Inkwell talisman

Version 0.33: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

A small bottle filled with mystical ink. Transforms the user into a walking scroll whose body is tattooed with the knowledge of a hundred mages. Being an omnibus of magical techniques gives them increased skill with all spell schools, which improves with Shapeshifting skill, but the form's ability to channel such magic is limited, and it cannot cast spells above level 4. Its attacks are also very weak, but have a chance of restoring 1 MP when they hit.

An inkwell talisman is a talisman that changes you into a walking scroll.

Useful Info

When eVoked, an inkwell talisman turns you into Walking Scroll Form, which lasts until you end the form. Entering or exiting a form takes 5 turns.

Walking Scroll Form has the following effects:

Offensive traits

• Unarmed Combat: 3 base damage (no bonus)
• Your melee attacks have a 50% chance to restore 1 MP when you hit (even if you do no damage).
• Your melee attacks do 50% less damage.
• Your skill with all magic schools is increased by 0.5 + Shapeshifting/2, capped at +4.

Defensive traits

• You become nonliving: unbreathing, cannot be put to sleep, lacking blood
• Your size is tiny
• Poison immunity
• Fire vulnerability (rF-)
• Your max MP is increased by 4-9 MP, depending on your Shapeshifting skill.

Restrictions

• Melded Gear: All weapons and armor
• Suppressed mutations: Anatomy, substance, blood
• You can cast only level 1-4 spells.

Walking Scroll Form has a minimum Shapeshifting skill of 0, and the maximum skill is 7.

Strategy

Walking Scroll Form provides many useful benefits for casters in the early-mid Dungeon. It grants valuable poison immunity, protecting from threats like adders and hornets, while boosting MP, casting skill, and EV. You can get away with having no or very little Shapeshifting skill in this form.

Still, you must be careful of early fire attacks, such as from orc wizards, bombardier beetles, wands of flame, and weapons of flaming. In addition, it's infeasible stay in this form for long due to the spell level cap and lack of armour.

If you find another talisman in a timely manner (e.g., a scarab talisman for fire casters, rimehorn talisman for ice), this form can act as a useful bridge for those forms.

Walking Scroll Form

History

• Inkwell talismans were added in 0.33.