# Talk:Intrinsic protection
Is the protection (in my case from paying a priest) reflected immediately in your AC status thing? My AC was -4, then i donated 7800 gold (Level 13) and my AC didn't change... Aeronflux 01:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

If you donate 600 or more times your experience level, you gain alignment, not protection.  The article needs to be changed to reflect this.  RJaguar3 06:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
In my current game, I lost my protection to a gremlin attack; 10 points worth (Actually, it may have been more, but I'm not positive). When I donated to the valley priest, I got all 10 points back from a single donation. From a wizmode test, it would seem that losing your protection to a gremlin and to your god are quite different. In wizmode, I angered my god and lost protection, but it still showed up in enlightenment "You are protected"; this was not the case in my regular game. Donating after losing the protection to prayer also only resulted in a single point, while the first donation if you are not protected is always at least 2. So, it seems that losing protection to your god means your bonus AC is set to 0 but intrinsic protection remains, while losing it to a gremlin results in losing intrinsic protection but not the bonus AC, and they just won't do anything until you regain intrinsic protection.
Now, are any of the following possible? I'd try testing them but it's early and I don't want to change my sysclock, especially when I'm still playing Nethack.

Losing intrinsic protection to a gremlin with under 9 points of protection and donating to a priest for another 2-4 points to save money
Losing intrinsic protection to a gremlin so that you could anger your god without losing the actual protection points (e.g. trick your god into thinking you don't have any protection to take away)
Qazmlpok 22:43, September 19, 2009 (UTC)

Number 2 is very unlikely, as angering your god sets your intrinsic armor class to zero, regardless if you have the protection intrinsic. Number 1 sounds possible once after the gremlin, but if you are willing to commit the necessary amount of work to it, you probably could ascend in way less time by pudding/wraith/kop corpse+succubus/altar farming. And you would have to regain all those intrinsics, and a gremlin will get cancelled if it steals an intrinsic. In my opinion, it is probably a bug your numerical protection wasn't set to zero by the gremlin. -Tjr 12:18, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
Well, now that I have some time for source diving, I can't figure out what happened. Gremlin attacks definitely only remove the intrinsic without resetting the count (ublessed). However according to what I'm seeing in donation and gift from god code, if the player does not possess intrinsic protection, it is setto between 2 and 4 points (so the 1st idea is definitely impossible since it doesn't add 2-4 points). If the player does possess intrinsic protection, then add one point (only maybe if it's a priest). Additionally, I got that point of protection from a priest, but it seems that even though my protection was effectively 0, I was still subject to random chance since ublessed was at least 9. I got my protection back on the first try, so maybe I was just lucky there. However, I definitely regained 10 points of protection and I should have been forced to start over with the initial 2-4 points since I did not have the intrinsic. I don't know if I'm just reading the source wrong or what, but what just happened to me definitely seems impossible in the source. -- Qazmlpok 13:46, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

unhelpful corroboration
I had 4 points of protection, then had protection stolen by a gremlin, and when I purchased protection again, I immediately received 4 points.  Unfortunately, it seems that these 4 points are within the norm.
Yidda 21:35, February 23, 2010 (UTC)