Chaos Knight of Xom Guide - Revision history

Drac4 at 20:42, 15 March 2026

2026-03-15T20:42:05Z

Drac4: /* Altar-assisted Xom scumming */

2026-03-15T20:40:07Z

‎Altar-assisted Xom scumming

Drac4: /* Your spells can kill you */

2026-03-11T17:04:45Z

‎Your spells can kill you

Drac4: /* List of actions */

2026-03-11T13:33:06Z

‎List of actions

Drac4: /* List of actions */

2026-03-11T13:31:35Z

‎List of actions

Drac4: /* List of actions */

2026-03-11T13:30:54Z

‎List of actions

Drac4: /* Miscellaneous tips & tricks */

2026-02-27T22:12:18Z

‎Miscellaneous tips & tricks

Drac4: /* Special effects summary */

2026-02-08T19:23:46Z

‎Special effects summary

Drac4: /* Weak CKs */

2026-02-06T19:31:00Z

‎Weak CKs

Drac4: /* Bad tier */

2026-01-21T00:55:04Z

‎Bad tier

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:42, 15 March 2026
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−	{{~~version033~~}}{{Advice}}	+	{{version034}}{{Advice}}
	Chaos knight (CK) is considered a challenging start. You start with a god, but that god is Xom, a chaotic and unpredictable god capable of both granting you aid and making your situation worse. Chaos knight may seem like just a challenge start, a background somebody would pick only for a challenge, or to get their greater player title. Many have given up on Xom from the get-go, splatting dozens of CKs switching god as soon as possible. But there is a lot that can be said about Xom mechanics and the rather complex experience of having Xom as your god. In this guide you will find everything you should know about Xom in general, and about CK start in particular, everything you should know so that you can get the most out of a CK, or any character worshipping Xom for that matter.		Chaos knight (CK) is considered a challenging start. You start with a god, but that god is Xom, a chaotic and unpredictable god capable of both granting you aid and making your situation worse. Chaos knight may seem like just a challenge start, a background somebody would pick only for a challenge, or to get their greater player title. Many have given up on Xom from the get-go, splatting dozens of CKs switching god as soon as possible. But there is a lot that can be said about Xom mechanics and the rather complex experience of having Xom as your god. In this guide you will find everything you should know about Xom in general, and about CK start in particular, everything you should know so that you can get the most out of a CK, or any character worshipping Xom for that matter.

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 ===Altar-assisted Xom scumming===
 If you abandon a god you are put under penance. However, if you then rejoin the same god you will no longer be under penance, and your piety will be reset to the starting value. This can be exploited with Xom, since unlike with other gods, Xom piety doesn't start at 0, it starts in the middle, displayed as value 4 out of 7.
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 Altar-assisted Xom scumming is most useful when type 1 Xom scumming. If you find a Xom altar early on in the game before you reach level 9, then resetting your piety at an altar when it reaches one of the 3 lowest values will increase the number of positive Xom actions, and ideally you would be doing it.
 ===Does higher turn count matter?===

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:04, 11 March 2026
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	Here is how player clones work: They are basically like player ghosts except that if you are living they are living, if you are undead they are undead, they are not always insubstantial undead, unless you are an insubstantial undead. This means that things like curare can work on them.		Here is how player clones work: They are basically like player ghosts except that if you are living they are living, if you are undead they are undead, they are not always insubstantial undead, unless you are an insubstantial undead. This means that things like curare can work on them.
		+
		+	Clones can be dismissed with Yara's Violent Unravelling just like regular Xom summons, so if you have Yara's Violent Unravelling, then it's much easier to safely use the spells listed here without risking your clones killing you with your own spells.

	===Spells===		===Spells===

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 Xom messages: Xom feels like there should be more of you to share with the Dungeon., Xom gently smashes a mirror over your [@random_body_part_external_singular@|@random_body_part_external_plural@].
-Summons one friendly player illusion and two hostile player illusions. These aren't ghosts, so they can be vulnerable to poison and negative energy. These clones despawn relatively quickly, they can have a decently strong melee attack, but their main threat comes from their (your) spells. They can be dismissed with Yara's Violent Unravelling the same way summons from summon hostile monsters action can be. They are able to use the spells you have memorized, and Xom being able to summon your clones is the reason why you shouldn't memorize some spells in some situations (see ''Your spells can kill you'').
+Summons one friendly player illusion and two hostile player illusions. These aren't ghosts, so they can be vulnerable to poison and negative energy. These clones despawn relatively quickly, they can have a decently strong melee attack, but their main threat comes from their (your) spells. They can be dismissed with Yara's Violent Unravelling the same way summons from summon hostile monsters action can be. They are able to use the spells you have memorized, and Xom being able to summon your clones is the reason why you shouldn't memorize some spells in certain situations (see ''Your spells can kill you'').
 '''Drain your magic and produce monsters'''

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 Xom messages: Xom feels like there should be more of you to share with the Dungeon., Xom gently smashes a mirror over your [@random_body_part_external_singular@|@random_body_part_external_plural@].
-Summons one friendly player illusion and two hostile player illusions. These aren't ghosts, so they can be vulnerable to poison and negative energy. These clones despawn relatively quickly, they can have a decently strong melee attack, but their main threat comes from their (your) spells. They can be dismissed with Yara's Violent Unravelling the same way summons from summon hostile monsters action can be. They are able to use the spells you have memorized, and Xom being able to summon your clones is the reason why you shouldn't memorize some spells at some stages of the game (see ''Your spells can kill you'').
+Summons one friendly player illusion and two hostile player illusions. These aren't ghosts, so they can be vulnerable to poison and negative energy. These clones despawn relatively quickly, they can have a decently strong melee attack, but their main threat comes from their (your) spells. They can be dismissed with Yara's Violent Unravelling the same way summons from summon hostile monsters action can be. They are able to use the spells you have memorized, and Xom being able to summon your clones is the reason why you shouldn't memorize some spells in some situations (see ''Your spells can kill you'').
 '''Drain your magic and produce monsters'''

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 * As a felid CK you may want to learn some spells early on. If you don't find good spells in the dungeon odds are you will find some in Xom bazaar if Xom sends you there. You can ignore some of the risks I have mentioned in ''Your spells can kill you'' since as felid if you die you get second chances. Also, when you die that is amusing to Xom.
 ==Gameplay==
 Other guides focus a lot on gameplay. They cover the entire game, all of the important gameplay mechanics, and what skills specifically you should train in what order. I didn't really want this guide to be like that, I didn't want to write something as long as a PhD thesis, that would be 2 or 3 times as long as this guide, and most of which would be general gameplay advice. There are already other guides, some of which are well known, that spend a lot of time explaining general gameplay mechanics and giving general gameplay advice. Most of the time a CK is a melee fighter, what skills it is training, what equipment it is using, what attributes it is focusing on increasing, will be quite similar to something like a Fighter. When worshipping Xom you don't use invocations, and you get more evocables, so training evocations can be more valuable. Whether you are using a plain broad axe or a chaos-infused superweapon you are still training, or have trained, axes.

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 ===Special effects summary===
-There is a 3.27% chance to get an effect from the ''Great'' tier, 5.6% from the ''Good'' tier, if we add in the effects from the 3 tiers above bad there is a 4.08% chance to get halve willpower/blink/resistance, and there is 5.18% chance to get an effect from the ''Bad'' tier. If we combine the ''Great'' and ''Good'' tiers there is a 8.87% chance to get a "good" effect, and 5.18% chance to get a "bad" effect. If you do happen to roll confusion it usually doesn't matter what other effects you have rolled as it essentially disables an enemy, vitrify allows you to kill an enemy very quickly, and petrify disables an enemy after some time. Overall, the special effects are positive, there are some great effects that amount to an instakill, and some of the bad effects like might won't make a difference on a caster, plus some casters like ancient liches are already hasted, so rolling haste on them won't really make a difference. However, early game when you lack resources some of the effects can be dangerous, and it may be good to pick a weapon with some other brand.
+There is a 3.27% chance to get an effect from the ''Great'' tier, 5.6% from the ''Good'' tier, if we add up the effects from the 3 tiers above bad there is a 4.08% chance to get halve willpower/blink/resistance, and there is 5.18% chance to get an effect from the ''Bad'' tier. If we combine the ''Great'' and ''Good'' tiers there is a 8.87% chance to get a "good" effect, and 5.18% chance to get a "bad" effect. If you do happen to roll confusion it usually doesn't matter what other effects you have rolled as it essentially disables an enemy, vitrify allows you to kill an enemy very quickly, and petrify disables an enemy after some time. Overall, the special effects are positive, there are some great effects that amount to an instakill, and some of the bad effects like might won't make a difference on a caster, plus some casters like ancient liches are already hasted, so rolling haste on them won't really make a difference. However, early game when you lack resources some of the effects can be dangerous, and it may be good to pick a weapon with some other brand.
 Update: Since 0.32 chaos brand can actually roll foul flame. That's right, chaos can roll Brilliance's special brand, that is what causes the "convulses!" messages that can sometimes be seen when using chaos on non-demonic and non-undead enemies. Against non-demonic and non-undead enemies foul flame is as strong as speed, and against holy enemies it is stronger. The chance to roll foul flame is 2.67%. Of course, this adds another layer of inaccuracy to the chances for chaos brand effects mentioned on the wiki, as of writing this the table on the wiki does not include the foul flame effect.

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 Poltergeist also has -10% hp while mummy has normal hp. It does have a better melee aptitudes, but it does have -1 fighting, and its LB/SB aptitudes are average. You would probably want to pick LB or SB as a poltergeist CK. It does have good throwing aptitude, which is nice. Its shields aptitude is also below average, although for that to matter you would have to find a shield in the first place. Its dodging aptitude is +1, but dodging scales with dexterity, so to get a lot of EV you would need a lot of dexterity, and you won't have that much early game. Some other characters get +2 or +3 dodging aptitude, and EV is poltergeist's only defensive skill until it can get a shield.
 ===Deep Elf CK===
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 While for a DECK switching to a ranged weapon is much more viable and much easier than for a PoCK, you would first need to find a ranged weapon, and it can take some time to find one.
 ==Miscellaneous tips & tricks==

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 '''Might'''
-I put might as the worst effect, I would say it's worse than haste because of game mechanics. The way effects work is that you hit an enemy, if it rolls a special effect then it applies a buff or debuff to an enemy, and then the enemy turn follows. This means that you can hit an enemy, apply might which will increase its damage output by 50%, and then it hits you and deals 50% more damage with its attack, which you may not have expected. All the other effects work the same way, you could roll haste and then it's conceivable that the enemy gets 1 extra hit on you immediately which he wouldn't otherwise. But generally speaking getting hit for 50% more damage can be more dangerous than a chance to get hit twice, 2 attacks get reduced by AC twice, while 1 attack dealing 50% more damage will result in more damage getting past AC. That being said, might is unlikely to make a difference on enemy casters, while haste will. And haste is also dangerous on melee enemies, these 2 effects, might and haste, are pretty close in terms of how bad they are.
+I put might as the worst effect, I would say it's worse than haste because of game mechanics. The way effects work is that you hit an enemy, if it rolls a special effect then it applies a buff or debuff to an enemy, and then the enemy turn follows. This means that you can hit an enemy, apply might which will increase its damage output by 50%, and then it hits you and deals 50% more damage with its attack, which you may not have expected. All the other effects work the same way, you could roll haste and then it's conceivable that the enemy gets 1 extra hit on you immediately which it wouldn't otherwise. But generally speaking getting hit for 50% more damage can be more dangerous than a chance to get hit twice, 2 attacks get reduced by AC twice, while 1 attack dealing 50% more damage will result in more damage getting past AC. That being said, might is unlikely to make a difference on enemy casters, while haste will. And haste is also dangerous on melee enemies, these 2 effects, might and haste, are pretty close in terms of how bad they are.
 Overall, there is a 5.18% to get an effect from this tier.