Spellbook of drain life

spellbook of +   drain life
Appearance	random
Base price	200 zm
Weight	50
Turns to read	2
Ink to write	10–19
Spell type	[[attack spells|attack]]
Level	2
Power cost	10 Pw

The spellbook of drain life provides the drain life spell. Casting it at a monster drains one level from it, and does 1 to 8 damage (doubled if you are a Knight with The Magic Mirror of Merlin), plus damage bonus. The monster's location will be revealed, if it is unseen. If the monster resists the spell (through monster magic resistance or drain resistance), there is no effect.

Casting the spell at an object reduces any charge or enchantment on the object by 1. Objects may also resist. An object cannot have its charge or enchantment reduced below zero, and any objects with negative enchantments are unaffected.

Casting the spell at yourself drains one experience level, unless you are drain resistant. If you are drained below experience level 1, you die.

Messages

"<Monster> suddenly seems weaker!"

The monster did not resist the spell.

"<Goodbye> level <x>."

You have been drained a level.

Strategy

Drain life is not a great attack spell: It does not deal much damage, and you will not gain as many experience points from your kills because that is based on the monster's experience level before dying. An exception is for dealing with certain very tough opponents that teleport away from you to heal themselves, such as the Monk Quest Nemesis, Master Kaen. They can not revover their drained levels, and will eventually expire.

This spell is commonly used to reduce the enchantment of a weapon from +6 to +5, from where you may safely re-attempt to enchant it to +7, and also to reduce armor from +4 to +3 for the same purpose.

Another use of the drain life spell is to help getting cheaper extra AC through donation. After you collected a lot of money from the dungeon (say, 80k gold after looting all the vaults and Fort Ludios), you can go back and lock yourself in a temple (maybe keep a pet nearby for extra security), then repeatedly cast drain life on yourself (preferably with a robe on to lower failure rates) until you become XL1. After that, donate all the gold to the priest 400 zorkmids at a time. With ample gold, you have a decent chance of acquiring even -10 naked AC this way. The downside of this strategy is that you have to retrain your character's XL, so it's advisable that you reach XL14 and activate the quest stairs before doing this. However, with all your stats (especially Constitution and Wisdom) much higher than their starting value at this point, your character is likely going to have even more HP and Pw than before once he/she levels up again. This strategy must be used with care because some monsters possess a life-draining attack (notably vampires and wraiths); this will also drain an experience level. If you are drained below experience level 1, you die.

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

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