Silver

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It deals increased damage compared to normal ammo and substantially increased damage to chaotic and magically transformed beings. It also inflicts extra damage against mutated beings, according to how mutated they are.

Silver is a brand which does the following:

• Deals an average of +16.6% untyped damage (100% - 133%) to any creature.
• Deals up to +75% untyped damage against shapeshifting, mutated, and chaotic creatures, including the player character. For players, the damage scales with how mutated you are - see below for details.

If you are struck by a silver projectile and are especially vulnerable to silver, you will see the message:

The silver sears you!

Silver can appear on boomerangs, javelins, and the unrand lajatang of Order.

Silver Damage Calculation

Chaotic monsters and shapeshifted characters

If the target is chaotic or shapeshifted, the damage is:

(normal_damage * 7) / 4  [rounded down]

or roughly 175% damage. Unlike most other brands, there's no random component. Although the player can never be chaotic, they do count as shapeshifted when in any of the following transformations: Beastly Appendage, Spider Form, Ice Form, Statue Form, Storm Form, Dragon Form, Bat Form, Tree Form, Fungus Form, Wisp Form, or Pig Form.

Mutated Players

For non-shapeshifted players who have mutations, the damage varies by how much you are mutated. All external sources of mutation count, and for demonspawn, all demonspawn mutations count. Otherwise, mutations innate to species (e.g. Octopode tentacles) don't count. The amount of mutations is tallied and converted to damage (max. 15 mutations):

normal_damage * ( 5*mutations + 100 ) / 100  [rounded down]

The silver damage thus varies from 105% to 175%, for 1 to 15+ mutations. All mutated monsters are considered chaotic, so they'll always get max damage from silver.

Final Calculation

Any extra silver damage is then compared to a random multiplier from 100% to 133%. The higher result is applied.

See Also

List of silver vulnerable monsters

History

• Prior to 0.24, silver only did extra damage to chaotic and mutated creatures, with steel dealing extra to all monsters.
• Prior to 0.18, sling bullets and bolts could have brands, one of which was silver.
• Prior to 0.15, you could find silver darts. Additionally, silver ammunition weighed twice as much as regular ammunition.
• The lajatang of Order was introduced in 0.14.
• Prior to 0.9, this brand also improved damage vs. corporeal undead monsters.