Summon Cactus Giant

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

Summon Cactus Giant
Level	6
School1	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Scorching Book of the Wilderness
Casting noise	4
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	200

Summons a warrior from a particularly prickly tribe. Foes that strike these giants in melee are in for a painful surprise! When cast at a higher power, older, more robust warriors will answer the call.

Sumon Cactus Giant is a Level 6 Summonings spell, which summons a titular cactus giant. These animated cacti attack extremely slowly, but are spiny and have remarkably high HP to boot.

Effect

A single cactus giant is summoned. Higher spell power increases the strength of the creature. Players have a summon cap of 1; casting the spell again will cause the old summon to very quickly time out.

The cactus giant's hitpoints are determined by spell power; roughly equal to 27 + <power>, which is then randomized like any other monsters HP.

Duration of the summon is around 27 turns, it does not depend on the spell power.

Strategy

• Cactus giants are, effectively, a leveled up version of Summon Guardian Golem. While they don't explode, they fulfill the same tanky retaliatory summon role that they do. Their low EV helps with this role; projectiles are likely to hit them.
• Despite what it may seem on paper, cactus giants actually 'deal' respectable damage in melee. Melee is the key word here; ranged attacks just don't activate spines.
• Spines can only affect hostile monsters once per round. While a cactus giant can still take out a regular hydra quite easily, don't expect them to obliterate the Lernaean hydra in one turn.

History

• Summon Cactus Giant was added in 0.28.