Anemocentaur

Trunk-only: This article pertains to a feature of Crawl which is being tested. It will likely change before the next release, and may even be removed entirely.

Anemocentaurs are hardy hybrids with the lower body of a horse and the torso of a human. Distant descendants of the Four Winds, they can stampede swiftly towards enemies in battle and trample entire groups of them backward. As they become more experienced, one of the Four Winds will further augment their combat prowess based on the skills they have trained the most. Their lineage gives them an excellent affinity for air and translocations magic as well as invocations. Their defensive aptitudes are solid, though their size impairs their evasion and unusual body shape reduces the benefit they get from heavy armour. They learn many other skills slowly, but the strength of their winds make them a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.

Innate Abilities

• Anemocentaurs are hybrids, half-horse and half-human:
  • Deformed Body: Centaurs get -40% base AC from body armour and Armour skill, though they still get the full benefits of any armour enchantment.
  • Large body, medium torso: Anemocentaurs get a mild EV penalty, due to their size.
    • Anemocentaurs are large enough to receive no attack penalties or movement speed penalties while standing in shallow water.
  • Anemocentaurs can equip bardings, but not boots.
  • Hooves 3: Anemocentaurs have a kick auxiliary attack with base damage 10 and a trigger chance that scales from 52% at XL 1 to 96% at XL 27.
• Rampage: Anemocentaurs have innate rampaging, allowing them to move two tiles at a time towards enemies, or to automatically hit one space away while moving towards them while inflicting 5 energy of a ministun.
  • Stampede 1: After rampaging forward (with or without an enemy to hit), you get the Stampede status, which tramples adjacent enemies with you when you attack (pushing back a whole line of enemies if necessary). You keep this status by rampaging or stampeding (including changing directions to rampage or stampede towards other targets), and lose it when doing any other actions (except when casting spells with the East Wind), or if a stampede attack can't push back an adjacent enemy (due to e.g. walls or deep water).

Anemocentaurs have a base Strength of 9, Intelligence of 7, and Dexterity of 7 (before Background modifiers).

The Four Winds

At XL 5, anemocentaurs get the second level of their Stampede mutation and become the embodiment of one of the four winds, based on their highest base skill.

• North Wind: Unarmed Combat and all melee weapon skills besides Short Blades (Maces and Flails, Axes, Polearms, Staves, Long Blades).
• South Wind: Short Blades or Stealth skill.
• West Wind: Ranged Weapons skill.
• East Wind All magic skills besides Spellcasting (Conjurations, Hexes, Summonings, Necromancy, Forgecraft, Translocations, Alchemy, Fire Magic, Ice Magic, Air Magic, Earth Magic).

(Fighting, Armour, Dodging, Shields, Throwing, Spellcasting, Invocations, and Evocations don't affect one's Wind alignment. If you have only these skills (by e.g. starting as an Artificer or rolling strangely with a Wanderer), you will get the North Wind.)

One's wind alignment changes with whichever is the highest at any given time, and locks in at whatever tracked skill first reaches the max of 27.

These winds each have different effects:

• North Wind's Embodiment: The "melee" wind. While have the Stampede status, 70% of the damage you take is converted into an Indomitable status (displayed as e.g. Indom (4)), and your regeneration increases (scaled to your max health) to recover that much lost health over the next several turns.
• South Wind's Embodiment: The "stabber" wind. While you rampage and have the Stampede status, you have +50% stealth, and any successful stabs gives you a Tailwind status for a few turns. This status makes your next rampage movement / attack (but not stampede attacks!) instant, and can be regained immediately with another stab. (Thus, you can chain between stabbing targets if they're properly spaced out.)
• East Wind's Embodiment: The "caster" wind. Whenever you rampage or Stampede, you regain a small percent of max mp and apply the Exposed debuff two spaces around your new position. (This leaves behind a rainy vfx display afterwards highlighting the affected area, which is solely visual and has no other effects). This debuff makes enemies take +35% damage from non-attack sources of damage (except poison), have -30 Willpower (after Vulnerability but before orbs of guile apply), and increases the accuracy of non-ranged-weapon beams aimed against them. Also, casting or channeling spells maintains your Stampede status (but doesn't apply any additional Exposed stacks).
• West Wind's Embodiment: The "ranged" wind. When wielding a ranged weapon, rampaging or Stampeding towards enemies pushes those enemies in a line back 1 to 2 spaces (which makes them lose 4 to 9 energy), and fire a penetrating +33% damage shot at movement speed. This builds up to 5 Salvo charges, letting non-rampage non-stampede normal shots fire at up to 5 additional targets with an unobstructed line of fire to (i.e. never in a way that would hit the same target repeatedly).

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Gladiator, Hunter, Brigand
• Mages: Conjurer, Fire Elementalist, Air Elementalist

Level Bonuses

• +1 to a random stat every 4 levels.
• 10% more HP than average.
• +3 willpower per level.
• Upon reaching XL 5, gain the second level of the Stampede mutation, getting the ability to embody one of the four winds.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Anemocentaurs start with the skills and equipment listed for their background.

Difficulty of Play

Anemocentaurs are a species with passable-to-mediocre apts that encourage reckless play with entirely unique mechanics. They regularly have to play a bit cautiously before they reach XL 5, but after reaching that point, understanding when and how to Stampede with the right wind as corresponds to starting backgrounds, early item drops, and early god finds can let them parallel or surpass many other species' gimmicks. If you don't plan for when things go wrong, however, you'll end up surrounded without any ability to escape, making them much more easy to die with than many other non-frail species.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	0	Armour	0	Spellcasting	-2
		Dodging	1
Maces & Flails	-1	Shields	1	Conjurations	-1
Axes	-2	Stealth	2	Hexes	-1
Polearms	-1			Summonings	-2
Staves	-1	Invocations	2	Necromancy	-2
Unarmed Combat	0	Evocations	-1	Forgecraft	-2
Throwing	-2	Shapeshifting	-2	Translocations	1
				Alchemy	-2
Short Blades	-1			Fire Magic	-1
Long Blades	-1			Ice Magic	-1
Ranged Weapons	0			Air Magic	2
		Experience	-1	Earth Magic	-1

Strategy

• At the start of the game, before getting any wind embodiment, you're somewhat mediocre compared to most species- the 10% HP somewhat makes up for the AC and EV penalty, as does Hooves 3, but your apts are otherwise mediocre and you don't have total upsides. Play somewhat cautiously, and make judicious use of exclusions for early threats like D:1 jackal bands, D:2 adders and gnolls until you can reach XL 5.
• Despite starting with more Strength than Dexterity by default, most Anemocentaurs want their defenses to be from their Dodging rather than Armour, as reflects their respective +1 and +0 apts. The Deformed Body penalty is always ~40% of one's base armour AC, compared to taking an initial 25% EV penalty that decreases to about ~9% after investing into Dex and Dodging. They'll still want bardings despite the EV penalty, though, as the AC from a fully enchanted barding more than makes up for -2 EV.
• Stampedes can turn around varying angles and even fully pivot back and forth in place depending on the proximity and positioning of other monsters. This allows escaping despite being completely surrounded by other enemies if the Stampede is already active, or dancing back and forth between two opposite targets to only be hit by one at a time while getting Stampede wind benefits.
• Translocations spells are even more valuable than they are for most species, between escaping bad situations post-Stampede and helping set up new Stampedes. Other relocation effects like the Wu Jian Council's Serpent's Lash and Dithmenos's Shadowslip are also quite valuable for this reason.
  • Vhi's Electric Charge and Gell's Gavotte do not set up Stampede, even if they were lined up properly otherwise.
  • Hepliaklqana's provided ancestor regularly gets in the way of Stampede charges, but judicious Transference usage and micromanagement can reposition both it and yourself as needed, and one can also freely Stampede while the ancestor is on their revival cooldown.

Four Winds Strategy

One's wind embodiment is flexible for a reason: depending on early gear drops or god altars, one can pivot between differing builds as is needed, and shouldn't force any individual one if it feels insufficient for one's need.

• North Wind: Despite the Indomitable status regenerating more one's health much higher than most other sources, most earlygame anemocentaurs are fairly less sturdy than other melee-specialist species due to their Deformed Body penalties. Relying on the stampede effect before reaching midgame on heavy armour Anemocentaurs can be quite risky, and requires decent equipment luck or a large amount of unique risk-analysis experience- skilling to invest more in defenses than offenses overall is most likely safer for newcomers, and one can still somewhat rely on corridors and chokepoints once you find your barding.
  • Due to getting higher dividends from Dodging over Armour, focusing on light armour with the Dexterity scaling of Long Blades can be much safer than relying on e.g. the cleaving of Axes.
• South Wind: Stampeding attacks attack significantly slower than most Short Blades mindelay, so stampeding forward with this wind's effect shouldn't be prioritized outside of given stabing situations- fortunately, Hooves 3 powers up Short Blades significantly, and the Stealth bonus + rampage can help set up more stabs. Still, as with most stabbing characters, it's not possible nor safe to always go in for sleep stabs without back-up support from Gods or spells like Hexes and Mephitic Cloud- stabbing is about randomly reducing the total number of encounters in the game to save consumables for other situations, rather than being the majority of a character's strategy.
  • Remember that the Tailwind buff for successfully stabbing during a rampage doesn't wear off immediately, so if you need to e.g. prepare Confusing Touch or shift a square before lining up another rampage stab, it's probably safer to do so.
  • Stabbing god interactions: Uskayaw's Solo Time paralysis can set up a chain reaction of stabs, the Wu Jian Council provides both relocation and additional Whirlwind stabs, and Dithmenos allows setting the wind up constantly through Shadowslip distraction stabs. (You can push back shadow mimics behind a target while Stampeding if necessary.)
  • Short Blades equipment: Investing heavily into Short Blades for a quick blade scales well off of the aux attack and provides a back-up strategy of traditional melee combat when Stabbing won't work. Lupine talismans provide both Slaying and stab opportunities, though Bestial Takedown doesn't count for Stampeding itself, and the form melds bardings. Blade talismans provide two additional aux attacks and notable SH with the right equipment, though they require significant investment.
  • Without a strong short blade to invest in, one can invest in the +2 Stealth apt over e.g. the -1 Hexes apt to preserve the wind, or pivot out of it entirely with a choice of a different god. The East Wind gained from training Hexes higher can still help Hexes anyway.
• West Wind: Between the knockback's spacing and knockback's innate ministun, many melee-only enemies can be juggled with the wind plus walking back even without particularly large spaces to work with, and the penetration effect + Salvo charges can deal with groups as Ranged Weapons otherwise have to reach into spells or artefacts to manage. Remember that monsters will line up onto the nearest compass direction when walking towards you.
  • Dimensional Bullseye combos very well with Salvo, as every additional shot will also get a free hit on whatever the spell targets.
  • Due to always firing at movement speed, arbalests and hand cannons, which stop at 1.0 delay, are more attractive than usual, though Longbows still function fine when not stampeding.
  • Ranged gods interactions: You can still stampede through plants with Fedhas, who can thus provide briars to hide behind for Salvo shots, alongside the usual ballistomycete benefits. Dithmenos's shadow mimic spawns randomly near an enemy when firing ranged weapons, so it usually won't (but sometimes will) block Stampede line-ups, and Shadowslip can provide a cheap relocation effect as Anemocentaurs heavily benefit from. Hepliaklqana has significant antisynergies with this build, as Stampede won't start if the ancestor is in the way of enemies and the ancestor will usually just stand between you and your enemies- Okawaru, on the other hand, is perfectly fine as a default.
• East Wind: The short-range effect from this wind mostly benefits from leaning into short-range spells like Irradiate, and the species' +2 Air Magic apt to cast Static Discharge / Arcjolt / Chain Lightning up close. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast can provide space to start stampeding out of bad positioning, and mid-level Translocations like Gell's Gavotte can significantly help with both irresistable damage and escaping.

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  Stampede's extra movements and pushback can escape to staircases and split up enemies.

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  You can also pivot back and forth in place to deal with multiple monsters, repeatedly ministunning both while getting the beneficial effects of your particular wind.

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  The West Wind allows repeatedly pushing back melee-only enemies between the spaces knocked back and the energy ministun knockback inflicts.

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  The East Wind's debuff application applies both at the end of your turn and the start of your next turn, letting enemies move into range.

Trivia

The Anemoi are the four Greek divine winds, occasionally depicted as either humans or horses. Centaurs are originally creatures from Greek mythology, half human and half horse.

History

• In 0.35, Anemocentaurs were added in 0.35 to replace Armataurs as the last Species replacement, due to repeatedly have their gimmicks replaced to use elsewhere (a rolling charge becoming Vhi's Electric Charge, doubled potions becoming Oni doubled potion heal and the double potion durations mutation), and a severe lack of popularity partially attributed to their armadillo flavour.