.: Help for reservation

Some things you carry do not simply help you -- they hold part of you
back. A Chrysalis enchantment feeds on the wearer. A companion draws on
your will for as long as it walks beside you. What they take is called
reservation, and it is set aside from one of your three pools for as
long as you keep them.

Reserved strength is not lost and it is not damage. Rest will not bring
it back, because nothing took it from you. It is simply spoken for. What
it does mean is that your true ceiling is lower than your listed one,
and everything that measures you against a full pool measures you
against the part you can still reach.

━━━ The Limit ━━━

You cannot set aside more than a certain share of any one pool. When you
reach that limit, the game will refuse the thing that would push you
past it: wearing another draining item, beginning another enchantment,
or binding another companion. It refuses cleanly and costs you nothing.

It will never take anything away from you. If you are already past the
limit, everything you have stays exactly where it is. You will only be
told no when you try to add.

Some single things ask for more than the limit allows all on their own.
A mighty companion is the usual one. When you are told that a thing
alone is too much, nothing you put down will make room for it. You need
a deeper pool to draw on, or a lesser thing to bind.

━━━ Reading It ━━━

Your health, stamina and conviction bars are drawn in three parts. The
lit part is what you are carrying, the dark part is what you have
spent, and the shaded band at the right hand end is what is being held
in reserve. The lit and dark parts together are the pool you can still
reach, so when they are all lit you are as recovered as you can be
while you are carrying what you carry. The band tells you how much of
that pool is not coming back until you set something down.

On a plain text client the three parts show as # for carried,
. for spent, and : for held in reserve.

Type status and look at the Reserved line under your pools. Each pool
gets a word of its own, and each word measures how close you are to the
limit rather than to your whole pool:

  none or slight    Nothing worth worrying about.
  modest            A real cost, comfortably borne.
  notable           You are giving up something to keep this.
  heavy             Well along. Choose the next one with care.
  near limit        Almost no room left. The next thing may be refused.
  at limit          You cannot add anything more to this pool.

When the game speaks to you in a sentence it uses the same rungs in
longer words, so you can match one to the other without doing any sums:

  slight            a slight part
  modest            a modest share
  notable           a notable share
  heavy             a heavy share
  near limit        nearly all you can set aside
  at limit          all you can set aside

━━━ Making Room ━━━

Remove a draining item, disenchant something you wear, or dismiss a
companion, and the share comes straight back. When the game refuses you
it names only the ones you could actually do, so if it does not mention
your gear, your gear is not what is holding you.

Skill also buys room. A practised enchanter binds magic that takes less
from its wearer, and a practised summoner holds a companion on less of
their will. Both are worth raising if you mean to live this way.

See Also:

  help status, help companion, help enchanting, help conviction