The scroll of earth creates boulders. If the scroll is uncursed, it will create 9 boulders, 8 around you, and one will fall on top of your head. If blessed, 8 boulders around you, and if cursed, only one boulder on your head.
Beware - for an early player this may kill you or your pet.
If you're confused, the scroll will create rocks instead of boulders.
On the Rogue level and in the End Game (with exception of the Plane of Earth) a scroll of earth has no effect.[1]
The boulder that falls on your head will do 1d20 points of damage, unless you're wearing a hard helmet, in which case it does 2 points of damage.
The first level in Sokoban contains two guaranteed scrolls of earth. Reading a scroll of earth in Sokoban will decrease your luck by 1.
Important to pacifists and farmers, a scroll of earth does no damage to amorphous, phasing, noncorporeal, and unsolid monsters.[2] Feel free to create boulders on top of the jelly fort surrounding you.
Strategy[]
This scroll can be used to create a "boulder fort". Monsters will not attack you if they can't see you through the boulders, and most cannot enter spaces containing boulders, but you can use telepathy to detect them and attack with missile weapons and spells (be careful of force bolt, though, as it will destroy boulders). This is a relatively safe way to deal with a horde of dangerous monsters, or one extremely tough monster.