Ashenzari

Version 0.27: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Partake of my vision. Partake of my curse."

While it seems inconceivable that the divine could be shackled, Ashenzari is just that: bound to the sky for eternity, the unbudging god is all-knowing, all-seeing. Devoted worshippers are allowed to grasp shreds of this knowledge and foresight, but be warned: to Ashenzari, power and blessing and curse are all the same thing. Ashenzari exhorts followers to curse their possessions, periodically offering these curses to worshipers as they explore. Cursed equipment can not be enchanted and only removed by shattering it forever. However, these curses enchance specific skills. They will also please Ashenzari, who will reveal the invisible and grant clarity of mind. The truly devot will gain a fragment of Ashenzari's astral sight, letting them see through walls. Ashenzari likes it when you bind yourself with curses. Ashenzari's powers are not effected by Invocations skill.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Ashenzari (or any other god).

Appreciates

Ashenzari likes it when you curse your equipment. Curses are offered periodically on exploration; approximately one curse per ordinary dungeon floor fully explored, if you have no curses pending.

Piety is entirely dependent on how many equipment slots you have binded. For an unmutated human, each cursed item will provide approximately 17 piety, ignoring piety gain on worship. Slot-limiting effects, such as species, Ru's Sacrifice Hand, or the Lear's hauberk are taken in consideration. When transformed, your bound status is based on your equipment pre-transformation.

Deprecates

• Abandonment.
• Uncursing items (loss of piety given by the cursed slot)
• Piety with Ashenzari does not increase over time.

Given Abilities

Piety level (0): "Cursed"

• All items are immediately identified upon converting to Ashenzari.
• Curse Item: curse an item in your inventory. Offered periodically.
• Shatter the Chains: destroys a cursed item, forever.

The Detect Foo abilities start with a radius of 0, but their radius and power increases with piety.

• Detect Curses: All items in sight will display as Cursed or Uncursed. (Passive)
• Detect Items: Shows the location, but not the type, of items beyond your field of vision. (Passive)
• Detect Traps: Provides immunity to traps triggered by exploration. (Passive)
• Detect Monsters: Shows the location and relative strength, but not the type, of monsters beyond your field of vision. (Passive)
• Detect Terrain: Maps random tiles beyond your field of vision, similar to the deep dwarf mutation. It works in Labyrinths and the Abyss. (Passive)
• Portal Detection: Instant detection of portals, including in the Abyss ("You have a vision of a gate."). (Passive)

Piety level (*): "Initiated"

• No new abilities.

Piety level (**): "Soothsayer"

• See invisible.

Piety level (***): "Seer"

• Clarity.

Piety level (****): "Oracle"

• Scrying: Passively reveals everything with a set radius from you. Increases in radius with piety, with a maximum of 4 tile radius.

Piety level (*****): "Illuminatus"

• No new abilities.

Piety level (******): "Omniscient"

• No new abilities. Please note that unlike other gods, Ashenzari's piety caps at 170. You must curse every equipment slot possible to achieve this maximum.

Curses

Each curse you make will provide a boost to two distinct groups of skills. These groups are listed as follows:

Group	Boosted skills
Alchemy	Poison Magic, Transmutations
Beguiling	Conjurations, Hexes, Translocations
Companions	Summoning, Necromancy
Cunning	Dodging, Stealth
Elements	Fire Magic, Ice Magic, Air Magic, Earth Magic
Evocations	Evocations
Fortitude	Armour, Shields
Introspection	Fighting, Spellcasting
Melee Combat	All melee weapon skills
Ranged Combat	Slings, Bows, Crossbows, Throwing

WIth at least one curse boosting it, each skill is boosted by (curses * 2 + 1) * (piety_rank + 1) * skill_level skill points (not to be confused with levels). Therefore, skills with minimal investment will not be boosted much.

Punishments

Ashenzari does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Ashenzari's wrath is not like other gods'; it is constant and unrelenting for its duration. Victims find their skills impaired, and their enemies divinely guided - never losing track of them, never ending the hunt.

Upon abandoning Ashenzari, all cursed items immediately shatter. You will receive -4 to all skills until you've gained an amount of XP equivalent to two experience levels.

Additionally, monster AI gets a boost:

• They track you better.
• They never forget about you.
• They are more likely to know your position while you are invisible.

Strategy

Ashenzari provides a significant power boost relatively early in the game, soon after the player has managed to recieve a few curses. As a result of the ensuing skill boosts, melee combat types will be able to go toe-to-toe with much stronger enemies, and casters will see high level spells become castable much more quickly and low level utility spells castable with very little training. Since Ash offers no abilities that fill the escape or combat-support roles often provided by gods, players must take advantage of the skill enhancements and retraining flexibility to fill these roles themselves with the spellbooks and equipment they find.

Ashenzari's early curses might not benefit your gameplan. Therefore, common or replacable items, such as an unbranded robe or plate armour, are quite useful. These sacrifical items let you take immediate advantage of Ashenzari's knowledge, even when the skill bonuses offered do not provide the greatest benefits. An amulet of faith is entirely useless for Ashenzari, besides the benefits gained by cursing it. Alternatively, you can change your gameplan - for example, an otherwise melee character might learn a spell if cursed with Companions.

Conversely, items that you would want to keep on for the entire game; whenever it'd be a well-enchanted artefact or a good amulet, are even more useful for Ashenzari worshippers. You can wait until you get an especialy advantagous curse to inflict on your most valuable items.

Remember that Ashenzari does not punish adventuring with uncursed equipment. The tradeoff is merely less boosted and god abilities. So if a strategy or dungeon branch requires a swappable slot (e.g. for rings of protection from cold or fire in Depths), go ahead and leave it unbound as needed. Maximum piety is helpful, but not entirely necessary.

Ashenzari worshippers may discover occasional disconnected vaults (which often contain treasure). Normally these are only found via magic mapping or the Passive Mapping mutation / Deep Dwarf passive.

Felids can start gaining piety with Ashenzari particularly quickly - each cursed jewllery will provide ** of piety, each. However, this comes at the cost of losing much of your ability to swap resistances on the fly.

History

• In 0.27, Ashenzari and curses were reworked. Ashenzari would boost skills related to the item cursed, scrying was an active ability, and had the ability to transfer skill points between schools. To see more details on Ashenzari prior to 0.27, see this revision.
• Prior 0.23, Ashenzari provided the only source of full monster equipment identification. It also provided a passive boost to finding traps rather than immunity to exploration traps.
• Prior to 0.18, players would have to pray over scrolls of remove curse to convert them into the now-obsolete scrolls of curse armour, curse weapon, and curse jewellery.
• Prior to 0.14, scrolls of curse item could be randomly generated, but Ashenzari gave fewer of them for sacrificing remove curse.
• Prior to 0.12, Ashenzari's altars often had an artefact spell book next to them with only one spell: Animate Skeleton. This was to assist in butchering corpses while wielding cursed blunt weapons.
• Prior to 0.9, worshippers of Ashenzari would receive a bonus to experience gain instead of a boost to skills, and shields were not considered a separate equipment category in regards to being bound.
• Ashenzari was added in 0.8.