The Abyss

Version 0.12: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The Abyss is a truly bizarre place, ever-changing and twisted. It is filled with all sorts of monsters, mostly of demonic nature, whose common aim is to feast on intruders. It is also the garbage dump for many sorcerers, who delight in sending would-be champions like you to these proving grounds of madness. Reportedly, there is some structure to the chaos, as Lugonu seems to concoct schemes around this place and its denizens. The abyssal rune can be found there. The Abyss can be purposefully reached through portals in the deeper levels of the main dungeon.

A one-way gate to a demon-haunted realm, riven by chaos, its very substance impermanent and whimsical, filled with creatures out of nightmare.

The Abyss is an extra-dimensional chaotic plane without definite shape or form, inhabited by unholy horrors and ruled by Lugonu the Unformed. Whether you end up in this horrible place intentionally or as the result of sheer bad luck, dedicated explorers will eventually find the abyssal rune of Zot and perhaps even a way out!

Layout

The Abyss is a 5-"floor" branch, though not in the traditional sense. Each floor is an endless plane of constantly shifting terrain, made up of all manner of walls, shallow water, deep water, and lava. Clouds of smoke are common, and clouds of more dangerous substances are not unheard of. Although you can occasionally find stable structures and obvious vaults in your exploration, it's mostly just a jumbled mess of terrain and monsters.

The chaotic forces of the Abyss cause a number of strange phenomena to occur:

• The Abyss is constantly shifting and cannot be permanently mapped. Only tiles recently or currently in your line of sight are shown, and anything that leaves your sight is quickly forgotten. Terrain in the Abyss shifts with nearly every step, though vaults are mostly unaffected. This shifting may open new escape routes for stranded adventurers – or seal ones they were planning to take. You may be pushed out of your current tile by this happening, but never with directly lethal effect.
• You will be teleported at random every so often, bringing you to a new part of the Abyss or even resetting the level and dumping you in a fresh patch of chaos (20% chance per teleport). Be aware that dropping something from your inventory may result in losing it forever, and that your army of summoned monsters will be constantly left behind. Recall helps with this somewhat.
• Manual teleportation and blinking also behave erratically in the Abyss. Teleport attempts have a chance to fail, and take much longer than normal to kick in. Doing so also has the same 20% chance of resetting the level. Blinking is extremely difficult here, succeeding only 11% of the time (or 33% for Lugonu followers). Teleport control is nearly useless; its only effect is to double the success rate of blink attempts, but they still send you to a random tile.

Exploration has its rewards, however. Although most items found here are fairly common, almost any item in the game can be randomly generated, and wandering will eventually uncover both the abyssal rune and a portal out. Every tile you come across has a 1/7500 chance of being a way out (though this is much higher if you worship Lugonu or have the Abyssal rune). The rune can only appear on Abyss:3 or deeper, and the chance of it appearing rises the deeper you go and the longer you've spent in the Abyss. There is also an infinite amount of experience in the Abyss, though it is a much slower area to train in than Pandemonium or the finite end-game branches. While exploring is suicidal for low-level characters, it is usually survivable once you've reached level 20 or so.

While each gateway down in the Abyss only brings you one floor lower, any gateway up will take you out of the Abyss entirely.

Structures

While the most common sights in the Abyss are monsters, chaotic walls, items, and altars to Lugonu, more orderly things can be found:

• Altars to any god can randomly occur, though with less frequency than those to Lugonu. If you see a stone structure surrounded by plants and trees, you may have come across a fully-functioning Ecumenical Temple (though corrupted temples to Lugonu also occur).
• After teleporting, you may find yourself in the middle of an arena filled with monsters, loot, and a portal out of the Abyss. You can face the monsters and collect the loot if you'd like, but remember that another teleport may kick in at any moment.
• Rune vaults:
  • A perimeter of 8 lightning spires with the rune in the center.
  • A lava lake, in the center of which is an island filled with dire elephants, one hellephant, and a stone structure containing the rune.
  • A small stone building containing 8 doors. Each contains a lich, but one also contains the rune.
  • A large crystal structure filled with mad acolytes of Lugonu and a rune in the very back.
  • A huge stone structure filled with neqoxecs, cacodemons, and other miserably hazardous demons (also a rune).
  • And more!

Entering the Abyss

There are several ways to enter the Abyss:

• Enter a portal to the Abyss. These are found in Pandemonium, Labyrinths, and floor 21+ of the Dungeon. This is the safest method, but it causes you to drop any distortion weapons you're carrying at the gate. They'll be there if/when you return.
• Fail to resist a monster's Banishment spell.
• Unwield a weapon of distortion (25% chance per unwield).
• Get hit by a weapon of distortion (9.9% chance per hit).
• Severely miscast a Translocations or Summonings spell.
• Gate yourself to the Abyss using Lugonu's abilities.
• Play as an Abyssal Knight to begin in the Abyss.
• Renounce Lugonu's religion or abandon it for another god.
• Draw the Damnation card from the deck of escape (may banish enemies instead).
• On rare occasion, a Zot trap will send you to the Abyss.

Exiting the Abyss

• Use an exit portal.
• Use Lugonu's Depart the Abyss ability. You can convert to Lugonu easily in the Abyss, but generating the piety needed to use this ability takes time, and your former god will not appreciate this.

Tips & Tricks

• The enemies found here are only slightly weaker than those found in Hell, so a full complement of resistances (particularly mutation resistance) is recommended. Getting surrounded here can be deadly, but if you can run away for long enough the level will reset, saving you from your pursuers. Swiftness or boots of running are especially useful to speed up exploration - or Flight to pass over magma (but be careful not to fall in!) - and Stealth can let you walk away from fights you just don't want to deal with.
• You may be in the Abyss for a long time, and few of its inhabitants leave corpses, so a generous supply of permafood is also highly recommended.
• Abyssal Knights start in the Abyss, and may choose to look around before either leaving through a portal (there's usually one near their starting position) or using Depart the Abyss. However, this level of the Abyss will only contain items on par with those found on Dungeon:1, while the monsters will be as deadly as normal. Don't stick around any longer than you have to.
• Getting sent to the Abyss early (usually through Banishment) is often a death sentence, but you may be able to survive long enough to find a gate out. Use every speed advantage you can muster to avoid every combat you can; even if you can defeat some of the weaker foes, you want to spend every possible turn exploring new tiles and generating new chances of escape.
• For weaker players, surviving the abyss is about mobility and not about XP or treasure. To this end, when you see a monster, you should head in the opposite direction. Levitation and Dig will help manufacture avenues of escape when you're seemingly trapped. Blinking and Teleport scrolls are for when a horde has accumulated and you're trapped. Since teleports take a while to kick in, consider teleporting on sight when you see speedy, lethal monsters like the Executioner. Relatively few monsters can fly: use lava and deep water to strand pursuers. Spawn summons to slow/entangle pursuers. Use quiet dead ends to regenerate HP/MP. Then, get moving.

Monsters

• Almost any zombie or skeleton, usually of late-game monster
• Almost any undead or demon (though tier-1 demons are very rare)
• Rare player species monsters, such as tengu and octopodes
• Humanoid casters, such as wizards and *necromancers
• Almost any eyeball
• Any kind of draconian
• Any kind of deep dwarf
• Any uniques you banished to the Abyss
• Several monsters unique to the Abyss:
  • Ancient zyme
  • Apocalypse crab
  • Lurking horror
  • Spatial maelstrom
  • Starcursed mass
  • Tentacled starspawn
  • Thrashing horror
  • Wretched star

History

Prior to 0.12, the Abyss had only one floor, and finding the rune was simply a matter of wandering it for long enough.

Prior to 0.10, the Abyss' terrain shifting would happen at a much slower pace, and only when you weren't looking directly at it.

In earlier versions, the Abyss would wrap around on itself if you went too far in one direction. Also, banishment to the Abyss was one of the possible results of Hell's mystical force.