Lear's hauberk

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

A well-made golden hauberk that covers all of its wearer's body parts. It includes a chainmail coif, chausses and maille gauntlets.

the +18 Lear's hauberk

+18 chain mail

Fills your body, head, hands, and feet armour slots

Desirability

Lear's hauberk is an extremely unusual piece of equipment, filling four equipment slots in exchange for a massive amount of AC. To wear it, you must be able to wear chain mail, hats, boots, and gloves, meaning players that cannot wear one or more of those items due to size (ogres, trolls, spriggans), species (tengu, formicid, draconian, naga, palentonga, djinni, octopode, felid), or mutations (horns or antennae 3, claws or demonic touch 3, hooves or talons 3) cannot wear Lear's hauberk. Merfolk can wear the hauberk, but the entire thing will meld into you in water, so you should search for something different to wear if you know you'll be fighting around water in the foreseeable future.

Lear's hauberk is by no means an ideal piece of armour. Chail mail itself is a cumbersome armour, and losing that many equipment slots is a serious downside. Accounting for all auxiliary slots enchanted to +2, the hauberk is effectively a +9 chain mail (even less once considering Armour skill). Plus, you won't benefit from egos or artefact equipment in those slots.

This artefact is more likely to spawn in the early game, likely before you can find enchanted equipment for every slot. Players who find this in a timely manner can suddenly find themselves absurdly well-protected against the threats of the early game. It can still have some merit in the later parts of the game, as using the hauberk saves scrolls of enchant armour for other pieces of equipment.

History

• Prior to 0.28, Lear's hauberk was +27, and its generation was not favored for the early-game.
• Lear's hauberk was added in 0.13, replacing Lear's chain mail.