Uskayaw

Trunk-only: This article pertains to a feature of Crawl which is being tested. It will likely change before the next release, and may even be removed entirely.

Ukayaw the Reveler is a god of ecstatic dance. On the surface, Ukayaw appreciates many forms of worship, but in the dungeon most worshippers stick to the dance of combat. Ukayaw appreciates the passion and rhythm of combat, rewarding followers for each strike they deliver and for the damage they deal their foes. The longer the dance continues, the greater powers Ukayaw offers. When the dance ends, Ukayaw quickly loses interest. Ukayaw offers powers that help worshippers continue the dance. Worshippers can stomp to damage foes around them and rapidly move through a line of creatures while confusing them. When a worshipper's dance reaches a certain point, Ukayaw will freeze all foes so that the dancer may take a solo. If the dance continues, Ukayaw will link the emotions of foes, forcing them to share their pain. If the dance continues, Ukayaw allows you to end it by melding with and then violently exploding a foe, killing it instantly.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Ukayaw (or any other god).

Appreciates

Ukayaw especially likes it when you hurt your foes.

Deprecates

• Abandonment.
• Inactivity (loses Piety quickly when not attacking foes).

Given Abilities

Piety Level -: "Wallflower"

• Ukayaw offers no abilities at this level.

Piety Level *: "Party-goer"

• Stomp - Stomps down in time with the rhythm of the dance, sending a shockwave through all adjacent creatures. The shockwave deals damages to the creatures it passes through in proportion to the creature's maximum health and the reveler's Invocations skill.

Piety Level **: "Dancer"

• Line Pass - Passes through a contiguous line of creatures at superhuman speed, ending up in a new location. Any creatures passed through in this way may be confused, with the chance of confusion increasing with Invocations skill.

Piety Level ***: "Impassioned"

• Solo Time (***) - Ukayaw briefly paralyzes all enemies in your line of sight.

Piety Level ****: "Rapturous"

• Pain Bond - Triggers automatically upon hitting the required piety. It gives all monsters in your line of sight the pain bond status for an amount of time that increases with Invocations skill. While the status is active, affected creatures deal a portion of the damage they receive to nearby creatures with the same status -- which can trigger the status again in a chain reaction. The damage shared decreases with distance, dealing 80%/60%/40%/0% at one/two/three/four tiles away, respectively.

Piety Level *****: "Ecstatic"

• Grand Finale - This power lets you blink to a monster's location and kill the monster, potentially sending flying chunks everywhere. Any targetable monster (one with emotions) is instantly killed by this ability. The flavor is that you merge your emotions and body with the target, then violently separate. Using this ability will reduce your piety back to *.

Piety Level ******: "Rhythm of Life and Death"

• Ukayaw offers no new abilites.

Punishments

Ukayaw's wrath turns the powers of the dance against the offender. The prude will find their foes going berserk and will be forced to helplessly watch as foes execute their own solos. When the dance is getting too slow, Ukayaw will attempt to bring more revelers.

Strategy

Ukayaw provides some very strong abilities that require you to stay in a fight for longer. While they can be used against a single opponent, they truly shine when engaging multiple opponents, thus considerably increasing the risk.

Ukayaw's fast piety gain can be further increased by wearing amulet of faith. The playstyle fits very well with the cleaving attacks of various axes and, for entirely different reason, with stabber characters. In the first case, cleaving accelerates the piety gain by hitting multiple opponents. The latter benefits from irresistible confusion, pain bond to apply stabbing damage to multiple monsters at once and then finally Grand Finale allows them to deal with highly-threatening enemies without being resisted, evaded or mitigated by AC and affects even the most threatening of enemies like pandemonium lords, rune guardians in Hell or orbs of fire.

History

Ukayaw was added in 0.19.