Mimic

Version 0.9: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

mimic !
HP	30-58
HD	8
XP	467
Speed	8 (item) 10 (feature)
AC	5
EV	1
Will	32
Attack1	12 (hit: poison)
Attack2	12 (hit: plain)
Attack3	12 (hit: plain)
Resistances	rPois+, rElec, rF+, rC+
Vulnerabilities	none
Habitat	land
Intelligence	Normal
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Non-living
Size	variable
Type	item/feature mimic, item/feature mimic
Flags	No skeleton Stationary Fighter (feature)

An apparently abandoned item, actually a vicious little beast in disguise.

Useful Info

Mimics are irritating creatures which appear to be tantalizing items or common dungeon features, but which will attack and chase you once revealed. They are more than a match for careless, fragile characters, packing poisonous bites and multiple moderately powerful attacks. Item mimics can be found on Dungeon:7 or lower, as well as in any branch except for the Ecumenical Temple, and are slightly slower than the average character. The faster feature mimics can start appearing on D:10, and are absent from the Temple, the Slime Pits, and the Vestibule of Hell.

Tips & Tricks

• Be wary of extremely high quality gear found early on. While gold dragon armour or crystal plate mail can occasionally appear on any floor, it might be wise to test it for fangs first:
  • Casting Apportation on a mimic will reveal it without moving it ("The <item>/<feature> mimic twitches!").
  • Unlike items, nothing can stand on a tile with a mimic in it, so monsters will step around them.
  • If your minions stand adjacent to an item mimic, it will attack them.
  • If you've already injured a mimic on this floor and it managed to escape, you may find an "item" later on with a health bar.
• How to kill a mimic:
  • Powerful melee fighters can usually plow right through them, especially if they have poison resistance.
  • They have an EV score of 1. Bolt of Inaccuracy can annihilate them in a single hit.
  • Almost any Summonings spell can take them out without risk. They're fragile enough that a pack of imps can make short work of them.
• Mimics almost always identify themselves when you stand next to you. A Blink spell can put some quick distance between you and it.
• When dealing with feature mimics, escape won't be nearly as easy, but they're otherwise not any harder.
• Note the differences between a weapon mimic and a hostile dancing weapon: dancing weapons are much faster, may have any branded attack, and leave behind an actual weapon as a "corpse." A dancing weapon's attack strength and speed vary on the type of weapon being animated and can be quite powerful.

Trivia

It's not impossible to find a feature mimic in the Lair impersonating a stairway to the Swamp... surrounded by the gases and the initial monsters associated with a Swamp entry stairway. Like we said, they're clever.

History

Feature mimics were introduced to the game in 0.8. Due to numerous bugs, they were retired in 0.9, to be reintroduced in 0.10 after much bugfixing.

Prior to 0.10, item mimics were immobile, and in general they were cowardly creatures that teleported away when struck with a ranged attack.