Sack of spiders

Trunk-only: This article pertains to a feature of Crawl which is being tested. It will likely change before the next release, and may even be removed entirely.

Type	Miscellaneous item
Name	sack of spiders
Icon

A woven silk bag. Opening it will cover the area with webs, spiders, and other skittering things. Evocations skill increases spider quality and webbing.

A sack of spiders is an evocable item which generates 2-3 allies themed around the Spider's Nest, and has a chance to create a web on hostile monsters in your line of sight. It can be used once being needing to be recharged with XP.

Evocations affects the strength of allies and the chance to web opponents; it does not increase the number of summons.

This item is mutually exclusive with the box of beasts. Like with other miscellaneous evocables, only 1 sack of spiders (or box of beasts) will spawn in a given game.

Potential Results

In ascending order of power:

• s Scorpion
• s Redback
• s Culicivora
• s Jumping spider
• s Tarantella
• s Wolf spider
• w Steelbarb worm
• s Demonic crawler
• s Broodmother

If your god despises a certain creature, it will be replaced with another one.

Summons have a duration of 27 to 171 turns; it does not depend on Evocations skill.

You have a 36 + (Evocations * 2) - [20 * (distance - 1)] % chance to web a hostile monster not already constricted.

Strategy

At low Evocations, a sack of spiders will often make weak allies... but they can still be useful as meat shields, and a redback or two can be very helpful in the early-game. At high levels of Evocations, it can create powerful allies and consistently web (i.e. net) enemies.

History

• In 0.31, sacks of spiders will be re-introduced, now as an XP-gated evocable which alternates with the box of beasts. Previously, you could find multiple sacks, each having a 33% chance to be consumed. Evocations skill increased the number of spiders, and decreased chance to fail the evocation. Also, the monster list was different.
• Sacks of spiders were removed in 0.25.
• Prior to 0.19, sacks of spiders didn't stack. Instead, each sack of spiders had 5-15 charges.
• Prior to 0.18, you could summon giant mites, spiders and trapdoor spiders at low Evocations.
• Prior to 0.15, the webs would be placed randomly, rather than targeting enemies.
• Sacks of spiders were added in 0.13.

Monster	Min. Skill	Max. Skill		Skill 0	Skill 3	Skill 6	Skill 9	Skill 12	Skill 15	Skill 18	Skill 21	Skill 24	Skill 27
B Worker ant	0	13		16.67%	15.18%	7.66%	1.79%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
B Soldier ant	0	13		83.33%	84.82%	52.68%	21.54%	7.53%	1.48%	0%	0%	0%	0%
s Redback	6	19		0%	0%	39.66%	57.92%	56.7%	33.41%	12.25%	0%	0%	0%
s Redback	8	27		0%	0%	0%	18.75%	28.69%	36.07%	33.04%	18.21%	12.53%	11.76%
s Jumping spider	10	27		0%	0%	0%	0%	7.09%	22.28%	28.57%	22.49%	15.48%	14.53%
s Orb spider	12	29		0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	6.76%	19.83%	27.31%	18.8%	17.64%
s Tarantella	13	29		0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	6.31%	19.86%	23.93%	22.45%
s Wolf spider	15	29		0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	12.14%	29.25%	27.44%
y Ghost moth	21	27		0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	6.17%