Uskayaw

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

"Surrender yourself to the rhythm!"

Uskayaw the Reveler is a god of ecstatic dance. On the surface, Uskayaw appreciates many forms of worship, but in the dungeon most worshippers stick to the dance of combat. Uskayaw appreciates the passion and rhythm of combat, rewarding followers for each strike they deliver and for the damage they deal their foes. The longer the dance continues, the greater powers Uskayaw offers. When the dance ends, Uskayaw quickly loses interest. Uskayaw offers powers that help worshippers continue the dance. Worshippers can stomp to damage foes around them and rapidly move through a line of creatures while confusing them. When a worshipper's dance reaches a certain point, Uskayaw will freeze all foes so that the dancer may take a solo. If the dance continues, Uskayaw will link the emotions of foes, forcing them to share their pain. If the dance continues, Uskayaw allows you to end it by melding with and then violently exploding a foe, killing it instantly.

Racial restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Uskayaw (or any other god).

Appreciates

Uskayaw especially likes it when you hurt your foes. Piety increases with damage dealt. Unlike other gods, Uskayaw piety gain and loss is very rapid; you can reach full piety in a single prolonged fight, and will probably be back down at the starting piety level before the next one.

Deprecates

• Abandonment.
• Inactivity (loses Piety quickly when not attacking foes, to a minimum of 1*).

Given Abilities

Uniquely, Uskayaw's awarded titles are based on Invocations skill, not piety. They are "Wallflower", "Party-goer", "Dancer", "Impassioned", "Rapturous", "Estatic", and "Rhythm of Life and Death".

Piety Level -

• Uskayaw offers no abilities at this level.

Piety Level *

• Stomp - Stomps down in time with the rhythm of the dance, sending a shockwave through all adjacent creatures. (Damage = monstercurrenthp/6 + 2d[2 + Invocations/2]). Does more damage to monsters with more health. Costs 20 piety and 3 MP.

Piety Level **

• Line Pass - Passes through a contiguous line of creatures at superhuman speed, ending up in a new location. Any creatures passed through in this way will be confused, with duration based on Invocations and monster HD. Costs 20 piety and 4 MP.

Piety Level ***

• Solo Time - Upon reaching this piety level, Uskayaw briefly paralyzes all enemies in your line of sight, with duration based on Invocations.

Piety Level ****

• Pain Bond - Triggers automatically upon hitting the required piety. It gives all monsters in your line of sight the pain bond status for an amount of time that increases with Invocations skill. While the status is active, affected creatures deal a portion of the damage they receive to nearby creatures with the same status -- which can trigger the status again in a chain reaction. The damage shared decreases with distance, dealing 80%/60%/40%/0% at one/two/three/four tiles away, respectively.

Piety Level *****

• Grand Finale - This power lets you blink to a monster's location and kill the monster, potentially sending flying chunks everywhere. Any targetable monster is instantly killed by this ability. The flavor is that you merge your emotions and body with the target, then violently separate. Success rate increases with additional piety over 5* (120) as well as Invocations. Using this ability will reduce your piety back to *. Costs 8 MP

Piety Level ******

• Uskayaw offers no new abilites.

Punishments

Uskayaw's wrath turns the powers of the dance against the offender. The prude will find their foes going berserk and will be forced to helplessly watch as foes execute their own solos. When the dance is getting too slow, Uskayaw will attempt to bring more revelers.

Strategy

Uskayaw provides some very strong abilities that require you to stay in a fight for longer. While they can be used against a single opponent, they truly shine when engaging multiple opponents, thus considerably increasing the risk.

Uskayaw's fast piety gain can be further increased by wearing an amulet of faith which, unlike with other gods, can be removed with impunity. The playstyle fits very well with the cleaving attacks of various axes or ripostes of long blades, and, for entirely different reasons, with stabber characters. In the first case, cleaving accelerates the piety gain by hitting multiple opponents. The latter benefits from irresistible confusion, pain bond to apply stabbing damage to multiple monsters at once and then finally Grand Finale allows them to deal with highly-threatening enemies without being resisted, evaded or mitigated by AC and affects even the most threatening of enemies like pandemonium lords, rune guardians in Hell or orbs of fire.

Worshippers should remember that as powerful as Uskayaw's abilities are in battle, they can also be used to flee. Both Line Pass and Grand Finale are effective against friendly and neutral targets, including plants. Act quickly, though, as piety will start to fall after three turns without doing damage.

History

Uskayaw was added in 0.19. Originally, it was called Ukayaw, making it too similar with the shortened version of Okawaru (Oka vs Uka).