Flaming

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

The flaming brand causes a weapon to burn its target, inflicting additional fire damage. Although less effective against creatures with fire resistance, it can devastate anything vulnerable to fire. A weapon with this brand will burst into flame when wielded, identifying it.

As an added effect, this brand is extremely useful on slicing weapons when fighting hydras. Flaming slicing weapons will reduce a hydra's head count by 1 with each hit, and they do not heal in the process.

This brand works best on heavy, high-damage weapons, since the extra fire damage dealt is determined by the amount of normal weapon damage you manage to get past an enemy's AC.

Sources

Along with simply finding flaming weapons as randomly generated loot, there are a number of sources guaranteed to generate them. Efreets, fire giants, and the unique caster Erica always carry them. Finding a bottled efreet is an easy way to acquire one fairly early on, so long as you can survive its possibly angry inhabitant. An unbranded weapon can also be temporarily given this brand with the level 2 spell Fire Brand, and this can be made permanent with a scroll of vorpalise weapon.

Damage

• Normal: +0% to +50% fire damage (25% on average)
• rF+: +0% to +25%
• rF++: +5% to +10%
• rF+++: No additional damage
• rF-: +0% to +75%

The amount of damage dealt by any given attack is reflected by the punctuation at the end of message:

• 1-2 "You burn ... ."
• 3-6 "You burn ... !"
• 7+ "You burn ... !!"