Olgreb's Toxic Radiance

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Olgreb's Toxic Radiance
Level	4
School1	Alchemy
Source(s)	The Unrestrained Analects Young Poisoner's Handbook
Casting noise	2
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	100
Flags	Area

Causes the caster to radiate toxic energy, continuously inflicting poison on everything in line of sight for as long as the spell lasts.

Olgreb's Toxic Radiance (OTR) is a level 4 Poison Magic spell which both damages and poisons any creatures without poison resistance in the caster's line of sight for a few turns.

Venom Mages start with this spell, though it can also be evoked using the artefact staff of Olgreb.

Useful Info

The damage can be split into two parts:

• Impact damage. Olgreb's deals 1d(1 + pow/20) damage per 1.0 decaAut. Ignores AC. Poison vulnerable monsters take 150% damage from this.
• Poison status. Affected monsters have a 50% chance (on cast, and per 1.0 decaAut afterwards) to gain one poison "stack". Monsters without poison instead have a 100% chance. Keep in mind that monsters have a limit of 4 stacks. See the Poison article for more detail on how poison stacks work.

Players are affected by OTR differently; you'll take 2d3 damage worth of poison instead.

Creatures with poison resistance are completely immune to Olgreb's Toxic Radiance.

This spell has a duration of 1 + 1d(1 + pow/25) turns. Casting this spell again will increase the duration; it does not increase the rate of poison or poison damage.

Strategy

Olgreb's Toxic Radiance is a great spell for crowd-control. It isn't fast, but it is good at thinning out a crowd; weakening the strong monsters and killing the chaff. Very effective in the Spider's Nest, as most insects and spiders are vulnerable to poison. Also great against evasive enemies in general, like killer bees and boggarts.

Works very well with Ignite Poison. Ignite Poison deals 200% - 300% of expected poison damage, immediately. This makes OTR becomes even better at dealing with crowds, able to wipe entire screens of monsters in just a few turns.

This spell can be useful even into Vaults and Depths, decent against monsters like vault guards and deep trolls. Even in Zot, it can clear out draconians and orb guardians (at least with Ignite Poison). It's less useful in the lategame, since more and more monsters resist poison. But, by then, a level 4 spell will have done its work.

Tips & Tricks

• Olgreb's Toxic Radiance deals some direct damage, so it breaks monsters out of fear, and dispels friendly summons that don't resist poison.
• If there's only a single monster on the screen, it's better to use Poisonous Vapours instead.
• Monsters can have up to 4 poison stacks; monsters that are "extremely poisoned" cannot be poisoned further. In tiles, this is represented with 3 poison drops.

History

• Prior to 0.24, this spell did not deal direct damage on cast, and didn't properly trigger ally-harming conducts. Also, it inflicted poison based on actions and not time_taken, so swapping weapons or swinging a quick blade would cause more poison than waiting or moving.
• Prior to 0.19, the damage of this spell varied by distance and the spell also poisoned the player character.
• Prior to 0.13, this spell poisoned all visible creatures for a single turn, didn't cause any direct damage. and could be cast when drawing the Venom card from a Deck of destruction.
• In 0.10, the effectiveness of Olgreb's Toxic Radiance was modified to scale with spell power and to still affect poison-resistant players 10% of the time.