Escaping from (and avoiding) trouble

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

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised. Take advice as you see fit, and read at your own risk!

Sometimes, you can't win a fight, and sometimes the best thing to do is to run. Knowing when and how to escape a deadly situation is an essential part of playing Crawl. Crawl offers a number of escape options, as well as means of healing, disabling monsters, and many other things which just might save your life.

Avoiding Trouble

The best way to survive a troublesome predicament is keeping out of trouble in the first place. Let's see...

• Don't move towards enemies. In unknown territory, anything could be there. You might find a single orc easy prey, but an orc priest can be waiting in the shadows. Even if it was a lone orc this time, there is always the risk of 2 priests being there. And if fighting Ijyb was bad enough, you could always be adding Sigmund to the mix.

Use those turns to reposition yourself, retreat into known territory, and/or use ranged attacks to soften up the enemy. Even at 0 Throwing skill, stones, boomerangs, and poisoned darts can do some damage.

• When retreating, head towards known territory. It's often tempting to flee "into the black", directly away from the enemy. But, as mentioned above, you might find a dead-end or inconveniently placed monster. Retreat towards known areas, even if it means taking an extra hit or two. And make sure your route is actually safe - you don't want to be running away, only to come across even stronger enemies.

• Explore only at full HP & MP. If a monster is dangerous when you have 100% HP, it's even more dangerous when you have 75% HP. By pressing the 5 key, you can wait until your HP/MP are full again. This consumes a lot of turns, but don't worry. Unless you're going for a high score, or really want to get into a timed portal, you win nothing by saving time.

• Use tactical positioning. The layout of the Dungeon can be used to your advantage. For example, you can lead enemies into corridors in order to fight them one by one. That way, you avoid taking 8 hits at once! Even as a beefy axe user, being surrounded is a perilous situation.
  • Line of sight management: Enemies cannot ever attack you from outside your line of sight. Use this to your advantage against ranged foes. Take a corner as an example. You could charge directly into a centaur, giving it several turns to fire at you. Or, you can take 2 turns to duck behind a corner, wait for it to come to you, then step up into melee.

• Watch out for noise. If an enemy hears noise, it will come to its location. Try to always be aware of noise. The less noise you make, the less likely you're going to be drawing in a monster mid-combat.

Noise, in a highly advantageous position, can be helpful. It can lure enemies in. You can bring packs into a corridor, or bring monsters to stair dance.

• Skipping the floor is an option. You don't have to kill everything in Crawl. While it's usually good to clear each level, sometimes it isn't. Sigmund or a pack of orc priests are good reasons to skip D:2 or D:3, for instance. You can always come back later - when you have the items and experience to deal with it.

• Specialize before you generalize. Make sure you can actually kill things with your skills of choice, before investing into others. Many troublesome situations can arise from not having enough "kill power" to fight basic enemies. If you have to blow a potion for every cane toad you see, you're gonna run out of consumables. Don't forget to put your non-killing skills once you have enough power (e.g. for a caster, train Fighting, Dodging, Stealth after getting spells to a low failure rate).

• Triple visitation. Triple visitation means entering a level by all three staircases before you start exploring it in earnest. If you get into trouble, you may see a closer staircase to retreat to.
  • Note that this strategy is not without risks. Every time you go down an unknown stairs, there's a chance of instantly losing a game (say, being next to Sigmund or Grinder), or being put into an extremely dangerous situation. Therefore, this is best used on stealthy or swift characters.

Options when in immediate danger

While its best to prevent danger, sometimes it is unavoidable. Whenever you get shafted, or see an out of depth monster, or a dangerous pack of monsters just after finishing a fight, you can find help with various escape options:

These are just some of the more useful, immediate tools at your disposal. Many more items might solve lethal situations. For example, a potion of might may give you the damage you need to handle a dangerous enemy. However, the Might status is not likely to help you when you are at low HP (beyond a last resort).

Potions (q)

• Potion of berserk rage: hastes (and strengthens) you, and adds +50% temporary HP... but when it runs out, you will be slowed instead, and you won't be able to berserk again for a while! Mostly useful for killing things (thus precluding the need to escape in the first place), or sprint to a staircase a few (2-3) tiles away. Do not use berserk as a poor man's swiftness! You will be slowed much longer than the berserk will last.
• Potion of ambrosia: Leaves you confused, but recovers both HP and MP as long as its confusion lasts. Useful when it'll be a few turns before the next monster comes, or if you need a quick MP heal.
• Potion of curing: heals a few HP and removes poison and confusion, which may be critical to end.
• Potion of haste: allows you to run away, though you will be susceptible to ranged attacks until you break LOS/leave the level. The speed boost has nice synergy with scrolls of fog, allowing you to quickly break LOS. Also allows for kiting tactics.
• Potion of heal wounds: Heals approximately 25 HP (minimum 10 HP). In the early game, it is a significant boost, but slowly loses effectiveness throughout the game.

Scrolls (r)

• Scroll of fog: might help you cut line of sight from monsters that attack you from range. This can range from making a centaur get into melee range, to preventing an Ice Fiend from tormenting you during the orb run.
• Scroll of fear: helps in warding off packs or threats. It checks willpower, so may not be successful against all monsters, but it may give you enough leeway to escape. Does not work against undead or nonliving creatures.
• Scroll of silence: Prevent enemies (and you!) from casting both spells and godly abilities. Make sure to check them (xv) to make sure that silence can actually effect them! Very risky, but eases up many threats (such as Nikola or deep elves).
• Scroll of teleportation: after a short delay of a few turns, translocates you to a random habitable square on the same level. This can be combined with other means of escape, then healing until teleport kicks in. Teleport early; if not to survive the delay, to survive if you get into another dangerous position (or even right next to where you were!). Beware of teleporting in unexplored levels, or where there is a dangerous vault (such as Elf:3 or the end of a rune branch).
• Scroll of butterflies: Knocks enemies back and creates a mass of butterflies, which must be killed or move out of the way for enemies to attack you. Does not generate if a scroll of summoning is generated, and vice versa.
• Scroll of blinking: allows you to instantly translocate yourself to any visible square (transparent walls are treated as solid). Extremely powerful, a great "jail out of free card", but not infallible. See its page for when it doesn't work.

Quiver (Q)

Includes wands (V) and throwables (F) (most other options may also be quivered).

• Uncontrolled Blink: instantly translocates you to a random blink-accessible square within line of sight. This can easily make the situation worse: imagine blinking from the edge of an orc pack to the center. But consider that you can blink from the center of an orc pack to the edge. LOS management is critical - for example, you can use a scroll of fog in conjunction so you can't see tiles near the enemy. Even stepping into a hallway can help your chances. In general, only use this if you can comfortably live wherever you land.
• Paralysis/polymorph/Slow: very effective in the early game, where few enemies can resist. Outside of the early game or Formicids, it's best to act early (or buff yourself). Sources include wands, curare darts, and the Hexes school of magic.
• Wand of iceblast, Wand of roots, Lightning Rod...: Attacks that can't miss, be shrugged off, or disabled. You run the risk of rolling low, but enemies with low HP will likely die.
• Throwing net: Traps an enemy in a net, forcing them to waste turns breaking free. Even though spellcasters can still cast in a net, they often won't; monsters tend to "move" rather than cast.

Gods (a)

As you should expect, you won't get a god's abilities if you aren't worshipping the god in question.

• Zin's Sanctuary: protects you from nearly every attack, and scares away monsters. Combine it with other escape options, with healing, or use it near the stairs.
• Lugonu's Enter the Abyss: removes you from any situation immediately, leaving all pursuing monsters behind, but costs both HP and all of your MP. Keep in mind that you will then be in the Abyss, so it still might not "save your life".
• Elyvilon's healing powers: more powerful than potions of heal wounds, but are limited by piety.
• Cheibriados' Step from Time: Moves you to nowhere and lets time pass. During that time, monsters wander away and may even forget about you.
• Dithmenos' Shadow Form: Transforms you into a shadow, which reduces damage taken by half, makes you invisible, and grants a few resistances.
• Nemelex worshippers may draw upon their decks of escape. The tomb card can block any enemy not already close to you, the cloud card can act like a scroll of fog, and the elixir card can heal you. Combine with Triple Draw or Draw Four in order to get the most success.
• Ru: all the abilities can be used in dicey situations; two are more obvious (Draw Out Power is a heal, Power Leap opens up a gap). Apocalypse is very loud, but deals massive damage and gives statuses to anything still alive.

Many gods also have offensive abilities that can help in tough battles. It's better to use Okawaru's Finesse early than a scroll of blinking!

Escape Spells (z)

Translocations

Translocations are designed in order to manipulate movement. Most of them can be used to solve some dicey situations, though some more than others.

• Blink: Blinking can also be used to give you time to teleport: blink, activate a teleport and then start running away -- even if the monsters are faster than you, they can only gain one square a turn if you're running, giving teleport time to kick in. Has a cooldown unless at max power.
• Passage of Golubria: Creates two portals, one targeted, and another just beside you. Limited to open enough areas, and at low spellpower, short distances. But even a single tile gap will let you reliably get away from monsters to climb the stairs. The portals last for a moderately long time, so you can cast PoG, run/teleport away, cast it again, and end up at your original destination. This spell can also teleport monsters, assuming they are willing to get into the portal.
• Iskenderun's Mystic Blast / Dispersal: Both spells will force enemies away. IMB deals damage, is at a much more reasonable spell level, but has a chance to fail based on size. Meanwhile, Dispersal, if you succeed a willpower check, will cause a full teleport, but will always at least create a few tiles of distance.

Other Movement Spells

• Swiftness: Reduces your movement delay for a short time before slowing you, usually enough to get you to the stairs.
• Passwall: A spell people love to underestimate (though for good reason -- waiting multiple turns is always risky). If you notice your trouble early enough, and know the map layout, it can create a lot of space in only 2-3 turns.

Disabling Tactics

• Cigotuvi's Dreadful Rot: Very situational spell. It creates a cloud of poisoning miasma on your tile, but temporarily drains your max HP. Since most early-game monsters won't enter the cloud, it can be used to block hallways. Can also use a potion of attraction to drag enemies into the miasma, dealing heavy poison damage and the slow status. Beware that undead and nonliving creatures are immune to miasma.
• Hexes: Hex spells like Slow, Ensorcelled Hibernation, and Confusing Touch take a significant skill investment to be worth the turns and MP. A good option for Enchanters, who already use these spells for their day to day killing. Most of these allow a clean escape, and clean stabs.
• Mephitic Cloud: Confuses foes, which is very effective when it works. Creatures with poison resistance are immune; monsters with 100+ HP will also often resist. Even without immunity, Mephitic cloud can be used against an adjacent enemy in most cases (aim at the *):

.........  .........
...###...  ....###..
...#*#...  ....#*#..
...##Y...  ....Y##..
....@....  ....@....
.........  .........

Also note that risking self-confusion is sometimes worth it. If worse comes to worst, you can always drink a potion of curing (which you might have been wanting to do anyway). Most enemies can't, and even humanoids are unlikely to be carrying more than one potion.

Other

• Summoning: Several summoning spells are great for defensive purposes even if they're useless for offense. You can exchange places with allies automatically, but an enemy will have to fight through or walk around them to get to you. This means that even a lowly rat can open up that vital one-square space for a stair escape!
• Death's Door and Borgnjor's Revivification: high level, emergency Necromancy spells. Death's Door makes you invulnerable for a short time, but will leave you with very little HP. Borgnjor's Revivification restores your health to the maximum; at the cost of permanent maximum HP. Use these when you know you have to; and have the Necromancy to spare.

Escaping Trouble

• Prepare early. Once you know that a certain monster type or pack is dangerous, act like it's dangerous. Run before it gets melee, be ready to use consumables/god abilities quickly, etc.

• Stair dance. "Stair dancing" is a tactic used to separate monsters. Since only adjacent monsters follow you up, stairs can be used to split groups of monsters.

There's a huge difference between "fighting 2 orcs, resting, and fighting 3 orcs", and "fighting all 5 orcs at once". Also, fighting a nasty monster on a "cleared" level is much less troublesome than an unknown one. On a cleared level, it's much less likely to encounter new monsters during the fight, and teleport becomes much more reliable as an escape option (teleporting on an unknown level can be nasty!)

Keep in mind that going up a stair takes 2.5 decaAut, meaning adjacent monsters will get 2 or even 3 attacks on you. Depending on the layout of the upstair, you may have to take extra attacks in order to get a better position.

Enemies with Blink (as rare as it is) can be left on the upstairs with little resource cost; lead them up, let them blink, and go back down. Leave them 2 levels just to be safe.

• Use your abilities. When you're facing an emergency situation, slow down. Stop and think about every item and ability at your disposal. Often times players forget to use their spells, god abilities or even consumables when it matters the most. You can even save your game, ask for advice from other players and come back later!

• Use marginal tools to non-marginal effect. Items like the scroll of noise or scroll of immolation are often pooh-poohed, yet they can save your life, or at least save you from using better consumables. Using that wand of paralysis early might mean saving a potion of heal wounds, scroll of blinking, etc. for another situation. Don't toss them until you're sailing smoothly... or even at all!

• Engage fast monsters by stepping away. Fast monsters can get 2 turns for every 1 of your turns. If you wait, the enemy could get a free hit (move -> attack). Stepping away means they'll have to spend 2 turns moving towards you. In the case of bats, they won't have the chance to move away from you.