Apportation

Version 0.21: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Apportation
Level	1
School1	Translocation
Source(s)	Book of Cantrips Book of Party Tricks
Casting noise	1
Spell noise	0 (30 when apporting the Orb of Zot)

Pulls the top item or group of similar items from a distant pile to the floor near the caster. With low power, items might not be moved all the way to the caster's position. Extremely powerful magical items, such as the Orb of Zot, may actively resist the pull of this spell.

Apportation is a level 1 Translocations spell which moves a targeted item in your line of sight toward your character. The distance you pull the item is determined by your spell power. The presence of monsters between you and the item has no impact on the spell's effect, and you can pull items over deep water and lava, but the spell will not function if the object would drop in as a result. Physical obstacles, including iron grates, will completely block your ability to affect an item, even though you can see it.

There are some limitations, however:

• If you cast it on a stack of different items, it will only affect the top item in the stack. So long as that item moves, however, this will reveal the next item in the stack - however casting on multiple of the same stackable item eg. scrolls will move both as if there was only one.
• Successfully apporting the Orb of Zot can make the Orb chamber significantly easier - however 1-in-3 attempts fail, every attempt causes the Orb to shriek louder than a scroll of noise, and it can only be moved a maximum of (spell power / 10) - 1 tiles per casting. (The shriek can be beneficial as, as you're escaping with the Orb, monsters will be pulled to your old location as you escape instead of to your escape path.)

Strategy

Apportation is surprisingly useful for a level 1 utility spell, and almost any non-Trog worshipper can get this spell functioning reliably with little effort. It only requires training in one skill (Translocations), thus making the experience cost to use it rather low. While your minotaur fighter is unlikely to get it anywhere near full spell power, even a moderate strength Apportation is useful for:

• Grabbing runes without having to deal with all those inconveniently placed monsters.
• Picking up loot in the Abyss without risk of teleporting away or backtracking into pursuing monsters.
• Stealing items out of vaults filled with dangerous clouds or blocked by terrain you'd need to fly over.
• Retrieving ammo for ranged-combat characters.
• Minimizing your turncount, for turncount speedruns.
• It can help you grab the Orb of Zot a little faster.

History

Prior to 0.22, Apportation was available in the Book of Spatial Translocations, the starting book for the Warper background.

Prior to 0.12, the Orb only caused Apportation to fail 1-in-6 times.

Prior to 0.8, the Orb did not resist Apportation at all.

In earlier versions, apporting only part of a pile of similar items would cause the remaining items to be destroyed.