Lantern of Shadows

[GNFR]

Hi there! I just picked up a lantern of shadows, but Im not sure what it does. When I wield it, everything goes really dark and friendly shadows appear, but thats about it. How do I use it properly?? Thanks!

[Eji1700]

Technically that's all it does, but that's actually quite useful.

In short it lowers your LoS(line of sight) and spawns friendly shades, but what isn't apparent is that with how crawl is coded this means it lowers enemy LoS as well(enemies you don't see can't see you....i think.). That combined with automatic shade spawning means its a wonderful item to hold when you run away. Your less likely to see things that can attack you and the shades will automatically block for you as you run through hallways.

Other than that i know its a terrible item if you worship okawaru and that's about it.

[njvack]

It's wonderful in the Abyss -- especially if you're low-level enough that surviving there is an iffy proposition. I'm pretty convinced it saved one of my characters there.

Also nice for something with a nasty ranged attack you want to get away from, as LoS is indeed reciprocal -- if you can't see that Orb of Fire, it can't see you.

Note that it kills your magical prowess while wielded -- it's really strictly defensive. And I'm pretty sure it's considered necromancy for the purposes of religion.

Overall, it's nice to carry around (if you've got the spare capacity; it's kinda heavy) if you're worried about Abyss survival, and could be useful on branch ends.

[zrn]

If only you could cover your eyes like parents do when they play with they babies. Orb of fire keeping you down? Play peekaboo and all your worries fade away!

[GNFR]

Bad news for me: I worship okawaru!! Ive used it about twice and he is still extremely pleased with me, what could happen if I was sent to the abyss and had to use it a lot?

[KoboldLord]

You lose a little piety every time one of your minions get killed, including the shadows. Individually, this is trivial since you can get that piety back just by killing a couple enemies per dead minion, but it will delay the appearance of your next divine gift substantially. If you lose quite a few minions in a row, you can also lose access to Okawaru's Finesse invocation until you can grind piety to get it back, but you're unlikely to ever lose the Heroism invocation or get excommunicated. Anything that can burn through shadow minions that fast will probably kill you, too, long before Okawaru runs out of patience with you.

Oh, don't attack or kill the shadow minions yourself, even if they're in the way of you killing something else. If you do that, you get penance instead of just a piety loss. If you have penance, Okawaru will actively try to kill you until you work it off.

[vintermann]

Does this think really work as advertised? I had a DS with the full shadow mutation, once he needed to rest I equipped the lantern, figuring with that small LoS nothing is going to find me here in this corner. I was rudely awakened by a Storm Dragon lightning bolt from halfway across the room, way out of my LoS. Maybe it was aiming for my shadows? Anyway the hiding power of the lantern seems to be rather limited.

[galehar]

The effect of the lantern is multiplicative, not additive. Usually, it reduces your LOS from 8 to 6, but when nightstalker already has reduced your LOS to 5, the lantern only brings it down to 4.
And yes, the storm dragon must have fired at one of the shadow, since it cannot target you from out of your LOS. I guess the shadows are more useful when fleeing than when hiding.

[vintermann]

I would really have liked if the shadow summoning thing could be toggled on/off. That would make it more palatable to the good gods too.

[Shade]

I would really have liked if the shadow summoning thing could be toggled on/off. That would make it more palatable to the good gods too.

Flavour wise, I don't know if it's a bad thing that it offends good gods, but that's just my $.02 CAD.