Movement

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Movement is the primary means of getting around the dungeon. Although you may Blink, Teleport, and even create a Passage of Golubria, the majority of your movement will be directional movement between tiles or changing floors with stairs and escape hatches. A character's movement speed determines your ability to escape from danger and the number of enemy actions that will occur while you move.

Controls

If you are playing a version with mouse compatibility, you can click on a tile to send your character there by the fastest means possible, avoiding areas marked for travel exclusion. Pressing o on your keyboard auto-explores the level, stopping when you find a monster, item, or dungeon feature of interest.

You can also move in all 8 directions with the number pad on your keyboard, or with h-j-k-l-b-n-y-u:

7 8 9 <--> y k u

4 * 6 <--> h * l

1 2 3 <--> b j n

You can also move up or down stairs or escape hatches by standing on them and pressing < (upstairs) or > (downstairs). To head up or down a floor by the fastest means possible, press G to bring up the autotravel menu, followed by < or >. You can also auto-travel this way to any branch or distant level of the dungeon you've already discovered.

Character Speed

The @ command displays your character status.

Description	Delay
Very quick	6 - 7
Quick	8 - 9
Average	10
Slow	11 - 12
Very slow	13 +

Notes on movement speed:

• Regardless of any modifiers, a player's movement delay can never be lower than 6 except while hasted.
• There is no cap for slowest speed (such a blasphemy might anger Cheibriados).
• The relationship between speed and delay is: Speed = 100 / Delay ; Delay = 100 / Speed

Effect in Combat

While every Action you take counts as a single game turn, your action speed determines how many enemy actions take place (or how many fractions of an action they accumulate) during that turn. If your movement speed is slower than a dangerous enemy, such as a hydra, you may find yourself taking severe melee damage even as you flee.

Calculating Speed

All player species start with movement delay 10, with the following exceptions:

• Nagas start with Slow 2 (delay 14).
• Felids start with Fast 1 (delay 8).
• Centaurs start with Fast 2 (delay 7).
• Spriggans start with Fast 3 (delay 6).

Terrain
Swimming	+ 3
Burden
Encumbered	+ 1
Overloaded	+ 3
Mutations
Fast 1	- 2
Fast 2	- 3
Fast 3	- 4
Slow 1	+ 20%
Slow 2	+ 40%
Slow 3	+ 60%
Transformations & Effects
Swiftness	-25%/+33.3% (if mv. delay > 7) -14.28%/+20% (if mv. delay = 7) -0%/+0% (if mv. delay < 7)
Flying & Unburdened Tengu	- 1
Spider Form, Wisp Form, Porcupine Form	= 8
Merfolk Fishtail in Water	= 6
Bat Form	= 5
Pig Form	7
Equipment
Running ego	- 1
Ponderousness ego	+ 1
Religion
Cheibriados	Variable with piety (between +2 and +10)
Enchantments
Flash Freeze	+4
Grasping Roots	+3
Special
Haste	All actions are 50% faster
Slow	All actions are 50% slower

Notes on minimum delay and haste:

• Minimum delay is always 6, even after all the modifiers above have been calculated.
• However, Hasted characters have every action occur 50% faster, including movement. This can result in a hasted character with movement delay 6 behaving as if movement delay were 5 (rounded up from 4.5), even though movement delay itself is technically unchanged.

Notes on swimming:

• The swimming penalty does not affect Octopodes or Merfolk. Instead, Merfolk grow a fishtail and swim faster while Octopodes retain their normal speed while swimming.
• The swimming penalty also does not affect characters who are levitating, flying, or walking on water.
• Swimming negates both the Fast and Slow mutations.
• Swimming negates swiftness, unless you're levitating, flying, or walking on water.

Miscellaneous notes:

• The only multiplicative effect, the Slow mutation, is applied after adding all the additive effects except the burden modifiers.
• Transformation into another form negates the effect of mutations and any equipment incorporated into the form.

History

In 0.15, encumbrance status and item weight information will be removed altogether.

Prior to 0.14, the Ponderousness ego increased movement delay by 2 aut; and the swiftness decreased it by 2 auts, without any kind of penalization to your movement delay at all.

Prior to 0.13, the running ego reduced movement delay by two auts.