Randart

Randarts, or random artefacts, are randomly or purposefully generated weapons, jewellery, armour, or spellbooks that can have any number of enchantments, egos, and brands, which are randomly selected from a pool of each of those attributes. They are also given names.

How Randarts Occur

In the Dungeon, randarts appear randomly starting on D:3. While a randart of any individual type is difficult to find (i.e., you cannot rely on finding a randart plate mail), randarts themselves are not particularly rare: a typical game will produce around 10 to 20 without divine intervention.

Three gods can also gift their followers randarts: Okawaru, Trog, and Xom. Okawaru will gift weapons and armour to high-piety followers; Trog will gift weapons (although usually of a higher quality than Oka's), while Xom can gift anything to any worshiper at any time, though with absolutely no degree of reliability.

Identifying A Randart

Discovering a randart is quite simple. they will look like any other item of the same type, most of the time, but the thing to look for is in the text description. Randarts will have a strange title in white text, like

a smoking dagger

Note that randart spellbooks will not have their names in white text. However, they do bear descriptions different from those of mundane books. Reading them once fully identifies them.

Armour randarts are always fully identified when you wear them. Weapon randarts will have their brand and all of their properties identified, but their to-hit and to-damage enchantments will have to be discovered through a scroll of identify or having enough skill in that weapon type. Randart jewellery is more elusive: only evokable properties will self-identify upon wearing; an identify scroll is necessary to ID the rest.

When trying on randarts, be sure to have a scroll of remove curse handy. The last thing you want is to find yourself with a useless Contam+ robe stuck to you, or wielding a cursed weapon with *Tele and a -4, -5 enchantment. It is not usually necessary to fully identify randarts before trying them on. Distortion weapons are a threat, but they are a threat which is often overstated. They are fairly rare, they only Abyss you on unwielding, and even then they're not guaranteed to do so. If you're really concerned about the possibility, only wield randarts of a base type that would be useful to you anyway, thereby lowering the chances of getting a distortion weapon, and leaving you in a better situation if you do get stuck with one.

Enchantments

Enchantments only apply to weapons or rings of slaying, but mostly to weapons. They appear as the (+foo,+foo) values on a weapon before the name of the weapon. Randarts tend to have these in good amounts, although they cannot be changed with a scroll of enchant weapon, due to their artefact status. A scroll of enchant weapon/armour can be used to uncurse a randart, however.

Properties

Randart weapons always have a brand. Conversely, randart armour never inherently bears an ego: there are no randart boots of running or cloaks of preservation. In addition, randarts can have any of the following properties. Note that these describe the properties that can appear above and beyond the artefact's base type.

• +/- Str, Dex, or Int. Self-explanatory. The range is -7 to +6 inclusive. A ring cannot have a stat modifier identical to its base type (so a ring of strength will never have a strength modifier).
• +/- Acc/Dam. Works identically to a ring of slaying. The range is -9 to +8 inclusive. Never found on weapons or rings of slaying.
• Resistances/vulnerabilities: These all work pretty similarly, but the ranges that can be found on randarts differ. Rings cannot bear a resistance or vulnerability identical to their base type, and rings of fire and ice will never bear either fire or cold resistance or vulnerability.
  • Fire resistance: ranges from rF- to rF++. Cannot be found on fire, ice, or gold dragon armour.
  • Cold resistance: ranges from rC- to rC++. Cannot be found on fire, ice, or gold dragon armour.
  • Negative energy resistance: only found as rN+. While a ring of life protection cannot have additional negative energy resistance, an amulet of warding can, so an amulet of warding with rN+ does give rN++. Cannot be found on pearl dragon armour.
  • Poison resistance: only exists as one level, rPois. Vulnerability is not found on artefacts, and multiple sources do not stack. Cannot be found on swamp or gold dragon armour.
  • Electricity resistance: only exists as one level, rElec. Vulnerability does not exist, and multiple sources do not stack. Cannot be found on storm dragon armour.
  • Magic resistance: represented by MR, this can vary from 35 to 100 MR. Note that if the base type of a ring is a ring of protection from magic, it always gives 40 MR. This means that the randart property almost always gives more MR than the base property.
• SInv: Lets you see invisible. Pretty self-explanatory. Doesn't appear on rings of see invisible.
• Stealth+(+): Increases your intrinsic stealth.
• +Blink: Can evoke a blink for a small cost in MP and food. Never found on amulets of stasis.
• +Rage: Can be evoked to send the wearer berserk. Never found on amulets of rage or stasis.
• +Fly: Allows the wearer to fly. Obviously not found on rings of flight.
• +Inv: Can be evoked to turn the wearer invisible. As with the ring, this evocation is not particularly easy, and costs a fair amount of food and MP. Not found on rings of invisibility.
• Stealth-(-): Decreases your intrinsic stealth. Does not directly alert monsters to your presence, though.
• Noisy: Periodically makes noise, waking and alerting nearby monsters. The noise is somewhat louder than simply shouting.
• *RAGE: Causes the wearer to randomly go berserk, similar to the berserkitis mutation. Not found on amulets of stasis.
• *TELE: Causes the wearer to randomly teleport, similar to the teleportitis mutation. Not found on amulets of stasis or rings of teleportation.
• Curse: May recurse itself on equipping. The chance for this to happen varies from artefact to artefact.
• Contam(+): Causes a large amount of magical contamination when unwielded/unworn, likely to cause bad mutations that may bypass mutation resistance. No longer causes continual contamination.
• Hunger(+): Causes additional 1-2 hunger each turn. However, the inscription is also used for artefacts with a base type of a ring of hunger, which will cause 4 extra hunger/turn. Be sure to read the artefact description
• -Cast: Inhibits all spellcasting. Never found on inherently "magical" rings: fire, ice, wizardry, magical power.
• -Tele: Blocks all attempts at teleportation. Does not prevent banishment, and does not have any of the other effects of an amulet of stasis. Never found on rings of teleportation or teleport control or amulets of stasis, and will override the +Blink property.

Unrands can have a number of unique, hard-coded properties, but additionally, a fair number also bear bonuses or maluses to your AC and EV. Previously, these properties could appear on randarts; while this was removed in 0.8, those unrands that already had them were allowed to keep them. Two other removed properties, +Tele and +Map, were not so lucky: they were removed from the unrands that bore them.

Randart spellbooks are different from other randarts in that they do not have any sort of special properties. Instead, they simply have semi-random collections of spells, which will be grouped around one or more themes. Themes can include specific magical schools, general spell types such as "offensive spell", "defensive spell", "disabling spell", and specific levels of spells. The randbook's name will usually be a description of its theme.

Names

Randarts have randomly generated names - either a name generated from Crawl's database files, or from a random pool of letters. They are always unusual and sometimes entertaining. The name of a randart is mostly irrelevant; however, randarts that are named for gods (like the +7, +6 broad axe of Okawaru's Hope) are forbidden from having properties that contradict the god's flavour. Thus, Cheibriados will not have weapons of speed named after him, nor will one find a ring dedicated to Sif Muna that prevents spellcasting. This does not result in any information leak, however, since it is impossible to know the name of an artefact without already knowing all of its properties.

Randarts can occasionally be named after the player. While rare, this is not an amazing coincidence or anything: artefacts simply have a small chance of being named after the player. While amusing, these names are just as irrelevant as any others.

Strategy

While randarts can be very powerful, always have a scroll of remove curse handy when use-identifying them. Also, keep a sense of perspective about your randarts. One can very broadly divide them into six categories; these definitions, of course, change from character to character:

• Nice to Uber: These include the so-called "uber-randarts", but also some that don't quite qualify for that distinction but are still things you'd always want to use. Things like the ring of Amarra {Regen rF++ rPois Dam+3} or the +4 large shield of Okawaru's Hope {rF+ rN+ SInv} would fall into this category.
• Good for a while: Most of the time, these are weapons with high enchantments and neutral to useful properties, but poor base types. Such an example might be the +3, +7 scimitar of Fun {chop, rC+ SInv}. A nice weapon, but outclassed by any demon blade, double sword or triple sword when it comes to the end game.
• Swaps: These are the mixed randarts that give a tactically useful property, but things you would not want to wear all the time. A good example would be the amulet of Plog {Inacc, rElec Hunger+ rN+}. You might use this as a swap for rElec or rN+, but the inaccuracy, increased metabolism, and occupation of the amulet slot make it highly undesirable to wear constantly.
• Not useful to you: Randarts you can't wear or wield fall into this category, as do those that you could in theory but can't really use in practice: an executioner's axe of speed is an awesome weapon, but outside of doing ziggurats, a deep elf wizard is unlikely to be able to use it. Ditto for a randart gold dragon armour. However, super-heavy weapons with useful resistances can be useful to casters who don't plan on using melee that much.
• Dross: These are randarts that are just boring; usually, branded mundane items will fill the slot better. The ring of the Moon {Ice Dex+1} for a non-ice caster, or +0 helmet of Xizic {Dex-2 Int+1 +Fly}. Unfortunately, far too many randarts fall into this category. This is where it is most important to keep a sense of perspective: it would be a bad idea to wear the randart helmet given above in place of a wizard hat of magic resistance, for example. Only wear this type of randart if you have nothing better to put in that slot.
• Bad: These are generally quite obvious. They range from "mixed but mostly bad" things like the amulet of Torgh {clarity, Dex+1 rC- *TELE} to truly spectacular failures like the -7 wizard hat of a Thousand Suns {Dex-2 Acc-2} or the ring of the Sun {Acc-4 Dam-5 rF- Hunger+ *RAGE}. Usually there is absolutely no reason to prefer randarts like these to a unbranded mundane item of the same type.

A factor that goes into what category a randart falls into, one that is often overlooked, is the slot and base type the randart itself is. The +6 plate mail of Wixzils {Dex+3 Dam+1 rN+} is probably inferior to a +10 plate mail of fire resistance. But the the +3 pair of gauntlets of Wizzils {Dex+3 Dam+1 rN+} is actually quite good, since it's superior to any mundane gauntlets you can get. Basically, be sure to consider what normal items you could substitute for your randart when considering how good it is.

Most randarts are not actually that useful, due to the sheer randomness of their properties. Pick out the best of them, and discard the rest. Don't carry or stash randarts because you might use them "at some point." Chances are, if you're not using it now and can't think of any specific situation in which it'll be useful, it's probably junk (i.e., in the last three categories given above).