Staff of Wucad Mu

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A crystal staff overflowing with magical energies, which can be channeled by a skilled wielder to allow them to cast spells without exhausting any of their own magical energies — at the risk of damaging the user's mind.

the +9 staff of Wucad Mu

+9 staff

Channels MP (may refund the MP of spells cast by the wielder)

Mechanics

When casting a spell while wielding the staff of Wucad Mu, you have a 3 * Evocations / 108 chance of regaining the MP used in the spell (75% chance at 27 Evocations). This chance stacks with the chance from wielding an orb of energy -- see the Channeling page for more details.

Each time this happens, you have a 1 / (Evocations - MP cost) chance of either being confused for 1 + 1d4 turns or losing 1-5 intelligence.

Desirability

The staff of Wucad Mu is most useful for characters that have invested heavily in both Evocations and magic - aka, users of another magical staff. Without high Evocations, you have little chance of refunding your MP, and run the risk of incurring deleterious intelligence penalties; without significant training in Spellcasting and magical skills, you have nothing worth spending large amounts of MP on (or indeed much MP to work with). Evocations is a bit hard to train here; many evocable items are redundant with a decent spell repitore.

Keep in mind that successfully activating the staff refunds the cost of spells you cast, instead of providing the MP for the spells up-front -- the staff of Wucad Mu does little to help those who have run out of MP entirely. Regardless, the ability to cast your most powerful spells even a few more times can and will make a difference between victory and running dry mid-fight. Overall, it is a powerful item balanced by its fair share of drawbacks, assuming you're casting spells in the first place.

Ziggurat raiders have the high-level spells to cast and the XP to spare; they'll find few better items to wield for general use. While confusion is annoying for lichform players, a source of Clarity will block it entirely, while Intelligence drain will be cured near instantly.

Djinn do not use MP and cannot activate the staff of Wucad Mu.

History

• In 0.28, sources of channeling were made stackable. Wucad Mu refunds MP 1.5x as much (now counting as 3 sources, but each source was halved).
• In 0.27, the staff was buffed: it refunds MP more often (1.5x) and refunds MP even when it backfires.
• Prior to 0.26, the staff of Wucad Mu could be evoked to restore MP, but had a chance of backfiring when used in this manner.
• Prior to 0.20, the staff's negative effects were based on Divinations miscast effects.
• Prior to 0.12, the enchantments on this weapon depended on intelligence and were capable of reaching up to +22/+13.
• Prior to 0.11, this item appeared as an ephemeral quarterstaff when unidentified.
• Prior to 0.8, this staff would occasionally cause miscast effects simply by attacking with it.