Jewellery
Jewellery is a category of equipment that consists of rings and amulets. They are always magical, but not necessarily in a beneficial way.
Most species can equip one amulet and two rings, although octopodes are able to wear eight rings at a time. Wearers of the unrandart macabre finger necklace can wear an extra ring. Worshippers of Ru who have sacrificed a hand have one less ring slot than normal. Some bad forms restrict your jewellery options. Rings and amulets are equipped with the P key and removed with the R key. You cannot change your jewellery while berserk.
Strategy
One important quality of jewellery is that it can be changed very quickly. It only requires 1 turn to remove a ring or amulet and equip another (specifically, 0.5 turns for each individual action). In contrast, removing and equipping another piece of armour requires 10 turns (or 5 turns for each individual action), making it far less versatile.
That being said, it is wise to keep extra pieces of jewellery in your inventory for situational encounters, such as a ring of resist corrosion for a monster that can corrode you, or a ring that offers an elemental resistance versus a specific monster.
Note, however, that some amulets have properties that should make you think twice before swapping:
- An amulet of faith decreases your piety by one third when removed
- An amulet of guardian spirit depletes all your MP when put on
- An amulet of the gourmand activates gradually over time
- An amulet of harm drains you when removed
- An amulet of regeneration or magic regeneration only activates once your HP or MP (respectively) is full, meaning that you can't swap them on between fights to regenerate faster.
Curses
Jewellery is sometimes cursed, most often when it has a negative effect. This makes trying on unidentified jewellery without a scroll of remove curse somewhat risky.
ring of slaying, evasion, protection, strength, dexterity, and intelligence are always cursed when they have a negative modifier, which happens 20% of the time.
A ring of teleportation, ring of loudness, or amulet of inaccuracy is always cursed.
Otherwise unidentified jewellery has a 2% chance of being cursed.
