Uskayaw

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Surrender yourself to the rhythm!"

Uskayaw the Reveller is a god of ecstatic dance. In the dungeon, Uskayaw appreciates the passion and rhythm of combat, rewarding followers for each strike they deliver and for the damage they deal their foes. The longer the dance continues, the greater powers Uskayaw offers. When the dance ends, Uskayaw quickly loses interest. Uskayaw offers powers that help worshippers continue the dance. Worshippers can stomp to damage foes around them and rapidly move through a line of creatures while confusing them. When a worshipper's dance reaches a certain point, Uskayaw will freeze all foes so that the dancer may take a solo. If the dance continues, Uskayaw will link the emotions of foes, forcing them to share their pain. If the dance continues, Uskayaw allows you to end it by melding with and then violently exploding a foe, killing it instantly.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Uskayaw (or any other god).

Appreciates

Uskayaw especially likes it when you hurt your foes. Piety increases with damage dealt. Unlike other gods, Uskayaw piety gain and loss is very rapid; you can reach full piety in a single prolonged fight, and will probably be back down at the starting piety level before the next one. See Piety Gain for more details.

In order to gain piety, you must damage enemies during an action. Your summons damaging foes does not count towards piety. If you miss, you won't get piety. Certain damage over time effects, like poison, Sticky Flame, and clouds, do not give piety. Constriction, including from Borgnjor's Vile Clutch, does give piety. Damaging your own friendly summons, nameless horrors, or firewood (such as fungi or pillars of salt) will not give piety.

Deprecates

• Abandonment.
• Inactivity (loses Piety quickly when not attacking foes, to a minimum of 1*).

Given Abilities

Uskayaw's awarded titles are based on Invocations skill, not piety. They are "Wallflower", "Party-goer", "Dancer", "Impassioned", "Rapturous", "Estatic", and "Rhythm of Life and Death".

Piety Level -

• Uskayaw offers no abilities at this level.

Piety Level *

• Stomp - Stomps down in time with the rhythm of the dance, sending a shockwave through all adjacent creatures. You will deal a percentage of a monster's current health, then extra flat damage which scales with Invocations. Damage = (Current Mons. HP) / 6 + 2d(2 + Invocations/2). (20 piety, 3 MP)

Piety Level **

• Line Pass - Passes through a contiguous line of creatures at superhuman speed, ending up in a new location. Any creatures passed through in this way will be confused, with duration based on Invocations and monster HD. (20 piety, 4 MP)

Piety Level ***

• Solo Time - Upon reaching this piety level, and randomly while above it, Uskayaw will briefly paralyze all enemies in your line of sight. Duration is based on Invocations skill. The paralysis lasts for (2 * Invocations) + (player_XL - mons_HD) + 6 aut (min. 10 aut, max. 40 aut, a.k.a 1-4 turns).

There are two ways of activating Solo Time:

• 1. When reaching 3* piety. Activating Solo Time for any reason will trigger a cooldown of 299 + 1d201 (300 - 501) aut. During the cooldown, if you reach 3* of piety again, Solo Time will not re-activate.

• 2. Randomly, when at or above 3* piety. The cooldown will not prevent Solo Time from activating this way. Instead, the more time you have left on the above cooldown, the less likely you are to re-activate Solo Time. Specifically, every action has a (time_taken) / (100 + cooldown) * 100% chance to proc Solo Time.

Piety Level ****

• Pain Bond - Upon reaching this piety level, and randomly while above it, all hostile monsters in line of sight gain the pain bond status. If a monster has this status, any damage they receive is shared with other nearby monsters with this status. Damage dealt from pain bond is itself shared by pain bond, allowing some form of recursion. Damage from pain bond does not give piety. Duration of the pain bond is 19 + 2d(7 * Invocations + player_XL - mons_HD) / 2 aut.

The percent of damage shared depends on distance: monsters share 80%/60%/40%/0% damage at one/two/three/four+ tiles away, respectively.

Pain Bond will activate when reaching 4* piety, and randomly if you are at or above 4* piety. This works in the same way as Solo Time does, using an independent cooldown.

Piety Level *****

• Grand Finale - Instantly kill a single monster, then you are moved to their former location. This ability can be used under stasis and movement restrictions, e.g. while wearing a -Tele item, being a Formicid, or even when in tree form. No monster is immune to this ability. Success rate increases with additional piety over 5* (120), as well as Invocations. (8 MP, sets piety to 1*)

Piety Level ******

• Uskayaw offers no new abilities.

Punishments

Uskayaw's wrath turns the powers of the dance against the offender. The prude will find their foes going berserk and will be forced to helplessly watch as foes execute their own solos. When the dance is getting too slow, Uskayaw will attempt to bring more revelers.

Strategy

Uskayaw's piety system creates a unique style of play. It encourages big, prolonged fights, especially against large groups of enemies. To facilitate this, Uskayaw offers a number of strong perks, which should (ideally) make these fights easier to deal with. This playstyle fits particularly well with these types of characters:

• Axes can cleave through multiple enemies at once, and axe users often have the heavy armour to stay in a fight.
• Stabbers benefit from irresistible confusion and paralysis. Stabs can deal massive damage, which not only gives high piety, but triggers the pain bond - causing the damage to spread between monsters. Grand Finale lets you take out tough monsters that are hard to stab, including pandemonium lords, the lords of Hell, and orbs of fire, in a single shot.

Summonings and Necromancy experts gain much less benefit from Uskayaw. In addition, damage over time effects like poison or Freezing Cloud don't give piety. Conjurations and elemental mages can make use of Uskayaw, though MP can often be an issue.

Uskayaw is generally a god that benefits from high Invocations investment, which makes Solo Time last longer and Grand Finale more reliable to use.

Tips and Tricks

• Remember that, as powerful as Uskayaw's abilities are in battle, they can also be used to flee. Both Line Pass and Grand Finale are effective against friendly and neutral targets, including plants and other firewood. Act quickly (in turns, not real time!), as piety falls rapidly.
• Alchemists can benefit from Uskayaw if they have access to Ignite Poison, which does give you piety.
• Uskayaw's fast piety gain can be further increased by wearing an amulet of faith. Unlike most gods, there is next-to-no penalty for taking off an amulet of faith.

Details

Piety Gain

For each monster you hurt, you will gain piety based on the monster's threat and the % of the monster's max HP you dealt.

hurt_val = 1d3 + sqrt(2 * threat + 2) * (damage dealt)/(monster max HP)

piety = 10 * log2(1 + (<hurt_val - 5> / 10) )

Final piety gain is rounded down. There is a minimum of 1 piety per monster hit. There is a maximum of 40 piety per action.

For reference, a monster considered "tough" (yellow) has a threat between 6-33, and a monster considered "nasty" (red) has a threat >= 34.

Piety Loss

Piety loss is proportional to the time, in aut, since your last piety-gaining action. If at least 30 aut (3.0 turns) has passed, you will lose piety:

piety_loss = (aut since piety gain)/10

For fractional piety, it is rounded in a weighted fashion, e.g. 5.1 piety would mean 10% chance to lose 6 piety, and a 90% chance to lose 5 piety. This piety drain will bring you down to a minimum of 30 (1*) piety; you won't lose piety if you are at 1* or below.

History

• Prior 0.29, Uskayaw didn't give piety for damaging hostile summons.
• Uskayaw was added in 0.19. Originally, it was called Ukayaw, making it too similar with the shortened version of Okawaru (Oka vs Uka).