Ashmar
[ Ashmar 
| |
|---|---|
| Base item | dwarvish roundshield |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | none |
| When worn |
|
| When invoked | none |
| Base price | 20000 zm |
| Weight | 37 |
Ashmar is an artifact armor that appears in EvilHack. It is unaligned, and its base item is a dwarvish roundshield made of mithril.
Generation
Ashmar can only be created by combining Ogresmasher and Trollsbane at a forge; it cannot be wished for, and will revert to its base item if left in a bones file.
Description
While worn, in addition to the AC conferred by its base item (including bonus AC for dwarves), Ashmar confers half physical damage, hungerless regeneration, acid resistance, and extrinsic protection (which adds +MC1, up to MC3) - it also sets the player's constitution to 25, prevents the wearer from being knocked backwards, and has a 1⁄4 chance of knocking monsters back upon deflecting their attack.
Ashmar can be combined with The Sword of Annihilation at a forge to create the Armor of Retribution.
Strategy
Forging Ashmar comes at little to no cost, as its component artifacts are widely considered subpar or useless on their own, and any significant benefits they grant are also granted by Ashmar.
Acid resistance is a major boon in EvilHack's lategame, where many monsters will be able to cast the highly-damaging acid blast monster spell - combined with the half physical damage and other defensive attributes, this makes Ashmar an extremely powerful option for tanky, high-health characters and a way to even the playing field for a more frail character. The main drawback of using Ashmar is the same as all shields, i.e. giving up twoweaponing artifacts or other weapons and losing out on higher damage ceilings, though the shield skill can both further raise a characters defenses and even grant an additional bashing attack of its own at Skilled or better. The best weapons to pair with Ashmar are ones with very high damage potential against multiple monster types (e.g. Hammer of the Gods) or a high instakill chance (e.g. the Sword of Annihilation).
Encyclopedia entry
The Guardian, or 'Ashmar' as spoken in the dwarvish tongue.
Arguably the best defense a warrior could ever hope to
have. Rumor has it, the bearer of this magical shield
could never be forced to retreat, and that its foes would
be repelled should they dare to attack.
