The Royal Jelly
Version 0.26: 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. |
Contents
Useful Info
The Royal Jelly (or TRJ) is the jelly boss of the Slime Pits. Located in the center of Slime:5, it will not emerge until you've entered the stone structure it resides in, or you make enough noise nearby to awaken it.
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, death oozes, and acid blobs). 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 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 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
Buffing up is highly recommended, regardless of your strategy. Potions of haste, might, and/or brilliance can help you deal lethal damage to TRJ before its reinforcements make life unbearable.
- TRJ is large, but not giant. This means it is vulernable to throwing nets; allowing you to get free actions while the boss is immobile. Its many slime allies can still attack, however.
- Melee fighters should not simply charge in and bash the thing. Even with corrosion resistance and heavy armour, having eight corrosive opponents attacking you repeatedly will quickly send your offensive capabilities and your AC plummeting, leaving you weak and very vulnerable. Always soften it up before engaging it in melee, and buff heavily. Similarlly, stabbing TRJ is possible - but highly unrecommended.
- TRJ retreats behind its spawned jellies periodically, forcing you to fight through them. Attacks like javelins, Starburst, and Beogh's smite can ignore the surrounding jellies.
- Fighting TRJ in one of the central corridors restricts how many monsters can reach you. Just be prepared for the angry jelly mob once you're done. Reading a scroll of summoning will prevent TRJ's slimes from reaching you or used as retreat fodder.
- TRJ is a natural creature, and thus vulnerable to torment. Reading two or three scrolls of torment will drop it to near death, and a few ranged or smite-targeted attacks will kill it despite the surrounding army. Just be aware that this strategy will also leave your own HP dangerously low (rN+++, or else being undead is highly recommended).
- A scroll of immolation works well: hit TRJ 1-2 times, read the scroll, then kill any of the spawns to set off a chain reaction. Make sure to have strong. [[haste]d ranged attacks - or rF++(+) to tank the immolation blasts.
- TRJ can be polymorphed if your Evocations is fairly high and you reduce its willpower with a scroll of vulnerability or two. Succeeding will immediately create a very large number of jellies, and due to TRJ's high HD, whatever it turns into will also be dangerous: expect titans, high-end dragons, or shrikes. However, TRJ will spawn no further slimes, and killing it will still unlock the rune vaults.
God Abilities
- Banishing TRJ via Lugonu's ability doesn't unlock the vault, meaning you'll need some way to bypass stone walls. Luckily, Lugonu provides the stone-breaking Corrupt ability. Failing this, you may need to use Shatter or even follow TRJ the Abyss yourself.
- Many god abilities can bust through TRJ. Whenever it'd be multiple Brothers in Arms from Trog, a well positioned Disaster Area from Qazlal, or a horde of cards from Nemelex, make sure to actually use your piety!
- 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.
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 have boots of running or use a timely casting of 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.
- Shatter, while ineffective against everything you'll find in the Slime Pits, can be used to break open the loot vaults and skip the fight entirely. It is, however, very difficult to cast as well as very loud and will likely attract the attention of every slime on the entire floor.
History
- In 0.27, anti-magic quicksilver oozes and resistant rock slimes are spawned in place of death oozes.
- 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.
