Spell circles
A spell circle is a thin ring that turns slowly around anyone you see who carries a buff or a hex. A buff or hex here is a status laid by one of the spells in the table below, or the same status from anywhere else: a potion of quickness hastes you just as Haste does, and shows the same circle.
A circle tells you no more than the status bar and look mode do. It shows which kinds of magic someone carries, never how strong they are or how long they will last.
Reading a circle
- The figure inside the rings counts the effects: one is a triangle, two a square, three a triangle again, four a square, five a pentagon, six a hexagon. A seventh changes nothing.
- There is one thin ring per effect, up to three: one ring for one effect, two for two, three for three or more.
- Buffs are whole and turn clockwise, one turn a minute. Hexes are broken, with dashed rings and sides, and turn the other way, one turn in 45 seconds. Someone with both has the buffs’ circle inside and the hexes’ circle around it.
- The colour is the school of the first effect, in the order the status bar lists them. The rings glow faintly in their colour, and so does the glyph of whoever wears the circle (in the buffs’ colour if they have both).
- Glints and arcs: now and then a tiny glint flashes on the wearer’s glyph (two beats, every 5.3 and 7.1 seconds, each showing for about a tenth of that). A soft brighter arc runs round each ring every 7 seconds.
- A circle keeps to what you see. Its rings show only over floor you can see right now. They never cover walls, darkness, or anything else drawn on the map (a creature, an item, a torch on the wall), and fade out softly where they reach one. Where two circles crowd together, the later one’s rings pass under the earlier one’s (yours come first).
- A circle fades in over half a second when the first buff or hex begins, and fades out just as long when the last one ends. When an effect begins or ends while others go on, the old figure and rings fade into the new ones over 0.4 seconds. A hexes’ circle moves outward when a buffs’ circle appears inside it, and back in once that one is gone.
- With Reduced effects or Slides, camera off, none of this moves, nor do the glints or the arcs: a circle appears, changes, and goes at once. Reduced effects also removes the glow (Settings).
Sleep is the one hex without a circle. A creature asleep, from Slumber or in a den, shows none and sheds no light.
Every buff shows on a creature, whatever gave it. Look mode calls a hasted creature “quickened”, a bark-skinned one “bark-skinned”, and one that drank a potion of might “fortified” (see Status effects).
The drawn circles are only for show: the Spell circles switch in Settings hides them, and Reduced effects only stops them moving. The light they shed is real, though (below).
| Spell | Kind | Status | School | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barkskin | buff | Barkskin | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Blessing | buff | Blessed | abjuration | #80b4e0 |
| Brand | buff | Burning blade | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Fire cloak | buff | Fire-cloaked | abjuration | #80b4e0 |
| Glamour | buff | Glamoured | abjuration | #80b4e0 |
| Haste | buff | Hasted | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Light | buff | Lit | evocation | #e0803c |
| Nightsight | buff | Cat-eyed | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Renewal | buff | Renewing | restoration | #e0c060 |
| See invisible | buff | Seeing | divination | #d8d8e8 |
| Sense the quick | buff | Quick-sensed | divination | #d8d8e8 |
| Water walking | buff | Water-borne | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Bind | hex | Pinned | enchantment | #d07ab0 |
| Bramble | hex | Webbed | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Curse of sloth | hex | Sluggish | transmutation | #78c478 |
| Evil eye | hex | Hexed | enchantment | #d07ab0 |
| Fear | hex | Frightened | enchantment | #d07ab0 |
| Flare | hex | Stunned | evocation | #e0803c |
| Hex of weakness | hex | Weakened | necromancy | #a48cc8 |
| Mesmerise | hex | Transfixed | enchantment | #d07ab0 |
| Silence | hex | Silenced | abjuration | #80b4e0 |
| Sleep | hex | Drowsy | enchantment | #d07ab0 |
| Web | hex | Webbed | transmutation | #78c478 |
The circle’s light
A status with a circle sheds a faint, steady light in its school’s colour. It does so whatever gave the status (a potion of quickness’s Hasted too) and whoever has it, you or a creature. These are the spell circle lights of the lights table: each reaches one cell and has a strong ultraviolet share.
The light’s strength never changes with the status’s severity or the time left, and it goes out the turn the status ends. Someone with several statuses that have circles sheds only one such light: that of the first status in status order. The Light spell’s own light is brighter and wins over it.
- Normal eyes (a brightness of 40) see the glowing one’s own cell, and so the glowing one, at any distance in line of sight, even in the dark (40 to 52 there, plus the cell’s other light). They do not see the four cells beside it, which are half as bright (20 to 26). The diagonal cells get no light.
- Low-light eyes (12) see the four cells beside it too.
- Eyes that see UV see it plainly (130 to 142 on its cell), and the four cells beside it as well (65 to 71), where the UV shows as a violet tint.
- A buff lights you up. Creatures see by the same rules, so a hasted, blessed, or bark-skinned sneak is seen by any normal-eyed creature that has them in line of sight, just as with Inner light. A hex marks its target the same way: a webbed or drowsy creature glows for as long as the hex lasts.
- Light-blind eyes add this light to the cell’s other light. A drow in daylight just under their glare (250) can be dazzled by their own Blessing.
- A disguised mimic sheds no light: its disguise would glow.
See also: Buffs and hexes, Settings, and Potions.