Silver

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Silver sears all those touched by chaos. Compared to normal ammo, it does 75% more damage to chaotic and magically transformed beings. It also does extra damage against mutated beings according to how mutated they are. With due care, silver ammo can still be handled by those it affects. It weighs twice as much as normal ammo.

Silver is an ammo brand that causes ammo to do up to 175% damage against shapeshifting, mutated, and chaotic monsters (and characters!). It is very desirable, but rare outside of god gifts and certain high-level monsters. It can be found on darts, javelins, sling bullets, and bolts.

Note that since silver (and steel) are implemented as brands in Crawl, this precludes a silver item from having any other brand; thus, you will never see poisoned steel javelins, silver bolts of flaming, etc.

If you are struck by a silver projectile and suffer this extra silver damage, you will see the message:

The silver sears you!

Silver Damage Calculation

Chaotic monsters and shapeshifted characters

If the target is chaotic or shapeshifted, the damage is:

(normal_damage * 7) / 4  [rounded down]

which equates to roughly 175%. Although the player character can never be chaotic, it can be shapeshifted when under the effects of the following spells: Spider Form, Statue Form, Ice Form, Dragon Form, Bat Form or Porkalator.

Mutated characters

For non-shapeshifted characters who have mutations, the damage varies by how much you are mutated (Note we say characters, not monsters, because all mutated monsters are by definition chaotic, and therefore the first calculation applies). For demonspawn characters, your inherent mutations are counted; for other species with inherent mutations (eg, octopode), they are not. Your total mutations (up to 15) are counted; any above 15 are ignored. The damage is:

normal_damage * ( 5*mutations + 100 ) / 100  [rounded down]

The damage thus varies from 105% to 175%, for 1 to 15+ mutations.

See Also

Category:Silver vulnerability - List of silver vulnerable monsters.

History

Since 0.14, a melee version of this brand is to be found on the unrand artefact lajatang of Order.

Prior to 0.9, this brand also improved damage vs. corporeal undead monsters.