Scroll of immolation

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Scroll
Name	Scroll of immolation
Icon

A scroll that fills the creatures around the reader with an unstable and powerful inner flame.

Reading a scroll of immolation will affect all creatures in your line of sight as though they were the victim of an Inner Flame spell. Damaging them will create flame clouds, and if the monster dies, it will create a fiery explosion. The size and damage of the explosion varies based on the size of the monster slain, and is powerful enough to severely injure or even kill careless characters.

This scroll has no effect on monsters with infinite willpower, though the scroll does not otherwise check willpower.

Hunters start play with a scroll of immolation.

Strategy

Used wisely, these scrolls can be very useful. You can use a decent ranged attack (or means of generating allies), kill a single weak monster, and have the chain reaction kill everything else. The scroll excels particularly:

• In monster-packed areas, like the entry of Vaults:5. If you read it immediately upon descending and manage to kill 2-3 vault guards, the chain reaction will take care of the rest.
• Against monsters who generate summons when confronted, such as The Royal Jelly, Dissolution, or Mnoleg. The explosions will clear the summons and damage their aster.
• Using your own allies: summons, undead, Hepliaklqana ancestor. Whether your ally or the monster wins, you'll get an explosion.

The main risks of the scroll are the explosions hitting you, and the noise they create. If you have rF++ or better with high AC, you can generally tank a few explosions to the face. Meanwhile, noise will attract monsters. For example, you may not want to immolate the guards on Vaults:5, since this'll bring out the scarier monsters just outside.

Tips & Tricks

• Even if you're fighting a lone monster, you can use the flame clouds (created on any hit) for some extra damage. Immolation can help you take out an ogre before it gets to you, for instance. The flame cloud effect works very well with poison, since each tick of poison will trigger a new cloud.
• The actual Inner Flame explosions can hurt enemies outside line of sight.

History

• Prior to 0.25, the scroll had no effect on summons (except for durably summoned monsters).
• Prior to 0.13, these scrolls were significantly less useful; they would unleash a single moderately-powerful explosion centered on the reader, though thankfully this explosion could only destroy scrolls in very early versions of the game.