Spriggan's Knife

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

A dainty little knife which was made by Spriggans, or for Spriggans, or possibly from Spriggans. Anyway, it's in some way associated with those fey folk. It is more effective when stabbing unaware enemies, treating them as though they were completely helpless.

the +7 Spriggan's Knife

+7 dagger

Converts 50% of stabs to sleep-tier stabs.
+4 EV
+50 Stealth

Desirability

The Spriggan's Knife is an incredibly powerful item for stabbers. Monsters who are distracted, confused, or even those who haven't noticed you yet will have a 50% chance to take a sleep-tier stab, which is often a one-shot for a character with good Short Blades and Stealth skill.

There are many ways to get stabs, even against monsters with extreme HD or willpower. All monsters can fail to notice you, only a select few monsters are immune to throwing nets, even fewer are immune to a wand of light, and Uskayaw's Line Pass works on any enemy. Gozag, allied summons, or animated undead can distract enemies, which monsters are not immune to.

Unfortunately, it isn't much use to other characters unless you find it very early on, since an unbranded dagger is a poor weapon for general combat.

History

• Prior to 0.29, the Spriggan's Knife converted all stabs to sleep-tier stabs.
• Prior to 0.23, the Spriggan's Knife also had Dex+4 and MR+, but did not convert stabs to sleep-tier stabs.
• Prior to 0.15, the Spriggan's Knife had a +4, +10 enchantment.
• Prior to 0.14, the provided MR was only +20.
• This weapon was upgraded from a knife to a dagger with the removal of knives in 0.9.