Vorpal

Version 0.24: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It inflicts extra damage upon your enemies.

Vorpal is a brand which any weapon may have. Melee weapons with the vorpal brand do between +0% and +33% additional damage each hit, averaging +16.6%. Ranged weapons do 20% more damage.

The displayed brand name differs by weapon type:

• Axes - Chopping
• Polearms - Spears and (demon) tridents: Piercing, Two-handed polearms: Chopping
• Maces & Flails - (Demon) Whips: Slashing, All other maces and flails: Crushing
• Staves - Quarterstaves: Crushing, Lajatangs: Slicing
• Long Blades - Slicing
• Short Blades - Piercing
• Tomahawks and Javelins: Silver
• Ranged weapons - Velocity

There is a 15.8% chance to brand a melee weapon and a 19% chance to brand a ranged weapon with vorpal when a scroll of brand weapon is used on a non-artifact weapon. This chance increases if the weapon already has a brand other than vorpal.

Tips & Tricks

• This brand works best on high-damage weapons, since the damage is multiplicative.
• Vorpal weapons are inferior damage-wise to most other brands, but versatile because nothing can resist the extra damage.

History

• In 0.25, the vorpal brand will not have different descriptions based on the type of weapon; all such weapons will be "vorpal".
• Prior to 0.16, this brand was called "stabbing" on short blades.
• Prior to 0.13, this brand increased your damage between 0% and 25% each hit, averaging 12.5%.