Potion of blood

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

Type	Potion
Name	Potion of blood
Icon

A potion containing the essence of life. Vampires find it... vital.

A potion of blood can be extracted from a monster corpse by a Vampire using the butcher (c) command. Most monsters yield one bottle of blood, but some larger monsters may yield two or three.

Quaffing a potion of blood as a Vampire will provide 1,000 nutrition. Non-vampire species gain no benefit from quaffing a potion of blood.

Potions of blood will rot away after a maximum of roughly 2,000 turns. This depends on the original corpse's freshness multiplied by 10 (for reference, a standard corpse rots away after about 200 turns). Each individual potion of blood has its own freshness and will rot away at its own interval, regardless if they are stacked together into one inventory slot.

Non-vampire characters will only encounter potions of blood as loot on vampiric opponents. They do not spawn randomly in the dungeon like other potions, and are automatically identified on sight.

Worshipers of Zin, Elyvilon, and the Shining One incur a piety loss if they knowingly drink this potion; followers of the Shining One also incur penance.

Different species will display different messages upon quaffing a potion of blood, even if it has no other effect on them:

Vampires: "Yummy - fresh blood!"
Carnivores: "This tastes like blood."
Others: "Yuck - this tastes like blood."

Tips & Tricks

• Some of later branches of the dungeon do not generate a lot of corpses (Crypt, Tomb,...) so it might be a good idea to skip the first few levels of Orcish Mines or Elven Halls to have a large supply of blood for later use.
• If you want a constant supply of corpses, you can use Kikubaaqudgha Receive Corpse ability.
• Vampires will receive more satiation by drinking from a freshly slain corpse rather than drinking from potions of blood. On the other hand, corpses will only last about 200 turns, while potions of blood will last ten times longer (up to about 2,000 turns, depending on how quickly the blood was bottled after the monster was slain). This makes potions of blood a more reliable source of nutrition for areas where fresh corpses may be scarce.
• Like other potions, potions of blood take one turn (10 auts) to consume, while drinking the blood from a corpse may take several turns, depending on how large the monster is. Additionally, vampires may be interrupted in the middle of drinking from a corpse (such as by taking damage or a monster entering your line of sight), wasting the rest of the blood in the process. Potions of blood do not have this drawback.

History

Prior to 0.16, potions of blood could provide some nutrition to carnivore species, and could potentially cause Sickness in non-carnivores. Also, potions of blood would turn into potions of coagulated blood when they neared the end of their freshness, providing the drinker with slightly less satiation.

In 0.15, ghouls could restore a single point of rot by quaffing a potion of blood. This was removed in 0.16.

Prior to 0.14, potions of blood were capable of generating randomly, and would restore much more nutrition to vampires than to other species. Also, they were unidentified by default, but having one in your possession when it coagulated would identify both forms. As these potions were always red, it was generally easy to guess their identity anyway.