Instadeath

Version 0.17: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The term instadeath can have several definitions, either in Crawl or in roguelikes in general. Of course, many people use it to describe a death which occurs instantly or very quickly, e.g. an early ogre one-shotting a low-level spriggan. However, the term is often more formally used to describe deaths which occur regardless of a character's current HP, even if the death itself is not instant (so-called 'delayed instadeaths'). Such instadeaths are fairly rare in Crawl, and can only occur in a few ways:

• Starving to death is an instadeath.
• Falling into deep water or lava will result in an instadeath. Normally, the game will prevent you from walking into deep water or lava, but it may happen in a number of ways:
  • Ending flight while over deep water or lava. The game will not let you choose to end flight in such a situation, and will give you very clear warnings if a temporary source of flight is expiring.
  • Despite how ominous their effects may seem, Ilsuiw's Call Tide and merfolk aquamancers' Primal Wave spells will not directly cause you to drown. In the same vein, while water elementals' attacks are referred to as "drowning" attacks, they merely do irresistible damage each turn, instead of causing any sort of instadeath.

Dealing instadeath to monsters

There are only a few ways to kill monsters irrespective of their hit points. All of them only work in a few specific situations:

• Most monsters die if they fall in deep water or lava. Usually, this requires confusing them near such terrain.
• Arguably, (Mass) Abjuration can deal a form of instadeath to summoned monsters.
• Banishment works regardless of a monster's current HP, although said monster may again be encountered in the Abyss.

History

Prior to 0.17 it was possible for confused players to accidentally walk into deep water or lava. Intelligent monsters used to be immune to this type of death, but no longer are.

Prior to 0.15, orange crystal and silver statues could be instantly killed by wands of disintegration. Prior to this version it was also possible to sometimes scramble out of deep water or lava.

Prior to 0.14 Lee's Rapid Deconstruction could instantly kill brittle monsters.

Prior to 0.13, one could suffer statdeath: after a few dozen turns of a stat being at zero, the character would die. Presently, being at 0 in a stat will just apply some penalties. Prior to 0.8, statdeath killed the player as soon as the stat hit zero, as opposed to being a delayed instadeath.

In addition, prior to 0.13, one could die by being level-drained to level 0 - that is, being hit by a draining attack at XL1. This was removed when draining attacks were changed to temporarily drain skills instead of permanently draining experience.