Staff of energy

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Version 0.15: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.
Type Magical staves
Name staff of energy
Icon Staff of energy.png
This staff greatly reduces the hunger cost of the wielder's magical spells.

A staff of energy is a magical staff which eliminates spell hunger caused by casting spells and provides some minor channeling ability. Equipping it will cause it to auto-identify. This affects all spells except for those cast through a rod, as you cannot wield both items at once.

Successfully evoking the staff restores 1-3 MP at a cost of 50 nutrition. While this is much less efficient than waiting for your MP to regenerate naturally, it is also much faster, allowing you to regain access to spells in the middle of combat. A failed attempt does not incur the hunger cost. Your chances for the staff's success improve with Evocations training:

Evocations Success Rate (%)
0 28
2 33
5 40
10 53
15 65
20 78
25 90
27 95

The staff can also be used in combat, functioning as a +0, +0 staff. Unlike some other magical staves, it provides no magical combat effects, but you can still improve your damage output, accuracy, and attack speed through training Fighting and Staves. Even so, this is one of the least effective melee weapons available, and should be used solely for its spellcasting benefits.

Strategy

Although this staff doesn't make magic any more powerful or easy to use, it allows casters to spam high-level spells without fear of starving themselves to death every battle. Wielding this staff is a much easier option for most characters than gaining access to Necromutation. Any caster should keep one on hand simply to reduce the amount of downtime spent recovering after combat, especially when traveling through edible corpse-rich branches.

For some characters the crystal ball of energy might be a better alternative.

History

Prior to 0.13, the channeling feature was on a separate staff.

In 0.11, the staff was temporarily nerfed, reducing food costs by two-thirds. It was restored to zero spell hunger in 0.13.

Prior to 0.8, the chance of a staff of energy auto-identifying when wielded depended on the Spellcasting skill of the wielder.