Sticks to Snakes

Version 0.9: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Sticks to Snakes
Level	2
School1	Transmutation
Source(s)	Book of Changes Book of Morphology Book of Zoology
Casting noise	2
Spell noise	0

This spell uses wooden items in the caster's grasp as raw material for a powerful summoning. Note that magical artefacts will not be affected.

Sticks to Snakes is a level 2 Transmutations spell which turns a wielded (w + * or Ctrl + Left mouse click) wooden item into a poisonous snake. The summoned snake will be friendly unless the wooden item was cursed, in which case it will be hostile. Transmuters begin with this spell in their starting spellbook and can use it to turn common junk weapons into useful poisonous allies early on.

The following items are suitable for this spell:

• Arrow stacks
• Javelin stacks
• Club
• Spear
• Quarterstaff
• Magical staff
• Halberd
• Glaive
• Scythe
• Bow
• Longbow
• Blowgun
• Giant club
• Giant spiked club

This spell can create ball pythons, adders, and water moccasins from ammunition. While weapons normally become snakes, high spell power may result in water moccasins (at 20 power), black mambas (70), or anacondas (90).

Several factors other than spell power can also influence the results of this spell. Using heavier weapons results in the creation of larger snakes (even at low spell power, giant clubs never create anything less than water moccasins). Certain brands can also affect the outcome: a venom branded item will create better snakes, while silver or steel items are entirely unusable. Using a stack of ammunition will often give you multiple snakes, sometimes more than the number of missiles used. Items that you've placed a {!D} inscription on will also not work until you've removed the inscription (though this is an excellent way to ensure you don't destroy a useful weapon).

While felids can't normally wield weapons, they can wield arrows as a special case specifically for this spell. However, they need to use the 'w' command to do this; as of version 0.9.1, neither the "swap weapons" (`) command nor Tiles' point-and-click will handle arrows properly for felids. Note that felids still cannot wield any other weapon for this spell, severely limiting its usefulness for them.

Tips & Tricks

• Inscribe wanted wooded weapons with !D to prevent accidentally turning it into a snake.