Ashenzari

Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Partake of my vision. Partake of my curse."

While it seems inconceivable that the divine could be shackled, Ashenzari is just that: bound to the sky for eternity, the unbudging god is all-knowing, all-seeing. Devoted worshippers are allowed to grasp shreds of this knowledge and foresight, but be warned: to Ashenzari, power and blessing and curse are all the same thing. Ashenzari exhorts followers to garb themselves with curses, and provides rewards for time spent using cursed armour, jewellery or weapons. Ashenzari will increase followers' skills depending on how cursed they are, and grants clear sight and clarity of mind. Followers will later gain the ability to scry through walls, and eventually will be able to transfer a portion of their knowledge from one skill to another. Ashenzari likes it when you explore the world (preferably while bound by curses). Note that Ashenzari does not demand training of the Invocations skill. All abilities are purely based on piety.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Ashenzari (or any other god).

Appreciates

Ashenzari likes it when you explore the world (preferably while using cursed gear).

You have four equipment categories: armour, weapon, shield and jewellery. A category is considered "partially bound" if more than half of its slots in use are cursed, and "fully bound" if all slots in use are cursed. The more bound you are, the faster you'll acquire piety, and the more powerful several of Ashenzari's gifts will be.

Deprecates

• Abandonment.
• Inactivity (loses about 1 Piety every 500 turns).

Given Abilities

Piety level (0): "Cursed"

• Scrolls of remove curse are immediately identified upon converting to Ashenzari.
• Curse Item: curse items in your inventory. Costs one scroll of remove curse per item, and can't be used if the player has no scrolls.
• Improved behavior of curse-related scrolls: Ashenzari worshipers reading a scroll of remove curse may select which pieces of equipment they wish it to apply to (instead of automatically uncursing everything as usual). Also, any weapons, armour, or jewelry you receive through a scroll of acquirement will be pre-cursed. (Passive)
• Prevent Curses: Prevents external item cursing from death curses and miscast effects. (Passive)

The Detect Foo abilities start with a radius of 0, but their radius and power increases with piety.

• Detect Curses: All items in sight will display as Cursed or Uncursed. (Passive)
• Detect Items: Shows the location, but not the type, of items beyond your field of vision. (Passive)
• Detect Traps: Grants a bonus to trap detection which increases with piety. (Passive)
• Detect Monsters: Shows the location and relative strength, but not the type, of monsters beyond your field of vision. (Passive)
• Detect Terrain: Maps random tiles beyond your field of vision, similar to the deep dwarf mutation. It works in Labyrinths and the Abyss. (Passive)
• Portal Detection: Instant detection of portals, including in the Abyss ("You have a vision of a gate."). (Passive)
• Partial Identify: Picking up ego items identifies them as well as if you had wielded or worn them. Self-identifying rings are identified once picked up. (Passive)
• Identify Monsters' Equipment: You can sometimes identify the brands of weapons and armour on monsters in your field of vision (chance increases with your number of bound parts, up to a max of 100%). It can also detect the presence and type of wands.

Piety level (*): "Initiated"

• Partial Identify: Wearing a piece of cursed armour lets you see the enchantment level of other armour of that type. (Passive)
• Scrying: When active, all walls are transparent for you, but not for monsters. You cannot smite-target through them. Costs 4 MP, 50-100 Food, 2-3 Piety.

Piety level (**): "Soothsayer"

• Partial Identify: Wearing a cursed amulet lets you identify amulets. Wearing two cursed rings lets you identify rings. (passive)
• Skill boost: For each equipment category you bind, Ashenzari will boost your skills. Different kinds of equipment offer different bonuses. There are 3 levels of bonus available, earned by having higher piety and more bound slots, but the higher your actual skill levels become, the smaller the bonuses are. Regardless, skills at level 0 will not receive any bonus.

The exact formula is: min(piety_rank, bondage_level + 2) * factor - skill_level / 4

Factor = 1 for a low level of bonus, 1.25 for a medium, and 1.5 for high)

Bound part	Equipment	Bound level	Boosted skills	Bonus
Hands	Two-handed weapon	N/A	Weapon skill	High
Weapon hand	Weapon	N/A	Weapon skill	Medium
Weapon hand	Enhancer staff^	N/A	Staves and Evocations	Low
Weapon hand	Other staff	N/A	Spellcasting	Medium
Weapon hand	Rod	N/A	Evocation	Medium
Shield hand	Shield	N/A	Shields	Low
Armour	Light armour^^	Partial	Stealth and Dodging	Low
Armour	Light armour^^	Full	Stealth and Dodging	Medium
Armour	Medium armour^^	Partial	Armour and Dodging	Low
Armour	Medium armour^^	Full	Armour and Dodging	Medium
Armour	Heavy armour^^	Partial	Armour	Medium
Armour	Heavy armour^^	Full	Armour	High
Jewellery	N/A	Partial	Magic schools and Evocations	Low
Jewellery	N/A	Full	Magic schools and Evocations	Medium

^ - The staff of channeling is treated like an enhancer staff (since it can be evoked).

^^ - Armours with an encumbrance rating from 0-5 count as light, 6-11 count as medium, and 12+ count as heavy.

Piety level (***): "Seer"

• See invisible and Clarity

Piety level (****): "Oracle"

• No new Abilities

Piety level (*****): "Illuminatus"

• Transfer Knowledge: Pick a source and destination skill and experience will move from one to the other as you gain more experience, at the cost of some piety and 10% of the exp being transferred. Costs 20-30 piety.

Piety level (******): "Omniscient"

• No new abilities.

Punishments

Ashenzari does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Ashenzari's wrath is not like other gods'; it is constant and unrelenting for its duration. Victims find their skills impaired, and their enemies divinely guided - never losing track of them, never ending the hunt.

Upon abandoning Ashenzari, you will receive -4 to all skills until you've gained an amount of XP equivalent to two experience levels.

Monster AI gets a boost:

• They track you better.
• They never forget about you.
• They are more likely to know your position while you are invisible.

Strategy

Ashenzari provides a significant power boost relatively early in the game, soon after the player has managed to become partially bound. Cursing one's weapon and 2 pieces of jewelry are enough to make piety take off. As a result of the ensuing skill boosts, combat types will be able to go toe-to-toe with much harder enemies, and casters will see high level spells become castable much more quickly. Since Ash offers no abilities that fill the escape or combat-support roles often provided by gods, players must take advantage of the skill enhancements and retraining flexibility to fill these roles themselves with the spellbooks and equipment they find. Changes in overall strategy can be made amazingly quickly, so if a powerful spellbook/evocable/artifact weapon shows up that doesn't fit your current strategy, consider adopting a new one.

Save some scrolls of remove curse for equipment changes. Ash changes their behavior so that instead of removing all curses from worn equipment, they only remove the curses you select. Save up equipment changes to execute several at once.

Scrying is cheap to cast, and is very useful for playstyles that like knowing where out-of-sight enemies are (Stabbers using invisibility or Passwall to sneak up on things, Earth Elementalists blowing things up through walls with Lee's Rapid Deconstruction and Shatter, Fire or Ice Elementalists casting storm spells to damage unseen opponents).

Remember that Ashenzari does not punish decursing equipment, nor adventuring with uncursed equipment. The tradeoff is merely certain less-boosted or un-boosted skills, and slower piety gain. So if a strategy or dungeon branch requires a swappable slot (eg amulets of resist mutation and corrosion in Slime Pits), go ahead and leave it unbound as needed.

Ashenzari worshippers may discover occasional disconnected vaults (which often contain treasure). Normally these are only found via magic mapping or the Passive Mapping mutation / Deep Dwarf passive.

You will inevitably accumulate scrolls of identify since you won't have many things to cast it on. This makes magical decks more accessible, since you can afford to re-identify them after every draw to know the top card. A deck must be wielded to be evoked, which requires an unbound weapon slot, however this can be used to safely spam decks for certain cards, or set up a single escape card that takes a couple turns to pull off. You can also use your spare scrolls of identify to learn how many charges remain in any wands you might be using (assuming your Evocations skill isn't high enough to let you do so on your own).

Ashenzari is a great god for Pandemonium scumming and Ziggurat raiding. By that point you will likely have the best gear, so permanently cursing yourself is fine. Piety gain is extremely quick in the Abyss, so you can transfer XP constantly while there (as you will be frequently, between Pan trips). Free IDing for everything you find in there certainly helps too.

Felids can start gaining piety with Ashenzari particularly quickly, as one cursed jewelry item is slightly bound, two is partially bound, and three is fully bound. However, this comes at the cost of losing much of your ability to swap resistances on the fly.

History

Prior to 0.18, players would have to pray over scrolls of remove curse to convert them into the now-obsolete scrolls of curse armour, curse weapon, and curse jewellery.

Prior to 0.14, scrolls of curse item could be randomly generated, but Ashenzari gave fewer of them for sacrificing remove curse.

Prior to 0.12, Ashenzari's altars often had an artefact spell book next to them with only one spell: Animate Skeleton. This was to assist in butchering corpses while wielding cursed blunt weapons.

Prior to 0.9, worshipers of Ashenzari would receive a bonus to experience gain instead of a boost to skills, and shields were not considered a separate equipment category in regards to being bound.

Ashenzari was added in 0.8.