPois+ rAcid+++ rDrown
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Land
Intelligence	Brainless
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Small
Type	jelly, star jelly
Flags	See invisible Unbreathing Unblindable Amorphous

A white gelatinous mound that pulses with a strange iridescence. Its body absorbs magical energy like a sponge, and when sufficiently injured, will unleash this energy as a flurry of shooting stars. "My colleagues may have dismissed the sightings as blink frog egg casings, but today I shall prove that these creatures came from beyond the firmament. Let's begin the dissection." -Ardun Idrick, cryptozoologist, last words

Useful Info

Star jellies are high-tier slimes found in the Slime Pits. They are fast, lightly-omniresistant, and have antimagic attacks. They also brandish a uniquely dangerous gimmick: when they are injured below 40% of their max health (i.e. becoming "severely wounded"), they will produce a flurry of three * shooting star projectiles, akin to those made from orbs of stardust. These are speed 20 foxfire style projectile-monsters that don't hit allies, deal 4d12 irresistable damage that can't be evaded or blocked, and which last either 20 turns (200 aut) or a maximum travel distance of 12 spaces away. They do, however, have a single turn of spawning before they can actually fly forward and injure anything.

When a star jelly fires off its stars, it will gained a diminished spells status, and it will only get stars again after the status wears off in 50 to 65 turns. This is also indicated visually in Tiles by losing its sparkles and glow:

Default	Diminished

Tips & Tricks

With an average of four or more star jellies encountered in the dive to Slime:5 and several more coming out of the Royal Jelly as its fought, every character intending to take the slimy rune needs to have some plan to handle shooting star damage. The occasional characters with 40+ AC left at decent HP can usually take the damage head-on without particularly caring much about it if there's not a lot of other enemies present, as can characters managing fights ending with 200+ HP, but most other characters should have one of several options planned in advance:

Allies

• Mid-tier ally spells readied while damaging the jelly from afar can easily absorb multiple stars, whether in Summoning or Forgecraft or with Necromancy prepared in advance. (Cross-school spells, like Forge Monarch Bomb for Fire Magic users, are still reasonably accessible for lategame conjurers.) Endgame level 8 and 9 spells work fine for handling most of the branch in general, of course.
  • Relying on weak allies in Slime can be dangerous due to the presence of colossal amoebas- if both are present, the threat of one versus the other depends on one's frailty versus one's damage output.
• God-provided allies, whether from active invocations like Fedhas and Makhleb and Trog, or as a regular presence like with Hepliaklqana and Beogh, can also take the shots for you if particularly needed.
• Evokers like phantom mirrors, boxes of beasts, and sacks of spiders aren't the most repeatable with low enchantment or low Evocations skill, and most other Slime monsters have too high Will to make wands of charming reliable without using orbs of guile or Sphinx Form, but these are technically still options.

Movement

• With a maximum travel distance of 12 tiles away and the capacity to knock back their foes on hit, preparing Passage of Golubria in advance or positioning to make use of Gell's Gavotte, then walking away afterwards, can help reduce the number of stars hitting to one or even zero.
  • Other Translocations spells and effects don't reliably provide a lot of distance, though Haste and / or some clever chained uses of Vhi's Electric Charge can also help provide enough distance to teleport or generally escape. Hasted Barachi can also try hopping.
• If all else fails, a scroll of blinking is likely to provide sufficient distance when paired with walking away.

Other Interactions

Most of these options are somewhat expensive, but may serve as one's last resort or help with the big Royal Jelly fight.

• Cheibriados's Temporal Distortion requires two activations to last long enough and costs a fair bit of piety to use each time against star jellies, but works with few other issues.
  • Step From Time provides enough time for the stars to fade away, but also for a given star jelly to recover its stars- this can save one's life, but it also doesn't permit much forward progress in terms of killing given star jellies (though it might help with killing other present monsters, like while fighting the Royal Jelly).
• Dithmenos's Primordial Nightfall setting one's LOS to zero interacts strangely with projectile monsters, leaving them unable to hit until one's LOS raises back up to at least 1. Since this doesn't actually remove the stars, this mostly just helps with teleporting out.
• Nemelex Xobeh's Tomb cards can provide star cover if there's no adjacent enemies, though it will also let the star jellies recover back to full health. Using a wand of digging can open the Tomb up early, but the stars will still be present if you don't wait and count up to 20.
• Zin's Sanctuary removes all slow projectiles, which includes shooting stars.

Trivia

As the in-world quote alludes to, star jelly (or astromyxin, or astral jelly) is a real-world phenomenon of disappearing gelatin said in folklore to appear after meteor showers. This has a number of theorized origins, from fungi to slime molds to algae to, indeed, the spawn and oviducts of frogs and other amphibians.

History

• Star jellies were added in 0.34 as part of the version's updates to the Slime Pits.