Thorns Ring
| Thorns Ring | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Ring |
| Location | Crafting with Combat Level 7 |
| Sell Price | 100g |
The Thorns Ring turns getting hurt into a way of fighting back. Combat level 7 teaches the recipe, fifty Bone Fragments, fifty Stone and one Gold Bar make the ring, and from then on every monster that lands a blow takes one of its own. The clever part is the arithmetic: the ring sends back the full force of the attack before the farmer's armour has taken anything off it. That makes it the natural companion to a heavy Defense build, where incoming hits are reduced to almost nothing while the reply stays at full strength. Two rings double the reply, and the Forge joins it to a Crabshell Ring for anyone who likes the idea of standing still and letting a crowd of Bats kill itself.
Location
Crafting is the only route. Combat level 7 is a mid game milestone, reached somewhere around the lower floors of the Mines, and it hands over the Ring of Yoba recipe at the same time, so the two defensive rings tend to arrive together.
The materials sort themselves out on the way down. Fifty Stone is a few minutes with a pickaxe. A single Gold Bar is one trip to the deeper floors and a furnace. Bone Fragments are the slow part. Skeletons drop them on the deep floors of the Mines, Skull Cavern crates hold them, panning turns them up, and the bone nodes of Ginger Island give them away by the handful to a farmer who has got that far.
Effect
The reflected damage is worked out from the monster's attack as the game first rolled it, with the monster's own Defense then subtracted. Nothing the farmer wears changes that number, so Defense from boots, rings, food and weapons reduces the wound without weakening the answer. A farmer in good armour therefore gives up very little and takes back a great deal, which is the whole case for wearing the ring.
Small hits work slightly differently. When the damage that gets through is under ten points, the ring returns the average of what the farmer actually lost and what the attack would have done unarmoured. The effect is to soften the reply against weak monsters and leave it near full against strong ones.
Equipping two Thorns Rings doubles the damage sent back, which is unusual among rings and worth knowing before a second one is fed to the Forge. The ring also leaves loot alone: a monster killed by its own attack drops exactly what it would have dropped to a sword.
There is one real catch. Kills the ring makes do not count towards the Monster Eradication Goals on the wall at the Adventurer's Guild. A farmer grinding Bats for a Vampire Ring or Dust Sprites for a Burglar's Ring should take the Thorns Ring off first, or risk watching the tally crawl while the monsters die.
The ring rewards armour, not carelessness. Monsters still land their hits, the farmer still loses health, and the honest comparison is with simply dodging, which costs nothing at all. Thorns earns its place in the fights where dodging is impossible: narrow corridors, swarms, and the flying enemies that attack from every direction at once.
Notes
Yellow is the ring's dye pot in Emily and Haley's house, on 2 Willow Lane.
The forged pairing most often suggested is this ring with a Crabshell Ring, and the reasoning follows directly from how the damage is calculated. Five points of Defense cut almost everything a Bat or a Serpent can do down to the minimum, while the ring still answers with the attack's original strength. Twenty Cinder Shards buy that arrangement, and it suits the floors where fliers arrive in numbers and swinging at them is awkward.
Heavy boots push the same idea further. Dragonscale Boots or Cinderclown Shoes stacked with a Crabshell Ring leave very little damage getting through, and every scratch that does still sends back a full hit. A Protection Ring fits the build for a different reason, since the longer stretch of invincibility after a blow means fewer blows land while the reply is already on its way.
For a farmer who fights with speed and distance rather than armour, the ring is a poor fit, and the finger is better spent on something that fires on a kill instead of on a wound.
All Rings
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Amethyst Ring | 
|
100g |
| Aquamarine Ring | 
|
200g |
| Burglar's Ring | 
|
750g |
| Crabshell Ring | 
|
1000g |
| Emerald Ring | 
|
300g |
| Glow Ring | 
|
100g |
| Glowstone Ring | 
|
100g |
| Hot Java Ring | 
|
100g |
| Immunity Band | 
|
250g |
| Iridium Band | 
|
1000g |
| Jade Ring | 
|
200g |
| Jukebox Ring | 
|
100g |
| Lucky Ring | 
|
100g |
| Magnet Ring | 
|
100g |
| Napalm Ring | 
|
1000g |
| Phoenix Ring | 
|
100g |
| Protection Ring | 
|
100g |
| Ring of Yoba | 
|
750g |
| Ruby Ring | 
|
300g |
| Savage Ring | 
|
750g |
| Slime Charmer Ring | 
|
350g |
| Small Glow Ring | 
|
50g |
| Small Magnet Ring | 
|
50g |
| Soul Sapper Ring | 
|
100g |
| Sturdy Ring | 
|
750g |
| Thorns Ring | 
|
100g |
| Topaz Ring | 
|
100g |
| Vampire Ring | 
|
750g |
| Warrior Ring | 
|
750g |