Animate Dead

Version 0.17: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Animate Dead
Level	4
School1	Necromancy
Source(s)	Book of Necromancy Book of Unlife
Casting noise	3
Spell noise	0

Reanimates all corpses and skeletons in the vicinity as followers. This magic is unstable, so eventually those reanimated will crumble to dust. Zombies and skeletons cannot leave the level they were created on.

Animate Dead is a level 4 Necromancy spell that attempts to raise all corpses and skeletons in LOS as zombies or skeletons. These minions cannot heal or use stairs, but will serve you faithfully until death or until they crumble to dust (this seems to have been changed with version 0.17). Some corpses cannot be raised in this manner.

This spell is similar to Yredelemnul's power of the same name.

Strategy

• Animate Dead is a very powerful spell for Kikubaaqudgha followers. Combining the Corpse Delivery ability with this spell allows you to rapidly create a large gang of allies at will, in exchange for a very affordable chunk of piety and MP. Other characters can also put it to good use; animating the remains of every powerful enemy you defeat on a given floor means that you'll have plenty of allies available in case you come across a very powerful unique. Couple it with Recall in order to compensate for the slow movement speed of the undead.
• Although pricier than Animate Skeleton, Animate Dead offers significant advantages:
  • Like skeletons, zombies have lower stats than the monsters they were raised from. However, the reduction is less dramatic (except for movement speed).
  • Animate Dead can raise multiple corpses at once, and from a distance. This makes it a much more useful option in the middle of combat.
• Fast species may want to use the Ctrl-E command to limit the travelling speed to the lowest ally speed.

Limitations

The following corpses are unaffected by Animate Dead:

p Shapeshifter p Glowing shapeshifter

The following corpses are too rotten for a proper zombie. You will get skeletons instead.

n Necrophage n Ghoul (monster) n Bog body

See Also

• Derived undead

History

Prior to 0.17, raised creatures were permanent until death.

Prior to 0.15, plague shamblers would also only produce skeletons.

Prior to 0.13, vampire mosquitoes, ugly things, very ugly things, guardian serpents, sky beasts and Arachne could not be animated.

Prior to 0.10 Animate Dead would ignore any corpses on a spot after the first corpse.

Prior to 0.5, zombies and skeletons could use stairs, making this an excellent spell for creating armies.