Protection

For the item, see cloak of protection.

Protection is an effect that lowers your AC but does not involve wearing armor. There are few types of extrinsic protection:

• The spellbook of protection gives a spell that temporarily lowers AC.
• A ring of protection lowers AC by its enchantment when worn. Thus, a +1 ring of protection lowers AC by 1, and a -2 ring of protection raises AC by 2. Rings of protection with negative enchantment are often also cursed.

Divine protection

You can attempt to purchase some protection from a priest by donating to a temple. (To donate, #chat with the priest.) The donation must be at least four hundred times ones' experience level, but less than six hundred times. For example, a level 6 character would donate 2400 gold. Of course, if the priest is killed, the gold will be on the corpse. There is a strategy called the protection racket that makes use of donations to drastically lower armor class.

Divine protection can also be granted as a favor when you pray to your god.

Intrinsic protection can also be gained by eating a ring of protection. This works (and is lost) exactly like divine protection.

Note that protection brought from priests is actually granted by your god, regardless of the alignment of the priest you paid. If you ever make any god angry, even for just a moment, you instantly lose all your divine protection.

All of these types of protection stack; you can buy protection from a temple (more than once), wear two rings of protection, and zap the spell, if you need a large temporary AC boost.

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

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