The Tavern

I saw them in trunk and had no idea what they were, so I confronted it(it didn't have a red name) and ended up in a confrontation where I had to use 3 teleportation scrolls, 3 blink scrolls, 2 digging charges, and a fog scroll just to survive.

They aren't on the wiki, whats the dealio with these things? They seem extremely powerful compared to other drakes. Perhaps I was just very unlucky though.

I think they're just like the old red ones, except they have a cold attack. The red ones occasionally gave some of my runners issues. My ghoul just met and ate several of the new blue ones without much hassle. His rC probably made the difference.

AFAIK they're fire drakes but with a flash freeze breath - which is quite a bit more dangerous as I think it never misses.

Flash freeze has been changed from automatic_hit to similar chance to hit of old fire drakes' breath.
Anyway yes, they are like drake with a cold attack that slow your movement for a while instead of fire drake - i hope they're going to be renamed to a simpler ice drake for consistency's sake.

Anyway if some how you struggle against those, just threat like dangerous speed 10 monster with nasty ranged attack - so ?fog is best thing, but also ?blink etcetera.
But they are kinda wimpy, so probably you have been quite unlucky, a normal char should be tackle them easily 1v1

Fire drakes were speed 12, so I assume rime drakes also are.

That underlines how much they have put me in trouble in the past.
Or more realistically how a bad player I am.

I quickly realized that running away from them is the worst thing I could possibly do. They are about as squishy as basilisks, it appears to be better to just kill them quickly at close range.

They should be renamed 'rhyme drakes' and get a sweet rap battle cry.

[Source]Merriam Webster Dictionary[/Source]

Alright. WHY is this some rarely used word drake instead of IDK, Frost Drake?

???

English isn't even my first language and I know this word. You get rime on your windows in winter. It's a very normal phenomenon in any country that has winter, and there is no other word for it. Do you live somewhere without winter or something? ._.

"Rime" sounds prettier than "frost." PleasingFungus has a way with words.

It's probably a regional thing then, where I'm from you'd just say "frost" on the window. Now GRIME, we know GRIME, we are tough on GRIME.

1. This is an extremely obscure word in American English, we just call the stuff on windows frost or maybe ice. I'm not sure if there's a dialect of English where this word is actually used, google ngram suggests unlikely. 2. The stuff on windows in most places probably isn't rime as rime is specifically something formed from frozen/supercooled fog, and this is really rare in all the winter climates I've lived in.

(However, I don't object to using obscure words in crawl, I kind of like the sound of "rime drake" actually. Though I had to look it up when I first encountered one.)

In modern English, this word is most often used in fantasy settings, either as a noun or part of a monster/spell name. What do you know, this is also how DCSS uses it!
(It's more romantic and flavorful than "frost")
(romantic-
of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.
"a romantic attitude toward the past"
synonyms: idyllic, picturesque, fairy-tale)

My first thought is always of a particular flavour of horror, thanks to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

FR: Rename all mummies as albatrosses (and bennu to sacred albatross), reflavor tomb as a sunken ship infested with an undead albatross flock, change anubis guards to humans that yell pirate-themed one-liners to alert each other (they're immune to torment because they're too boozed up on rum to feel any pain), add new and flavorful albatross curses.