Sling

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

Name	Sling
Skill	Ranged Weapons
Damage	7
Accuracy	+0
Base delay (%)	14
Min delay	7 at skill 14
Hands	1H
Size	Little
Ranged?	Yes

A piece of cloth and leather for launching stones, adequate for hunting small game like rabbits or goblins. "And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sank into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth." -KJV Bible, 1 Samuel 17:49.

This weapon falls into the 'Ranged Weapons' category. It is a one-handed weapon.

Slings are one-handed Ranged Weapons. They are the lightest ranged weapon, and much more common than the other ranged one-hander, hand crossbows.

Strategy

Generally, a D:1 character with a sling is stronger than the same character without one. Slings let you attack from range for 0 MP, which is nice for both melee and mage starts. You don't need to train Ranged Weapons to benefit from one. Even at 0 skill, firing a sling at a melee enemy will net some extra damage (enough to outright kill D:1 enemies). Past Lair or so, the damage from an untrained sling is too low to bother with.

Compared to other ranged options, slings are the weakest ranged weapon. They are stronger than stones and slightly stronger than boomerangs at 0 skill (though boomerangs scale better with skill). Shortbows offer +1 base damage and more accuracy, but you can't wield a shield with one.

	Image
Mundane
Magical
Artifact
	Unrandart
Punk

History

• In 0.29, hunting slings were renamed back into slings, with the removal of the Slings skill and fustibali. They now use Ranged Weapons skill. Also, prior to this version:
  • Hunting slings required use of stones or sling bullets, which added 2 or 4 damage to your shots.
  • They had an accuracy of +2 and a base delay of 12 (mindelay of 6).
  • Their damage did not scale with DEX and their attack speed wasn't slowed down by armour encumbrance, like all ranged weapons.
• In 0.15, slings were renamed into hunting slings, with the addition of greatslings (fustibali). Ranged combat also worked differently; they had 0 base damage, which was improved by their ammo.