Instant death

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While usually creatures in Qud die only by taking sufficient damage, some methods of death bypass damage altogether and kill regardless of how much HP one has.

Methods of Instant Death

Some instant death methods grant an achievement when the player dies this way. These are noted in the “Achievement” column when present.

Some methods kill the player even if they are currently dominating another creature and that creature is the one affected. These have a “Yes” in the “Kills dominator?” column.

A lack of message in the “Message” column indicates that instead of the usual “You died. [Message]” dialog, that method gives the fallback “You die! (good job)” dialog, which happens when no death message is specified in the code that causes the death.

Method	Achievement	Kills dominator?	Message
Losing your last remaining head to decapitation	Hole Like a Head	No	You were decapitated by [someone].
Ending a phased effect while both in and surrounded by solid objects	The Laws of Physics Are Mere Suggestions, Vol. 1	No	You violated the Pauli exclusion principle.
Getting hit by the gaze of a lithofex	Aetalag	No	You were turned to stone by the gaze of a lithofex.
Standing in the path of a burrowed salt kraken or a star kraken	*gulp*	No	You were consumed whole by a [salt kraken/star kraken].
Drinking or cooking with neutron flux (specifically drinking or cooking with it; other actions with flux merely do large amounts of damage)	Starry Demise	No	You were crushed under the weight of a thousand suns.
Being turned into a gem by a gemming attack	Jeweled Dusk	No	You were transmuted into [a gem].
Reaching higher than 10,000°, causing instant vaporization		No	You were vaporized.
Dropping below 1 Willpower while wielding the amaranthine prism		No	You had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space.
Being a magmatic soupy sludge and having one's temperature go below flaming		No	You cooled into a block of shale.
Being affected by normality when one's existence is supported by a reality-distorting effect (for example, being a Temporal Fugue clone or animated forcefield)		Yes	Your mind winked out of existence.
Being a wall and getting slammed (including by yourself)		Yes
Being a giant centipede nest and collapsing due to spawning the maximum number of giant centipedes		Yes
Being any temporary forcefield (such as from a stasis grenade, Force Bubble, or Force Wall) who was animated with Spray-a-Brain and running out the duration of the effect that spawned you (or, in the case of Grit Gate's entrance barrier, walking away so that you are disconnected from the originating force projector)		Yes
Running out the duration of Temporal Fugue when one is a fugue clone		Yes
Having one's original body destroyed when one is dominating another creature (caused by, e.g., any effect on this page being applied to the dominator's body while they're away)		N/A	Your original body was lost.
Having the creature one is dominating destroyed while still occupying it (This applies to any other entry on this table that has a “Yes” in the “Kills dominator?” column)		N/A	Your mind winks out of existence.

Not Normally Possible for the Player

A player can obtain the body of any creature via the use of a ganglionic teleprojector for mechanical bodies, Metamorphosis for organic bodies, or Domination for bodies without a mental shield. There is no known way to obtain a noncreature body, so the following methods of instant death are impossible for the player to do without wishes.

Method	Kills dominator?	Message
Having one's flywheel disabled, such as by becoming broken from examining oneself, when one is a norm core mk I, norm core mk II, or norm core mk III	No	Your flywheel failed catastrophically.
Being gas and dissipating or merging with another cloud of gas	No	You dissipated.
Being shot with a nullray pistol when one is normality gas	No	You were cancelled from existence.

References

This information is reliable as of patch 2.0.203.31.