Attack flavour

Version 0.34: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Almost all monsters are capable of dealing physical damage to you by attacking in melee, but many of them also cause elemental damage or inflict a wide variety of detrimental status effects. What a monster's melee attacks are capable of is determined by the monster's attack flavour. These modify a monster's melee attacks in many ways, and apply whether the monster is attacking unarmed or while wielding a weapon.

Flavour	Example	Description
Plain	g Goblin	No special effects.
Reaching	t Snapping turtle	Inherent reaching (can melee attack from two tiles away).
Constrict	S Ball python	Inflicts constriction (pins victim in place, dealing damage over time).
Barbs	w Steelbarb worm	The attacker inflicts barbs on the target when attacking, making further movement painful.
Trample	Y Elephant	Has a chance of knocking the defender back one tile (chance depends on defender's size relative to the attacker). If successful, the attacker moves into the tile the defender occupied.
Drag	l Alligator	Pulls the defender towards themselves, and backs up one tile. If the attacker has reaching and attacks from afar, they will not step backwards.
Fire	b Fire bat	Adds HD + 1d(HD) - 1 fire damage.
Pure fire	E Fire elemental	Deals no physical damage. Consists solely of HD + 1d(HD + 1) + (HD / 2) fire damage.
Sear	n Searing wretch	May strip one level of fire resistance from the defender.
Cold	Y Ice beast	Adds HD + 1d(HD*2) - 1 cold damage.
Electricity	F Sky beast	Adds HD + 1d(HD/2) - 1 electricity damage.
Acid	J Jelly	Splashes the defender with 4d3 acid damage, dealing additional damage and possibly causing corrosion.
Reach tongue	F Goliath frog	Inherent reaching and splashes the defender with acid, possibly corroding it.
Poison	S Adder	Inflicts HD*2 to HD*4 poison damage, with a 1 in 3 chance to affect poison-resistant targets. See poison types for specifics.
Strong poison	s Redback	Inflicts HD*11/3 to HD*13/2 poison damage, with a 1 in 3 chance to affect poison-resistant targets. See poison types for specifics.
Paralytic poison	y Hornet	If not immune to poison, the defender will be poisoned, slowed for 1d3 turns, and has a 1 in 6 chance to be paralysed for 1d3 turns. Has a 1 in 3 chance to affect poison-resistant targets.
Momentary paralysis	J Formless jellyfish	Similar to Paralytic poison, but without the slowing and with a 100% chance to paralyse the target for 1 turn (reduced accordingly by poison resistance and immunity).
Reach sting	4 Orange demon	Inherent reaching and inflicts poison.
Drown	m Water nymph	Attacks do a small amount of asphyxiation damage.
Flood	E Water elemental	Attacks have a chance of engulfing the target, giving it Flooded status, which continuously deals asphyxiation damage and mimics the effect of silence on targets that need to breathe. Asphyxiation resistance negates both effects.
Holy	D Pearl dragon	Does an additional 75% damage against evil and unholy targets. This is similar to the holy wrath weapon brand, but without a random component.
Distortion	v Spatial vortex	Inherent distortion brand (deals additional irresistible damage, causes the defender to blink, or banishes defender to the Abyss).
Rift	P Starflower	Smite-targeted attacks that can reach targets up to 3 tiles away. Also applies the distortion brand.
Pain	5 Grinder	Inherent pain brand (deals negative energy damage based on attacker HD)
Drain XP	z Wight	Has a 50% chance of draining the target (temporary max HP reduction vs. player, temporary HD loss vs. monsters). This only has a 3% chance of activating if the attack deals less than 6 damage, and a 33% chance if the attack normally does no damage (i.e., "touch"). In spite of the name, player experience is completely unaffected by this attack flavour.
Vampiric	V Vampire	Will heal the attacker for 1d(damage inflicted) if the defender is cold-blooded or warm-blooded. Deals normal damage but has no healing effect against bloodless defenders.
Shadow stab	@ Shadow	When invisible and not backlit, the attacker gains a boost to movement speed, 100% accuracy, and deals 2.5x damage for a single attack. If the defender has see invisible it negates the extra damage and accuracy, but not the added speed. After the attack, the attacker's invisibility ends.
Drain speed	W Wraith	May slow the victim.
Scarab	B Death scarab	Combines vampiric and drain speed.
Ensnare	s Jumping spider	If the attack does any damage, it has a 50% chance of trapping the defender in a web.
Steal	f Maurice	Each attack steals one item from inventory (only affects players).
Corrode	4 Rust devil	Corrodes the defender.
Weakness	4 Orange demon	Attacks have a chance to inflict weakness on a target.
Sleep	f Sleepcap	Has a 50% chance of putting the defender to sleep when dealing damage.
Confuse	s Tarantella	Has a 33% chance of confusing the defender, or 10% if the attack did less than 3 damage. Duration is 1d(HD + 3) / 10 turns, rounded up, with a cumulative maximum of 4 turns.
Rage	y Moth of wrath	Has a 33% chance of sending the defender into a berserk rage, if it is capable of doing so.
Bloodzerk	F Skyshark	When striking targets that bleed, the user is strengthened, then sent into into a berserk rage.
Vulnerable	W Phantasmal warrior	Has a 33% chance of temporarily halving the defender's willpower. If the defender is already so afflicted, it instead increases the duration of the effect.
Antimagic	S Mana viper	Inherent antimagic brand (drains player MP, or causes monsters to have a spell failure chance that rises with antimagic damage dealt and decreases with time).
Swoop	4 Hellwing	The attacker swoops in to perform a melee attack if far away.
Flank	5 Ufetubus	Slips behind the target before attacking.
Blink	F Blink frog	The attacker has a 33% chance of blinking after a successful hit.
Blink with	W Phantom	After a successful hit, the attacker may blink both itself and the defender.
Spider	s Broodmother	May summon a spider when attacking.
Hell hunt	b Obsidian bat	Summons a hell hound or hell rat on hit.
Swarm	F Marrowcuda	Summons a copy of itself on hit.
Chaos	4 Chaos spawn	Changes flavour with every attack, to one of the following: Fire Cold Electricity Strong poison Vampiric Confusion "Pure" chaos, which has many different possible effects detailed on the chaos page.
Foul flame	& Pandemonium lord	Deals an additional 75% damage to holy creatures, 50% damage to neutral creatures, and 25% damage to evil creatures.
Airstrike	F Sky beast	Deals increased damage with more open spaces adjacent to the target, similarly to the Airstrike spell.
Vent fumes	9 Walking alembic	Creates poison clouds on and around the target when striking them.
Bomblet	E Monarch bomb	May summon a bomblet when attacking.
Trickster	[ Haunted armour	May irresistibly drain, daze, or confuse the target.
Dim	J Void ooze	Diminishes the power of target's spells.
Doom	5 Drude	Draws target's Doom closer by increasing "doom meter" by a number in interval from (5 + HD / 3) to (8 + HD). The amount will be lowered for player in case of existing banes.
Slimify	J Morphogenic ooze	Slimifies the target. For player it will result in Slimifying status which will turn them into Jelly after several turns, monsters will be transformed immediately with 25% chance.
Reach cleave ugly	x Crawling flesh cage	Attacks with random flavour of attack of ugly thing, also has range of 2 and cleaves nearby tiles.

History

• In 0.35, All attack flavours with reach or cleave will be removed, separate reach and cleave properties will be added to each attack instead.
• In 0.34 the Engulf flavour was changed to apply a flooded debuff, and the new Doom, Reach-cleave ugly, Diminished Spells and Slimify flavours were added.
• 0.33 added the Airstrike, Alembic, Bomblet, and Trickster flavours. Prior to 0.33 monsters could have drain stat(strength/dexterity/intelligence) flavour as well.
• 0.32 added the Drag, Swarm, Hell Hunt and Foul Flame flavours.
• 0.31 added the Flank and Momentary paralysis flavours and removed the Sticky Flame and Mutate flavours. The latter had a 25% chance of malmutating the player (or polymorphing if the defender was a monster).
• 0.30 added the Sleep and Bloodzerk flavours.
• 0.29 added the Rift flavour.
• 0.28 removed the Kite flavour and added the Barbs and Spider flavours.
• 0.27 added the Blink with flavour.
• 0.26 removed the Rot and Hunger flavours; enemies that caused rot now inflict draining, which now temporarily reduces the player's maximum HP.
• 0.23 removed the Klown flavour that could choose randomly between Fire, Cold, Electricity, Strong poison, Drain speed, Pain, or Antimagic.
• Prior to 0.22, Engulf applied a movement penalty, which doubled the player's movement delay.
• 0.19 removed the Miasmata flavour.
• 0.18 introduced the Miasmata flavour and removed the Firebrand flavour.
• 0.16 introduced the Corrode, Scarab, Trample, Kite, and Swoop flavours. It also made Drain Speed apply slow even through rN+.
• As of 0.15, the Plague flavour was removed and the Sticky flame attack flavour was added. Item destruction was removed, reducing the threat from Fire and Cold attacks, as well as anything which can duplicate them (Chaos and Klown).
• 0.14 contained many monster flavour changes:
  • The Klown attack flavour chose from the following types: Fire, Cold, Nasty poison, Drain XP, Rot, Blink, and Anti-magic.
  • Harpies had a Steal Food brand; attacks would occasionally consume one or more food items from your inventory or on the ground, if the target was standing on any food.
  • There were Poison (stat) attack flavours. These vaguely copied the Drain stat brand: they had a 33% chance of temporarily reducing a point of a given stat if the target was not resistant to poison.
  • Poison's overhaul removed the Nasty Poison and Medium Poison attack flavours, as detailed in poison types. Each were moved to normal poison and strong poison as appropriate per monster.
• 0.13 removed the Disease flavour and introduced the Plague flavour.