Deep Dwarf

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This article is about the player species. For the monster, see Deep Dwarf (monster). For a list of all monstrous deep dwarves, see List of deep dwarves.

Deep Dwarves are short, hardy people who, unlike their extinct surface relatives, never left the underground homelands. Living there for countless generations made them turn pale and lose all ability to regenerate health over time, or to have their rate of regeneration hastened by any effects. Deep Dwarves can instead draw on their magical essence to heal, but doing so will gradually deplete their maximum reserves of magic. They are passively able to reduce all incoming damage, and their empathy with the earth allows them to sense their surroundings; these abilities increase in power as they gain experience levels. Naturally, Deep Dwarves are quite adept with all arts of avoiding blows and damage. Offensively, they are skilled users of axes, crossbows, and slings. Deep Dwarves are highly spiritual beings, often portrayed as actual spirits by outsiders; because of this, their skill with invocations is great, and they often rely on divine assistance for healing. They are most at home with the magic of earth and death, eventually gaining some resistance to the dark powers of necromancy.

Innate Abilities

• No Regeneration: Deep Dwarves cannot heal lost HP naturally, nor benefit from any non-divine form of regeneration.
  • Deep Dwarves will not passively regain MP if wearing an amulet of guardian spirit.
• Passive Mapping 1: Deep Dwarves can sense parts of the layout of the dungeon around them.
• Damage Reduction (also known as "damage shaving"): Deep Dwarves suffer less damage from every source. This applies separately to every source of damage, every time it is dealt; for instance, damage shaving generally negates the effects of all but the worst cases of being poisoned.
• Heal Wounds: Deep Dwarves have an innate Heal Wounds ability, which has a 25% chance to permanently reduce their maximum MP by 1 when used. Notably it has a chance to fail, with a decreased chance of failure at higher experience levels.

Deep Dwarves have a base Strength of 11, Intelligence of 8 and Dexterity of 8 (before Background modifiers) and normal base magic points.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Fighter, Hunter
• Zealots: Berserker
• Mages: Necromancer, Earth Elementalist

Level Bonuses

• +1 strength or intelligence (equal chance) every 4th level.
• 20% more hit points than average.
• +6 willpower per level.
• At levels 9 and 18, your Passive Mapping is upgraded to ranks 2 and 3, respectively.
• At level 14, gain Life Protection 1.

Damage Reduction

The formula for Deep Dwarves' damage reduction is 1d(1 + 1d(1 + floor(XL / 3))). This is applied against all damage they receive, even against attacks that are normally irresistible like smiting or damnation. It is not applied to damage from spell or ability activation sources, such as Makhleb's abilities. The reduction is improved every three experience levels as per table below.

Level	Maximum	Average
1	2	1.5
3	3	1.75
6	4	2
9	5	2.25
12	6	2.5
15	7	2.75
18	8	3
21	9	3.25
24	10	3.5
27	11	3.75

Minimum reduction is always 1 point of damage.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Deep Dwarves start with all the skills and equipment listed for their background.

Difficulty of Play

Deep Dwarves are a moderately easy species to play, so long as you work around their lack of natural HP regeneration. They start the game with a heal wounds ability, which functions as a very reliable panic button (as long as you don't wait so long that you would die if it failed to work). Deep Dwarves also have powerful damage shaving that scales up with their character level. However, one should take into account Deep Dwarves' lack of natural regeneration when choosing one's god and background. Some strategies for how to offset this disadvantage can be found below.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	-1	Armour	1	Spellcasting	-2
		Dodging	1
Maces & Flails	0	Shields	1	Conjurations	-1
Axes	1	Stealth	3	Hexes	-2
Polearms	-1			Summonings	-1
Staves	-1	Invocations	3	Necromancy	1
Unarmed Combat	-1	Evocations	3	Translocations	1
Throwing	-1	Shapeshifting	N/A	Alchemy	N/A
				Fire Magic	-1
Short Blades	-1			Ice Magic	-1
Long Blades	0			Air Magic	-3
Ranged Weapons	N/A	Experience	-1	Earth Magic	3

Strategy

Initially, you start with a heal wounds ability with a chance to lose one permanent MP. Use it. You're not going to regain that lost health naturally, so whenever your HP is at least 20 points or so below maximum, heal. Don't be afraid of running out of healing - you can always train more Spellcasting or Invocations to get more MP, and most characters should never run low on max MP. Save potions of curing for situations where you have a negative status effect (such as poison or confusion), and potions of heal wounds for life-or-death situations where you cannot afford the fail chance on your innate ability—using them to simply heal HP is wasteful.

Later on, you will need a source of renewable healing, in addition to the usual means of non-renewable (ability and consumable) healing. Consumable healing and your maximum MP will eventually be exhausted if you don't find another way to heal. There are only a few ways to go about this:

Healing Through Necromancy

The Vampiric Draining spell is an excellent choice for a Deep Dwarf. It requires a living target in melee range to be effective; luckily, the game provides plenty of these. Vampiric Draining is only found in the Book of Necromancy or in randart spellbooks. Vampiric Draining can be obtained in three ways:

• By starting as a Necromancer
• By finding it randomly
• Reaching * piety with Kikubaaqudgha

Gifted necromancers can also use Borgnjor's Revivification to heal, but this is as much of an emergency spell for Deep Dwarves as it is for any other character, given its cost in max HP.

Passive Divine Healing

Jiyva gives passive HP regeneration, resulting in a playstyle similar to other species. Unless an early altar is found, however, a different source of healing will be needed to survive through Lair.

Two gods passively give HP for kills:

• Makhleb gives HP for killing most enemies. Historically it has been by far the most common choice for Deep Dwarves, since Makhleb's healing is useful everywhere, and its other abilities are useful to just about any character build.
• The Shining One gives HP on killing "evil" enemies (namely demons, undead, and many spellcasters). This alone is not sufficient in most areas of the game, however; only in Pandemonium, Hell, Crypt, and Tomb is it likely to be a reliable, consistent source of healing. Also note that worshiping The Shining One precludes using Necromancy and vampiric weapons as means of healing.

Active Divine Healing

Six gods have abilities which can heal Deep Dwarves.

• Elyvilon gives a Heal Self ability at *** that costs piety. While piety is only gained through exploration, accomplishing this is aided by the Deep Dwarves Passive Mapping ability. Training Invocations skill increases the effectiveness of Heal Self.
• Trog grants Trog's Hand, a regenerative ability, at ** piety. Unlike most other forms of regeneration, this works on Deep Dwarves. Trog's Hand does not require Invocations to be effective—rather, it becomes more effective with increasing piety. Moreover, because worshipers of Trog are forbidden from using magic anyway, Deep Dwarven berserkers can lean more on their innate healing ability, as the loss of max MP is of no concern.
  • Note that Trog does not allow any forms of healing that involve spellcasting, and that excessive use of Trog's Hand will diminish how often one can use the powerful Brothers in Arms ability. Additionally, Trog's Hand itself has a duration that depends heavily on your piety: the less piety you have, the less Trog's Hand will heal you per use, and the more piety you will have to burn to stay alive. An Amulet of faith is an extremely valuable find for a Deep Dwarven berserker.
• Yredelemnul gives worshipers the ability to drain ambient life force at **** piety. This ability is quite expensive, requires considerable Invocations investment, and only works on living monsters. Taking Yred for the sole purpose of using this ability is inadvisable.
• Ru lets you use Draw Out Power at *** piety at the cost of slight (temporary) reduction to your maximum HP. In a similar vein to Yredelemnul, taking Ru solely for this ability may not be wise.
• Gozag's Potion Petition ability usually offers at least one option that includes a potion of healing or curing. However, it's unreliable, expensive, and is more suited for emergencies.
• Nemelex's deck of escape can contain the Elixir card which will heal you. However, Nemelex card gifts aren't going to grant sufficient healing for the rest of the game; you can expect to get about 5 Elixir cards throughout the entire game.

Vampiric Weapons

Vampiric weapons heal Deep Dwarves when they hit a living target. Unfortunately, they are quite rare, and there is no way to guarantee that they will be on a useful weapon. An early vampiric weapon may give a Deep Dwarf somewhat more flexibility in god choice.

Non-Renewable Healing

Deep Dwarves can heal themselves by quaffing a potions of curing or heal wounds. Unlike most forms of regeneration, potions of ambrosia also function normally and can be used to heal between fights.

So What Does All This Mean?

All of this essentially means that Deep Dwarves who wish to maximise their chances for success are fairly limited in their choice of god. Necromancers have the most flexibility; since they start with Vampiric Draining, they can do reasonably well with any "non-good" god they desire, although it may still be advisable to pick one who gives renewable healing. All others, with the exception of those who get lucky and find a Book of Necromancy early on, are strongly incentivised to choose between Makhleb, Trog, Elyvilon, or Jiyva.

History

• 0.28 Jiyva gives passive regeneration
• 0.27 Makhleb healing reduced in strength.
• Prior to 0.20, Deep Dwarves started with a wand of heal wounds and a Device Recharging ability which would recharge any wand or rod for 1 permanent MP, instead of their innate heal wounds ability. Also, they had Slow Regeneration 3 instead of the species-specific No Regeneration.
• Before 0.17, Deep Dwarves could not regenerate back temporarily reduced stats and had to use the now-removed potion of restore abilities. Deep Dwarven player ghosts also lacked the ability to regenerate.