Evocations

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

Evocations is the skill related to the use of evocable magical items, such as wands.

Aptitudes

At	Ba	Co	DE	Dg	Ds	Dj	Dr	Fe	Fo	Gr	Gh	Gn	Hu	Ko	Mf	Mi	MD	Mu	Na	Op	On	Sp	Te	Tr	Vp	VS
0	1	3	1	-1	0	0	0	1	1	-1	-1	8	0	2	0	-1	1	-2	0	1	-2	3	0	-3	-1	-1

• Purple draconians get 1.
• Pale draconians get 1.

Effects

Increasing Evocations skill results in the following:

• Increases the spell power of effects produced by most evoked items.
• Increases the success rate of scarves of invisibility and artefacts with evocable abilities (invisibility, blinking).
• Increases damage inflicted with magical staves.

For more details on how Evocations impacts an evocable, see that item's individual page.

Monster Evocations

When monsters wield weapons that are affected by Evocations, they are given skill equal to HD if they are intelligent, and have no skill otherwise. When monsters attempt to use evocable invisibility or blink, they succeed 100% of the time, regardless of their effective skill.

Strategy

Overall, Evocations is an "emergency" tool that you can use somewhat frequently. For melee characters, it is a ranged option that isn't affected by encumbrance. For magical characters, it is can damage enemies without using MP. Any character can make use of the various evocable effects, like summons and statuses. You can't use evocables for every fight, but like any item in Crawl, use them early and often.

Wands generate much more frequently in Swamp than Shoals. If the former branch is in your game, you may want to favor Evocations a little more.

Many evocables are affected by the alternate items mechanic. For example, a single game can spawn either the wand of iceblast or the wand of roots, not both. This may change how much you want to use Evocations.

See Also

• Artificer
• Evocable items

History

• Prior to 0.26, Evocations increased maximum MP.
• Prior to 0.19, Evocations improved Nemelex Xobeh's abilities
• In 0.17, all races had their Evocations aptitude decreased by one.
• Prior to 0.12, Evocations cost 80% as much XP to train; aptitudes were adjusted up by one to compensate.
• Prior to 0.11, Evocations had no impact on your max MP.