Bat Form

Version 0.23: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Bat Form is Vampire ability and a bad form which turns the player into a small and agile bat-like creature.

Pros

• Greatly increased movement speed (0.6 movement delay, i.e. spriggan speed)
• Tiny size (good evasion and stealth)
• +5 Dexterity
• Flying
• Vampires retain a 1-in-8 chance of a vampiric melee attack

Cons

• Spellcasting is disabled
• All equipment other than amulets is melded
• Unarmed Combat base damage is 1+UC, instead of 3+UC
• 0 AC
• Vampires recover less hit points and nutrition (-50%) when they bite monsters with blood

Sources

You can acquire this ability in the following ways:

• Vampires gain access to Bat Form at level 3 through their unique Bat Form ability. This transformation is disabled while Alive and does not time out.
• Jiyva may induce Bat Form (along with a vicious dose of magic contamination) at random as divine punishment.
• Being affected by a beam of polymorph.
• Weapons of chaos may polymorph the attacker or the defender.
• Transmutations miscasts.
• Clouds of chaos.

Strategy

The most obvious use for Bat Form is for getting away from dangerous situations. Flying allows you to cross deep water or lava, and the speed and evasion boosts make it easy to get away from melee opponents. Enemies with ranged attacks will still be a threat, particularly if they have unavoidable or smite attacks.

Alternatively, it can be used to kite opponents if you happen to have the right abilities. Invokable and Evokable abilities still function while in Bat Form, allowing you to use wands and god-given abilities (Makhleb's abilities are particularly useful as they don't cost piety). The Fangs mutation also adds to your Unarmed Combat damage, but bats usually don't want to be in melee.

History

• Prior to 0.22, Bat Form prevented the use of wands.
• Prior to 0.20, Bat Form's Unarmed Combat base damage was 1+UC/5 for non-Vampires and 2+UC for Vampires. It also came with a -40% lower attack delay.
• Prior to 0.19, players could not quaff potions or open doors in Bat Form. Also, being in Bat Form reduced hunger rate to 1
• Prior to 0.18, Bat Form also had a -5 Str penalty.
• Prior to 0.16, drawing the Metamorphosis card could result in Bat Form.
• Prior to 0.15, drawing the Flight card could result in Bat Form.
• Before their removal, the Breathe Fire and Spit Poison mutations also functioned in Bat Form.

Bat Form