Wanderer

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

Wanderers are people who have not learned a specific trade. Instead, they've travelled around becoming "jacks-of-all-trades, masters of none". They start the game with a random assortment of skills and maybe some small items and spells they picked up along the way, but, other than that, they're pretty much on their own.

The wanderer is an adventurer who has tried multiple professions without devoting himself to any particular discipline. The items in a wanderer's starting inventory usually (but not always) relate to their starting skills.

Preferred Races

If you feel you must play a Wanderer, the game recommends you play as a Human, Hill Orc, Spriggan, Merfolk, Draconian or Demonspawn.

Starting Equipment

Wanderers start with 1-2 random weapons, random armour, various miscellaneous items, and sometimes a few random spells, all weighted towards those you have good aptitudes for.

Possibilities include any of these:

• Melee weapons - club, mace, dagger, short sword, falchion, hand axe, spear, or quarterstaff, which may be enchanted up to +2.
• Ranged weapons - shortbow or hand crossbow, which may be enchanted up to +2, with ammo but often not a lot.
• Occasionally a second weapon of a different skill (melee or ranged) which will always be +0
• Shields: buckler or (normal) shield, always +0
• Armour: robe, leather armour, ring mail or scale mail, possibly enchanted up to +2
• Throwing nets
• Default spell sets: starting spells of other mage and warrior-mage backgrounds
• Additional spell sets: two low level spells of a particular theme.
• Scrolls
• Potions
• Wands: wand of charming, wand of paralysis, or wand of flame
• Evokables: box of beasts, phial of floods, phantom mirror, condenser vane, tin of tremorstones, or lightning rod (1/3 chance instead of a wand)

You will always get 1 melee weapon or 1 ranged weapon and at least a robe for armour. If you get a ranged weapon you may not get a melee weapon. This leads to the worst-case scenario of getting 1 curare dart and nothing else.

Starting Stats

Wanderers receive 12 stat points distributed at random when they start the game, with a 50% less chance to increase a stat if it is already 17 or higher when a point is assigned by the algorithm. It is not correlated to their starting equipment, so it is possible for a Wanderer to start with little more than a robe and a few spells in their spell library, yet still have an Intelligence of 10. This does not affect racial modifiers, of course; a DEWn will still have a higher intelligence than a TrWn on average.

Starting Skills

You may receive 1-5 levels in the Weapon skill of your default weapon (but not always), Fighting, Armour, Unarmed Combat, Dodging, Stealth, Evocations, Spellcasting, and various schools of magic, not necessarily relevant to any starting spell you may have. Wanderers always start with a couple levels in two out of four possible utility skills: Throwing, Stealth, Shields, and Evocations.

History

• In 0.28, Wanderers' gear will be influenced towards your aptitudes. In addition, the gear pool will be updated.
• Prior to 0.21, wanderers could start with a wand of confusion instead of a wand of paralysis.
• In 0.16, wanderers start with a randart spellbook instead of starting with a level one spell memorized. They also have a chance to spawn with a box of beasts or an elemental evoker instead of a wand. The starting equipment your character receives is also recorded in the game log.
• Prior to 0.14, wanderers began with scrolls of teleportation recognised.