Amulet of unchanging
Effects
An amulet of unchanging prevents you from changing your current form by polymorph or other means, and also protects you from being slimed; any sliming in progress is aborted. It does not prevent you turning to stone. Another exception is prayer as a lawful in undead form; you will rehumanize anyway.
If you eat the amulet, you are "un-changed" to your natural form.
If you die while polymorphed and wearing an amulet of unchanging, you will not revert to your previous form, and will instead die.
However, if you "die" by polymorphing into a wood or leather golem and getting rotted away by a brown pudding, or rusted as iron golem you will resume your normal form. If you are polymorphed and decline to die in wizard mode, you will also rehumanize.
Generation
There is a 4.5% chance that a randomly-generated amulet will be an amulet of unchanging, making it the least generated amulet.
Identification
Because uncontrolled polymorphing and being slimed are both potentially dangerous if the amulet isn't unchanging, and losing all HP while polymorphed is lethal if it IS unchanging, this is a relatively difficult amulet to identify safely.
The easiest way is probably to eat a mimic corpse while wearing the unidentified amulet. If you don't mimic gold/an orange, the amulet is unchanging. If you do, the amulet isn't unchanging, you won't break or fall out of your armor, and if a monster tries to pick you up, you return to normal form immediately.
If you're following the vegetarian or vegan conducts, an alternative would be to polymorph yourself while wearing the amulet and a ring of polymorph control, specifying a safe form if you do polymorph. If you intend to use a polytrap for this purpose, you must remove any source of magic resistance as well. If the amulet is unchanging, the polymorph trap will not disappear and you will receive the message, "You feel momentarily different."
Strategy
If discovered early, this can be a good substitute for magic resistance in the early game, where polymorph traps are a big threat. Moreover, they can be used to permanently remain in a particular polymorph form. This is somewhat risky, of course, since you will die permanently if your HP are drained to zero, but can be useful if you lack a reusable source of polymorph. This can become a literal life-saver if for some reason you genocide your role or race while polymorphed (accidents happen with scrolls of genocide and umber hulks). Also, if you are riding and do not have magic resistance, an amulet of unchanging will protect your steed from polymorph traps.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, amulets of unchanging cannot be polymorphed.
See also
This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:
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