Tower shield of Ignorance

Version 0.21: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A shield unearthed from the remains of a ruined city. It bears an inscription written in an ancient language. Scholars and wise men laboured for countless hours to decipher it, and in time, a translation was finally settled on: "With a shield like this, who needs to think?"

the +10 large shield of Ignorance

+10 large shield

-4 INT
rN+

Desirability

For most characters, the large shield of Ignorance is ruled out simply by virtue of it being a large shield; smaller characters can't wield it, and medium-sized characters need to invest a tremendous amount of experience into their Shields skill to mitigate the severe penalties large shields apply. Large characters and formicids have a significantly easier time of it, but the arguments against the shield continue. -4 intelligence is a huge penalty for any spellcaster, and since any non-Trog character can benefit from learning at least a little magic, this is significant in almost all cases. Finally, while it does offer an impressive amount of shielding plus a rank of occasionally-helpful negative energy resistance, it's often more tempting to take advantage of the fire, cold, or poison resistances you can find on non-artefact bucklers and shields.

History

• Prior to 0.20, this shield gave +4 AC, reduced intelligence by 6, and only had a +6 enchantment. Also, it had *Curse property (33% chance to recurse itself on equip).
• Prior to 0.19, this shield had +2 EV and only a +2 AC bonus.
• Prior to 0.15, this shield had a +8 enchantment level.