Sword of Zonguldrok

Version 0.17: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A blade imbued with the essence of a legendary necromancer. Those slain in its presence are reanimated by its power and forced to fight on.

the +9 Sword of Zonguldrok

+9 double sword

Reaping brand
Cursed, 33% chance to recurse itself on equip
Evil
Raises angry dead (Each turn that you wield this sword, random corpses in your line of sight will be raised as hostile dead. They are worth no experience or piety)

It is always part of the loot in Zonguldrok's Shrine, but can be found elsewhere too.

Desirability

The sword of Zonguldrok is a decent weapon, but not a great one. Even with its high enchantment level, its lack of a damage brand makes its damage output noticeably worse than a well-enchanted branded demon blade or bastard sword, and it will cause you food problems unless you judiciously unwield it to kill edible, easy monsters. This is a task easier said than done given the sword's tendency to recurse itself. Friendly zombies can be useful, particularly if you can clear the majority of a floor before using your army to storm a particularly nasty vault, but the sword doesn't really do anything that being able to cast Animate Dead or even Animate Skeleton doesn't do. Use this weapon if you have nothing better yet and you don't see food problems being an issue.

Due to the fact that it passively uses a necromantic effect each turn, even wielding it is enough to offend the good gods.

Sadly, for followers of Beogh, this item is ineligible for gifting to your orc allies.

History

• In 0.9 Zonguldrok was upgraded from long sword to double sword.