Haunt

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Haunt
Level	7
School1	Necromancy
School2	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Death Necronomicon
Casting noise	6
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	200
Range	LOS
Hated By	Elyvilon The Shining One Zin
Flags	Mons abjure, Not self, Target

Calls wraiths and ghosts to haunt the caster's target. They will only attack the creature they are haunting, and will dissipate quickly once their target dies. The number of spectres summoned increases with spell power.

Haunt is a level 7 Necromancy/Summoning spell, which uses smite-targeting to summon high level phantasms near an enemy.

Effect

Between 2 to 6 monsters are summoned around the target. Higher spell power may increase the number of summons. Unlike other summoning spells, Haunt cannot be cast without a valid hostile target. There is a summon cap of 8.

The composition of the horde is random with the following weightings:

W Wraith (50% chance)

W Freezing wraith (20%)

W Phantasmal warrior (20%)

W Shadow wraith (10%)

The summoned ghosts will only attack the target selected by the caster, ignoring player commands. When the haunt target dies, the remaining monsters will expire within a few turns, regardless of how much duration was otherwise remaining (though they will be free to attack other targets during this short window).

Unless the target dies, the summons have duration of around 27 turns. This does not depend on the spell power.

Strategy

For a character relying on Necromancy, Haunt is one way to kill enemies. Haunt can kill monsters up to orbs of fire, even if it takes multiple casts (i.e. lots of MP) to do so. With Necromancy, killing just a few monsters can lead to an army, due to the snowball effect from spells like Death Channel and Infestation. This spell can also be useful to non-Necromancers, as its summons can be quite useful.

The monsters summoned by Haunt tend to lack high damage output. To compensate, Haunt often creates a lot of monsters. In addition, these monsters have the potential to slow enemies. More importantly, no monster in the game can resist this slow. This makes Haunt a good way to weaken and ultimately deal with nasty enemies.

• Since the monsters spawn around a target, this spell is a good way to block line of sight to a target.

Monster Version

Monster version of the spell is almost identical to the player version. Number of summons is 2 to 3, and does not depend on the spell power.

Duration class of the summons ranges from 2 (around 18 turns) to 6 (around 171 turns), based on the strength of the caster.

The following enemies cast Haunt:

• z Antique champion

The following enemies may be able to cast Haunt, depending on their spell set:

• & Pandemonium lord (2.8% chance)

History

• Prior to 0.28, this spell did not have a summon cap.
• Prior to 0.26, this spell could summon hungry ghosts and phantoms.
• Prior to 0.17 this spell inflicted sickness upon the caster.
• Prior to 0.13 this spell could summon flayed ghosts, the ghosts summoned by haunt could attack other targets, and it could be cast on friendly targets.
• Prior to 0.8 the duration of summons created was longer.
• Prior to 0.7 the spell level was 6.
• Haunt was added in 0.6.