Summon Cactus Giant

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Summon Cactus Giant
Level	6
School1	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Scorching Book of the Wilderness
Casting noise	4
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	200

Summons a warrior from a particularly prickly tribe. Foes that strike these giants in melee are in for a painful surprise! When cast at a higher power, older, more robust warriors will answer the call.

Sumon Cactus Giant is a Level 6 Summonings spell, which summons a titular cactus giant. These animated cacti attack extremely slowly, but are spiny and have remarkably high HP to boot.

Useful Info

A single cactus giant is summoned. When attacked in melee, cactus giants will retaliate with 5d8 damage. This damage cannot miss, but is reduced by AC. Any individual monster can only be harmed by spines once per monster turn, even if they have multiple attacks (such as hydras).

Higher spellpower increases the cactus giant's hit points; it doesn't increase HD. Their base HP is set to 27 + <power>, which is then randomized like any other monsters HP.

Duration of the summon is around 27 turns, it does not depend on the spell power.

There is a summon cap of 1 cactus giant; casting the spell again will cause the old summon to very quickly time out.

Strategy

• Cactus giants are tanky retaliatory summons that are quite effective in corridors. Their low EV helps activate their spines but makes them vulnerable to projectiles, which don't activate spines.
• Despite what it may seem on paper, cactus giants actually 'deal' respectable damage in melee. Melee being the keyword here, as ranged attacks don't activate spines.
• Spines can only affect hostile monsters once per round. While a cactus giant can still take out a regular hydra quite easily, don't expect one to obliterate the Lernaean hydra in one turn.

History

• Summon Cactus Giant was added in 0.28.