Players and enemies can wield a variety of spells capable of inflicting debilitating status ailments upon their foes. It is also possible for these to be inflicted upon enemies using an enchanted weapon, such as a magical dagger that has Physical + Poison or Paralyze as an attack types/elements, or they can be inflicted upon the player such as Behemoths that can blind with their physical attacks, or Balrogs that can poison with their physical attacks.

Some of these ailments are short-lived and can be cured easily if the player reacts quickly enough, whereas others are potentially lethal in the middle of combat. Multiple status effects can be active at the same time, so it's entirely possible to be blind, confused, paralyzed, slowed, with multiple diseases all at once.

The following is a full list of status ailments, including details on how to manage and cure them:

Acid is a bit unusual in that it's a damage element that also inflicts a status ailment when wielded against players. Enemies that can inflict damage with their acid attacks can permanently damage / corrode equipment, and many acidic enemies such as acid blobs will automatically hit back whenever you physically attack them with melee attacks. Even more unusually, you actually gain immunity to this ailment if your acid resistance is at 50% or higher, so if you're up against acidic enemies it's recommended to try and equip stuff that puts your resistance at that threshold which will spare your equipment, but won't make you totally immune to the acid damage itself unless you somehow obtain 100% acid resistance.

Players do not inflict an ailment on enemies when hitting with acid damage. Spells and weapons with acid damage that the player can use tend to be exceptionally rare; Gorokh followers get the Vitriol spell, but that's about it.

Serpentfolk have some innate acid resistance; not enough to meet the 50% threshold for equipment damage immunity, but a decent chunk to help get there with a Ring of Acid. Lythander followers are mildly susceptible to acid (and poison) so it's an additional nuisance for them to deal with.

The target temporarily loses all sight, and also gains significant accuracy penalties for making physical attacks. If inflicted on the player the map stops updating except for new tiles you walk over, but the parts of the map you've already seen are still lit up and in your memory so if you're hit with blindness and unprepared to cure it, you can usually find your way quickly to a staircase to exit the immediate area and find safety until it wears off.

Generally not a major concern for players as it's easily fixed with the Cure Blindness spell or scrolls of Cure Blindness, and as long as you don't leave the current map you remember the areas you've explored, escaping to a safe area isn't seriously hindered while blind. Being blind also doesn't appear to impact accuracy with offensive spells, so you can still happily blast away at targets while blinded.

Followers of Valriel have immunity to Blind, and can inflict Blind with their enchanted weaponry.

Confusion is a seriously debilitating ailment that should be cured immediately if the player becomes inflicted by it. When confused, spells cannot be naturally cast, and if the player attempts to cast a spell they will instead either randomly cast one from their known spells, or may have other unusual effects such as temporarily transforming items in their inventory into flowers.

Players that are confused cannot reliably move or fire in any direction. Trying to move in a given direction appears to have a higher chance of moving in the direction you're trying to go (trying to move East has a better chance of going East, Northeast, or Southeast), but you may move entirely in a different direction. You're not forced to move, so you could, if needed, stand still until Confusion wears off.

Confusion cannot be cured with the Praying spell Cure Confusion as it will fail to cast properly. The only way for a player to quickly and reliably cure it is to use a magic item such as a scroll of Cure Confusion as scrolls, wands, staves, potions, and dusts will still operate, albeit firing in random directions. It's highly recommended to keep scrolls of Cure Confusion on hand to fix this ailment and have a keybind that instantly uses one.

Confused enemies stop casting spells and appear to move around at random. While it interrupts their attacks, their random, erratic movement makes them rather tricky to hit with melee attacks, so inflicting confusion on enemies is perhaps more useful if you plan to follow up with wide area-of-effect spells.

Lythander followers have full immunity to confusion. Amulets of the Shielded Mind are another way players can access confusion immunity. Sorcery has a couple of spells that can inflict confusion on enemies.

Death attempts to inflict instant death upon the target. Having 0% resistance doesn't necessarily mean attacks are guaranteed to hit, as Death type spells and attacks have a chance to hit that's based on the level of the target, compared with the level of the attacker. Resistance then likely gets checked if this accuracy check succeeds (needs confirmation).

Death is rather uncommon as far as attacks go. It's mostly encountered early on by unfortunate players in the form of door traps, or rarely as floor traps in certain maps, but spells and attacks by enemies that use Death as their type tend to be quite rare and limited. If you do encounter it, equipment that has high resistance or outright immunity is highly recommended since getting hit by Death instantly kills you!

Devourers followers in particular get access to the Face of Death spell, as well as immunity to Death. Gaea followers also have immunity to Death.

Saps stat points. It's unclear what it does in the hands of the player against enemies (there's a few artifact weapons like Mournblades that can inflict it), but enemies with Depletion are extremely annoying because their attacks will lower your stat points until you recover them.

Disease isn't one specific ailment type in Crossfire. Rather, it covers a variety of different diseases that all deal damage over time and reduce the target's stats and speed. They operate in one of two ways:

a) Permanent diseases that last until the player casts Cure Disease or until the player / enemy dies. These progress in damage and lower the target's maximum HP as they repeatedly tick / hit the target, making them a slow, but reliable method of killing anything susceptible to them. Cause Leprosy is a good example of this type of disease.

Enemies afflicted with diseases typically will stop taking damage from even permanent diseases if the player leaves the map for too long (need confirmation on how this works, leaving to a different map for more than 30 minutes usually stops disease progress?), so for Leprosy to kill very high level targets, the player will need to remain on the same map as the enemy for a long time.

Even if the player doesn't know the spell Cure Disease, it's available in scroll form, as well as at the House of Healing in Scorn by paying a small fee for it to be cast on the player.

b) Temporary diseases that are automatically cured after a certain number of ticks / hits occur. These tend to have a higher degree of contagiousness, and vary in how fatal they are from weaker ones like Cold or Flu, or devastatingly fatal ones like Red Death.

If allowed to progress and cure themselves, the player or enemy's body will develop antibodies against temporary diseases at or lower than the level they were inflicted at, which provides immunity to further infections. This will not happen if the player casts Cure Disease on themselves, which immediately removes the disease without producing these antibodies. It also provides no protection against reinfection of higher level versions of diseases. This is a special mechanic that doesn't apply to any other status ailment, and each disease is tracked separately (being immune to Level 90 Cold won't help you if you get infected by Flu, Typhoid, Red Death, etc).

For instance, a player that has level 10 Praying can cast Cause Cold and infect themselves (and all the enemies on the map) with the disease. Once they allow the Cold to progress naturally and cure itself, they can cast Cause Cold again without reinfecting themselves until they gain a level, at which point level 11 Praying will infect themselves. It's possible for friendly players to inoculate each other against diseases by deliberately infecting themselves with such diseases before going into a map with enemies to use them there. Some enemies such as Dragons can drop rather high level scrolls and staves of Cause Cold and Flu, giving you a way to effectively gain immunity to even very high levels of these diseases, as well as wield them to devastating effect on groups of enemies.

Diseases scale aggressively in damage and how much of a drop in speed they afflict based on the level cast. A level 10 Cause Cold or Cause Flu can kill large groups of fairly weak monsters and slow them down slightly while infected, but level 110 Cause Cold or Cause Flu will ruin the target's speed to 0.01 as well as deal respectable damage to weaker enemies, giving you an enormous window of time to beat down even powerful foes.

Both types of disease are subject to immunity, but equipment doesn't exist that provides actual resistance to disease. If the target is undead they're immune to diseases, and the player can obtain immunity by being undead (the Wraith race or by becoming a follower of the Devourers). Note that there's a couple of special diseases inflicted by enemies that can still infect undead players, but undead players will be immune to the major threats (such as accidentally infecting themselves with Leprosy, Cold, Flu, or Rabies).

Enemies can be immune to diseases either by being undead (which prevents the infliction) or by being immune to the damage type GodPower, which is exceptionally rare as it's considered a special damage type that you can't normally gain resistance to and the only enemies with resistance to it are typically high level, boss type foes.

In the hands of enemies, getting hit with Drain attacks causes you to lose exp from skills and can sap your levels if you're hit frequently enough. This is one of the more annoying effects in the game, but fortunately many weapons, shields, and accessories offer full Drain immunity.

Grimreapers are one of the earliest enemies encountered with Drain attacks. They're a potential threat for a new player as they have 100% physical resistance and thus are immune to conventional weapons, but are easily killed with most spells or any elemental weaponry. Items that give immunity to Drain attacks also tend to be fairly common, so finding a ring that you can quickly switch to as needed isn't too difficult to come by.

Followers of Gaea and of Devourers have immunity to Drain.

Note that Drain resistance also appears to cover resistance against the attack type Life Stealing which is technically considered a separate effect that sucks HP from the target as you attack to restore health, but since many enemies with Drain also have Life Stealing, it's usually safe to assume enemies that Drain experience can do both.

Players can gain access to Drain and Life Stealing on their weapons by becoming a follower of Devourers and enchanting their weapons. Wraiths also have this as a barehanded attack option in the form of Wraith Feed.

Causes the target to run uncontrollably away for a short distance from whatever hit them with Fear. It's perhaps the status ailment with the shortest duration, and isn't terribly exciting or useful in the hands of players (a lot of enemies are outright immune to it), but when used against a player it can be rather troublesome.

Fear cannot be cured when you're hit by it; you have to wait for its effect to end, but it only usually lasts a few seconds and you have somewhat limited control over your movement, so it's something that can be problematic, but usually not life-threatening to be hit by it.

Many enemies have Fear attacks that fire in a wide, cone-shaped spray including various undead mages and dragons, and players that are hit by it can be forced to run away and accidentally trigger door or floor traps in the process. There are several ways to gain immunity to Fear including by being a follower of Valriel, of Gorokh, of Devourers, or by wearing an Amulet of the Shielded Mind.

One of the most dangerous status ailments in the game, Paralyze removes your ability to do anything at all and freezes you in place for a short period of time. Enemies that can hit for Paralyze or cast Paralyze spells can lock you in place indefinitely by repeatedly hitting you before your Paralyze wears off, which refreshes the duration. Because of this, Paralyze is extremely dangerous and immunity to it is critical to have on at all times. Obtaining something that grants immunity is a key goal early on in the game, such as a Ring of Halvor.

If hit with Paralyze, there is no way to cure yourself. It might be possible for another player to cure it with something like the Restoration spell (needs confirmation), but the duration is usually short lived enough that it's enough to simply kill whatever's casting it and keep the afflicted ally alive.

Paralyze is extremely deadly for a level 2 Sorcery spell in the hands of a player as, with enough spell points, you can repeatedly cast it before it wears off, keeping an enemy locked down indefinitely while you carve them up to bits. Very high level enemies typically have some level of resistance or immunity to this, but many mid level enemies that are great sources of experience have no resistance whatsoever such as Dragons or Titans (who hilariously will often accidentally Paralyze themselves with their own spells).

No deities offer any kind of protection to Paralyze. Quetzals used to have a weakness to Paralyze but this has been removed as it was deemed way too debilitating to have on top of a weakness to Cold.

Poison functionally is like a temporary disease, but one that you don't gain any immunity against even if you wait out the duration. While poisoned, you slowly take damage, have your stats reduced, and your speed lowered until the poison leaves your body after a few minutes, or until you cast Cure Poison. It can be quite dangerous to a new player who doesn't have easy access to ways of curing it or healing through the damage as poison needle traps are one of the more common traps on doors and chests.

Poison gains strength in proportion to the level of the poison user. Extremely high level creatures that can inflict poison such as Balrogs and Greater Hellhounds have extremely powerful poisons that deal massive quantities of damage per tick, and slow the player down to extremely dangerous speeds, so Poison resistance is useful to have throughout the entire game.

Fireborn are completely immune to poison, Dragons can eat flesh to gain permanent resistance to poison, and Serpentfolk start with a decent amount of poison. Gnarg is the god focused on poison (and disease) and grants a significant bonus to resistance both by simply worshipping Gnarg, as well as by casting the Holy Possession spell to increase their stats and resistances temporarily.

Slow is essentially a weaker, less threatening form of Paralyze. It lasts about the same duration, with the target's maximum movement speed being lowered proportional to the strength of the caster. Most monsters you'll encounter that use Slow spells such as Vampires and Dreads will cut your speed in half, but extremely high level spellcasters may reduce it to dangerously low values where it's essentially like being Paralyzed.

Paralyze is typically a lot more common and more threatening than Slow, but you can gain immunity to both with a Ring of Free Action. Note that an Amulet of the Shielded Mind covers 3 movement-affecting ailments (Confusion, Fear, & Paralyze) but does nothing to resist Slow.