Cigotuvi's embrace

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This page refers to the artefact. For the obsolete spell, see Cigotuvi's Embrace (spell).

A suit of armour borne of rotten flesh and bone and gristle, held intact by the will of a long-dead sorcerer. The dreadful energies within it call to the bodies of the recently dead, protecting the wearer with a cocoon of carrion. This protection only lasts a short time, however - the ward against decay holds true within, but not without.

the +4 Cigotuvi's embrace

+4 leather armour

Miasma immunity
Drains wearer when removed
rN+
Absorbs corpses to temporarily increase AC
Evil

Mechanics

Any corpses or skeleton items in your line of sight (even those that generate as part of vaults) will be destroyed to increase the enchantment of Cigotuvi's embrace. This increase is subject to diminishing returns (it takes more and more corpses to increase the enchantment further), and the enchantment will gradually decrease over time. Also, the higher your bonus armour, the faster it decays.

The enchantment goes to +10 with one corpse harvested, which takes about 90 turns to fully slough off. Four corpses give you +18 and take ~180 turns to fully go away, sixteen corpses give +34 and take ~320 turns to fully rot away, etc. Regardless of size or HD, each and every corpse gives the same amount of AC.

The following special cases apply:

• Followers of Beogh will not desecrate orc corpses with this armour.
• Gozag converts corpses into gold, preventing the AC bonus.
• Yredelemnul converts corpses into zombies before they can be absorbed into this armour.
• Necromancy spells (Necrotise, Animate Dead, Simulacrum, Infestation) also take priority, and will convert the corpse before it can be absorbed.

Desirability

With enough corpses, Cigotuvi's embrace can provide extremely high amounts of raw physical protection despite its light weight -- the trick is continually generating said corpses. An amulet of regeneration may come in handy; the longer you have to spend recovering after a fight, the less bonus AC you'll have for the next one.

Cigotuvi's embrace is of limited use in areas with a dearth of monsters that drop corpses such as Hell or the Tomb. While the resistances to negative energy and miasma it provides may potentially come in handy in such areas, other sources of such resistances combined with more universally-useful body armour may be a better choice.

While Cigotuvi's embrace absorbs any and all corpses you come across, monsters that can drop armour when killed will still leave it behind, so you'll never lose out on any sets of troll leather armour or dragon scales. Additionally, certain methods of killing enemies won't leave corpses behind (wand of disintegration, Inner Flame, Orb of Destruction), leaving you without any additional AC.

History

• Prior to 0.29, Cigotuvi's embrace would apply before you could use spells like Animate Dead/
• Prior to 0.26, Cigotuvi's embrace had rot immunity instead of miasma immunity.
• The unrand version of Cigotuvi's embrace was added in 0.25 as a reference to the old spell.