Items

Our two equipment write-ups answer the same question from opposite ends. The best rings page lists thirty-one entries and tells you where twenty-six of them come from. The Magic Essence page takes one six-item shopping list and walks you to every stop on it. Laid side by side they split the game's loot into three groups: things a named person will hand over, things sitting in a room you have to fight your way into, and a short list of things our page rates without saying where any of them are.

Eleven rings come with a name attached

Ten of the thirty-one ring entries put a name in brackets, and an eleventh, the Sigil of Destruction, names a Traveling Skeletal Salesman with no place attached at all. A name is shorthand for a source you can go and ask rather than a room you have to search, though one of the ten belongs to the Corrupted Mongrel Brute, who has to be killed for his Ring of Protection +1 rather than bargained with. Five of the ten sit at Defender's Heart, and a sixth ring is listed there with nobody attached to it, which makes it the busiest single address on the page. Drezen supplies the next three.

Three of those are spell rings and all three carry the same warning on our page: Dark Omen, Red Salamander and the Ring of Boreal Might each let a caster reach for five or six extra spells, from ray of enfeeblement up to waves of fatigue, fireball up to fiery body, and ice storm up to polar midnight, but you still have to own a spell slot of the right level to cast any of them. They are range extenders, not free casts.

Fifteen name a room and nothing else

The larger group is loot with an address. Several addresses come up twice, which is the useful part, because it turns a shopping list into a route. Gray Garrison holds the matched pair of signets, the Arcane Signet casting magic missile three times a day as a level three Wizard and the Unholy Signet doing the same with bane as a level three cleric. The Shield Maze holds Flow of Water and the Corrupted Mongrel Brute who carries another Ring of Protection +1. Citadel Drezen carries two of its own, the Ring of Chaotic Fascination and a +4 Ring of Protection. Both places have a puzzle in them, and our puzzle solutions guide is where the door trick and the key hunt are written up.

Thieflings Hideout doubles up too, with the Ring of Sharp Strike and the Thiefling Ring, and Ivory Sanctum supplies Ravager of Dread and the Ring of Sacred Touch. The rest are single stops: Merciless Shot at Neathholm, the Righteous Crusader's Ring in the Underground Hideout, Steady Finger out in the Scrubland, the Ring of Devastating Will at Blackwater, and the Ring of Deadly Swing in the Midnight Fane, tucked behind the shrine to Deskari. Wintersun and Reliable Redoubt appear as second sources for protection rings rather than as homes for anything of their own.

Five rings our page rates and does not place

Hasting Expanse, Greater Ring of Balance, Zaoris's Beauty, Conthyr's Wisdom and Ancestral Retribution are described by what they do and by who should wear them, with no location given at all. That is worth knowing before you go hunting for one. Hasting Expanse suits a Bloodrager, Slayer or Barbarian and stacks an extra attack with Haste; Conthyr's Wisdom inflicts Paranoia on a sneak attack target and spreads it to anything nearby; Ancestral Retribution knocks a target ten feet back; Zaoris's Beauty adds 1d6 precision damage and a +2 circumstance bonus to attack rolls for the party. The Greater Ring of Balance is the strongest of them and the fussiest, at a +5 deflection bonus with immunity to fear, confusion and emotion effects, but only on a character whose alignment is True Neutral.

The Magic Essence run is containers and checks

Not one of the six vials the Storyteller wants for his broken gold buckle is on anybody's counter: five of them are stashed in boxes, the last is simply waiting in a back room, and half of the run sits in one building. The first is in Blackwing Library behind a hidden door on the right-hand wall, which needs high Perception to spot at all rather than any key. The second is on the second floor of Gwerm's Mansion, in the Goods box next to the bed in the room facing you at the top of the stairs. The third is in the basement of Estrod Tower, where Teldon wants Trickery and Diplomacy, and the box behind the locked door past him needs either a picked lock or the old man's stolen key.

Four, five and six are all in Gray Garrison. The fourth sits behind a blocked path that high Trickery opens, in the room on the left. The fifth is in a dark room straight through the door at the marked loot spot. The sixth is one doorway and one left-hand door further on from the fifth. If you are already there for the two signets, collect all three vials in the same visit.

Buy the checks before you go looking for the loot

Read those two lists together and a small circle appears. Getting at the vials repeatedly comes down to a skill check, and three of the rings on the list hand out bonuses to exactly those skills. Conman's Ring, from Kyado at Defender's Heart, adds +5 competence to Perception and Trickery, two of the three checks the vial run names, with only Diplomacy left over. The Thiefling Ring adds +2 to Trickery and Stealth, or +3 on a Tiefling. Enlivening Leadership hands your allies +1 morale on all skill checks on top of its own +5. Those are the cheapest ways we can point at to raise the two numbers this game keeps asking for. Which classes are carrying which skills in the first place is laid out in the best builds guide, while the Wrath of the Righteous guide index collects the rest of our coverage.