Amulet of guardian spirit

Version 0.12: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Jewellery
Name	Amulet of guardian spirit
Icon

Wearing an amulet of guardian spirit links your HP and MP, causing all damage you take to be split proportionally between your HP and MP pools. This even affects normally hard-to-resist damage sources such as torment and smiting. Should your MP reach zero, damage will be taken entirely from your HP until at least one MP is restored.

Immediately upon putting on the amulet, your MP will be reduced to zero, but in most cases it will regenerate as normal. Deep dwarves behave differently; their MP stops regenerating, but MP channeling and other methods of restoring MP still function normally.

Damage Reduction Example

If you have 200 HP and 20 MP, an 11 damage attack will reduce your HP by 10 and your MP by 1. Characters with more balanced HP:MP ratios will see much more dramatic reductions to damage.

Alternate Sources

This amulet's property is also found on some unrand artefacts. Specifically, it is found on the shield of the gong and the hat of the Bear Spirit. It can also very rarely appear as an ego on non-artefact caps, which will be described as "caps of spirit shield".

Tips & Tricks

This amulet is best suited for berserkers and other characters who do not use much (or any) MP. It is usually a bad idea for spellcasters, who will find themselves low on MP exactly when they need it most (i.e., when they're getting pummeled badly). While training Spellcasting specifically for the purpose of giving yourself more MP to fuel your spirit shield is an option, Invocations or Evocations are much better choices for characters that do not intend to cast actual spells often.

When combined with some sort of channeling ability or the Sublimation of Blood spell, it can serve as a limited form of on-demand healing. This is great for mummies, who can channel constantly without feeling hunger, and is even worth considering for spellcasters in lichform. Deep elves and felids, for instance, have low enough HP that they can be one-shotted by Lehudib's Crystal Spear and similar dangers. Losing a large chunk of your MP from a hard hit is still preferable to losing all your HP. Bear in mind that if your HP is low enough, even a full MP pool will still do you no good, as some damage will always get through to your HP.

History

Prior to 0.10, the amulet used only MP to shield the wearer (similar to the Song of Shielding spell in the current version), making it less useful for casters.