Scroll of poison

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

Type	Scroll
Name	Scroll of poison
Icon

A scroll that fills the air with poison, covering every unoccupied space in sight with toxic fumes.

Reading a scroll of poison creates poisonous clouds everywhere in line of sight that is not occupied by a player, monster, or another cloud. Poisonous clouds have no effect on creatures with poison resistance.

Tips and Tricks

• The most obvious use of this scroll is to maintain a distance from nearby enemies (in the early game) and pelt them with ranged attacks. Hexslingers start with a scroll of poison for this purpose.
• Unless you already have poison resistance, make sure that you can afford to remain in place for an extended period of time. Enemies can still fire their own ranged attacks, and monsters that are poison-resistant or strong enough will run at you all the same. By the midgame, most enemies are strong enough to walk through the poison clouds.
• The poison clouds can do a very surprising amount of damage, assuming the enemy isn't resistant or immune to poison. Even caustic shrikes can be severely weakened by this scroll's clouds. Of course, this doesn't stop these enemies from hitting you.
• Ignite Poison combos well with this scroll, whether as a way to finish off things that have been heavily poisoned by the clouds, or to engulf resistant enemies that blithely ignored the poison in a sudden sea of flames. Just be aware that fire also hurts you more than poison -- if you need to go anywhere before the flames die down, you'll want fire resistance.
• Also works well with fear (scroll of fear, Cause Fear). Scared monsters will walk right into the clouds.
• This scroll is effective against invisible enemies; even with rPois, their location will be revealed through the clouds. Unseen horrors in particular will often blunder through the clouds with their batty movement, leading to a quick death. If you need to attack a suspected invisible enemy, use ctrl-direction or v to attack in place.

History

• Scrolls of poison were introduced in 0.29.