Tower shield of Ignorance

Version 0.27: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A shield unearthed from the remains of a ruined city. It bears an inscription written in an ancient language. Scholars and wise men laboured for countless hours to decipher it, and in time, a translation was finally settled on: "With a shield like this, who needs to think?"

the +10 tower shield of Ignorance

+10 tower shield

-4 INT
rN+

Desirability

For most characters, the tower shield of Ignorance is ruled out simply by virtue of it being a tower shield; small or smaller characters can't wield it, and medium-sized characters need to invest a tremendous amount of experience into their Shields skill to mitigate a tower shield's severe penalties. Large, hybrid, and formicid characters have a significantly easier time of it, but the arguments against the shield continue: -4 intelligence is a huge penalty for any spellcaster, and since any non-Trog character can benefit from learning at least a little magic, this is relevant in almost all cases. Finally, while the shield of Ignorance offers an impressive amount of shielding plus a rank of occasionally-helpful negative energy resistance, it's often more tempting to take advantage of the fire, cold, or poison resistances you can find on non-artefact bucklers and kite shields.

However, for heavily armoured fighters that don't particularly care about spellcasting, this shield offers a tremendous boost to survivability, and a tower shield's penalties to physical combat are manageable even with a relatively moderate investment of 15 Shields. Also, the shield's high enchantment allows wearers to invest the scrolls of enchant armour they would have used on a more mundane shield into the rest of their equipment. Just be wary of sources of intelligence damage -- characters who would choose to make use of a tower shield are unlikely to prioritize intelligence, and some wearers might find the shield leaving them dangerously close to stat zero.

In short, not a great find for a mage or a gnoll, but definitely worth considering for any bruiser.

The tower shield of Ignorance combos particularly well with an amulet of reflection; reflect all the projectiles you'll be blocking back at your attackers!

History

• Prior to 0.25, this was known as the large shield of Ignorance.
• Prior to 0.20, this shield gave +4 AC, reduced intelligence by 6, and only had a +6 enchantment. Also, it had *Curse property (33% chance to recurse itself on equip).
• Prior to 0.19, this shield had +2 EV and only a +2 AC bonus.
• Prior to 0.15, this shield had a +8 enchantment level.