Jewellery
Jewellery is a category of equipment that consists of rings and amulets. They are always magical, and beneficial in some way. Most species can equip one amulet and two rings, although octopodes are able to wear eight rings at a time. Rings and amulets are equipped with the P key and removed with the R key. You cannot change your jewellery while berserk.
Wearers of the unrandart macabre finger necklace can wear an extra ring. Worshippers of Ru who have sacrificed a hand have one less ring slot than normal. Some bad forms restrict your jewellery options.
Rings can increase stats: attributes, defenses -- even your slaying. You can also find rings that bolster your resistances or spellcasting.
Amulets are typically more defensively oriented. The Amulet of regeneration and amulet of reflection bolster your combat proess directly, while the amulet of the acrobat makes you more evasive when moving.
Strategy
One important quality of jewellery is that rings can be changed very quickly. It only requires 1 turn to remove a ring and equip another (specifically, 0.5 turns for each individual action). However, take note that amulets take as long to remove and equip as armor, requiring 10 turns to swap (or 5 turns each for removal and equip). Therefore, amulets are far less versatile than rings.
It is wise to keep extra rings in your inventory for situational encounters, such as a ring of resist corrosion for a monster with acidic attacks, or a ring that offers an elemental resistance versus a specific monster.
Some amulets also have properties that should make you think twice before swapping:
- An amulet of faith decreases your piety by one third when removed.
- An amulet of regeneration only activates once your HP is full, meaning that you can't swap it on between or during fights to gain its benefit.
- Similarly, an amulet of magic regeneration only activates when your MP is full.
History
- Prior to 0.27, you could find amulets of inaccuracy, rings of teleportation, and rings of attention, which were always cursed.
- Prior to 0.27, ring enchantments could be negative or positive, so you could find a -4 ring of slaying or a -6 ring of strength.
- Prior to 0.26, amulets could be removed as quickly as rings, but often needed to be atuned to their user first (or had some other cost).
- Prior to 0.25, ring enchantments were random values between 1 and 6 (positive and negative).
