Evaporate

Version 0.10: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Evaporate
Level	2
School1	Fire
School2	Transmutation
Source(s)	Book of Alchemy Book of Clouds Book of Stalking
Casting noise	2
Spell noise	15

This spell heats a potion to the point that it explodes when thrown. The resultant steam is then transmuted into a large cloud, the type of which varies from potion to potion. Of course, the volatile potion must be thrown immediately for the spell to work.

The Evaporate spell allows the caster to throw a magically heated potion that explodes into a cloud of up to 3x3 squares. The exact effect produced depends entirely on the kind of potion used (see list below). As many of the "bad" potions you can find produce powerful effects, this spell works very well alongside Fulsome Distillation.

Potion	Cloud (Odds)	Duration (Multiplier)
Water, Porridge	Steam	1
Confusion, Slowing	Mephitic	1
Paralysis	Mephitic	2
Poison	Poison	1
Strong Poison	Poison	2
Degeneration	Poison or Miasma	2
Decay	Miasma	2
Berserker Rage	Steam or Flame	1
(Coagulated) Blood	Mephitic, Flame, or Steam	1
Mutation	Mutagenic	1
Gain X/Gain Exp/Magic	Flame (16.7%), Freezing (16.7%), Poison (16.7%), Miasma (16.7%), or Mixed (33.2%)	1
Other	Flame (7.7%), Mephitic (7.7%), Freezing (7.7%), Poison (7.7%), Mixed (7.7%), Colored Fog (23%), or Steam (38.5%).	1

Mixed clouds have their squares individually randomized from all available cloud types. The duration of the cloud increases with spell power.

Tips & Tricks

Evaporate is the cheap swiss army knife of toxic clouds. It's usually used by transmuters in conjunction with the Fulsome Distillation spell, which provides ideal "ammo".

The spell will duplicate the far more difficult Mephitic Cloud or Poisonous Cloud, or produce dreaded Miasma in the same quantities (Miasma's poison/slow combination can take out Orc Knights with a single use)! Even clouds of steam can soften or kill snakes and hobgoblins or fleeing enemies, and later it can cut off LOS to dangerous ranged attackers or orc priests. A deadly one-two punch is to lead off with a mephitic cloud to confuse opponents, and as the clouds dissipate, replace them with poison or miasma for the victims to mill in and out of. And occasional clouds of flame or stranger stuff is nothing to sneer at.

Mutagenic fog is probably best avoided; it provides bad mutations for you and repeated polymorphs for monsters.

History

Prior to 0.10, Evaporate would always produce a 3x3 cloud. It was changed to produce smaller clouds in later versions of the game.

Evaporate will be removed completely in 0.12.

In very old versions of Crawl, you were prevented from blinking into harmful clouds, so this spell could be used to direct a nominally uncontrolled blink.