Bat

Version 0.12: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

bat b
HP	2-5
HD	1
XP	1
Speed	30
AC	1
EV	14
Will	1
Attack1	1 (hit: plain)
Resistances	None
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Land
Intelligence	Animal
Uses	Uses nothing
Holiness	Natural
Size	Tiny
Type	bat, bat
Flags	Batty Warm-blooded Sense invisible Flying

A large grey bat that, despite being herbivorous, is quite aggressive. It is myopic and uses echolocation to navigate. "The sun was set; the night came on apace, And falling dews bewet around the place; The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings, And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings." -John Gay, Shepherd's Week, Wednesday; or, The Dumps. "Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight." -William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 40.

Useful Info

Bats are one of the weakest and most annoying creatures in the game (though they make tasty snacks). They move three times faster than the average player and aren't easy to hit, but do very little damage. Bats are only a threat to players on the brink of death.

Bats can be summoned with the Summon Small Mammals spell.

Tips & Tricks

• Bats move very quickly and can perform multiple actions before the player can react, which means they can hit and move out of melee range in between the player's own actions. One way to minimize this is to move away from them rather than toward them. They'll waste most of their turn approaching you and may end up next to you. This technique is very useful later on when dealing with monsters that are both fast AND dangerous.
• Another way to deal with bats is to fight them in a corridor to restrict their movement. You can even trap the bat between yourself and another monster or a dead end to prevent the bat from moving.
• Ranged weapons such as stones, darts, and bows allow you to attack even when they fly a few spaces away, but characters without the appropriate skills will still miss often.

Variant Bats

One particularly harmless-yet-annoying vault you can encounter (the aptly-named "goddamned_bats" vault) contains a wide variety of unique bats. They all have their own names, but for the most part their stats are only slightly different from those of standard bats.

Megabat

A huge black bat.

Microbat

A bat that, despite its name, is not any smaller than a megabat.

Fruity bat

An ugly, silly bat. It sparkles.

Dwarf mountain bat

A species of bat that lives in mountain caves. How it got into the dungeon is a mystery — probably something related to the sudden demise of dwarves in those lands. But don't worry, an eradication team is on the way.

Giga bat (has 4 HD and slightly improved stats)

A huge, bloated bat.

Vampire bat

A large black bat with vicious fangs that feeds on blood. This is the preferred form for vampires in disguise.

Ice bat (bat simulacrum)

An undead creature in the shape of a bat, made of ice.

Ghost faced bat (bat spectral thing)

Does this bat merely posses the visage of a ghost, or is it a ghost itself?

Fire bat (with only 1 HD and reduced stats)

A bat whose leathery body burns with a hot flame.

Rotten bat (bat zombie)

I guess this bat is well past its sell-by date.

Skeletal bat (bat skeleton)

A bat skeleton without the decency to lie unmoving like dead bats are supposed to.

Phase bat (bat with the Blink spell)

A strange, glowing bat that seems to flutter through more dimensions than the average bat.

History

• Originally, these monsters were called giant bats. This was changed to megabats in 0.8, and in 0.9 they simply became bats.