Staff of Wucad Mu

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A crystal staff overflowing with magical energies, which can be channeled by a skilled wielder to allow them to cast spells without exhausting any of their own magical energies — at the risk of damaging the user's mind.

the +9 staff of Wucad Mu

+9 staff

Channels MP (may refund the MP of spells cast by the wielder)

Mechanics

When casting a spell while wielding the staff of Wucad Mu, you have a 3 * Evocations / 108 chance of regaining the MP used in the spell (75% chance at 27 Evocations). This chance stacks with the chance from wielding an orb of energy -- see the Channeling page for more details.

Each time this happens, you have a 1 / (Evocations - MP cost) chance of either being confused for 1 + 1d4 turns or losing 1-5 intelligence.

Desirability

The staff of Wucad Mu is most useful for characters that have invested heavily in both Evocations and magic - or, users of other staves. Without high Evocations, you have little chance of refunding your MP, and run the risk of incurring deleterious intelligence penalties; without significant training in Spellcasting and magical skills, you have nothing worth spending large amounts of MP on (or indeed much MP to work with). Evocations is a bit hard to train here; many evocable items are redundant with a decent spell repitore. Regardless, the ability to cast your most powerful spells even a few more times can and will make a difference between victory and running dry mid-fight. Overall, it is a powerful item balanced by its fair share of drawbacks.

Ziggurat raiders have the high-level spells to cast and the XP to spare; they'll find few better items to wield for general use. While confusion is annoying for lichform players, a source of Clarity will block it entirely.

Keep in mind that successfully activating the staff refunds the cost of spells you cast, instead of providing the MP for the spells up-front -- the staff of Wucad Mu does little to help those who have run out of MP entirely.

Djinn do not use MP and cannot activate the staff of Wucad Mu.

History

• In 0.28, sources of channeling were made stackable. Wucad Mu refunds MP 1.5x as much (now counting as 3 sources, but each source was halved).
• In 0.27, the staff was buffed: it refunds MP more often (1.5x) and refunds MP even when it backfires.
• Prior to 0.26, the staff of Wucad Mu could be evoked to restore MP, but had a chance of backfiring when used in this manner.
• Prior to 0.20, the staff's negative effects were based on Divinations miscast effects.
• Prior to 0.12, the enchantments on this weapon depended on intelligence and were capable of reaching up to +22/+13.
• Prior to 0.11, this item appeared as an ephemeral quarterstaff when unidentified.
• Prior to 0.8, this staff would occasionally cause miscast effects simply by attacking with it.