Movement

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

Movement is the primary means of getting around the dungeon. Although you may Blink, Teleport, and even create a Passage of Golubria, the majority of your movement will be directional movement between tiles or changing floors with stairs and escape hatches. A character's movement speed determines your ability to escape from danger and the number of enemy actions that will occur while you move.

Controls

If you are playing a version with mouse compatibility, you can click on a tile to send your character there by the fastest means possible, avoiding areas marked for travel exclusion. Pressing o on your keyboard auto-explores the level, stopping when you find a monster, item, or dungeon feature of interest.

You can also move in all 8 directions with the number pad on your keyboard, or with h-j-k-l-b-n-y-u:

7 8 9 <--> y k u

4 * 6 <--> h * l

1 2 3 <--> b j n

You can also move up or down stairs or escape hatches by standing on them and pressing < (upstairs) or > (downstairs). To head up or down a floor by the fastest means possible, press G to bring up the autotravel menu, followed by < or >. You can also auto-travel this way to any branch or distant level of the dungeon you've already discovered.

Speed

The @ command displays your character status.

Description	Delay (aut)	Effective Speed
Very quick	6 - 7	14 - 16.6
Quick	8 - 9	11 - 12.5
Average	10	10
Slow	11 - 12	9
Very slow	13 +	8 -

Notes on movement speed:

• Regardless of any modifiers, a player's movement delay can never be lower than 6 except while hasted.
• There is no cap for slowest speed (such a blasphemy might anger Cheibriados).
• Aut are not to be confused with decaAut (which are just 10 aut).

Monster Speed

The monster speed stat is different from delay. A monsters move delay, in aut, is equal to 100 / Speed, and speed is also equal to 100 / Delay. Monsters on the examination screen will use similar descriptors as the above table, though the values are different.

If a monster would have a delay equal to a non-integer aut value, it is rounded in a weighted manner. A delay of 6.4 aut has a 40% chance of being 7 aut and a 60% chance of being 6 aut.

Sometimes a monster will have a modifier in addition to their speed (e.g move: 60%). This is a multiplier to delay, so lower numbers are faster.

Effect in Combat

While every Action you take counts as a single game turn, your action speed determines how many enemy actions take place (or how many fractions of an action they accumulate) during that turn. If your movement speed is slower than a dangerous enemy, such as a hydra, you may find yourself taking severe melee damage even as you flee.

Calculating Speed

All player species start with movement delay 10, with the following exceptions:

• Nagas start with Slow 2 (delay 14).
• Felids start with Fast 1 (delay 8).
• Spriggans start with Fast 3 (delay 6).

All transformations negate natural speed mutations. Bat Form has Fast 3 (delay 6) and Pig Form has Fast 2 (delay 7). All other forms able to move have a delay of 10, though Statue Form also slows all actions by 50% (for a delay of 15).

Terrain
Swimming	+ 3
Transformations & Effects
Swiftness	-25%/+33.3% (if mv. delay > 7) -14.28%/+20% (if mv. delay = 7) -0%/+0% (if mv. delay < 7)
Flying Tengu	- 1
Merfolk Fishtail in Water	= 6
Equipment
Running ego	- 10%
Ponderousness ego	+ 1
Religion
Cheibriados	Variable with piety (between +2 and +10)
Enchantments
Frozen	+4
Grasping Roots	+3
Special
Haste	All actions are 50% faster
Slow	All actions are 50% slower

Notes on minimum delay and haste:

• Minimum delay is always 6, even after all the modifiers above have been calculated.
• However, Hasted characters have every action occur 50% faster, including movement. This can result in a hasted character with movement delay 6 behaving as if movement delay were 4, even though movement delay itself is technically unchanged.

Notes on swimming:

• Swimming negates the Fast and Slow mutations along with Swiftness.
• The swimming penalty does not affect Merfolk, Octopodes, or Barachim. Instead, Merfolk grow a fishtail and swim faster while the other two retain their normal speed.
• Flying and walking on water negates all effects of water.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Multiplicative effects are applied after adding all the additive effects.

History

• In 0.15, the encumbered and overloaded status effects (and item weight in general) were removed.
• Prior to 0.14, the Ponderousness ego increased movement delay by 2 aut, and the Swiftness decreased it by 2 auts without any penalty afterwards.
• Prior to 0.13, the running ego reduced movement delay by two auts.