Invisibility (ego)

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

When activated, it grants the wearer temporary invisibility, but also drains their max health.

Wearing equipment with the invisibility ego grants you the Evoke Invisibility ability, allowing you to turn invisible at will. It has a chance of failure, based on your Evocations skill.

Regardless of whether you fail or succeed, your max HP is temporarily drained (~8% max HP). Successfully evoking invisibility will cause minor magical contamination.

Sources

The invisibility ego can be found on:

• Scarves
• The unrand ring of Shadows
• Randomly generated artefacts

Desirability

Being invisible is a strong effect. Against enemies that can't see invisible, it greatly reduces chance of being hit, and allows you to stab. A scarf of invisibility gives all those benefits without needing to use a rare potion.

However, the Evocations skill required to reliably go invisible is high. And the heavy draining discourages use until you get high skill. By then, more and more enemies can see invisible. It can still be useful, but faces competition from other slots.

Even in the late game, there are many enemies that can't see invisible. Examples include caustic shrikes, death cobs, draconians, tormentors, and hellions.

Success rate rises with Evocations skill:

Evocations	Failure rate(%)
0	71.47%
1	67.43%
3	58.88%
5	50.00%
7	41.12%
10	28.53%
15	12.31%
20	3.71%
25	0.49%
27	0.11%

History

• Prior to 0.28, turning invisible caused more magic contamination initially and applied some contamination over time.
• Prior to 0.26, evoking invisibility caused hunger instead of draining you.
• Prior to 0.25, invisibility generated on cloaks instead of scarves.
• Prior to 0.21, removing an invisibility-ego item while invisible did not cost the player extra magical contamination.
• Prior to 0.20, this ego would let the player turn visible again once invisible, as a way to reduce contamination.
• Prior to 0.18, this ego could be found on rings.
• Prior to 0.16, this was called the Darkness ego.