Potion of ambrosia

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

A strange substance, produced by ghost moths. Consuming it causes regeneration of health and magic, along with total befuddlement. The two effects are fundamentally linked - the regeneration ends the moment the confusion does.

Type	Potion
Name	Potion of ambrosia
Icon

Quaffing a potion of ambrosia immediately inflicts you with 3-10 turns of confusion (bypassing clarity), during which time you also benefit from a greatly increased HP and MP regeneration rate (+3-5 HP and MP per turn on top of standard regeneration). Unlike most sources of regeneration, this effect even functions for deep dwarves and bloodless vampires.

Extending your confusion through any means does not extend the duration of the regenerative effects.

Strategy

• Potions of ambrosia are situational items at best, combining a curious form of healing with near-uselessness in combat. Deep dwarves and vampires will obviously want to collect them for their healing benefits between fights, but others may have difficulty coming up with safe uses for them. In the early game they can be very effective at negating lethal levels of poison or for recovering health during a long, drawn-out fight with phantoms and other moderate threats, but later on they may be worth ignoring, particularly for characters relying heavily on shields for defense (Confusion automatically sets the player's SH to 0).
• It is possible to use them in big fights as extra regeneration, if you are, say, a two-handed axe user who does not care for targeting individual enemies. Since you don't use a shield anyway, you don't lose the SH value. Still it might be better to go unconfused for taking out ranged enemies.
• Potions of ambrosia are great to have in the Abyss, where you'll never find enough peace to fully heal up and recharge after a fight with normal means. Ambrosia accomplishes that in a few turns between one fight and the next.
• Unlike Deep Dwarves and Vampires, Vine Stalkers do not benefit from HP regeneration from this potion, but will still restore their MP as normal. If all other options have been exhausted, a few extra MP can keep a Vine Stalker alive with its innate spirit shield.

History

Prior to 0.18, clarity made potions of ambrosia useless.

Potions of ambrosia were added in 0.16. They are based upon the ambrosia food item found in 0.14 and earlier.