Instadeath

From CrawlWiki
Revision as of 22:00, 2 July 2022 by Hordes (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The term instadeath can have several definitions, either in Crawl or in roguelikes in general. Of course, many people use it to describe a death which occurs instantly or very quickly, e.g. an early ogre killing a low-level spriggan in one shot. However, the term is often more formally used to describe deaths which occur regardless of a character's current HP, even if the death itself is not instant (so-called 'delayed instadeaths'). Such instadeaths are extremely rare in Crawl.

There is only one way for the player to be killed instantly: the Zot clock. The player receives a significant amount of warning before this can occur.

Dealing instadeath to monsters

There are only a few ways to kill monsters irrespective of their hit points. They all require specific setups to work:

History

  • Prior to 0.26, players could face starvation and die, as opposed to the Zot clock.
  • Prior to 0.19, players falling into deep water or lava (through flight expiring) would be subject to instadeath, instead of draining every turn.
  • Prior to 0.17, it was possible for confused players to accidentally walk into deep water or lava. Intelligent monsters used to be immune to this type of death, but no longer are.
  • Prior to 0.15, it was possible to sometimes scramble out of deep water or lava.
  • Prior to 0.13, one could suffer statdeath: after a few dozen turns of a stat being at zero, the character would die. Presently, being at 0 in a stat will just apply some penalties. In addition, one could die by being level-drained to level 0 - that is, being hit by a draining attack at XL1 (removed due to the removal of XP draining)
  • Prior to 0.8, statdeath killed the player as soon as the stat hit zero, as opposed to being a delayed instadeath.

Instantkills on monsters has its own history: