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 rings can be changed very quickly. It only requires 1 turn to remove a ring and equip another (specifically, 0.5 turns for each individual action). However, take note that amulets take as long to remove and equip as armor. They both require 10 turns (or 5 turns for each individual action), making them 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.
Some amulets also 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 regeneration only activates once your HP is full, meaning that you can't swap it on between or during fights to gain its benefit.
- 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.
History
Prior to 0.26 Amulets could be removed as quickly as rings.
