Ashmar
[ Ashmar 
| |
|---|---|
| Base item | dwarvish roundshield |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | none |
| When worn |
|
| When invoked | none |
| Base price | 20000 zm |
| Weight | 37 |
Ashmar is a piece of 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
When 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, extrinsic protection (which adds +MC1, up to MC3), sets the player's constitution to 25, and prevents the wearer from being knocked backwards - additionally, if Ashmar deflects an attack, it has a 1⁄4 chance of knocking the attacker back.
Ashmar can be forged together with The Sword of Annihilation to create the Armor of Retribution.
Strategy
Since its ingredients are relatively useless on their own, forging Ashmar comes at little to no cost; any significant benefit either Trollsbane or Ogresmasher grants is 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 spell. This, combined with the half physical damage and other defense favoring attributes makes Ashmar an extremely powerful option for tanky, high-health characters, or a way to even the playing field for a frailer character.
The main drawback of using Ashmar is the same as all shields. That being, you forfeit any chance at twoweaponing, and lose out on quite a bit of potential damage, especially with EvilHack allowing twoweaponing of artifacts. The easiest way to combat this is to use a weapon either with very high damage potential against multiple types of enemies, such as the Hammer of the Gods, or high instakill chance, such as 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.
