Blind

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Blind is a status effect which causes the victim to treat the player and all other creatures as if they were invisible, whether or not they actually are. See invisible is rendered useless while blinded.

Blindness

The effects of blindness are the same as if you were invisible:

• Blind attackers receive a -35% penalty to to-hit rolls
• Blind enemies cannot perform attacks of opportunity.
• Blind ranged attackers will often target the wrong tile, potentially hitting other targets or missing entirely.
• Anything with animal intelligence or worse will occasionally move as though confused, rather than pursuing or attacking you. Anything of human intelligence can still track you normally, however.
• Blind enemies are be susceptible to low-tier stabbing attacks.

Players can not be blinded. Effects that would blind or dazzle players will instead cause a short confusion.

Sources

You can blind opponents in the following ways:

• Atropa darts
• Wand of light
• Blindness is a possible effect of the following divine abilities:
  • Ru's Aura of Power and Apocalypse.
  • Zin's Recite (when used against heretics).

Some monsters, e.g., wargs and bats, cannot be blinded by any means.

Dazzled

Dazzled is a similar condition to blindness. It inflicts all the same penalties, but only lasts for several turns.

You can dazzle opponents in the following ways:

• Hitting monsters with Dazzling Flash.
• The cloak of Starlight dazzles attackers in retaliation.

History

• In 0.32, players can be blinded, but it doesn't work the same way it does against monsters. Instead, blindness will reduce a player's to-hit rolls by (to-hit - target EV)/(distance+1) - (to-hit - target EV).
• Wands of light were added in 0.29.
• The cloak of Starlight gained *Dazzle in 0.26.
• Prior to 0.16, the sense invisible monster intrinsic would stop blindness.
• During the brief period in which jesters existed, you could also temporarily blind monsters by hitting them with pies.