What does the Black Tome do?

[magictrolloc]

I am only wondering because it was generated in a random book shop on D:5 of my newest DE Archer game. 60000 gold he wants for it. :-| too expensive right now.

Nice shop too, 6x6 squares. Teleportation and Frost Bolt books.

[brim]

I assume it is the "black tome of Alsophocus" which if I remember correctly teaches knowledge in a random spell when read, but also corrupts and contains the essence of chaos, meaning merely carrying it also corrupts you. I could be wrong about the random spell part, its been awhile since I've found one.

[JellySlayer]

brim has it right. It teaches a random spell when read. Carrying it corrupts you. Reading it severely corrupts you. 60k for it is a scam: The shopkeeper should be paying you to take the thing.

[BenMathiesen]

The Black Tome can be handy in the early game, and it makes for a fun story element if you're into that kind of thing. It's the quintessential chaos artifact: power for corruption, but somewhat under your control.

I had one character who found it early in the PC vault, a human wizard who hadn't been finding many spellbooks and was running out of castings on her Fire Bolt. I read it a few times, and got (IIRC) Invisibility, Magic Missile, Know Alignment, Frost Bolt, Magic Lock, and one of the Ball Spells. I also got three corruptions, luckily none of which were debilitating.

The problem is that you can't interrupt yourself when reading a spell. If you put yourself in a safe place, then read, you might roll one of the "big spells" such as Death Ray, Acid Ball, ID, Earthquake... and then you can easily pick up 2 or 3 corruptions all at once. So for the Black Tome, it's best to read it in an unsafe place where monsters are likely to interrupt you from time to time.

It's a great ratling gift too, if you need one. This is the only reason I would ever buy the thing.

Ben

[Xevoc]

Yes, the problem with the black tome are the big spells. You'll gain a lot of corruption for nothing useful.

I was doing an avatar of balance ending once and brought the tome to D50 to gain corruptions before entering the gate. The problem is - I was quite corrupted already when I begun to read a really hard spell and got like 3-4 corruptions before I was interrupted (I think it was due to hunger). I already thought that I had lost the character, but only 99% of my soul belonged to chaos...

[magictrolloc]

At this point I'm just going to try and win the game as a lawful DE archer, not do any self endangering RP things with that book. Certainly no ultra either, I haven't made it to the earth vault yet in the game, my last attempt was foiled by over-confidence against the Cat Lord.

Thanks by the way