Staff of energy

Version 0.19: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Magical staves
Name	staff of energy
Icon

A staff that allows its wielder to control magical energy. It allows the wielder to cast spells without gaining hunger, and to channel ambient magical energy to restore their reserves of magic.

A staff of energy is a magical staff which eliminates spell hunger caused by casting spells and provides some minor channeling ability. Equipping it will cause it to auto-identify. The spell hunger elimination affects all spellcasting spells, but not evocation and invocation. Being under status effects caused by spells (such as haste and regeneration) still take their usual hunger cost.

Successfully evoking the staff restores 1-3 MP at a cost of 50 nutrition. While this is much less efficient than waiting for your MP to regenerate naturally, it is also much faster, allowing you to regain access to spells in the middle of combat. A failed attempt does not incur the hunger cost. Your chances for the staff's success improve with Evocations training:

Evocations	Success Rate (%)
0	28
2	33
5	40
10	53
15	65
20	78
25	90
27	95

The staff can also be used in combat, functioning as a +0, +0 staff. Unlike some other magical staves, it provides no magical combat effects, but you can still improve your damage output, accuracy, and attack speed through training Fighting and Staves. Even so, this is one of the least effective melee weapons available, and should be used solely for its spellcasting benefits.

Strategy

Although this staff doesn't make magic any more powerful or easy to use, it allows casters to spam high-level spells without fear of starving themselves to death every battle. Wielding this staff is a much easier option for most characters than gaining access to Necromutation. Any caster should keep one on hand simply to reduce the amount of downtime spent recovering after combat, especially when traveling through edible corpse-rich branches.

For some characters the crystal ball of energy might be a better alternative, or if they are lucky enough, the Staff of Wucad Mu.

History

Prior to 0.13, the channeling feature was on a separate staff.

In 0.11, the staff was temporarily nerfed, reducing food costs by two-thirds. It was restored to zero spell hunger in 0.13.

Prior to 0.8, the chance of a staff of energy auto-identifying when wielded depended on the Spellcasting skill of the wielder.