Okawaru

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Bring me glory in combat!"

Okawaru is a dangerous and powerful god of battle. Followers are expected to constantly prove themselves in combat, and may channel Okawaru's might to enhance their prowess. Okawaru demands that followers prove themselves by their own strength alone, and so worshippers are forbidden from gaining allies by any means. Okawaru pays little heed to easy victories, but will reward worshippers for heroic feats against mighty foes. Followers of Okawaru will gain the ability to temporarily increase their skills in combat, and, much later, to deal much faster blows. Okawaru will eventually gift followers with ammunition, weapons and armour. The most favoured of Okawaru may challenge their foes to honourable single combat.

Racial Restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Okawaru (or any other god).

Appreciates

• Killing powerful living, undead or demonic beings. Very low chance of Piety for weak creatures.

Prevents

Okawaru prevents the creation of allied monsters. You are unable to use any magic or items to create allies, and reactive abilities (such as from the ratskin cloak) simply will not work. Entities that are proxies of magical effects: orbs of destruction, ball lightning, battlespheres, spectral weapons, foxfires, and fulminant prisms, are unaffected.

Deprecates

• You'll lose (on average) one Piety point every 320 turns, so kill often!

Given Abilities

Piety level (0): "Struggler"

• No granted abilities.

Piety level (*): "Combatant"

• Heroism - Increases all non-magic skills by 5. Evocations and Invocations count as magic. No skill is increased past 27. HP bonus from Fighting is not affected. (2 MP, 1-2 Piety)

Piety level (**): "Warrior"

• No new abilities.

Piety level (***): "Knight"

• No new abilities.

Piety level (****): "Myrmidon"

• Finesse - Halves the action delay of melee and ranged attacks, doubling your attack speed. Bear in mind this bonus is reduced if your action delay is already less than 0.4. (5 MP, 3-5 Piety)

Piety level (*****): "Warmonger"

• Duel - Transports you and a single sufficiently dangerous (dependent on your XL and monster HD) monster into Okawaru's arena. If and when you kill the monster, you will have a short (15-25 turn) grace period to heal and prepare for what's still outside. Okawaru will bid you farewell about 5 turns before actually kicking you out. Dueling will not prevent your opponent from creating more monsters in the arena, so watch out! However, it does prevent Banishment. (7 MP, 7-15 Piety)

Piety level (******): "Victor of a Thousand Battles"

• No new abilities.

The duration and success rate of all three abilities are improved with Invocations skill.

Gifts

Piety 81+

• Ammunition. If you are eligible for a gift and 1d(Piety) >= 72, there's a 13% chance that you will receive ammunition on a given turn. This happens only if you have trained a missile skill (Slings, Bows, Crossbows, or Throwing) and you have the launcher for your best missile skill (sling, (long)bow, crossbow respectively) in your inventory. You may receive ammo for a different skill than this best skill (but always a skill you have). Throwing missiles and darts will often be branded. The gift timeout for each gift is 2d4 + 4.

Piety 130+

• Weapons and armour. If you are eligible for a gift and 1d(Piety) >= 120, there's a 25% chance that you will receive a weapon or piece of armour. The item given will always be wearable by your species and can be of any quality level. It is similar to a scroll of acquirement, but the results are somewhat worse on average. The gift timeout for each gift is between 31 and 49 for weapons, and between 62 and 94 for armour.

Punishments

Okawaru's most vicious warriors are sent against rebellious servants. Novices find themselves swarmed by packs of ogres and gnolls, while champions are surrounded by titans and elvish blademasters.

While under penance, Okawaru will sometimes punish you by sending 1d(experience level/5) hostile, durably summoned monsters to fight you. These monsters can range from packs of orcs to titans, reflecting your experience level.

In general, if you can survive Vaults:5, you can survive Okawaru's wrath. The monsters Okawaru summons are no worse than those encountered there, although there is always the possibility that they will be summoned at a particularly inopportune moment.

If there is nowhere within your line of sight for these monsters to be summoned to, the message, "Okawaru's forces are busy with other wars," will appear instead.

Strategy

Okawaru is the most popular god for melee characters.

Okawaru's simple, straightforward effectiveness has made Okawaru one of the most popular yet criticized gods in the Crawl pantheon. Okawaru grants two fairly simple abilities - a Heroism effect that can be invoked at * and a Finesse effect at ****. Heroism is especially cheap; in difficult battles, you can expect to gain its piety back immediately. These effects' only real costs are piety, and a no-ally conduct; magic and abilities (other than Summonings and Necromancy) are fair game. Keep in mind that ranged attacks still benefit from both buffs; for example, Throwing allows you to pelt threatening enemies twice as fast before they even reach you.

Oka will eventually gifts of armour, shields, ammo, and weapons, biased towards usefulness. Since these behave like reduced-potency scrolls of acquirement, many of them will be of little permanent use, but by the end game you will likely find yourself using at least a few pieces of god-given equipment. Okawaru is also a less restrictive means of getting this equipment than Trog (the only other god who gifts weapons).

With the abundance of experience available in the post-game, the value of Heroism decreases. Players may want to switch from Okawaru to a god with more favorable abilities (such as The Shining One) before taking on dangerous post-game branches such as The Tomb or Pandemonium. If you do plan on abandoning Okawaru, be sure to have a relatively safe place to explore while facing retribution, or at least good escape potential (such as Blink).

Okawaru is one of the few gods you can abandon while keeping permanent benefits granted via worship (gifted items).

History

• Prior to 0.28, Okawaru did not forbid the use of allies. Thus, Oka's 5* title was Commander, with the 4* title was Warmonger. Finesse was a 5* ability, as Duel was not introduced.
• Prior to 0.27, Okawaru would get angry if you attacked your own allies.
• Prior to 0.18, Finesse could be blocked by stasis; both of Okawaru's abilities cost more piety, but lasted longer even at low Invocations skill.
• Prior to 0.17, Finesse caused magic contamination.
• Prior to 0.16, Okawaru would only give ammo for skills of level 8 and higher, and would grant piety for praying over enemy corpses (the stronger, the better).
• Prior to 0.14, allowing your allies to die incurred piety loss and the Demonspawn Demonic Guardian mutation was suppressed.
• Prior to 0.13, Okawaru didn't care about the death of elementals.
• Prior to 0.8, Okawaru's granted powers were Might and Haste instead of the current Heroism and Finesse.