Wand of mindburst

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Wand
Name	Wand of mindburst
Icon

A magical device which launches a psychic attack on a target creature. If it overcomes their willpower, it 'blows their mind' in a violently literal fashion, dealing damage that bypasses their armour entirely. It is useless against mindless creatures.

A wand of mindburst deals significant chunks of untyped damage to a single monster, assuming it isn't mindless. This effect must overcome the target's willpower, but it ignores AC and always hits. Mindburst is significantly harder to resist than other willpower-related wand effects, making it useful against a large variety of early- and mid-game opponents.

Players will deal 3d(8.75 + 3.5 * Evocations/4) damage with this wand.

Monsters will deal 1d(12 + (30 + HD)/4) damage with this wand.

Players use mindburst with an "enchantment power" of 8.75 * Evocations, which is x2.5 higher than other wands. The higher ench. more is compared to monster willpower, the more likely you are to succeed. See the Willpower article for more details.

Strategy

• This wand can be particularly effective at taking out low-HD, high-threat monsters such as boggarts and Sonja.
• Mindburst is also effective at killing low-level players. If an early opponent happens to have one on hand, you'll likely want to escape immediately; multiple zaps of a wand of mindburst can very quickly become lethal.

Trivia

A monster killed in this manner will explode, spraying blood splatters around the area without leaving a corpse (dragons are immune to this effect, and may or may not leave a corpse as normal). Followers of Gozag Ym Sagoz will receive a spray of single gold coins on several nearby tiles instead of a shower of blood.

History

• In 0.29, monsters no longer deal 67% damage with this wand, but mindburst's damage formula (when used by monsters) was changed instead. Damage from the wand is slightly higher than in 0.28.
• In 0.28, monsters do 67% damage with this wand. It was supposed to work this way since 0.4, but was broken due to a bug.
• Prior to 0.27, this wand was called the wand of disintegration. Also, it could affect mindless creatures.
• Prior to 0.20, it could disintegrate rock walls and obstacles in the dungeon (doors, iron grates, trees, orcish idols, and most kinds of statues).
• Prior to 0.15, orange crystal statues and silver statues could be destroyed instantly through use of a wand of disintegration.
• Prior to 0.6, zapped creatures were simply reduced to nothingness.