Olgreb's Toxic Radiance

Olgreb's Toxic Radiance (OTR) is a level 4 Alchemy spell which both damages and poisons any creatures without poison resistance in the caster's line of sight for a few turns.

Alchemists start with this spell, though it can also be evoked using the artefact staff of Olgreb.

Useful Info

The damage can be split into two parts:

• Impact damage. Olgreb's deals 1d(1 + pow/20) damage per 1.0 decaAut.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> Ignores AC. Poison vulnerable monsters take 150% damage from this.
• Poison status. Affected monsters have a 50% chance (on cast, and per 1.0 decaAut afterwards) to gain one poison "stack".<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> Monsters that haven't been poisoned yet instead have a 100% chance. Keep in mind that monsters have a limit of 4 stacks. See the Poison article for more detail on how poison stacks work.

Creatures with poison resistance are completely immune to Olgreb's Toxic Radiance.

This spell has a duration of 1 + 1d(1 + pow/25) turns.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> Casting this spell again will increase the duration; it does not increase the rate of poison or poison damage.

Strategy

Olgreb's Toxic Radiance is a great spell for crowd-control. It isn't fast, but it is good at thinning out a crowd, as it'll weaken the strong monsters and kill the chaff. Very effective in the Spider's Nest, as most insects and spiders are vulnerable to poison. Also great against evasive enemies in general, such as killer bees and boggarts.

Works very well with Ignite Poison. Ignite Poison deals 200% - 300% of expected poison damage, immediately. This allows OTR to become even better at dealing with crowds, able to wipe entire screens of monsters in just a few turns.

This spell, when combined with Ignite Poison, can be useful up to Vaults and Depths, as the combo is decent against monsters like vault guards and deep trolls. Even in Zot, it can be used to clear out draconians and orb guardians. While it's much less powerful in the lategame, since more and more monsters resist poison, that's to be expected of a level 4 spell.

Tips & Tricks

• Olgreb's Toxic Radiance deals some direct damage, so it breaks monsters out of fear, and dispels friendly summons that don't resist poison.
• Monsters can have up to 4 poison stacks; monsters that are "extremely poisoned" cannot be poisoned further. In tiles, this is represented with 3 poison drops.

Monster Version

Players are affected by Olgreb's Toxic Radiance differently. Instead of poison stacks, players take 1d(1 + HD * 0.6) impact damage and then 2d(3 + HD/2) HP worth of poison per turn instead.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> Otherwise, the monster version acts like the player version.

History

• Prior to 0.24, monsters did less damage with this spell, 2d3 HP worth of poison per turn.
• Prior to 0.24, this spell did not deal direct damage on cast, and didn't properly trigger ally-harming conducts. Also, it inflicted poison based on actions and not time_taken, so swapping weapons or swinging a quick blade would cause more poison than waiting or moving.
• Prior to 0.19, the damage of this spell varied by distance and the spell also poisoned the player character.
• Prior to 0.13, this spell poisoned all visible creatures for a single turn, didn't cause any direct damage, and could be cast when drawing the Venom card from a Deck of destruction.
• In 0.10, the effectiveness of Olgreb's Toxic Radiance was modified to scale with spell power and to still affect poison-resistant players 10% of the time.

References

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