Doomed

Doomed is a particularly nasty intrinsic that can be inflicted on characters, resulting in a whole host of undesirable and dangerous effects. Like most intrinsics, dooming can be acquired through equipment, or, more typically, can be inflicted by an external source against the player's wishes (but usually through the player's deliberate actions). Because of the significant enhancement in the danger resulting from dooming, and few upsides, most players consider removing dooming an immediate priority unless they are looking for a considerable challenge. Note that multiple instances of dooming will stack, and that its effects are further compounded by cursing.

Basics

Known effects of dooming include the following:

1. Monsters which are spawned: they seem to have higher than normal stats
2. All monsters encountered (even those which were generated before the PC was doomed) are considerably more deadly: they score more critical hits and punch through and damage armor with alarming frequency.
3. Monsters appear to spawn at a slightly higher danger level than normal.
4. Monster spawn rates appear to be slightly higher than normal.
5. Monster special attacks, such as sleep, poison, confusion, etc. are much more potent. Paralysis in particular can be lethal even to very strong characters.
6. Item damage (for armor parts) and item destruction from all sources is greatly increased.
7. 'You shudder' trap rooms are considerably more common.
8. Doomed characters may never acquire a wish from a pool.
9. Prayers appear to fail approximately 50% of the time. This does seem to result in a piety loss.
10. Piety loss, both due to prayers and natural piety loss, appears to be more acute.
11. The background corruption rate is approximately doubled.
12. Characters with intrinsic dooming cannot enter the Chaos Gate and win an ultra ending.
13. Doomed characters cannot crown, precrown or post-crown.
14. Wilderness encounters are extremely common and very difficult to avoid.
15. There is a small, random chance that upon entering darkness, the character will be eaten by a grue and killed.
16. The price to learn the Smithing skill from Glod increases astronomically.
17. It is virtually impossible to wrench final characters out of wands.
18. The character receives a substantial penalty to their luck score. This affects a variety of rolls ranging from resisting confusion to falling down stairs. Many of the above listed effects may in fact be the result of ill luck. Note that intrinsic dooming is known to produce a significantly larger luck penalty than dooming from items.

Acquiring Doomed intrinsic

It should be obvious that most of Doomed effects are undesirable, and, compounded, make the game extraordinarily hazardous. The best way to avoid this hazard is simply to avoid becoming doomed in the first place. For the most part, this is not so difficult with cautious play. Dooming can be acquired in the following ways:

1. Praying to a god who is extremely upset with you while wearing no items will result in dooming (if the player is wearing items, his/her deity will attempt to destroy worn equipment instead).
2. Attacking any karmic monster in melee will degrade the character's intrinsic luck state, first removing Fate smiles and Luck, then adding Cursed and finally Doomed.
3. Shoplifting may result in dooming depending on how the character robs the shop, as well as their alignment.
4. Sipping pools will occasionally lead to dooming.
5. Eating the corpses of least daemons, lesser daemons and greater daemons, several NPCs (including the Oracle, the cat lord and Yrruir) or innocent/lawful beings (dwarven children, children, white unicorns and the cute dog).
6. Equipping a ring of doom, javelin of death or any weapon of damnation. Certain artifacts such as Celestrix, Medal of Chaos, and Crown of Science will also doom the character.
7. If the character is already intrinsically cursed, reading a scroll of ill fate will doom him/her.
8. If the character is already intrinsically cursed and a spellcasting monster such as a green hag attempts to curse the character, it may doom the PC.

Removing Doomed intrinsic

Intrinsic dooming may be most easily be removed by characters with high piety. If the player is very close or better with their deity, any acceptable sacrifice at an altar will remove dooming with the message "You feel a terrible gloom being lifted from you". Characters with very high piety may also pray for dooming to be removed. This is an extremely costly prayer, however, and since dooming causes problems with the character's piety, this option isn't desirable. Dooming can be removed by sipping pools, but this method is very unreliable and prevents a possibility of getting a wish. Eating the corpse of any karmic creature will also remove intrinsic dooming.

Dooming from equipment can be simply removed by removing the offending item. Note that many items with intrinsic dooming are also autocursing, and may required added effort to remove.

Exploiting Doomed intrinsic

There are a few situations in which the player may wish to be doomed. The increased rate of wilderness encounters may be useful for players searching for a particular type of fight in the wilderness, for example if they wish to generate giant boars in order to obtain a giant boar skull for an ultra ending, or wish to kill black unicorns in order to trade their corpses for potions of cure corruption with Guth'Alak. The increased monster generation rate may make it easier for players wishing to do a crowning by live sacrifices. In version 1.1.1, fireproof blankets were much more resistant to destruction while the character was doomed, leading some players to doom themselves prior to entry into the Tower of Eternal Flames. In 1.2.0, this bug was fixed. Players wishing for a considerable added challenge to their game may wish to doom themselves intentionally.

Popular misconceptions

• Fate Smiles counters the effect of dooming.

While Fate helps mitigate the effects of dooming, particularly the luck penalty, many of the added effects of dooming occur even if the character has Fate Smiles.

• Doomed characters get better loot.

This is categorically false. Doomed PCs may receive slightly more loot due to the increased spawn rate of monsters, but this is more than offset by the significant increase in equipment damage. Even though monsters appear to be generated at higher level when the PC is doomed, they will not, however, generate better loot than can be acquired at the danger level of the region.

• Doomed characters get more experience.

Doomed PCs may receive slightly more experience due to the increased spawn rate of monsters, but this effect is fairly negligible over the course of an entire game. A player playing the game doomed from start to finish can expect to hit key areas such as the Tower of Eternal Flames at exactly the same level as an undoomed character would.

• Standing in darkness while doomed will result in the PC being eaten by a grue

Testing suggests that the PC will only be eaten by a grue when entering dark areas, not when traveling through them. The most dangerous rooms for doomed PCs are, therefore, flickering light rooms.