Archmagi (ego)

Version 0.17: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It increases the power of its wearer's magical spells.

The Archmagi ego acts as an enhancer for all spells, increasing your spell power. It does not make spells any easier to cast, nor does it reduce your spell hunger.

It can appear naturally on robes, but it can also generate on a few rare unrandarts.

Strategy

This ego is useful to help maximize spellpower, although it serves no purpose on spells where you have already reached your spellpower cap. Additionally, spellpower is calculated on a diminishing-returns basis; hence, if you already have very high spellpower, Archmagi will grant less than it would on top of a lower spellpower.

The spell enhancing effects of Archmagi are particularly useful for binary schools of magic, such as Hexes. Conjurers and other direct damage dealers might simply deal a little more damage per hit, but for Enchanters, this ego can make the difference between the spell succeeding or failing entirely.

The archmagi ego can be found on:

• robes, including the unrandart Robe of Folly
• the Majin-Bo
• the orange crystal plate armour

History

In ancient versions of Crawl, before 0.8, this ego reduced spell failure rates in addition to increasing spell power, but it also reduced XP gain to 1/4 of normal, providing a serious threat of undertraining to most characters.