Mummy
This page covers the player species. For the monster, see Mummy (monster). For a list of all monstrous mummies, see List of mummies.
| These are undead creatures who travel into the depths in search of revenge, redemption, or just because they want to.
Mummies progress slowly in levels, half again as slowly as Humans in all skills except fighting, spellcasting and necromancy. As they increase in levels, they become increasingly in touch with the powers of death, but cannot use some types of necromancy which only affect living creatures. The side effects of necromantic magic tend to be relatively harmless to Mummies. However, their desiccated bodies are highly flammable. They also do not need to eat or drink and, in any case, are incapable of doing so. |
Contents
Innate Abilities
- Mummies are undead, and have the assorted resistances and weaknesses:
- Undead Benefits: Cold Resistance 1, Life Protection 3, Poison Resistance, Rot Resistance, Torment Immunity.
- Undead Penalties: Vulnerable to Dispel Undead and holy wrath-branded weapons (which they cannot wield); will rot instead of mutate; cannot go berserk.
- Mummies have one level of fire vulnerability.
- Mummies cannot memorize any self-transformation spells, nor can they memorize spells that only affect the living: Dragon Form, Ice Form, Spider Form, Statue Form, Stoneskin, Beastly Appendage, Blade Hands, Necromutation, Regeneration, Death's Door, Borgnjor's Revivification, Alistair's Intoxication, Cure Poison.
- Mummies cannot and do not need to eat: they have no food clock at all. As such, they have no spell hunger nor concern over sustenance costs associated with vampiric weapons, regenerating armor, using rods, Sif Muna's Channel Energy ability, and the like.
- Mummies are incapable of drinking potions of any kind. They can cure rot only with a wand of healing (when at full health) or by sacrificing 1 permanent MP using Self-Restoration (see below).
- Mummies do not breathe, and thus cannot asphyxiate (deep water remains fatal, causing unraveling rather than drowning).
- Being undead, mummies may not worship The Shining One, Zin, Elyvilon, or Fedhas Madash.
Preferred Backgrounds
- Mages: Wizard, Conjurer, Necromancer, Ice Elementalist
Due to their undead nature, mummies are prohibited from becoming Healers. Like Ghouls, they are also prohibited from becoming Transmuters.
Level Bonuses
- No additional stat gain.
- Average HP.
- Average MP.
- +3 magic resistance per level.
- Gain boosts to Necromancy spell power at levels 13 and 26.
Mummies receive a Self-Restoration ability at level 13: at the cost of a permanent MP, all strength, dexterity, intelligence, and some rotted HP are restored.
| At the permanent loss of one magic point restore your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, and heal a large amount of rotted hit points. |
Starting Skills and Equipment
Mummies receive the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions:
Difficulty of Play
| Simple • Intermediate • Advanced |
Mummies are a difficult species to play. They level up very slowly and have poor and unspecialized aptitudes. They also lack many survival lines available to other species, including potions of curing and speed; berserking (from any source); and the spells Death's Door, Borgnjor's Revivification, Alistair's Intoxication, and Regeneration.
However, they are unique amongst the playable races in not having a food clock. (Vampires can also survive at "bloodless" indefinitely, but at the cost of no regeneration.)
By not having to eat, mummies have no obligation to press forward into ever more dangerous areas in search of food. In earlier versions of the game, this made absurd levels of scumming possible. As an example, this mummy spent over a million turns on D:1 alone.
In current versions, scumming is still a viable mummy strategy, but only up to a point: spending a very long time on a level generates out-of-depth monsters. After a while, monsters stop showing up altogether, and after an extremely long time, the world will cease to exist.
Lack of spell hunger combined with hunger-free channeling allows mummies to spam powerful spells. This makes them very potent in the late game.
Skill aptitudes
The higher the value, the better the aptitude.
| Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attack | Miscellaneous | Magic | |||
| Fighting | 0 | Armour | -2 | Spellcasting | 2 |
| Dodging | -2 | ||||
| Maces & Flails | -2 | Shields | -2 | Conjurations | -2 |
| Axes | -2 | Stealth | -1 | Hexes | -1 |
| Polearms | -2 | Summonings | -2 | ||
| Staves | -2 | Invocations | -1 | Necromancy | 0 |
| Unarmed Combat | -2 | Evocations | -2 | Translocations | -2 |
| Throwing | -2 | Shapeshifting | N/A | Alchemy | -2 |
| Fire Magic | -2 | ||||
| Short Blades | -2 | Ice Magic | -2 | ||
| Long Blades | -2 | Air Magic | -2 | ||
| Ranged Weapons | -2 | Experience | -1 | Earth Magic | -2 |
Strategy
Mummies can ignore spell hunger, allowing them to spam high-level spells that would normally cause another species to starve, and to channel energy without restraint. In effect, mummies get the most sought-after advantages of the spell Necromutation right at the start of the game.
Their innate poison resistance allows them to cast Mephitic Cloud on themselves directly without any repercussions. This shuts down most monsters in the early dungeon except for the Orcish Mines' wargs and the occasional jelly. Their resistance to disease makes Haunt very effective in the later game.
Never travel in the dungeon without being fully rested first! (5 or Shift-Numpad5 to rest)
Scumming
Scumming is the practice of spending lots of time on low levels of the dungeon and racking up experience by killing lots of low-level monsters.
Scumming used to be central to the strategy for playing mummies. However, starting in 0.6, the devs changed the game's behavior so that progressively fewer monsters spawn on a level over time, with a larger percentage of them being moderately to extremely out-of-depth. See scumming for the full details.
This means that scumming is no longer an unlimited resource for mummies. A limited amount of scumming (up to 3000 turns) is still relatively safe, however, and you might wish to do more than that if you're feeling confident about your ability to escape really nasty encounters.
Most Suitable Classes
Mummies are fragile and have poor attributes, so their choice of background should reflect this. In particular, mummies benefit the most from playing Wizards, Summoners, and Necromancers. Venom Mage is also a potent choices due to Mephitic Cloud being in its starting spellbook.
The Mummy Wizard guide gives one tested route to the Orb which leans heavily upon the mummy's special abilities, notably the ability to wait out the wrath of certain gods (in this case, Kiku).
Gods
Sif Muna is a popular choice for mummies; lacking hunger, Sif Muna's channeling ability allows them to generate free MP with no downside other than having to train the Invocations skill. Sif Muna also loses Piety very slowly over time, befitting mummies' slow playstyle.
As for other gods, mummies have no need to butcher corpses, so they can get a lot of mileage out of Yredelemnul's undead-creating invocations, or from gods who allow blood sacrifice - Makhleb, Nemelex Xobeh, Lugonu, or Okawaru. Nemelex has the extra advantage of being able to sacrifice all potions and permafood (for decks of wonders), plus a fair amount of jewelry beyond the usual surplus items. Also, decks of destruction are a fair bit safer when you're immune to poison and torment. Trog also takes blood sacrifice, but mummies cannot use the power of berserk that he grants, and worse still, Trog shuns most spellcasting. However, Trog's Hand still works for mummies, and is one of the few ways for them to heal quickly.
