Animate Dead

Version 0.19: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Animate Dead
Level	4
School1	Necromancy
Source(s)	Book of Death Book of Unlife
Casting noise	3
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	100
Hated By	Elyvilon The Shining One Zin
Flags	Helpful, Selfench, Utility

For some time after casting this, living creatures killed by the caster will rise as zombies. The chance of reanimating a monster and the duration of the effect increase with spell power. Re-casting this spell will return zombies to dust, as will leaving the floor. “Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.” -Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus_, Vol. I, Chapter 3. 1818 (1st Ed.)

Animate Dead is a level 4 Necromancy spell that attempts to raise all corpses and skeletons in LOS as zombies or skeletons. These minions cannot heal or use stairs, but will serve you faithfully until death or until they crumble to dust. Some corpses cannot be raised in this manner.

This spell is similar to Yredelemnul's power of the same name.

Strategy

• Animate Dead is a very powerful spell for Kikubaaqudgha followers. Combining the Corpse Delivery ability with this spell allows you to rapidly create a large gang of allies at will, in exchange for a very affordable chunk of piety and MP. Other characters can also put it to good use; animating the remains of every powerful enemy you defeat on a given floor means that you'll have plenty of allies available in case you come across a very powerful unique. Couple it with Recall in order to compensate for the slow movement speed of the undead.
• Although pricier than Animate Skeleton, Animate Dead offers significant advantages:
  • Like skeletons, zombies have lower stats than the monsters they were raised from. However, the reduction is less dramatic (except for movement speed).
  • Animate Dead can raise multiple corpses at once, and from a distance. This makes it a much more useful option in the middle of combat.
• Fast species may want to use the Ctrl-E command to limit the travelling speed to the lowest ally speed.

Limitations

The following corpses are unaffected by Animate Dead:

p Shapeshifter p Glowing shapeshifter

The following corpses are too rotten for a proper zombie. You will get skeletons instead.

n Necrophage n Ghoul (monster) n Bog body

See Also

• Derived undead

History

Prior to 0.17, raised creatures were permanent until death.

Prior to 0.15, plague shamblers would also only produce skeletons.

Prior to 0.13, vampire mosquitoes, ugly things, very ugly things, guardian serpents, sky beasts and Arachne could not be animated.

Prior to 0.10 Animate Dead would ignore any corpses on a spot after the first corpse.

Prior to 0.5, zombies and skeletons could use stairs, making this an excellent spell for creating armies.