Kikubaaqudgha

Version 0.25: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Spread unending torment and darkness!"

Kikubaaqudgha is a terrible Demon-God, served by those who wish to indulge in the powers of death. An evil god, Kikubaaqudgha requires worshippers to cause the death and destruction of as many creatures as possible. In exchange, Kikubaaqudgha offers great assistance to the aspiring necromancer: spellbooks filled with dark magic, protection against necromantic backlash, and an endless supply of bodies taken from Kikubaaqudgha's vast mausoleum. Kikubaaqudgha will send corpses to followers, and enhance servants' necromantic prowess with gifts of spellbooks. Kikubaaqudgha will protect followers from the effects of necromantic miscasts, death curses, and may even shield them from unholy torment. Especially fervent followers may invoke torment themselves by sacrificing a cadaver, and Kikubaaqudgha will eventually allow followers to either receive the Necronomicon, or to have their weapon imbued with pain. Kikubaaqudgha likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings. Kikubaaqudgha's powers are based on Necromancy instead of Invocations skill.

Appreciates

• You or your undead slaves killing living, nonliving, holy, undead, or demonic creatures. (Chance of +1 Piety, chance increases with the victim's HD, but decreases with your level.)
  • Note that the "Kikubaaqudgha accepts your kill" message does not mean your Piety has risen, just that it could have.

Deprecates

• 1 piety lost every 340 turns on average, and you are excommunicated if it falls to 0.
• Abandonment. (Penance)

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Purveyor of Pain"

• No abilities.

Piety level *: "Scholar of Death"

• Receive Corpses: Creates 1-9 reanimatable, branch-appropriate corpses near yourself. A high Necromancy skill gives more and better corpses, with freshness depending on your piety. (costs 3 MP, 50-100 food, and 2-3 piety)

Piety level **: "Merchant of Misery"

• You may resist Necromancy miscast effects from spell miscasts or mummy death curses. Your resist chance rises with piety. Spells that qualify for protection will have "Kikubaaqudgha supports the use of this spell." in the description.

Piety level ***: "Artisan of Death"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ****: "Dealer of Despair"

• Protection From Torment: You sometimes take reduced damage from torment and agony; there is a piety/600 chance of taking no damage, and failing that a piety/250 chance of taking a random amount of damage from 2 to the full amount rolled. The average damage is shown below.

Piety	Unprotected	HP lost w/ Kiku Protection	HP lost w/ Kiku Protection & rN+++
80	50%	36.4%	34.3%
100	50%	33.35%	30.85%
120	50%	30.4%	27.5%
150	50%	26.25%	23.9%
200	50%	20%	16%

Piety level *****: "Black Sun"

• Torment - Use a corpse to torment everything in your LOS, including yourself. (Costs 4 MP, and 8-12 piety)

Piety level ******: "Lord of Darkness"

• Once per game, you may choose to either:
  • Receive Necronomicon: Kikubaaqudgha will grant you the Necronomicon.
  • Brand Weapon With Pain: Give a weapon of choice a permanent Pain brand and increase its enchantment level by 2. This splatters blood over the area, invokes torment, and overwrites the current brand on the weapon, unless it is an artifact weapon.

Gifts

Kikubaaqudgha grants randart spellbooks upon reaching 1* and 3* piety. Each book guarantees the player at least one corpse-using spell to complement Receive Corpses ability.

The first spellbook will contain four randomly selected Necromancy spells from levels 1 to 3,

• Pain
• Corpse Rot
• Animate Skeleton
• Sublimation of Blood, replacing either Corpse Rot or Animate Skeleton (if the player is not a Gargoyle, Ghoul, or Mummy).
• Vampiric Draining

The second spellbook will contain four randomly selected Necromancy spells from levels 4 to 6, and Dispel Undead:

• Animate Dead or Simulacrum.
• Borgnjor's Vile Clutch or Excruciating Wounds (always the former if the player is a Felid)
• Agony or Death Channel
• A random spell which can be any of the six previous spells.
• Dispel Undead

Punishments

Kikubaaqudgha does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Kikubaaqudgha's wrath brings forth all the dread powers of necromancy. Victims are wracked with torment, assailed by the undead, smothered in miasma, and afflicted with a host of other necromantic ailments. Further, Kikubaaqudgha's gifts become tainted; those that attempt to use necromantic magic to fend off wrath will find it backfiring on them when least expected. Kikubaaqudgha's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

When you abandon Kikubaaqudgha, all currently existing corpses will decay into skeletons in a few turns. While under penance, Kikubaaqudgha will occasionally inflict you with Torment, as well perform other forms of divine retribution. Kikubaaqudgha will often combine these punishments:

• Receive Corpses is cast (using your XL in place of Necromancy skill), followed by a hostile Animate Dead. All corpses and skeletons in the vicinity will be affected.
• Clouds of Miasma at your location and around you.
• Death curses.

Kiku may also punish you for casting Necromancy spells (5% probability).

Strategy

Kikubaaqudgha offers three main features: protection from torment and mummy death curses, Necromancy spellbooks, and a massive supply of corpses.

The latter, coupled with Kikubaaqudgha's approval of demon-slaying, makes Kiku particularly useful in Pandemonium; Kikubaaqudgha lets you flood levels with cheap minions by animating the received corpses. The corpse delivery is particularly nice for Ghouls, who could eat chunks for healing and curing rot.

Necromantic tomes are granted very quickly and roughly in order of spell level. This makes Kiku great for characters who want to learn Necromancy from scratch, but less useful for characters who are already Necromancers. Kiku's also great for melee/hybrid characters, as Necromancy offers a lot of utility and support spells useful for melee fighters, like Vampiric Draining. A bodyguard of meatshields is never more than two turns away with corpse delivery and Animate Dead, and you can get that tactic online very quickly as long as the second spellbook gift has Animate Dead in it.

Kiku's torment invocation is great for the midgame, but becomes all but useless in the late game, when most enemies are torment-immune. Even if you're not undead, Kiku's torment protection can making invoking torment worthwhile; you'll only lose 20-25% of your health depending on your piety, and everything else on the screen will lose 50%. A second invocation will drop you from 75-80% to 56-64%, but everything else will be cut to 25%. Invoking torment and letting your torment-immune undead minions mop up can be a very good way to clear out large amounts of monsters in the midgame. Just watch your piety and have ways to escape and regain that health; torment is expensive and risky.

At 6*, you get the choice between a pain-branded weapon and the Necronomicon. This typically happens around the midgame (if you converted at the Temple), and it can be a tricky decision.

Since you've been training Necromancy all along, a pain brand will be absolutely devastating in your hands - but only to living enemies. (Since you get to pick which weapon to brand, a fast weapon like a quickblade or demon whip works best, but remember to not waste scrolls of enchant weapon above +7 because Kiku cant raise the enchantment level by 2 if its already maxed out at +9.) As with the torment invocation, this is great in the midgame, but useless in the extended endgame, where pain-resisting demons and undead are everywhere. The Necronomicon, on the other hand, is the other way around. Its spells are great for the endgame, but they won't help you one bit in the midgame (when your skills are too low to cast them). In the end, the decision comes down to "Would I rather have something that will help me much later, or something that will help me survive right now?"

The Necronomicon may be found in other places, but it is far less likely that you will find a pain-branded weapon that is both the type you're using and the best weapon of that type. Pain-branded quickblades, for example, are very rare.

In the case you decide to pick the Necronomicon, the Excruciating Wounds spell can substitute for a permanent pain weapon in a pinch. That has its cost as well, though - Excruciating Wounds is a noisy spell, you'll have to commit the levels to memorizing it, and brand spells are kind of tedious. It's not guaranteed that you'll ever actually find the spell, either, so if you choose the Necronomicon you may not ever get a pain-branded weapon at all.

Finally, worshiping Kiku makes it much easier to conquer the Tomb. The Tomb is one of the deadliest branches of the whole game, but with protection from mummy death curses, torment protection, and a far greater chance of access to Dispel Undead, Kiku players have an easier time than anyone else.

Tips & Tricks

• If absolutely necessary, you can use Kiku's final gift to overwrite a dangerous Distortion branded non-artifact weapon with a harmless Pain brand without the risk of unwielding it. Using a scroll of brand weapon is much cheaper, however.
• Here are some neat uses for Kiku's corpse delivery:
  • Eat them. This is particularly useful for ghouls and trolls, especially in corpseless branches. However, not all corpses are edible.
  • Make undead out of them (skeletons, zombies) for meat shields.
  • Corpse Rot can turn nearby corpses into a protective ring of miasma. Slow and poison your enemies, then use Animate Dead to raise an army of skeletons to attack them.
  • Even in Hell, you can get powerful corpses. One or two of them combined with Simulacrum are often enough to build an army capable of taking down the Hell Lords.
• Kiku has no objection to you wielding weapons of holy wrath.
• In spite of Kiku's punishments, Kiku's divine retribution is one of the easiest to survive. Stair-scumming lets you run from the monsters Kiku sends. Expect to receive Torment every time Kiku's wrath occurs, however.
  • You cannot just use Receive Corpses and Animate Dead to surround yourself with a wall of minions before abandoning Kiku, as your undead minions turn hostile when you leave it.

History

• Prior to 0.25, Kiku's wrath included Necromancy miscast effects instead of death curses.
• Prior to 0.20, Kiku's 1* spellbook gift had a guaranteed Corpse Rot rather than a guaranteed Pain spell.
• Prior to 0.19, Kiku gave a piety-dependent bonus to final HP when casting Death's Door. Also, Kiku did not grant piety for killing undead creatures, and the torment protection did not reduce damage from agony. In addition, Kiku worshippers had to pray over a corpse to invoke the Torment ability.
• Prior to 0.17, Kiku helped at Piety level **** to resist the Haunt inflicted sickness on the caster (resist rate rose with piety). Kiku worshippers also had to pray at an altar to receive the Necronomicon/Pain brand gifts.