Hat of Pondering

Version 0.24: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The favourite hat of the slug wizard Gastronok, stained with reddish slime and enchanted to aid in his arcane pondering. It has been specially enchanted to protect against the desiccating effects of salt.

the +3 hat of Pondering

+3 hat

Ponderousness ego
+50 MR (#)
+5 Int
+10 MP

Sometimes (10%) found on Gastronok.

Desirability

The hat of Pondering provides extremely useful bonuses to any character's spellcasting and magic resistance, but the movement penalty has the potential to be very dangerous, so it very well may not be worth it. Luckily, this hat is most beneficial to those who are likely to have the means to speed themselves up, i.e. casters with Swiftness or Controlled Blink. It may also be useful to followers of Cheibriados, who are already slow, or inherently fast characters like spriggans or centaurs, who only sacrifice part of their speed advantage.

If you can find a pair of boots of running, they will counteract the ponderousness. Of course, moving at greater-than-average speed is a very valuable ability -- it's up to you whether the spellcasting boost provided by this artifact is worth remaining at normal walking speed.