Skeleton (monster)

Obsolete: This article refers to an aspect of the game which has been removed. It is retained for historical reference only.

This page is about the former monster. For the item left behind by rotting corpses, see skeleton. For the monster that replaced skeletons, see draugr.

A skeleton compelled to unlife by the exercise of necromancy. "God save us from the skeleton Who sitteth at the feast!" -James Jeffery Roche, _The Skeleton at the Feast_. 1890.

Skeletons are the reanimated bones of once-living creatures. As a type of derived undead, their stats are based on what the monster had in life.

Useful Info

Skeletons are slower, stupider, and clumsier than their alive counterparts. Skeletons are weaker versions of zombies.

• HP: (HD)d4 + 5*HD
• AC: Original - 6
• EV: Original - 7
• Speed: Original - 2 (at least 3)
• Attack flavour: None
• Special: Does not regenerate, cannot traverse stairs

Skeletons may be created with the Necrotise spell. They can also be found in a couple vaults. A newly-animated skeleton will drop weapons and armour that they were wearing.

Identifying Skeletons

Different monsters will leave behind skeletons with differing stats, but Crawl tends to lump them all together, making identifying them at a glance difficult. Console mode will display skeletons as either z or Z, depending on their size. Tiles mode provides different tiles for several different kinds of skeletons, but there are still many different monsters that fall under each type. In any case, if you want to find out exactly what you'll be fighting, simply hit x and highlight the skeleton in question.

Below are all the categories of skeletons in tiles mode:

Bats

Birds

Centaurs

Draconians

Dragons

Drakes

Fish

Frogs

Humanoids (small)

Humanoids (medium)

Humanoids (large)

Hydras

The Lernaean hydra

Lizards

Nagas

Quadrupeds (small)

Quadrupeds (large)

Quadrupeds (winged)

Snakes

Trolls

Turtles

Ugly things

History

• In 0.34, skeletons were replaced with draugrs.
• Prior to 0.29, skeletons on the ground could be re-animated using Animate Skeleton or Animate Dead. Reanimated monsters kept their weapons and armour. Skeletons were also removed from the main Dungeon's spawn table.
• Prior to 0.26, skeletons were more important. You could butcher a corpse to eat its chunks, then animate it into a skeleton. You could not do this with zombies.
• Prior to 0.23, butchering a corpse did not always leave a skeleton item, though Animate Skeleton always left chunks.