Magic items

Some of what you find is magic. A magic item is a base item (a long sword, an iron helm, a silver ring) with prefixes and suffixes that add to what it does. Every base item, prefix, and suffix is listed on Prefixes and suffixes.

Making your own. Those trained in Enchanting can make a plain item magic, or add to one, with magic crystals: see Enchanting.

Rarity

The color is the color of the item’s name, in your pack, on the equipment screen, and in its description. The item’s glyph keeps its own color. Unique items are rares too.

How often loot is normal, magic, or rare, and how many affixes magic and rare items have:

An affix’s tier is drawn evenly among the tiers whose item level is at most the item’s and at least 3 below it (an item of level 12 rolls the tiers of levels 9 to 12); an item whose level is past the affix’s last tier, or with no tier that close, gets the highest tier it may have. What a creature drops has the creature’s level as its item level, or the floor’s where that is higher (up to 99); what lies on the floor has the floor’s.

A rare item has at most three prefixes and three suffixes; the split is random. Each split the count allows is equally likely:

• three affixes: none to three prefixes, a quarter each;
• four affixes: one, two, or three prefixes, a third each;
• five affixes: two or three prefixes, a half each;
• six affixes: always three and three.

Capacity

Every item can bear only so many enchantments (affixes, prefixes and suffixes together): one to six. It is the sum of:

• 2 for any item;
• +1 for a ring or an amulet (they are made to carry a charm);
• nothing more for a Fine item, +1 for a Marvellous one, +2 for a Masterwork one (see Forges and Crafting); a damaged item counts as plain, and stays so once mended until it is made finer again;
• its main material’s binding, −2 to +2 (the materials table lists it: silver −2, tin and flint −1, steel and iron 0, gold and adamantium +1, mithril and dragonbone +2);
• +1 for a gem set in it, +2 for a flawless one;
• +1 for a craftsperson’s maker’s mark.

It is never less than one or more than six. Some examples:

Every item is made to fit. Loot, what creatures carry, and the game’s own named items never hold more than they can bear. A find that rolls more loses the extra, one at a time: one from whichever of its prefixes or suffixes it has more of, picked at random, a suffix when they are even. A rare that loses some stays rare and keeps its name, so a rare on a plain steel sword has just two affixes. The rares with more are rings and amulets, gem-set and finer items, and the precious materials.

Deeper finds

The deeper you go, the better made the things you find, so they can bear more. From item level 3 on, every weapon, missile weapon, shield, and piece of armour you find (on the floor, in a chest or a hoard, in a den or a room) may be Fine, Marvellous, or Masterwork, never damaged. What creatures carry gets the same chances on top of its own. Rings, amulets, ammunition, and the gear you start with are not affected. Deeper finds are also set with a gem more often, for the kinds of item that ever are:

The materials that hold magic best come deeper and grow more common as you go: dragonbone and dragonscale from item level 6, mithril from 8, adamantium (a fighting metal, which holds less) from 16; gold a little more at every level.

How it works out for what you find:

Near the surface, nearly nine finds in ten can bear two enchantments, so most rares keep two affixes. A magic item (one or two affixes) almost always fits: about nine in ten lose nothing, at any depth.

Only a damaged Fine, Marvellous, or Masterwork item can bear less than it holds. It keeps all its magic, which works as before.

The game tells you what an item can bear only if you are trained in Appraise or have the craftsperson’s talent Eye for the make: its description then says “It can bear two enchantments.”, or how many more it could bear.

Finding them

• On the floor of every level of a generated dungeon (see Dungeons and danger) lie a few items of loot. Now and then one is a scroll, which is never magic.
• Vaults hold a reward of the floor’s depth. The guard post’s store room holds something magic, the shrine and the roofless chapel something, and the flooded cell coins, a gem, a ring, or an amulet.
• Creatures may drop something magic or rare where they die, besides what they carried. A kobold does now and then, a kobold archer a little more often, and a kobold shaman one time in two (see Creatures).
• Loot is sometimes set with a gem, and now and then a find is a loose gem instead (see Gems).

The deeper you are, the better the loot. An item’s item level is the depth it was found at: a dungeon’s first level is item level 1, the eighth is 8. What a creature drops has the creature’s level as its item level when that is higher, so a creature out of its depth drops a deeper item. The game never shows an item’s level.

The item level decides which base items can turn up and which tiers of each affix. Low tiers are found from the start, and the strongest only deep down. An item rolls among the tiers close below its own level, so a deep find is seldom a weak one. The exact rule is under the rarity tables above.

Unidentified items

Magic and rare items are unidentified when you find them. You see their rarity (“a long sword (magic)”, “an iron helm (rare)”), but not their affixes or a rare item’s name.

Their magic works all the same while you wear or wield them. An unknown ring of Strength makes you stronger, and one that glows lights your way. Wearing it for a while does not tell you what it is. These do:

• a scroll of identify;
• a merchant’s Merchant’s eye, from level 12: a careful look that takes as long as reading a scroll;
• carrying the item for a day, if you were born to Old lore;
• Factor Wulfrun in Cēaptūn, for 100 gold per unidentified stack you carry (see Services).

Once identified, an item stays known wherever it goes: “This is a Sharp long sword of the Bear!”

Shops pay more for an identified item: until then they price it by its rarity alone (see Magic items in Shops).

What their magic does

Magic works while the item is worn or wielded, not while it is merely carried.

• On a weapon, a missile weapon, or ammunition, attack magic (to hit, damage, criticals, attack speed, range) changes only the attacks made with that item. A Sharp sword hits harder, but your bow does not. A bow’s magic and its arrows’ add up for a shot.
• On anything else (gloves, rings, amulets, a helm), attack magic changes every attack you make, bare hands and thrown rocks included.
• Magic that changes the item itself belongs to the item: its Armour, Protection, Shield, or Parry, how much Dexterity it lets add to your Defence, and its weight.
• Everything else is yours: stats, hit points, Dodge, Deflection, and natural armour, how fast your wounds heal, how fast you move, how much you can carry, how quietly you walk, light, and skills. “+20 to Stealth” works as if your Stealth were 20 higher, even if you never trained it. The Skills screen still shows only what you have trained.

Rules from elsewhere in the game carry over:

• Stats raised by an item count everywhere a stat does: Strength to hit and in your carrying limit, Toughness in your hit points, Dexterity in your Defence. The character screen shows your stats with what you wear. A status effect that lowers a stat lowers it from there: if you are poisoned while wearing a ring of Strength, you are still stronger than you would be without the ring.
• Defence: among Armour, Shield, Parry, Deflection, and natural armour, only the best counts. Dodge adds up (see Combat). Protection always adds up, piece by piece, and a Hardened piece of armour adds its magic to its own (see Combat).
• Hit points and mana: putting on something that adds to them raises your maximum, not what you have now. Taking it off lowers both, if need be (see Mana).
• Healing: magic that speeds healing adds on top of everything else that changes its pace (see Healing). Nothing heals you while you bleed, magic or not.
• Throwing: a magic weapon readied in the Missile weapon slot keeps its magic when you throw it, and still has it where it lands. Its Parry counts only while you hold it in a hand.
• Speed is never a number in the game. Things “attack faster” or make you “move faster”. In exact terms, each takes its share off the time of every attack or step (see the tables below). The shares of everything you wear and wield add up, to at most half the time, which is twice as quick.
• Light: a glowing item gives its wearer a faint, steady light that never flickers. Only the brightest one counts.

Categories

Every affix has a category, named in the tables below, and an item never has two affixes of the same category. Most categories hold one effect, so an item has at most one affix of each kind of effect. The stealth category holds a family: of Stealth and of Shadows.

Damage is split into several categories, so a weapon may carry more than one damage affix:

• physical damage: Sharp and Vicious, a flat bonus;
• extra damage: Heavy and of Wounding, an extra die;
• one category per element: Flaming, Freezing, Venomous, Shocking, Corrosive, Withering.

So a Sharp sword may also be Heavy, or Flaming, but never both Heavy and of Wounding. A prefix and a suffix of the same category do the same thing (Glinting and of Precision both add to hit), so an item has one or the other.

Looking at an item

To look at an item, press its letter in your pack (I), or press a slot’s letter in upper case (A to M) on the equipment screen (i). The description shows, in this order:

• the item’s name;
• what it is: rarity, base, every part it is made of, and weight (“Magic long sword · steel blade, leather grip · 1.8 kg”), and whether you wear or wield it;
• its base stats in words: how it is held or worn, its damage and criticals, how far it shoots, what it needs, whether it pierces armour, and its Defence and Protection;
• what it gives in numbers (“To hit +1, damage 1d8+2”, “Dv +2, Pv 3”; see Equipment);
• if it is identified, each affix in plain words: “Prefix Sharp: +2 damage”, “Suffix of Celerity: attacks faster”. The item level is never shown in the game.

Esc goes back.

Unique items

A unique item is one of a kind: a rare item whose name, affixes, and item level are set by hand. It also has a power, a rule of its own that no affix gives.

It is found unidentified like any rare item (“a stiletto (rare)”). Once identified, it shows its name, its affixes, its power in words, and a line of lore. Each one lies in one place in the world, so a character finds each at most once, and loot never makes one. Most are carried by those who own them. Three are only ever offered, very rarely, by a pedlar.

No item damage ever harms it.

Its power works while it is worn or wielded, identified or not:

• Inflict: a hit with it that leaves its target alive causes a status, either every time or by a chance. The status’s resistance applies, as it does to a poisonous bite. A bow’s power rides its arrows. A kick, or the weapon in your other hand, has none of it.
• Vision: its wearer sees with a vision profile wherever that is better than their own eyes.
• Ward: its wearer never suffers a status.

See also: Prefixes and suffixes, Enchanting, and Equipment.