Rift

Version 0.24: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A small wrinkle in the very fabric of reality, magically bound to a shaft by some mad acolyte of Lugonu. It possesses an unusually large reach that teleports its attack directly to its victim.

the +8 demon trident "Rift"

+8 demon trident

Distortion brand
Range 3 reaching attack that is smite-targeted (bypasses intervening monsters, statues, and iron grates).

Desirability

Rift's distortion brand can be tricky to work with -- while it is capable of dealing impressive amounts of irresistible damage or even removing your target entirely through banishment, it is also likely to blink your target around randomly or even teleport them away before you can finish them off. What's more, non-Lugonites suffer potentially disastrous effects (25% chance of being banished) if they ever unwield the weapon, precluding a fighting style based on switching weapons to take advantage of enemy weaknesses.

Rift has the advantage of being a highly-enchanted demon trident (one of the best one-handed polearms in the game) able to attack any space within three tiles without having to worry about intervening enemies getting in the way; it also reaches its minimum speed delay with the relatively modest investment of 14 levels in Polearms. Whether this is worth the potential side-effects of the distortion brand or practically losing the ability to switch weapons is up to you, though a sudden trip to the Abyss becomes less of a problem the farther down the Dungeon you go.

Rift is more likely to be useful to followers of Lugonu, who can switch to another weapon without consequence.

History

Rift was added in 0.23.