Brand

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Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Armour brands are also called egos. See the ego page for armour brands.

Brands are special properties that weapons can have, granting the weapon additional effects. Usually, these effects amount to increasing the damage they deal, but others do exist.

Useful Info

When looking at a +9 broad axe of flaming, the "of flaming" is the weapon's brand (and the "+9" is the enchantment level). In general, brands are harder to change than enchantment.

Under no circumstances can a normal weapon have more than one brand. However, some unrands, such as Maxwell's Thermic Engine and the storm bow, have multiple.

Brands are one of the biggest differences between Unarmed Combat and weaponry: without using a transformation, unarmed fighters have no access to brands.

Sources

  • Reading a scroll of brand weapon will give a weapon a randomly selected brand, replacing any existing brand if there is one.
  • All randarts are guaranteed to have a brand, and cannot have their brand modified.

Divine

List of Brands

Melee Weapons

Brand Description
Antimagic Trog's special brand; causes monsters to fail their spells and temporarily reduces the player's maximum MP while wielded.
Chaos Xom's special brand; can inflict different effects with each attack.
Distortion Lugonu's special brand. Can have multiple damaging and Translocations-related effects upon a successful hit, including Banishment to the Abyss.
Draining Adds an average of 25% extra negative energy damage per attack, as well as draining the monster if susceptible.
Electrocution Inflicts 8-20 additional electricity damage on 25% of successful attacks (independent of the damage dealt).
Flaming Adds an average of 25% extra fire damage per attack. Prevents hydras from regrowing heads.
Freezing Adds an average of 25% extra cold damage per attack. Can temporarily slow cold-blooded monsters.
Heavy Adds +80% base damage, but makes attacks 50% slower. (Net increase of +20%)
Holy wrath The Shining One's special brand. Inflicts an average of 75% extra damage to demonic and undead monsters.
Pain Kikubaaqudgha's special brand. Inflicts additional negative energy damage based on the player's Necromancy skill.
Protection Gives the wielder +7 AC for a short period after hitting with the weapon.
Spectral Creates a spectral weapon on hitting an enemy, which attacks alongside the user. Damage to the weapon is partially redirected to the user. Found largely on two-handed weapons.
Speed Reduces weapon attack delay by up to 50%. Found only on short blades, staves, and some artefacts.
Vampiricism When attacking enemies that bleed, heals the player for a portion of the inflicted damage on 60% of attacks.
Venom Poisons monsters on attack, dealing extra damage over time.

Artefact Only

Brand Description
Disruption Adds an average of 100% extra damage to undead. Found only on the unrandart great mace Undeadhunter.
Dragon slaying Inflicts 75% more damage to dragons and dragon-like monsters. Found only on the unrandart lance Wyrmbane.
Reaping Raises creatures slain with it as allied zombies if they produce a corpse. Found only on the unrandart Sword of Zonguldrok.
Silver Adds an average of 16.67% extra untyped damage per attack, and more to monsters weak to silver. Found only on the unrand Lajatang of Order and some Throwing weapons.

Launchers

Brand Description
Chaos Applies different effects with each attack. Only available through scrolls of brand weapon.
Draining Adds an average of 25% extra negative energy damage per attack, as well as draining the monster if susceptible.
Only available through scrolls of brand weapon.
Electrocution Inflicts 8-20 additional electricity damage on 25% of successful attacks.
Only available through scrolls of brand weapon, on artefact crossbows, and the storm bow.
Flaming Adds an average of 25% extra fire damage per attack.
Freezing Adds an average of 25% extra cold damage per attack.
Heavy Adds +80% base damage, but makes attacks 50% slower. (Net increase of +20%)
Penetration Attacks fired from this weapon pass through all creatures in their path. Only available on artefact crossbows and the storm bow.
Speed Reduces attack delay by 50%. Only available on artefacts.
Vorpal Adds an average 20% extra untyped damage per attack.

Ranged weapon brands are mostly similar to melee weapon brands, but lack some of the rarer brands, and a few were altered.

Ranged weapons may also get pain or holy wrath (but not distortion) exclusively from Kikubaaqudgha's and The Shining One's capstone gifts.

Thrown Weapons

Brand Description
Dispersal Blinks the target when struck. Only appears on boomerangs.
Silver Adds 30% extra damage to most monsters and roughly 75% more to monsters weak to silver.

Only boomerangs and javelins can have brands; stones and large rocks are all unbranded. (Exception: one of the Dungeon Sprint maps offers a large rock of chaos. Naturally, it's being used against you.).

Additionally, both boomerangs and javelins have inherent properties that act much like brands -- boomerangs have the returning property, while javelins have the penetration property.

Darts

Brand Description
Poisoned Inflicts poison, dealing damage over time.
Curare Poisons, deals asphyxiation damage, and slows.
Atropa Inflicts blindness and may confuse.
Datura Inflicts frenzy.

Darts are a specialized form of thrown weapon that are designed to inflict status effects rather than deal damage. The effectiveness of darts is based on both your Throwing and Stealth skills, and is resisted by monster hit dice.

  • The chance of success is: 100 - 100 * (HD - 2) / (4 + pow), where pow = (Throwing + Stealth) * 2 / 3
  • There is an additional 3% chance of affecting any monster with 14 or lower HD
  • No darts can affect monsters that are undead, nonliving, or resistant to poison

Some statistics: with no skill you’re still at 100% to succeed on monsters with HD1 or HD2 (gnoll, most D:1 monsters), 75% on HD3 (Sigmund), 50% on HD4 (Duvessa), and 25% on HD5 (ogre). With a combined skill of 6 as a starting Brigand, you’re up to 62.5% on an ogre, or 50% on a yak.

Strategy

Some brands are more desirable on certain weapons than others:

  • Brands like venom, electrocution, and pain deal 'flat' damage. They are better on fast weapons, like demon whips and quick blades, as these weapons activate the brand more often.
  • Brands like flaming, freezing, and spectral deal percentage damage. A dagger of flaming receives the same +25% benefit as a giant club of flaming, even after you account for slaying and AC. (However, due to rounding error, the dagger receives a smaller boost on average.)
    • Do note that a dagger of venom is stronger than a dagger of flaming, since daggers are fast weapons with low base damage.

All added brand damage is calculated after AC reduction, and are not further reduced by AC.

History

  • Prior to 0.30, the vorpal brand (+16.7% average dmg) existed instead of heavy. Also, Ranged Weapons could have venom instead of draining.
  • Prior to 0.24, throwing weapons could generate with the exploding and steel brands. Additionally, tomahawks were reworked into boomerangs (which innately have the returning property), all javelins were given the penetration property, blowguns were removed and needles were reworked into the new version of darts, removing the confusion, frenzy, and paralysis, and sleep brands. Silver gained the boost once given by steel.
  • Prior to 0.18, ranged weapon ammo could have brands, but they would be overridden by launcher brands other than Vorpal, Speed, or Penetration.
  • Prior to 0.16, drawing a Blade card would apply one of several temporary brands to your weapon.
  • Prior to 0.14, there was a reaching brand for whips and demon whips, allowing them to make reaching attacks.
  • Prior to 0.10, Polearms needed the reaching brand to make reaching attacks.
  • All needle types except "poisoned" were introduced in version 0.6.
Brands
Melee weapons AntimagicChaosDistortionDrainingElectrocutionFlamingFreezingHeavyHoly wrathPainProtectionReachingSpectralSpeedVampiricVenom
DisruptionDragon slayingReapingSilver
Launchers AntimagicDrainingElectrocutionFlamingFreezingHeavyPenetrationSpeed
Throwing weapons AtropaCurareDaturaDispersalPoisonedSilver