Summon Drakes

Version 0.25: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Summons multiple drakes, komodo dragons, and lindwurms.

Summon Drakes is a monster-only spell which summons several of the following creatures into existence:

• k Swamp drake, 16.7%
• l Komodo dragon, 16.7%
• k Wind drake, 16.7%
• k Rime drake, 20%
• k Death drake, 20%
• k Lindwurm, 10%

It is one of the more threatening spells in the game due to its ability to create miasma-spewing death drakes that will swiftly slow, poison, and rot you. Fortunately, it only appears in the spell lists of draconian stormcallers, and the rest of the monsters the spell can summon are minor threats compared to the regular enemies encountered around the Realm of Zot.

As a general rule, try to kill off the stormcaller first in any encounter to keep things simple. If you are swarmed and cannot kill the caller, use whatever means necessary to escape (teleport is not a bad idea on Zot:1-4, but on Zot:5 you'll usually want to resort to running away while increasing your movement speed as much as possible). Attempting to wade your way through hordes of drakes while slowed, rotting, and possibly poisoned is simply never worth the trouble.

Rot resistance renders miasma harmless, but gaining said resistance is quite difficult. Zin's Vitalisation ability will protect you from the status effects but not the damage, while having Statue Form, Necromutation, or Dithmenos's Shadow Form active provides complete protection. Other than that, you have to be undead (Ghoul, Mummy, bloodless Vampire), a Gargoyle, or a Vine Stalker. Make sure your other resistances are up to snuff, too -- the various drakes might be less dangerous than the dragons that roam Zot, but their breath weapons can still deal respectable damage if you don't resist them.

The following enemies cast Summon Drakes:

• q Draconian stormcaller

History

• Prior to 0.18, the spell had a 10% chance to summon a "standard" dragon, from a steam dragon to storm dragon and shadow dragon. Also, Fire drakes were replaced by rime drakes.
• Prior to 0.13, it did not summon wind drakes.