Spectral thing
| A hideous glowing apparition.
"On the hungry craving wind |
A form of derived undead, spectral things are the disembodied spirits of slain creatures. Like other undead creations such as zombies or skeletons, spectral things are weaker than the original creatures they were made from and have the standard undead resistances to cold and negative energy. Unlike zombies or skeletons, spectral things retain their original intelligence, can use stairs, come with draining-branded attacks, and can regenerate.
They are occasionally found in special vaults, can be summoned by the Spectral Cloud spell of either a ghost crab or a revenant, and occasionally generate naturally in The Crypt. The mid-game unique Nergalle is capable of summoning large numbers of spectral orcs, which will often be armed with reaching-capable polearms.
The player can summon spectral things by killing things while the Death Channel spell is active, though these are only temporary. Since monsters can still create corpses, this can be used to greatly increase the size of your undead horde for a time. Yredelemnul's Enslave Soul invocation can also give you a single permanent spectral thing that retains all the power it had in life.
Spectral things are somewhat less durable than skeletons or zombies, but their ghostly nature and ability to heal all help make up for this. Their draining attacks can prove quite useful against enemies that do not resist them. As insubstantial beings, they are inherently levitating, allowing them to cross liquids safely. They also uniformly see invisible, a power the original creature may not have had.
Identifying Spectral things
Though spectral things will have different stats depending on what they were made from, Crawl currently tends to lump them together, making identification somewhat difficult. In console mode, there are unique tiles for several categories of monster, but there are still possible variations within those categories. Press x and highlight the spectral thing in question to get a better idea of the monster you are dealing with.
Below are all the categories of spectral things in tiles mode:
Drakes
Fish
Frogs
Humanoids (small)
Humanoids (large)
Insects (winged)
Lizards
Quadrupeds (small)
Quadrupeds (large)
