Scale mail

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Name	Scale Mail
Size to wear	Small, Medium
Armour Class	6
Encumbrance rating	10
Maximum Enchantment	+6
Grants	nothing
Time to Wear	5

A leather suit covered with metal plates attached to each other in overlapping rows to provide full protection, but at the cost of reduced freedom of movement.

Scale mail is a medium body armour, providing moderate physical defense coupled with a significant encumbrance rating. Fighters start with this armour, assuming their species can wear it.

Desirability

Scale mail is a medium-weight armour, offering moderate defense, but at a significant cost to evasion and spellcasting success. Early on, high-strength characters may be grateful to find a scale mail on the first few floors. With strength in the upper teens, many low-level spells should be castable.

However, the stats of a scale mail aren't terribly impressive. Some EV-based melee fighters may like one, but most characters will prefer either lighter or heavier. Still, if found with a solid enchantment rating and ego, or in the form of an excellent randart, scale mail might be worth using for a while.

A plain +0 scale mail is completely outclassed by acid dragon scales.

	Image
Mundane
Magical
Artefact
	Unrandart scale mail
Kryia's mail coat

History

Prior to 0.16, scale mail had an encumbrance rating of 11.