Brand

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Armour brands are also called egos. See the ego page for armour brands.

Brands are special properties that weapons can have, granting the weapon additional effects. Usually, these effects amount to increasing the damage they deal, but others do exist.

Useful Info

When looking at a +9 broad axe of flaming, the "of flaming" is the weapon's brand (and the "+9" is the enchantment level). In general, brands are harder to change than enchantment.

Under no circumstances can a normal weapon have more than one brand. However, some unrands, such as Maxwell's Thermic Engine and the storm bow, have multiple.

Brands are one of the biggest differences between Unarmed Combat and weaponry: without using a transformation, unarmed fighters have no access to brands.

Sources

• Reading a scroll of brand weapon will give a weapon a randomly selected brand, replacing any existing brand if there is one.
• All randarts are guaranteed to have a brand, and cannot have their brand modified.

Divine

• Worshipers of the Shining One, Kikubaaqudgha, and Lugonu can have one weapon "blessed" per game, which will apply the holy wrath, pain, or distortion brands, respectively.
• Worshipers of Xom may randomly "receive" chaos-branded weapons. However, they often arrive in the hands of enemies in your line of sight.

List of Brands

Melee Weapons

Brand	Description
Antimagic	Trog's special brand; causes monsters to fail their spells and temporarily reduces the player's maximum MP while wielded.
Chaos	Xom's special brand; can inflict different effects with each attack.
Distortion	Lugonu's special brand. Can have multiple damaging and Translocations-related effects upon a successful hit, including Banishment to the Abyss.
Draining	Has a 50% chance to add an average of 25% extra negative energy damage + an additional 2-4 per attack, as well as draining the monster if susceptible.
Electrocution	Inflicts 8-20 additional electricity damage on 25% of successful attacks (independent of the damage dealt).
Flaming	Adds an average of 25% extra fire damage per attack. Prevents hydras from regrowing heads.
Freezing	Adds an average of 25% extra cold damage per attack. Can temporarily slow cold-blooded monsters.
Heavy	Adds +80% base damage, but makes attacks 50% slower. (Net increase of +20%)
Holy wrath	The Shining One's special brand. Inflicts an average of 75% extra damage to demonic and undead monsters.
Pain	Kikubaaqudgha's special brand. Inflicts additional negative energy damage based on the player's Necromancy skill.
Protection	Gives the wielder +7 AC for a short period after hitting with the weapon.
Spectral	Creates a spectral weapon on hitting an enemy, which attacks alongside the user. Damage to the weapon is partially redirected to the user. Found largely on two-handed weapons.
Speed	Reduces weapon attack delay by 1/3 for a net +50% damage per aut. Found only on short blades, staves, and some artefacts.
Vampiric	When attacking enemies that bleed, heals the player for a portion of the inflicted damage on 60% of attacks.
Venom	Poisons monsters on attack, dealing extra damage over time.

Artefact Only

Brand	Description
Disruption	Adds an average of 100% extra damage to undead. Found only on the unrandart great mace Undeadhunter.
Dragon slaying	Inflicts 75% more damage to dragons and dragon-like monsters. Found only on the unrandart lance Wyrmbane.
Reaping	Raises creatures slain with it as allied zombies if they produce a corpse. Found only on the unrandart Sword of Zonguldrok.
Silver	Adds an average of 16.67% extra untyped damage per attack, and more to monsters weak to silver. Found only on the unrand Lajatang of Order and some Throwing weapons.

Launchers

Brand	Description
Chaos	Applies different effects with each attack. Only available through scrolls of brand weapon.
Draining	Has a 50% chance to add an average of 25% extra negative energy damage + an additional 2-4 per attack, as well as draining the monster if susceptible. Only available through scrolls of brand weapon.
Electrocution	Inflicts 8-20 additional electricity damage on 25% of successful attacks. Only available through scrolls of brand weapon, on artefact crossbows, and the storm bow.
Flaming	Adds an average of 25% extra fire damage per attack.
Freezing	Adds an average of 25% extra cold damage per attack. Can temporarily slow cold-blooded monsters.
Heavy	Adds +80% base damage, but makes attacks 50% slower. (Net increase of +20%)
Penetration	Attacks fired from this weapon pass through all creatures in their path. Only available on artefact crossbows and the storm bow.
Speed	Reduces attack delay by 1/3 for a net +50% damage per aut. Only available on artefacts.

Ranged weapon brands are mostly similar to melee weapon brands, but lack some of the rarer brands, and a few were altered.

Ranged weapons may also get pain or holy wrath (but not distortion) exclusively from Kikubaaqudgha's and The Shining One's capstone gifts.

Thrown Weapons

Brand	Description
Silver	Adds 30% extra damage to most monsters and roughly 75% more to monsters weak to silver.

Only javelins can have brands; stones, boomerangs and large rocks are all unbranded. (Exception: one of the Dungeon Sprint maps offers a large rock of chaos. Naturally, it's being used against you.).

Additionally, both boomerangs and javelins have inherent properties that act much like brands -- boomerangs have the returning property, while javelins have the penetration property.

Darts

Brand	Description
Poisoned	Inflicts poison, dealing damage over time.
Curare	Poisons, deals asphyxiation damage, and slows.
Atropa	Inflicts blindness and may confuse.
Datura	Inflicts frenzy.
Dispersal	Blinks the target when struck.

Darts are a specialized form of thrown weapon that are designed to inflict status effects rather than deal damage. The effectiveness of darts is based on both your Throwing and Stealth skills, and is resisted by monster hit dice.

• The chance of success is: 100 - 100 * (HD - 2) / (4 + pow), where pow = (Throwing + Stealth) * 2 / 3
• There is an additional 3% chance of affecting any monster with 14 or lower HD
• No darts can affect monsters that are undead, nonliving, or resistant to poison

Some statistics: with no skill you’re still at 100% to succeed on monsters with HD1 or HD2 (gnoll, most D:1 monsters), 75% on HD3 (Sigmund), 50% on HD4 (Duvessa), and 25% on HD5 (ogre). With a combined skill of 6 as a starting Brigand, you’re up to 62.5% on an ogre, or 50% on a yak.

Strategy

Some brands are more desirable on certain weapons than others:

• Brands like venom, electrocution, and pain deal 'flat' damage. They are better on fast weapons, like demon whips and quick blades, as these weapons activate the brand more often.
• Brands like flaming, freezing, and spectral deal percentage damage. A dagger of flaming receives the same +25% benefit as a giant club of flaming, even after you account for slaying and AC. (However, due to rounding error, the dagger receives a smaller boost on average.)
  • Do note that a dagger of venom is stronger than a dagger of flaming, since daggers are fast weapons with low base damage.

All added brand damage is calculated after AC reduction, and are not further reduced by AC.

History

• Prior to 0.30, the vorpal brand (+16.7% average dmg) existed instead of heavy. Also, Ranged Weapons could have venom instead of draining.
• Prior to 0.24, throwing weapons could generate with the exploding and steel brands. Additionally, tomahawks were reworked into boomerangs (which innately have the returning property), all javelins were given the penetration property, blowguns were removed and needles were reworked into the new version of darts, removing the confusion, frenzy, and paralysis, and sleep brands. Silver gained the boost once given by steel.
• Prior to 0.18, ranged weapon ammo could have brands, but they would be overridden by launcher brands other than Vorpal, Speed, or Penetration.
• Prior to 0.16, drawing a Blade card would apply one of several temporary brands to your weapon.
• Prior to 0.14, there was a reaching brand for whips and demon whips, allowing them to make reaching attacks.
• Prior to 0.10, Polearms needed the reaching brand to make reaching attacks.
• All needle types except "poisoned" were introduced in version 0.6.