Amulet of faith

Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Jewellery
Name	Amulet of faith
Icon

This is a talisman crafted to call the attention of the gods to its wearer. This divine attention makes it easier to please your god, but your god is also less likely to forgive your transgressions, and the amulet will drain some of your divine favour when removed.

Wearing an amulet of faith causes your current god (as well as any former gods you've abandoned) to pay more attention to you, causing the following effects:

Pros

• Piety gain is 25% faster.
• Gods that grant god gifts do so 33% more frequently.
• Gods that may protect you from harm are more likely to do so (your piety is treated as being 33% higher for such checks).

Cons

• Removing the amulet will result in the loss of one third of your piety, but will never cause excommunication, or drop piety too close to excommunication.
• Wearing it during penance (even if you are currently atheist) will make godly-wrath happen 1/3 more often, ending the penance more quickly.

Unusual Behavior

• Gozag Ym Sagoz - No effect.
• Ru - Increases the rate at which sacrifices are offered, but may slow down the rate when removed. No effect at full piety.
• Xom - Xom's piety fluctuation occurs 33% faster than normal, and it acts more often. Removing the amulet has no consequences.
• Demigods will "feel a surge of self-confidence" upon putting on an amulet of faith. This has no actual impact on the game, however.

Strategy

The worth of an amulet of faith is entirely dependent on how much use you can get out of your god's piety. If your god provides only passive abilities and doesn't give out endless gifts (Vehumet, for instance), or if you simply focus on non-divine abilities and generally neglect your piety-fueled abilities, then an amulet of faith will do you little good apart from helping you reach max piety quickly. If you are taking advantage of piety-fueled abilities and god gifts, however, then the amulet of faith is extremely useful. For example, a Trog worshiper will receive more weapons and can call upon allies more often, while a Nemelex worshipers will be flooded with decks and can afford to trick draw from them more often. Although useless for some, for characters that can make use of them, amulets of faith are one of the more useful non-artefact amulets you can find for general wear.

However, the piety cost to remove an amulet of faith can be intimidating, and may seem like a good argument not to use the amulet at all. Depending on the god involved, the impact of losing a third of your piety can be severe. Making up lost piety is annoying, but rarely devastating, and the benefits of wearing an amulet of faith for long periods of time can be immense. Fear of occasional and entirely voluntary piety loss should not be a major concern when deciding whether or not to use this amulet.

If you haven't run across an amulet of faith by the time you have high piety with your current god, you might want to avoid wear-IDing amulets. A scroll of identify is a small price to pay to avoid significant piety loss.

History

Prior to 0.18, this amulet granted a 33% bonus to piety, not a 25% bonus.