Teleportation
Teleportation is the act of moving from one place to another instantaneously. Teleports differ from blinks in two main ways: teleports have no range limit while blinks are limited to visible destinations; and, blinks are instantaneous while teleports generally take some time to kick in.
There are several ways to teleport in Crawl:
- Reading a scroll of teleportation.
- Being zapped by a wand of teleportation (your own or a monster's).
- Being hit by a monster's Teleport Other spell.
- Stepping on a Teleport trap.
- Being randomly or intentionally teleported by the ring of teleportation.
- Being randomly teleported by the Teleport mutation.
- Being hit by a distortion branded weapon, or by the Dispersal spell.
- Suffering a Translocations miscast effect.
- Drawing a Portal card.
- You will occasionally teleport while wandering in the Abyss.
Generally, teleportation as a result of a distortion weapon or trap takes place immediately. For spell-, card-, or wand-initiated teleports, there is a delay of 3-5 turns between starting a teleport and the teleport taking effect. Because of this, teleportation cannot be completely relied upon to get the player out of trouble. If teleport control is active (or is activated before the teleport takes effect), this delay will be 4-8 turns. In the Abyss, there is an 80% chance that this delay will be 8-19 turns. If you have the Orb of Zot, this delay will be 8-14 turns.
To avoid teleport delays, step onto a Teleport trap. Potentially only one turn slower, use the Warpwright card and then step on the newly created teleport trap. High levels of the Traps & Doors skill is helpful in detecting where the trap was placed.
Once a teleport takes effect, the player is instantly teleported to the destination. If the player has teleport control, the teleport is not the result of a distortion weapon, and the level does not restrict teleport control, the player may choose the new location. The teleport control status effect will be lost after this. Like blinks, teleports leave a cloud of translocational energy behind, though this has no game effect other than being a pretty color.
Teleports will never place the player over lava or in dangerous clouds, and never over deep water unless they are amphibious (merfolk, octopode, grey draconian, et al). Teleports caused by the Teleport mutation will place the player within a region near his current position. The radius of this region depends on the rank of the mutation and the number of equipped items which give teleportitis (rings of teleportation or artifacts). At 3 or more mutation ranks/items, the destination can be any position in the level.
All forms of teleportation are blocked by stasis except for the occasional automatic shifts which occur in the Abyss.
Teleportation Failure
If the space the player is teleporting into is currently holding a monster, an attempt will be made to teleport the monster out of the way. If that fails, (not all monsters can be teleported) attempts are made to teleport to the spaces next to the monster (monsters there may also be teleported out of the way). This can be useful for stabbing purposes. If no space can be found, the teleport fails entirely.
History
Prior to 0.13, the teleport control status effect did not delay teleports.
