Ru

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Sacrifice that you may gain great power!"

Ru is the god of Balance. Worshippers of Ru blah blah. Ru likes it when you make personal sacrifices.

Racial Restrictions

?

Appreciates

• Making sacrifices to him.

Deprecates

• Nothing.

Given Abilities

Piety level -: ""

• Make Sacrifice - Ru gives you no powers initially, but as you explore will periodically offer you a batch of three sacrifice options to make. These will be available from the Abilities screen. Making a sacrifice will permanently handicap your character in a dramatic way, but will grant you piety which unlocks new abilities, increases the power of your abilities, and is consumed when you use your activated abilities. New sacrifices will be offered periodically, and will refresh faster after you accept one than if you simply let a set of three sit unused. The exact amount of piety varies depending on how crippling the effect is on your character. See Sacrifices below for more details.

Piety level *: ""

• Aura of Power - Any enemy that attacks you may instead falter or redirect its attack to itself or another target.

Piety level **: ""

• Your Aura of Power is strengthened. Enemies that inflict damage upon you receive various detrimental status effects.

Piety level ***: ""

• Draw Out Power - When used, you regain HP and MP.

Piety level ****: ""

• Power Leap - Allows you to leap three tiles and creates a damaging explosion wherever you land.

Piety level *****: ""

• Apocalypse - Deals heavy damage and random status effects to every enemy within your line of sight.

Piety level ******: ""

• No new abilities.

Punishments

Ru cannot be offended in any way, and will never deliver punishments upon your character. However, all sacrifices made while worshiping Ru are permanent, and the abilities Ru grants are lost when you abandon it.

Strategy

Ru encourages focused characters by encouraging you to sacrifice anything that lies outside your planned build, granting extremely powerful abilities and buffs in return. Sacrifices are as follows:

Sacrifices

Ru will offer you a randomly selected batch of three of the following sacrifices every so often. Choosing a sacrifice will permanently handicap your character as described, and you will lose access to the other two sacrifices until a new batch is revealed. Each sacrifice can be selected only once, though ideally you'll only have to make a fraction of them over the course of the game. Making sacrifices when you are already at maximum piety grants you no benefit, and should be avoided.

Sacrifice Arcana - Permanently lose access to all spells in three schools of magic. Any experience you've invested in the associated skills will be converted to additional piety, and any spells you already know that use those skills will be forgotten. One school is chosen from each of the following groups: Charms/Conjurations/Summonings/Translocations, Transmutations/Necromancy/Hexes, and Air Magic/Earth Magic/Fire Magic/Ice Magic/Poison Magic.

Sacrifice Artifice - Permanently lose the Evocations skill. Any experience you've invested in it will be converted to additional piety. Your character can no longer activate any wands, rods, or abilities which rely upon the Evocations skill. Brands, egos, and the lantern of shadows still function as normal though.

Sacrifice Courage - Suffer a slaying and spellpower malus which scales with the number and strength of opponents in your line of sight. Penalties begin when more than one tough monster or a single nasty monster is visible, and becomes more pronounced as more opponents appear.

Sacrifice Drink - Any time you are severely injured or suffer a significantly strong attack, you lose the ability to quaff potions for X turns. Any attack that reduces you below 30% of max HP will trigger this, as can heavy attacks regardless of your current HP; such attacks must deal damage equal to at least 4% of your max HP for a chance of triggering the sacrifice, and the chance rises with higher damage, guaranteed at 20% max HP.

Sacrifice Durability - Permanently lose the Armour skill. Any experience you've invested in it will be converted to additional piety. Worth bonus piety if you've also used Sacrifice Nimbleness.

Sacrifice Essence - Permanently suffer one of the following randomly selected negatives: a negative rank of wizardry, -40 magic resistance, or -10% MP. When you select this sacrifice, you will get to see which option has been chosen for you, and may accept or decline at that point.

Sacrifice Hand - Permanently lose one hand (or set of hands in the case of formicids) and all associated benefits of two-handedness. You can only wield weapons which are one-handed for your species, lose the ability to deliver offhand punches, can never wear shields, and lose one ring slot. You also lose access to the Shields skill, and any experience invested in it will be converted to additional piety.

Sacrifice Health - Permanently suffer one of the following randomly selected negatives: -3 AC, -3 EV, or -10% HP. When you select this sacrifice, you will get to see which option has been chosen for you, and may accept or decline at that point.

Sacrifice Love - Permanently make almost all monsters you encounter hostile to you. This includes derived undead which you generate and temporary monsters which you summon or create through evokable items. The only unaffected monsters are orbs of destruction, ball lightning, battlespheres, spectral weapons, and fulminant prisms. Notably, the fire vortices created by Fire Storm will be hostile. Also, the spell Enslave and all wands of enslavement will no longer function.

Sacrifice Nimbeleness - Permanently lose the Dodging skill. Any experience you've invested in it will be converted to additional piety. Worth bonus piety if you've also used Sacrifice Durability.

Sacrifice Purity - Permanently acquire one rank of one of the following bad mutations: Scream, Deterioration, Slow Healing, No Device Heal, Dopey, Clumsy, or Weak. The mutation is randomly selected when you choose this sacrifice, and you may decide whether or not to accept the selected mutation at that time.

Sacrifice Stealth - Permanently have your stealth value set to 0, as though you were constantly berserking. Any opponent in your line of sight will immediately notice you. This does not mean you produce additional noise, however, so you will not be waking up things beyond your line of sight any more than normal. Also, you may still train the Stealth skill for its stabbing benefits.

Sacrifice Words - Any time you are severely injured or suffer a significantly strong attack, you lose the ability to read scrolls for X turns. Any attack that reduces you below 30% of max HP will trigger this, as can heavy attacks regardless of your current HP; such attacks must deal damage equal to at least 4% of your max HP for a chance of triggering the sacrifice, and the chance rises with higher damage, guaranteed at 20% max HP.

History

Ru will be added in 0.16.