Speed (brand)

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

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Attacks made with speed branded weapons take only 66% as long as normal. This leads to a theoretical increase in irresistible damage output of +50%, but this varies based on how long a battle actually lasts. Regardless, it is a large increase in irresistible damage output, making it a very desirable weapon brand, particularly for characters who have found significant amounts of slaying bonus. When found on ranged weapons, the speed brand stacks with any branded ammunition you may be firing.

The speed brand can normally be found on:

• Daggers
• Short swords
• Cutlasses
• Quarterstaves
• Lajatangs
• Various artefact weapons, both melee and ranged
  • The captain's cutlass
  • Arga
  • Finisher
  • Skullcrusher
  • Sharnga
  • Randart blowguns will always be speed branded. Randart quick blades will never be.

Rounding

If a weapon's normal speed can't divide cleanly into thirds, then the speed of each attack will be rounded up or down to the nearest integer. Assume an attack with your lajatang normally takes 7 auts to complete. 66% of that would leave you with 4.66 auts, and the game would implement this by having each attack take either 4 auts (33% of the time) or 5 auts (67%).

History

Prior to 0.8, weapons of speed dealt full damage while reducing attack speed to 50% normal (though this calculation was then rounded up, leaving some weapons attacking slightly slower).

0.9 nerfed this by effectively reducing the base damage of melee weapons to 90% of normal, slightly reducing the effectiveness of these weapons. Meanwhile, ranged weapons instead received only a 66%-normal speed boost, but lost no damage output.

In 0.14, 0.9's ranged weapon rule was applied to melee weapons as well, simplifying the brand's behavior tremendously.