Teleportation

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

Teleportation is the act of moving from one place to another instantaneously. Teleports differ from blinks in two main ways: teleports have no range limit while blinks are limited to visible destinations; and, blinks are instantaneous while teleports generally take some time to kick in.

There are several ways to teleport in Crawl:

• Reading a scroll of teleportation.
• Stepping on a teleport trap.
• You occasionally teleport while wandering in the Abyss.
• Casting Teleport Other or the Dispersal spell to teleport monsters.

A few methods will try to teleport you next to monsters:

• The teleport effect from sourceless malevolence (i.e an explore-based teleport trap).
• Being randomly teleported by the Teleportitis mutation.
• Unwielding a distortion branded weapon.

Manually caused teleports have a delay of 3-5 turns between starting the teleport and the teleport taking effect. Because of this, teleportation cannot be completely relied upon to get the player out of trouble. In the Abyss, the delay is 8-19 turns. If you are in the Realm of Zot or have the Orb of Zot, this delay is 8-14 turns. Randomly-caused teleports (sourceless malevolence, teleportitis, Abyss shifts) happen instantly, as well as teleports from teleport traps and unwielding distortion.

Once a teleport takes effect, the player is instantly teleported to the destination. Like blinks, teleports leave a cloud of translocational energy behind, though this has no game effect (other than stopping other clouds from existing).

Teleports never place the player over in dangerous clouds, and only over lava or deep water with a permanent source of flight. Amphibious characters may also teleport into deep water.

Formicids cannot teleport except for the occasional automatic shifts which occur in the Abyss. Certain artefacts also prevent teleportation.

History

• Prior to 0.28, monsters could cast Teleport Other, to teleport other. And Teleport Self, in order to teleport themselves.
• Prior to 0.26, the *Tele intrinsic could be obtained from a ring of teleportation, acting like teleportitis.
• Prior to 0.25, suffering a Translocations miscast effect could teleport the player, and being hit by a distortion weapon could too.
• Prior to 0.17, teleport destination could be controlled with teleport control. Also, 20% of Abyss teleports had a delay of only 3-5 turns.
• Prior to 0.13, the teleport control status effect did not delay teleports.
• Prior to 0.9, players had access to Teleport Self.