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 with acidic attacks, or a ring that offers an elemental resistance versus a specific monster.
Note, however, that several 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.
- The effect from an amulet of the gourmand increases gradually over time.
- An amulet of harm drains you when removed.
- An amulet of regeneration or amulet of the acrobat only activates once your HP is full, meaning that you can't swap them on between or during fights to gain their benefits.
- Similarly, an amulet of magic regeneration only activates when your MP is full.
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.
Rings of slaying, evasion, protection, strength, dexterity, and intelligence are always cursed when they have a negative modifier, which happens 20% of the time.
Rings of teleportation, attention, and amulets of inaccuracy are always cursed.
Otherwise unidentified jewellery has a 2% chance of being cursed.
