Singing Sword

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

An enchanted blade which loves nothing more than to sing to its owner, whether they want it to or not. It radiates damaging sonic waves as you strike, especially in combat involving dangerous or numerous foes.

the +11 Singing Sword {sonic wave}

+11 double sword

Makes noise
Damages everything (excluding the user) in LOS

Desirability

The Singing Sword is, admittedly, a fairly powerful weapon; a +11 double sword is quite effective in the hands of a skilled Long Blades-user, though perhaps not great in the extended game. Its noise-generating properties are also not so terrible. When the sword hits an enemy, it may begin singing with both noise and chances to happen raising with tension. This makes it a dreadful choice for a stabber and may result in enemies nearby waking up and joining the fight on occasion, but it by no means rules the weapon out as dangerously unusable.

Every time the sword sings, it deals a small amount of irresistible damage to all monsters in your line of sight (including allies!), softening up hordes and potentially helping you take down powerful foes. The damage also raises with tension, reaching the maximum in irresponsibly dangerous situations, and thus shouldn't be a major deciding factor in whether or not you wield this artefact, but it bears mentioning.

At the highest singing effect, the sword's name changes to the Screaming Sword. When silenced, the sword's name instead changes to the Sulking Sword and no noise or damage are produced.

Screaming Mechanics

The Singing Sword has tiers derived from tension to determine the chance to cast its Sonic Wave spell. If the character wearing the weapon is not the player, then only the first tier applies.

Tier	Tension	Noise	Chance to cast Sonic Wave	Damage
1	0+	0	1/4	2d15
2	20+	20	3/8	2d16
3	40+	30	1/2	2d18
4	60+	40	1/2	2d23

Damage is calculated as follows:

• 2d(5 + (100 + 13 * (tier - 1) + 36) / 10) if the tier is 4,
• 2d(5 + (100 + 13 * (tier - 1)) / 10) otherwise.

History

• Prior to 0.23, the Singing Sword's sonic damage was weaker and could trigger at any time with high enough tension. It also did not have the vorpal brand.
• Prior to 0.14, this weapon was significantly worse; its base type was a long sword and it generated significant amounts of noise regardless of the presence of monsters.
• 0.9 added the LOS damage during high tension.