Morph Ovum
From DoomWiki.org
Torpol's Morph Ovum in Heretic is different from the other artifacts. When it is used, several projectiles, which look like eggs, are fired in a spread, similar to that of the ethereal crossbow. Monsters hit by one of the projectiles will transform into a chicken. In this state, they become very easy for the player to kill.
If the player gets hit by a Morph Ovum projectile, they will transform into a chicken, and will have only 30% of their health. They cannot go over that limit and are more vulnerable to enemies. There is an advantage to this state in that the small size allows the player to go under low ceiling areas which would otherwise not be reachable. While in the chicken state, the player has a very weak "pecking" attack that deals 1-4 damage and is unable to use any equipped weapons. However, if you can kill another player while being a chicken, or get hit by another Morph Ovum while already transformed, you turn into a super chicken. Once you become a super chicken, your beak deals 4-32 damage. In addition, the small size and extremely fast movement of a player turned into a chicken can make for a difficult target during deathmatch.
The effect of the Morph Ovum wears off after 40 seconds, returning players and monsters back to normal after a while. Health for players returns to 100%.
The Morph Ovum is useless against iron liches, maulotaurs, and D'Sparil (and his chaos serpent).
This item is included in the items percentage displayed at the end of each level.
When killed, iron liches have a ~20% chance to drop a Morph Ovum.
Antidote[edit]
Players who have been transformed into chickens by the Morph Ovum may return to their normal state immediately by using a Tome of Power if one is available.
Data[edit]
| Morph Ovum data | |
|---|---|
| Thing type | 30 (decimal), 1E (hex) |
| Enum | MT_ARTIEGG (10) |
| Appears in | Shareware Heretic Heretic/SSR expansion |
| Radius | 20 |
| Height | 16 |
| Sprite | EGGC |
| Frames | 4 [ABCB] |
| Class | Item Pickup |
| Flags | 8388609 (decimal) 00800001 (hex) |
| Flags list | 0: Can be picked up 23: Affects item % |
| Flags2 | 524288 (decimal) 00080000 (hex) |
| Flags2 list | 19: Float bobbing movement |
Appearance statistics[edit]
In the IWADs the Morph Ovum is first encountered on these maps per skill level:
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The IWADs contain the following numbers of Morph Ovums per skill level:
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Other games[edit]
The same item reappears in Heretic II, but as a spell. Hexen has a similar item, the Porkalator, which turns enemies into pigs. Another similar item appears in Hexen II and is called the "Seal of the Ovinomancer". It turns enemies into sheep.
Trivia[edit]
- Morph Ovum sprites, modified to have a golden hue, are present in the Hexen IWAD but unused in the game as the item was replaced with the Porkalator which transforms its victims into piglets.
- It is possible to morph yourself into a chicken in single player vanilla Heretic, as well as Chocolate Heretic, Crispy Heretic, and other versions that use the vanilla save file format. Morph Ovum projectiles normally pass through the originating player without effect; however, projectile attribution data is not saved in vanilla save files. As a result, if a player positions themself in the path of an incoming Morph Ovum shot (via the Chaos Device, for example), saving and reloading the game will cause them to be hit by the shot as though it were fired by another player. This does not work in vanilla Hexen (in that game there are other ways to morph yourself into a pig), nor does it work in ZDoom-based or other source ports which have their own save file format.
