Teleportation

Version 0.10: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

For the obsolete ability, see Teleportation (ability).

Teleportation is the act of moving from one place to another instantaneously. Teleports differ from blinks in two main ways: teleports have no range limit while blinks are limited to visible destinations; and, blinks are instantaneous while teleports generally take some time to kick in.

There are several ways to teleport in Crawl:

• Reading a scroll of teleportation
• Being zapped by a wand of teleportation (your own or a monster's)
• Being hit by a monster's Teleport Other spell
• Stepping on a Teleport trap
• Being randomly (or intentionally) teleported by the ring of teleportation
• Being randomly teleported by the teleport mutation
• Being hit by a distortion or dispersal branded weapon, or by the Dispersal spell
• Suffering a Translocations miscast effect
• Drawing a Portal card

Generally, teleportation as a result of a distortion weapon or trap takes place immediately. For spell- or wand-initiated teleports, there is a delay of 3-6 turns between starting a teleport and the teleport taking effect. Because of this, teleportation cannot be completely relied upon to get the player out of trouble. In the Abyss, there is a 4/5 chance that this delay will be 8-21 turns. If you are in the halo of the Orb, there is a 1/2 chance this delay will be 8-16 turns.

To avoid teleport delays, step onto a Teleport trap or use a high power Portal card. Potentially only one turn slower, use the Warpwright card and then step on the newly created teleport trap. High levels of the Traps & Doors skill is helpful in detecting where the trap was placed.

Once a teleport takes effect, the player is instantly teleported to the destination. If the player has teleport control, the teleport is not the result of a distortion weapon, and the level does not restrict teleport control, the player may choose the new location. Like blinks, teleports leave a cloud of translocational energy behind, though this has no game effect other than being a pretty color.

Teleports will never place the player over lava or in dangerous clouds, and never over deep water unless they are amphibious (merfolk, octopode, grey draconian, et al).

If the space the player is teleporting into is currently holding a monster, an attempt will be made to teleport the monster out of the way. If that fails, (not all monsters can be teleported) attempts are made to teleport to the spaces next to the monster (monsters there may also be teleported out of the way). If no space can be found, the teleport fails entirely.

History

In 0.13 controlled teleports will have a higher delay.