Invisibility (ego)

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

When activated, it grants the wearer temporary invisibility, but also drains their max health.

Wearing equipment with the invisibility ego grants you the Evoke Invisibility ability, allowing you to turn invisible at will. It has a chance of failure, based on your Evocations skill.

Regardless of whether you fail or succeed, your max HP is temporarily drained (~8% max HP). Successfully evoking invisibility will cause minor magical contamination.

Sources

The invisibility ego can be found on:

• Scarves
• The unrand ring of Shadows
• Randomly generated artefacts

Desirability

Being invisible is a strong effect. Against enemies that can't see invisible, it greatly reduces chance of being hit, and allows you to stab. A scarf of invisibility gives all those benefits without needing to use a rare potion.

However, the drain prevents you from spamming the ability. Plus, the Evocations skill required to reliably go invisible is high. As the drain happens even if you fail, you generally don't want to try until you have enough skill. By then, most 'tough' enemies will be able to see invisible. This ego can still be useful (many weaker enemies don't have SInv), but you may want a more consistent ego instead.

Even in the late game, there are many enemies that can't see invisible. Notable examples include caustic shrikes, death cobs, draconians, tormentors, and hellions.

Success rate rises with Evocations skill:

Evocations	Failure rate(%)
0	28.53%
1	24.70%
3	17.85%
5	12.31%
7	8.05%
10	3.71%
15	0.49%
20	0.00%
25	0.00%
27	0.00%

History

• Prior to 0.32, fail rate's dependency on Evocations and drain cost were both 3 times higher.
• Prior to 0.30, evocable invisibility cost MP.
• Prior to 0.28, turning invisible caused more magic contamination initially and applied some contamination over time.
• Prior to 0.26, evoking invisibility caused hunger instead of draining you.
• Prior to 0.25, invisibility generated on cloaks instead of scarves.
• Prior to 0.21, removing an invisibility-ego item while invisible did not cost the player extra magical contamination.
• Prior to 0.20, this ego would let the player turn visible again once invisible, as a way to reduce contamination.
• Prior to 0.18, this ego could be found on rings.
• Prior to 0.16, this was called the Darkness ego.