Draft:Hyena

Omega 0.90.4

h Hyena
Form	Ordinary creature
Attacks	1 attack: 0–4 physical before absorption; no defensive actions
Base level	1
HP	10
Hit	10
Defense	5
Action interval	4 ticks; lower is faster
Kill experience	8, when death is in sight
Generation	Random pools, jungle, desert and arena
Carried items	None at ordinary generation
Immunities	None innate
Remains	Hyena ribs; 50% on normal death
Remains use	Ordinary food; no alchemy
Traits Initially hostile and hungry Can swim Accepts food while hungry
Reference	minit.h in Omega 0.90.4, line 67

A hyena is a hungry, hostile animal, displayed as a brown h. It pursues and attacks the player, but accepting ordinary food can make it peaceful. Its edible remains are called hyena ribs.

Generation

Hyenas appear in ordinary random-monster pools and are explicitly included in jungle and desert encounters on LOCUS. Random encounter slots can also produce them elsewhere. They have no ordinary starting possessions.

The hyena is the third opponent in the initial unregistered Coliseum sequence, following the hornet and preceding the goblin. Registering skips these first three matches. The named arena hyena is awake and carries the disposable garage-door opener.

Form	HP	Hit / defense	Raw damage per attack
Ordinary	10	10 / 5	0–4
Arena	20	20 / 5	0–6

Both forms retain one attack and a base action interval of four ticks. The arena doubles the ordinary HP and hit without changing level, defense, speed or the eight-XP kill reward.

Behavior and feeding

A hostile hyena moves toward the player and attacks when adjacent. It can swim; water is not a reliable barrier against it. Its laugh is conversation text, without a fear attack or other special effect. At one HP, its next normal pursuit movement instead triggers retreat, drops possessions and shortens its base interval to two ticks. This threshold remains one HP in the arena.

While hungry, a hyena accepts ordinary food and becomes peaceful. It also accepts poisonous food, including a dead hornet. Poisoned feeding consumes the offering, inflicts 100 poison damage and moves alignment two points toward Chaos. Hyenas have no poison immunity, so this kills either form at its initial HP. Feeding clears its hunger: after a successful ordinary meal, do not expect a second poison offering to use the same feeding response.

Normal death drops any possessions, with a 50% chance of hyena ribs for an ordinary creature and a guaranteed corpse for the named arena form. The ribs supply six points of food reserve when eaten; normal hourly hunger checks consume one point. They have no alchemical transformation. The arena corpse's personal name does not remove its food use.

Strategy

Ordinary food offers a way past a hyena without fighting, at the cost of part of your food supply. Use Give while adjacent to it; cursed food cannot be given. This is particularly useful when another encounter or injury makes even modest physical damage undesirable. Its four-tick interval is shorter than the geek's eight, and its arena HP is twice the ordinary value, so experience with the opening geek match does not establish that you can absorb the hyena's attacks comfortably.

The previous arena hornet's poisonous corpse is a concrete alternative to melee if you retained it and accept the alignment cost. Pacifying the hyena alone does not win the match: normal death must record the victory. Poison feeding that kills it does use this death process. After a win, collect the opener before leaving; otherwise the corpse's value as food is secondary to being able to exit.