👉 A Cockatrice Nest is a lethal special room filled entirely with cockatrices and their relatives.
ℹ️ Description
A Cockatrice Nest is arguably one of the most dangerous special rooms in the game. It is filled with creatures from the cockatrice family, including cockatrices, chickatrices, and pyrolisks. The extreme danger comes from the fact that touching a cockatrice or chickatrice with bare skin, or being attacked by one, can instantly turn you to stone.
🗺️ Generation
Cockatrice nests have a 1 in 8 chance of generating on eligible levels starting from dungeon level 17, provided that cockatrices have not been genocided or made extinct. The room is usually small and densely packed.
🏆 Strategy
- Petrification Resistance: Do not attempt to clear a cockatrice nest in melee unless you have petrification resistance (which is very rare) or are extremely well prepared with ranged attacks.
- Gloves: You absolutely must wear gloves before handling cockatrice corpses or engaging them in melee.
- Blindfold/Towel: Since pyrolisks can cause damage through their fiery gaze, wearing a blindfold or towel can mitigate their ranged attacks, but it makes dealing with the cockatrices much harder unless you have telepathy.
- Loot: Aside from the stat-boosting effects of eating pyrolisk corpses (if you can resist fire), cockatrice corpses make incredibly powerful (but dangerous) melee weapons. Wielding a cockatrice corpse while wearing gloves will turn any non-resistant monster you hit to stone instantly.