Condenser vane

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Miscellaneous item
Name	Condenser vane
Icon

A magical device that allows its wielder to create clouds that will engulf and surround all enemies in sight with various destructive clouds, their lethality increasing with Evocations skill.

A condenser vane is evoked to engulf every monster in sight as well as the 8 squares surrounding it with semi-random clouds.

Useful Info

Evoking the vane engulfs each monster you see along with the 8 squares around it with dangerous clouds. The vane will never place a cloud on you or an ally. These include, in descending order of power:

• Noxious Fumes
• Poisonous Gas
• Flame / Freezing Vapour
• Negative Energy
• Thunder
• Acidic Fog

You are unable to choose which clouds will spawn, but higher Evocations will cause generally stronger clouds to appear. At 0 Evocations, noxious fumes are common, with occassional bursts of poison, fire, and ice. At moderate levels (~8 Evocations), fire/ice become common, with bursts of the other elements. Further training increases the chance of the "best" clouds.

This item is technically considered evil by the good gods, but they will only punish you if you invoke clouds of negative energy.

Strategy

Contrary to intuition, the vane works best either on very high levels of Evocations when it generates acidic or negative energy clouds pretty reliably... or on low levels of Evocations, which will reliably produce noxious fumes and poison clouds, especially if you have picked up the spell Ignite Poison.

Since the condenser vane works very much like the spell Ignition does, it is best used when you are facing a (large) group of enemies with restricted room to maneuver: the density of monsters will create a carpet of clouds, ideally covering your entire line of sight. The entrance to Vaults:5 is an obvious one, as are Ziggurat floors.

Since intelligent enemies will not willingly walk into sufficiently damaging clouds, consider combining a condenser vane carpet with a potion of attraction to pull them in nevertheless. Adding a scroll of silence on top makes the end vault of Elf:3 quite a bit easier.

All clouds, other than negative energy, are fine for the good gods. If you actually spawn clouds of negative energy, try to get them out of your line of sight as quickly as possible (close a door, get around a corner, or read a scroll of fog). Otherwise you'll lose piety for each turn enemies stand in the clouds.

History

• The condenser vane replaced the wand of clouds in 0.26.