Wand of clouds

Version 0.21: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Wand
Name	Wand of clouds
Icon

A magical device that allows its wielder to blast a cone-shaped area in front of them with various destructive clouds, their lethality increasing with Evocations skill.

A wand of clouds is evoked to cover a cone-shaped area in front of the caster with semi-random clouds, with the cloud types increasing in lethality directly with higher Evocations skill.

Strategy

The effects of multiple uses of a wand of clouds at high power.

Evoking the wand engulfs a cone growing outward from the caster with dangerous clouds; this cone begins as a 4x4 area, but grows larger with increasing Evocations. While one may not choose exactly which clouds will spawn, types include (in order of increasing power) noxious fumes, flame/freezing vapour/poison gas, negative energy, thunder clouds, and acidic fog. Providing your target(s) are not fully resistant, much havoc can be wrought.

At low levels of Evocations, you'll mostly get noxious fumes with the occasional burst of fire, ice, or poison. At moderate levels, you'll only rarely get noxious fumes, and mostly get fire, ice, and poison with the occasional burst of negative energy or storm clouds. At high levels (starting at around 14 Evocations), you can start getting clouds of acid; after that point, increasing Evocations makes dangerous clouds like negative energy, storms, and acid more common while decreasing the chances of getting fire, ice, and poison.

When you should use a wand of clouds largely depends on how much Evocations skill you have. Unskilled characters should avoid using the wand when fighting monsters immune to poison, as they will completely ignore noxious fumes and clouds of poison. Once you have a few levels of Evocations under your belt, a wand of clouds can make difficult encounters much easier by constantly dealing damage to dangerous creatures. It's especially effective if you can manage to keep a group of monsters in a cloud, and the high-end clouds can be particularly lethal. Of course, there's always the risk that you'll create a type of cloud that the majority of creatures you're fighting are immune to (clouds of fire when fighting fiery creatures, or negative energy when fighting the undead).

Much like the wand of random effects, some gods disapprove of certain effects of the wand. The good gods all dislike the creation of negative energy clouds, while Dithmenos hates creating fire. Fortunately for followers of the good gods, negative energy requires a moderate investment of Evocations skill (6 at minimum) to even begin to appear, so you are unlikely to incur penance if you have less skill than that. Followers of Dithmenos, however, are able to create fire at any time and should avoid using this wand altogether.

History

• In 0.22, Dithmenos no longer hates fire.
• The wand of clouds was added in 0.20, replacing the rod of clouds.