Crown of Vainglory

Version 0.33: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

An extravagant crown of gold filigree and glittering jewels that even a king could feel immodest wearing. It grants its wearer a regal aura the match of any in heaven and also a great deal of unearned confidence.

the +3 crown of vainglory

+3 hat
You are bathed in light that prevents you from turning invisible and greatly reduces your stealth. Whenever you enter a new floor, if you see nearby enemies, you will wake them up and become unable to leave the floor for 12-22 turns.
+2 ring slots
^Fragile
+40 Willpower

Desirability

The crown of vainglory is an overenchanted hat that gives you the effects of a ring of willpower plus two extra ring slots. Many characters can greatly benefit from the additional ring slots, such as spellcasters stacking up multiple rings of wizardry and intelligence or melee characters garnering additional strength and resistances, but that means the crown's usefulness is greatly reliant on having an abundance of useful rings.

Stabbers are very likely to find the item undesirable regardless of the rings they have access to - the stealth penalty and loss of access to invisibility (and thus on-demand partial stabbing) will usually outweigh whatever upsides the crown may have for these characters.

The inability to stair dance is also a huge liability: going downstairs to find a horde of powerful enemies or a dangerous entry vault is a common occurrence in the Dungeon, and not being able to retreat easily can often result in wasted resources or unfortunate deaths. The item's ^Fragile makes this downside mostly impossible to circumvent — you can't unequip it, go down a staircase, then equip it again, lest you accept you won't able to use it anymore. Its qualities do make it usable as a temporary power boost, though, and competition for the item slot (such as from other unrand headgear or from randarts with good egos) means it's not a bad idea to treat the crown as a temporary boon.

History

• In 0.33, this unrand was added to the game.