Wu Jian

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

"Follow the Path!"

The Wu Jian Council is a congregation of martial monks, ascended to divinity after battling their way out of the afterlife. Disciples of the Council are able to execute acrobatic martial maneuvers, such as wall jumps, spinning attacks and punishing lunges. They will eventually become able to request help in the form of a storm of heavenly clouds. Followers unlock these abilities through practice, so they do not benefit from training Invocations. The god revolves around three "martial attacks" and the interactions between them. The player is incentivized to use these special attacks in difficult fights, and they're designed to prevent any of the three from being overcentralizing or optimal for any particular build.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship the Wu Jian Council (or any other god).

Appreciates

Wu Jian likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings.

Deprecates

• Forgetting them. Piety slowly falls over time (about 1 every 340 turns), and you are excommunicated if it falls to 0.
• Abandonment.

Given Abilities

Piety level (-): "Young Dog"

• Lunge: Triggered by moving directly towards an enemy, dealing 120% the damage of a normal attack. Only the 8 normal movement directions count (ie. does not trigger on enemies a chess knight's move away).

Piety level (*): "Young Crane"

• Whirlwind: Triggered by moving from a tile adjacent to an enemy to another tile adjacent to it, dealing 80% the damage of a normal attack. If a movement has multiple targets for whirlwinds and lunges, all of them are struck.

Piety level (**): "Young Tiger"

• Wall Jump: Triggered by using the active ability while standing against a wall. If there is a clear landing site two squares in the opposite direction, you will vault over, attacking all enemies adjacent to the landing site. This movement takes twice as much time as a normal move, and inflicts twice as many attacks.

Piety level (***): "Young Dragon"

• Serpent's Lash: Instant ability. Causes your next two movement actions to be instant, and boosts your martial attacks during them. Serpent's Lash can be used as a simple escape, as well as allowing the player to stack damage with a lunge-whirlwind combination, or get 1 free wall jump (since wall jump takes 2 turns, it counts as both movement actions). Costs 2-3 piety and briefly exhausts you.

Piety level (****): "Red Sash"

• No new abilities.

Piety level (*****): "Golden Sash"

• Heavenly Storm: Grants the player a two-tile halo and summons a storm of opaque golden clouds that provides a hefty Slaying bonus and follows the player around, but makes a great deal of noise. The slaying bonus starts at 5, increasing by 1 for every target struck by a martial attack up to a maximum of 15, but decays by 1 every 2-3 turns. If the slaying bonus reaches 0, the ability ends. Costs 20-30 Piety.

Piety level (******): "Sifu"

• No new abilities.

Penance

Those who turn against the Council must be prepared to endure death by a thousand cuts. No hiding place is secure, no disguise perfect enough to avoid the sudden spring of traps, the flying daggers and the armies of animated weapons that will ambush the betrayer.

Being under penance while worshipping Wu Jian results in the title "Wooden Rat". Upon abandoning Wu Jian the penance counter is set at 25. Punishments include summoning various branded dancing weapons & applying a debuff (barbs, slow, silence or stat drain & corrosion). Barbs debuff is accompanied by a dagger of electrocution, slow is accompanied by a quarterstaff of speed, & silence is accompanied by a dire flail of flaming.

Strategy

There isn't a 1-to-1 relation between moving and attacking. Instead, moving causes a number of attacks which correspond to how many swings of your weapon you could perform in however long it takes you to move. For a normal character with a weapon delay of 0.7, one attack will always be performed, with a 3 in 7 chance of a second attack. The bonus to heavenly storm is the same regardless of how many attacks are performed.

Using Serpent's Lash during Heavenly Storm will let you build up your slaying bonus without letting it decay.

If you want to fight multiple enemies, find ways to create gaps in their formation. Status effects, translocations, summons, or just killing monsters will give you spaces to perform martial attacks in.

You do not have to perform your next two instant movements one after another; if you don't move from your spot the game will progress as normal and your Lash will be maintained.

Heavenly Storm also makes for a great escape/ninjaing ability; the perpetual fog provides fantastic cover while martial attacks and Serpent's Lash let you weave through enemy crowds with great agility.

Stabbers may find the Council an interesting choice of god; martial attacks allow a character to stab multiple enemies while moving. Lunge lets you use paralysis/ensorcelled hibernation from a distance and guarantee you can stab them before they wake up.

Despite resembling a cleaving attack, Wall Jump will not target invisible enemies.

History

• Prior to 0.25, Whirlwind pinned enemies in place for one turn. Heavenly storm had no cap, but decayed faster (much faster at higher bonuses), and the bonus increased by 2 per martial attack and 1 per normal attack.
• Wu Jian Council was added in 0.21.