Animate Armour

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Animate Armour
Level	4
School1	Earth
School2	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Armaments Book of Iron
Casting noise	4
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	50

Call upon the spirit of your worn armour to fight alongside you. The spirit moves slowly, but draws strength from the inherent protection of your own armour. At higher power, the spirit becomes more durable.

Animate Armour is a level 4 Earth/Summonings spell which brings forth your armour's spirit into battle as an animated armour. The heavier your armour, the stronger it will be.

Useful Info

Summons an animated armour, which has stats dependent on the base AC of your body armour:

• HP: Base 40
• AC: 2 * AC
• Attack: Hits twice for AC + (AC * AC / 2) damage.
• Extremely slow movement speed.
• Infinite willpower
• Immunity to poison and negative energy
• Is mindless and flying.

Other means of increasing AC (whether from the armour's enchantment, mutations, or being a Gargoyle) do not directly affect the spirit's stats.

There is a summon cap of 1 animated armour; casting the spell again will cause the old summon to very quickly time out.

Draconians, Felids, and Octopodes cannot use this spell, as they cannot wear body armour. Neither can players in an armour-melding form, though swapping forms or taking off your armour will not dispel the summon.

Strategy

This spell is meant primarily for melee-caster hybrids, giving you an extra ally in melee. Even when created using the heaviest armour, the summon is slow and relatively frail - it will not win too many battles alone.

The armour's strength scales heavily with its base AC; while a robe may hit twice for up to 4 damage, the relatively light fire dragon scales deals up to 40 damage per hit. A crystal plate armour can deal up to 112 damage twice - but the huge effort required to cast any spell in crystal plate could have been used on something more effective than creating a single slow ally. Meanwhile, quicksilver dragon scales synergize well: they have a high base AC, but very low encumbrance.

High-stat characters, such as Demigods, Oni, and worshippers of Cheibriados, are the most likely to wear, and cast spells in, a suitable piece of armour. However, many characters can afford to use this on a mid-weight armour, such as swamp or quicksilver dragon scales, effectively.

History

• In 0.32, animated armours will gain resists innate to their base type.
• Prior to 0.29, animated armours did not fly.
• Animate Armour was added in 0.27.