Wanderer

Version 0.29: 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 to any particular discipline. The items in a wanderer's starting inventory heavily correlate their starting skills.

Preferred Races

If you feel you must play a Wanderer, the game recommends you play as a Human, Hill Orc, Gnoll, 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. Possibilities include any of these:

• Melee weapons - Can be plain: Club, mace, dagger, short sword, falchion, hand axe, or spear, which may be vorpal or enchanted up to +2. Or a +0 'good tier' weapon: Rapier, flail, war axe, trident, long sword, quarterstaff.
• Ranged weapons - hunting sling, 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, which can be +2 or of protection. Large species get a kite shield.
• Armour: robe, leather armour, scale, chainmail, possibly enchanted up to +2. Characters unable to fit into regular armour may receive acid dragon scales or various auxiliary pieces of armour.
• Default spell sets: two or three low-mid level spells of a particular theme.
• Additional spell sets: two or four low level random spells.
• Various Scrolls and Potions.
• Wands and Evocables: box of beasts, phial of floods, phantom mirror, condenser vane, tin of tremorstones, or lightning rod
• Throwables. From darts; poison, curare, atropia, datura with a (+2) dagger, to boomerangs and throwing nets.

You will always get one 'good' set of gear (ex. vorpal hand axe or an expanded spell library), followed by two 'decent' sets of gear. These are assigned randomly, but weighted towards your species' good aptitudes. They will also always spawn with at least one potion or scroll.

Starting Stats

Wanderers receive 12 stat points distributed at random when they start the game. These stats tend to correlate with your skills and gear. But 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.

History

• In 0.29, Wanderers gained an extra consumable (potion or scroll); most other backgrounds were buffed.
• In 0.28, Wanderer's gear pool was updated. Skill, gear, and attributes were made generally smarter and closer towards a character's aptitude.
• 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.