Crystal ball of Wucad Mu

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A perfect sphere of crystal, overflowing with magical energies. It often returns the magic spent to cast spells, but lowers their success rate. It always returns the magic spent on miscasts.

the crystal ball of Wucad Mu

Orb

Channel x2

Mechanics

An orb of energy with double the refund rate, but double the spell failure.

When successfully casting a spell, you have a 40% chance to have your full MP refunded. When you miscast a spell, you will always have MP refunded. However, it increases your raw spell failure chance by +20%.

Note that this does not mean that your spell failure actually increases by +20%, as there is a stepdown applied. Generally, your actual chance for failure will increase by a number less than 20%. For more details, see the Spell Success page. (For reference, the first level of wizardry reduces it by 25%.)

Djinn do not use MP and do not benefit from this item.

Desirability

The crystal ball of Wucad Mu is useful for magical characters. It restores a significant portion of your MP, at the cost of negative wizardry. Since this orb always refunds MP on miscast, it's best thought as "making you waste a few turns here or there" rather than "making you fail more often".

However, it takes up the shield slot. In addition, the mana reduction is not guaranteed, meaning you can run out of MP without a single proc from this orb. 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.

History

• This item was introduced in 0.30, replacing the staff of Wucad Mu. Channeling mechanics were also changed in this version.