Xom

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This page is about the god. For the card, see Xom card.

"A new plaything!"

Xom is a wild and unpredictable god of chaos, who seeks not worshippers but playthings with which to toy. Many choose to follow Xom in the hope of receiving fabulous rewards and mighty powers, but Xom is nothing if not capricious. There is nothing a follower can do to influence Xom's mood. To worship Xom is to live riskily. In a good mood Xom may shower you with gifts, while at other times this capricious god could decide to “spice things up a little” and send you to your doom. If you prove yourself the stronger, so much the better; if not, well, there'll be other playthings...

Chaos Knights begin play worshiping Xom.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Xom (or any other god).

Piety

Unlike other gods, there is no way to affect your piety; it is instead randomly changed.

For Xom, Piety's only use is to determine the niceness and strength of its actions. Xom's niceness depends on your Piety: the chance to perform a "good" action is approximately equal to Piety/2 % (this probability is increased during dangerous situations, like combat, up to 95%). The strength of Xom's actions will depend on how far you are from 100 Piety (in either direction).

Piety starts at 100 and changes by 1 point roughly every 20 turns (about 49% chance to move towards 100 and 51% chance to move away). When Xom acts, there is a 20% chance that your piety will be set to a random amount. Piety can be observed in the ^ screen by watching your favour status, as well as observing the piety meter.

Depending on your piety, it displays the following messages:

• 0 - 20: A very special plaything of Xom.
• 21 - 50: A special plaything of Xom.
• 51 - 80: A plaything of Xom.
• 81 - 120: A toy of Xom.
• 121 - 150: A favourite toy of Xom.
• 151 - 180: A beloved toy of Xom.
• 181 - 200: Xom's teddy bear.

Amusement

Another important aspect of Xom is that it really, really hates being bored. When Xom is bored, Xom will act more often, and its actions will almost always be bad. This is reflected by an "amusement" value, which ranges between 0 and 255.

When you start worshiping Xom, its amusement is set to between 2 and 80. Every 20 turns, there's a 50% chance that Xom's amusement will be decreased by one, until it reaches 0. When that happens, you'll get a message "Xom is BORED", and the bad stuff will start. You'll get a warning when the amusement gets down to 1 (at least 20 turns before it reaches 0): "Xom is getting BORED". If your interest reaches zero, your title will always be "A BORING thing", regardless of your piety level.

To avoid boring Xom, you should always try to keep it interested in you. Unfortunately, Xom is mostly amused by things you can't control (like being teleported away in the Abyss when the exit or a rune was in sight) or if you waste useful resources. When Xom finds something funny, its amusement may be rise to a random point depending on how much it enjoyed the event and if the new amusement is higher than its current amusement. You can guess how high the amusement was set by the message provided:

• Xom is interested: 12 - 25
• Xom is mildly amused: 26 - 50
• Xom is amused: 51 - 75
• Xom is highly amused!: 76 - 100
• Xom thinks this is hilarious!: 101 - 200
• Xom roars with laughter!: 201 - 255

Interest

You can help make Xom more interested in you by doing or being affected by the following things:

• Extreme (255): Using random effects in dangerous combat, randomly teleporting into a dangerous situation, being banished to the Abyss, or being hit by a vulnerable element (200).
• High (128): Mutating (depends on the mutation) or undead rotting.
• Medium (64): Drinking potions of degeneration or berserk rage, having your intellect devoured (50), or when hostile monsters accidentally hit each other.
• Low (16): Successful use of a box of beasts (14), enchanting things, gaining levels, anyone in sight fumbling in shallow water (14), or being drained (20).
• Minor: Spell miscasts (the level), becoming confused (duration), or sustaining serious injury (varies).

Xom is also interested by dangerous and high tension situations and is more likely to intervene or act when these occur. Some examples include fighting many monsters at once, battling a high HD monster when your XL is low, and being slowed or paralyzed.

Acts

Every 20 turns (for a character with normal speed), Xom will turn its attention towards you, and depending on the situation (from 7% of the time if there are no monsters in view to 33% in the middle of a big fight) may decide to perform either a "good" action or a "bad" action.

Xom's actions will often be in context (i.e. turning you berserk if there's no one around), although nothing is guaranteed. Good actions are more likely if your Piety is high (see below).

Below is an incomplete list of actions that Xom may perform.

"Good" Actions

• Affect you with a random potion effect among Curing (12.35%), Heal Wounds (12.35%), Magic (12.35%), Haste (12.35%), Might (12.35%), Brilliance (12.35%), Attraction (6.17%), Invisibility (12.35%), Berserk Rage (6.17%), and Experience (1.23%) [1]. Only potions that will have an effect are picked (for example, no Magic if the player character is at max MP). These are more likely to occur during combat.
• Make you cast a random spell.
• Confuse monsters around you. This will not occur if the monster is holy, nonliving, has the Clarity intrinsic, or is already confused [2].
• Summon one or more allies to help you. This is limited by your experience level. (If you are level 15, the maximum number of demons spawned will be 15 [3].)
• Gift you an item.
• Polymorph a random monster around you into a weaker monster (-3 HD).
• Permanently transform a hostile snake enemy into a "stick" (any one of the weapons: club, spear, trident, halberd, glaive, quarterstaff, shortbow, longbow, giant club, or giant spiked club). The stick will never be branded, and is not guaranteed to be useful to the player character. The stick's rarity, type and enchantment are influenced by the HD of the snake.
• Swap the position of you and at least one monster near you (confuses the monster 50% of the time) [4].
• Instantly teleport several times, likely up to a relatively safe place.
• Give you a random good mutation, or many random good mutations. This will reduce your current HP (but no lower than 50% of your max HP), but they can also restore your health to 50% of your max HP if you are below that amount. These go through mutation resistance.
• Throw a bolt of divine lightning, which explodes around you. There's a chance based on your HP (the lower, the better) that Xom will protect you against it. ("The area is suffused with divine lightning!") [5]
• Prevent you from being banished.
• Provide you with vision of the current floor or detect items on the floor around you. This can only occur if less than 80% of the level has been explored.
• Detect monsters.
• Change the scenery around you. Fountains may begin to gush blood, walls in your line of sight may be vitrified (allowing both you and monsters to see through), or doors may randomly burst open and slam shut. [6]
• You start spewing a harmless trail of magical condensation behind you. This does not block line of sight.
• Polymorph you into a "good" form, such as an ice beast or dragon.
• Summon friendly monsters to defend you.
• Cast Tukima's Dance on a random monster's weapon. ("[Enemy]'s [weapon] dances into the air!") [7]
• Hurl fireballs at your foes. This skips adjacent monsters. If Xom is in a bad mood, there is a chance for him to hurl fireballs at allied monsters [8]. There is a 1/3 chance for the fireballs to be fake and have no effect [9].

"Bad" Actions

• Instantly teleport several times, likely up to a relatively dangerous place.
• Add a Chaos brand and several slaying increases to a random nearby creature's weapons and ammunitions. This will not occur if the item is blessed, is a gift from another god, is branded, or is a boulder or throwing net. If the enemy is an orc priest, there is only a 50 percent chance that the priest's weapon will be chaos enchanted. If the enemy is holy (and not a gift from a chaotic god), their weapons cannot be upgraded [10]. Upon upgrading, the text "[enemy]'s [weapon] erupts in a glittering mayhem of colors" will alert the player to the chaos upgraded weapon.
• Give you or random/bad mutations or removes them. This will reduce your current HP (but no lower than 50% of your max HP), but they can also restore your health to 50% of your max HP if you are below that amount. These go through mutation resistance.
• Polymorph a random monster around you into a stronger monster (+2 HD).
• If stairs (or escape hatches) are in view, they are moved toward you or away from you. For several turns, when you move on a stair or climb up or down a stair, there's a chance that it will slide away from you.
• Poison you.
• Confuse you.
• Weaken you, as if you drank a potion of degeneration.
• Make loud noises at your location.
• Inflict you with draining.
• Cast Symbol of Torment.
• Summon hostile zombies, demons, or dancing weapons to fight you.
• Banish you to the Abyss.
• Open a Malign Gateway near you.

Xom's actions and gifts will often be in the spirit of what Xom (with its particularly capricious sense of humor) finds funny: if you are training one specific type of weapon, Xom will probably give you a different kind.

In any case, Xom's actions will never directly kill you unless Xom is bored or you are under penance (a mutation or effect that would reduce a stat to 0 is cancelled, HP damage that would have killed you is cancelled, etc.). However, anything Xom summons is more than capable of killing you.

Revival

Rarely, upon death, Xom may intervene and save your life. This seems to be more likely with higher piety. Being revived merely negates the damage from the action that would have killed you; it doesn't restore you to full health, just leaves you at the point you would be if the killing blow had not happened.

Gifts

Xom will occasionally give you gifts as one of his actions. These are delivered purely at random, not based on any Gift Timeout. Xom's gifts can be normal, useful items, but are usually chosen for maximum annoyance. Items range from excellent randarts to large piles of gold to utter trash (robe {god gift}). Randarts will sometimes have titles with Xom's name in them (e.g. leather armour of Xom's Amusement).

Penance

Unfaithful ex-followers will find themselves suffering through Xom's bad moods for so long as Xom can be bothered to remember about them. Still, Xom's caprice remains; the unfaithful are rewarded just as the faithful are punished.

If you leave Xom (voluntarily or not), your penance counter will be set to 50 (quite high!).

While under penance, Xom will occasionally punish you by performing a "bad" action from the list above. As a true god of chaos, however, there is a 10% chance that Xom will do a "good" action instead.

Trivia

• When using a QWERTY keyboard layout, the name "Xom" is simply "Zin," but with all letters mistyped one key to the right.
• Xom's "last name" on his god page is usually "of Chaos" (at a 69.65 percent chance of occurring), but can more rarely be any one of 27 other options. This is unique for all gods in Crawl, as all other gods can only have one last name. [11]

• Most rarely are the last names "The Xom-Meister, Xom-a-lom-a-ding-dong", "The Xom-Meister, Xom-o-Rama", "The Xom-Meister, Xom-Xom-bo-Bom, Banana-Fana-fo-Fom", "Xom of Unknown Intent", "Xom the Fickle", "Xom of Unknown Intention", "Xom of Swiftly Tilting Intent", "Xom of Fickle Intent", "Xom of Ineffable Intent", "Xom of Gnomic Intent", each at a 0.50% chance of occurring. [12]

History

• In 0.26, Xom is stimulated on worship from a faded altar (+200 amusement).
• Prior to 0.25, Xom could cause miscast effects.
• Prior to 0.24, Xom could not summon butterflies when you were tormented.
• Prior to 0.21, eating mutagenic chunks could grant Xom's interest.
• Prior to 0.18, Xom branded weapon gifts with chaos less often and didn't chaos brand ranged weapons. Drinking potions of poison could also award Xom's interest.
• Prior to 0.17, drinking potions of decay could award Xom's interest.
• In 0.16, Xom gained a 'mood' meter on the Crawl interface, in the same place other gods have piety meters.
• Prior to 0.14, Xom's confusion could surpass 20 turns; this has been capped to 20. Xom's abilities also did not respect clarity and sustain abilities at all, although Xom may still bypass these abilities if his mood meter is particularly low.