Sif Muna

Version 0.19: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"I know many secrets..."

Sif Muna the Loreminder is a contemplative but powerful deity, served by those who seek magical knowledge. The Loreminder appreciates followers who triumph over their foes and especially the training of spellcasting skills in order to do so. The faithful can expect to recieve a supply of spellbooks taken directly from Sif Muna's legendary library. Sif Muna will grant followers divine energy, allowing them to occasionally cast spells even with insufficient reserves of magic. Eventually worshippers will gain the ability to rapidly restore their magical energy, and to forget any spell at will, so as to learn new ones. Sif Muna protects spellcasters against the negative effects of miscasting spells. Over time, followers will receive spellbooks containing a vast range of spells. Sif Muna likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings, and you destroy the nonliving beings. Sif Muna especially likes it when you train your various spell casting skills. Sif Muna strongly dislikes it when you destroy spellbooks.

Sif Muna the Loreminder is a contemplative but powerful deity, served by those who seek magical knowledge. Sif Muna appreciates the training of spell casting skills.

No background starts with this religion.

Restrictions

Sif Muna will not accept worshipers who don't know any spells.

Demigods may not worship Sif Muna or any other deity.

Appreciates

• Training your magic skills. The exact amount of XP required to gain piety is variable (increases as your level increases) and hard to evaluate precisely, but it doesn't depend on your aptitudes, or how you have distributed your skill points. Note that Evocations and Invocations don't count.
• Killing living, undead, demonic, holy, and nonliving creatures.

Deprecates

• Forgetting her. Piety falls slowly over time (about 1 every 2,000 turns) and you are excommunicated if it falls to 0.
• Abandoning her.
• Destroying spellbooks.

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Disciple"

• No new abilities.

Piety level *: "Student"

• Divine Energy: Toggleable status. When active, allows cast a single spell without sufficient MP in exchange for -Cast status for 3 + random2avg(2 * cost, 2) turns.

Piety level **: "Adept"

• Protection from miscast effects: You gain a (Piety/1.6)% chance to negate miscast effects due to spells you cast (full protection at 6*). Miscast effects from other sources ignore Sif's protection.

Piety level ***: "Scribe"

• Channel energy: 3-5 MP restored per turn for 4 + random2avg(2 * INVOCATIONS / 3, 2) turns. (Costs 50-100 Food and 2-3 Piety)

Piety level ****: "Scholar"

• Forget spells at will: Works as a scroll of amnesia. (Costs 5 MP, 8-12 piety)

Piety level *****: "Sage"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ******: "Genius of the Arcane"

• No new abilities.

Gifts

Piety level *****:

• Spell books. Each spell book is either an ordinary spell book (24%), a Theme artifact spell book (73%) or a Level artifact spell book (2%).

Ordinary spell books are the kind you find lying around the dungeon, and are weighted toward ones with spells you don't have in your other spell books. Theme artifact spell books will contain several spells on a given theme (not necessarily a magic school). Level artifact spell books will contain several spells with a given level (up to your experience level). A high Spellcasting skill will grant better artifact spellbooks. Note that Sif Muna will not give you any manuals, the Necronomicon (Kikubaaqudgha's special), a Book of Annihilations, an Akashic Record, or a Grand Grimoire, although it's possible to get some of the spells they contain in artifact spell books.

Sif Muna's gift timeout is between 41 and 59.

Punishments

Sif Muna does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Those in Sif Muna's ill graces find the very forces of magic rebelling against them. They are confused and stupefied, their magical reserves drained, their enchantments unravelled. Casting spells, too, becomes unreliable - and even dangerous.

If you leave Sif Muna (voluntarily or not), your penance counter will be set to 50 (quite high!), but no immediate negative events will happen. Possible punishments include:

• 20%: Temporary decrease in Intelligence by up to 20%
• 30%: Confusion for 1d10+2 turns
• 20%: A random divination miscast effect
• 20%: All MP drained
• 10%: Reduction of the remaining duration of all magic enchantments affecting you to 0 or 10 auts (11 for Flight). This is identical to the effects of a potion of cancellation.

Every time you cast a spell, there's a 5% chance that the failure rate will be increased by a percentage equal to your current penance. This is in addition to normal punishments, and will not reduce your penance.

Strategy

Sif Muna is the default "magic god", favored by characters who want to pursue that path without focusing on the destructive (Vehumet) or necromantic (Kikubaaqudgha) sides of magic. Instead, Sif Muna is much more versatile. Her protection from miscasts covers more magical realms than Kiku's protection, and her spell book gifts are weighted to contain spells you don't already have, allowing you to eventually gain access to every spell in the game. The Channel Energy and Selective Amnesia abilities also come early, and are very useful for any caster.

The main draw of following Sif Muna, aside from free spellbooks, is Channel Energy. At 12 invocations (a fairly modest investment at mid game) it recovers 4 MP per turn in average, lasting ~9 turn. Against single foes, you can Blink for a couple of free turns to channel. For a character with some means of delaying opponents (conjured flames, meph clouds, summoned monsters, Leda's Liquefaction, hexes), you can use the extra turns for mana restoration before resuming fire. (Just beware the food cost, semi-seriously; keep some quick snacks on hand, or chow before a big fight)

Channel Energy is of particular interest to undead players who don't have a food clock (Mummies, bloodless Vampires, casters in lich form). For them, it's essentially free MP. This is also true for other races with versatile diets, such as kobolds, ghouls, or anyone with an amulet of the gourmand.

If you find an Amulet of faith in the early game, you should consider wearing it, as it will allow you to receive spellbook gifts much sooner and much faster, and once you have the spells you need, the loss of 1/3d of your piety won't hurt a bit.

Tips & Tricks

When Sif Muna's altar is missing from the Ecumenical Temple, keep a look out for wide hallways with blue floor tiles; when Sif's altar is not in Temple, it often has such a hallway preceding the altar proper. Regardless, like other altars, it is guaranteed to appear at least once between floors 1-9 of the main dungeon.

History

Prior to 0.19, Channel Energy was a Piety level * ability that instantly granted d(2+[Invocations/4]) MP for 100-200 hunger at a 0 - piety/20 - floor(Invocations skill * 2.0) failure rate, and spellbook gifts began at Piety level ******. Followers gained piety solely for training magic skills.

Prior to 0.15, Sif Muna's wrath was able to force you to forget a spell.