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 you have.

Note: As a stylistic choice, this article uses “you” to refer to any creature that may be affected, not only the player. If specifically the player is meant, the phrase “the player” will be used.

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. (Creatures not controlled by the player do not use Domination.)

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 when the player dies that way, which happens when no death message is specified in the code that causes the death.

Method	Achievement	Kills dominator?	Message
Lose your last remaining head to decapitation	Hole Like a Head	No	You were decapitated by [someone].
End 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.
Get hit by the gaze of a lithofex	Aetalag	No	You were turned to stone by the gaze of a lithofex.
Stand in the path of a salt kraken or star kraken's consuming movement (indicated by flashing)	*gulp*	No	You were consumed whole by a [salt kraken/star kraken].
Cook with neutron flux (specifically cook 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.
Be turned into a gem by a gemming attack	Jeweled Dusk	No	You were transmuted into [a gem].
Be any temporary forcefield (such as from a stasis grenade, Force Bubble, or Force Wall) and either run out the duration of the effect that spawned you or disconnect yourself from an originating force projector	I-	Yes	Your mind winks out of existence.
Be affected by normality when your existence is supported by a reality-distorting effect (for example, being a Temporal Fugue clone or animated forcefield)	I-	Yes	Your mind winks out of existence.
Reach higher than 10,000°, causing instant vaporization	Heat Death	No	You were vaporized.
Drop below 1 Willpower while wielding the amaranthine prism	Wander Darkling in the Eternal Space	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.
Be a magmatic soupy sludge and drop below flaming temperature		No	You cooled into a block of shale.
Be a homogenized soupy sludge and destabilize after hitting another creature with your homogenized pseudopod.		No
Be a wall and get slammed (including by yourself)		Yes
Be a giant centipede nest and collapse due to spawning the maximum number of giant centipedes		Yes
Be a Temporal Fugue clone and run out the duration of the Temporal Fugue that spawned you		Yes
Be in a waking dream and have your original body be destroyed		No	Your dream collapsed.
Be a creature scripted to disappear when you leave the zone, and leave the zone (e.g., Eskhind in the charred tree, after you tell her to go to Bey Lah)		Yes	Your mind winks out of existence.
Have your original body be destroyed when dominating another creature (caused by, e.g., any effect on this page being applied to your body while you're away)		N/A	Your original body was lost.
Have the creature you're dominating be 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.

A player can obtain the body of any creature via the use of Domination for bodies without a mental shield, a ganglionic teleprojector for mechanical bodies, or Metamorphosis for any body.

Many environmental features, such as walls, can be converted into creatures via the use of Spray-a-Brain or a nano-neuro animator.

Not Normally Possible for the Player

The following methods of death require wishes for a player to experience them, as there is no known way for the things involved to be or become creatures.

Method	Kills dominator?	Message
Be stairs down, a deep shaft, or any other type of stairs or pit, and enter the same tile as another such object.	N/A
Have your flywheel disabled, such as by becoming broken from examining yourself, when you're a norm core mk I, norm core mk II, or norm core mk III	No	Your flywheel failed catastrophically.
Be gas and dissipate or merge with another cloud of gas	No	You dissipated.
Get shot with a nullray pistol when you're normality gas	No	You were cancelled from existence.
Be half of a sultan reliquary and become separated from your other half (if you have one), such as by moving up against a solid object	No	You broke apart.

References

This information is reliable as of patch 2.0.203.33.