In Dominions, mages can forge magic items which can have a massive variety of effects. Similar to casting a ritual, forging an item requires a mage to take an entire turn at a lab, and consumes gems as well as requiring levels in one or two magic paths dependent on the item being forged. The ability to forge more powerful magic items is the primary target of the Construction research line, which otherwise provides many less spells than any of the other research options. Like gems, magic items can be withdrawn and deposited from any lab, and passed between commanders in provinces without a lab.

Not all items are useful in combat: many items have beneficial effects off the battlefield such as boosting research speeds, making other items cheaper to forge, or boosting their holder's magical paths and improving their rituals. Others are simply weapons, to be given to a commander to help them fighting. Careful choices of magical items and equipment are an important part of building an effective thug or supercombatant.

Additionally, similarly to spells (albeit rarer), some nations have national items that cannot be forged by others. Unlike spells, some nations gain a discount on forging certain items.

Some magic items cannot be forged and have to be obtained through other means. A very small number of units, mostly pretenders, start with an unforgeable magic item. As an example of this, Jomon's Ryujin start with a Dragon Pearl. The majority of unforgeable magic items can only be obtained through killing the independents which carry them when they spawn as a random event or at the start of the game.

Most items' effects do not stack if equipped in duplicate. An example of an exception to this is The Copper Arm.

A key factor in using magic items is understanding the limitation of the slots a given commander has. Non-commander units may not be given magic items unless they are transformed into commanders using Gift of Reason or Divine Name. Each unit has a specified number of slots that is inherent to their chassis: for example, an unmounted human generally has two hands, a head, a body, feet, and two miscellaneous slots. Other units have all kinds of variations on this: mounted units usually do not have a foot slot, nonhumanoid units are often unable to wear body armour and may be limited to crowns and laurels in their head slots, and some units may have more than two arms or one head.

Slot availability can be modified by afflictions such as the loss of one or both arms, and by units which have some form of shapeshifting ability. Upon transforming to a form lacking slots which were filled with items, the items are lost.

Equipping magical items can replace equipment which a unit wears by default. For example, a unit with high encumberance due to its armour might have that vastly reduced by equipping some magical alternative, although doing so may actually lower the commander's protection. Similar effects occur with helmets and weapons, although natural weapons will always be present no matter the items given to such a commander.

When a unit with magic items dies in battle, there is a chance for another commander with an open slot to pick up the item. Should this happen, it will be mentioned in the text at the top of the battle report. The chance of picking up your own commanders' items is greater than that of taking your opponents'. Units that do not die in battle, such as through disease or various offensive ritual spells cannot have their items recovered.

Besides having a cost and forging requirement, some items have common traits:

• Item is cursed - The item cannot be removed, except by shapeshifting into a form which lacks a slot for the item.

• nofind ¹⁾- The item cannot be recovered if the wearer dies, generally implies that the item is cursed.

• Tainted - The item attracts the attention of horrors from the beyond. For every turn that passes the wearer may become horror marked, the probability of being marked is different for each item and is not displayed in game.

• Afflictions - Certain items will cause afflictions in whoever wears them. The afflictions caused vary by item, items with the disease ²⁾ tag disease the wearer, items with the chestwound ³⁾ flag cause chest wounds and items with the magiceye ⁴⁾ flag cause the loss of one of the unit's natural eyes.

• Crown - While most commanders can wear any headpiece in their head slot, some cannot wear regular helmets and are therefore limited to wearing crowns, be it due to head shape, hornedness or just plain snootiness. Commanders with this limitation feature a crown icon on their head slot instead of a helmet.

• Two handed weapon - Carrying this weapon requires an additional unused hand slot. When holding a two handed weapon there is no visual indication of the second slot being used and clicking it will still open the treasury, even with all other slots full.

• Start of battle spell - Carrying this item causes the specified spell to be active at the start of any battle, including both sides of an assassination or patrol discovery.

• Spell - The wearer may use the specified ritual or combat spell.

Every item requiring Construction 8 to forge is called an artifact. Artifacts differ from regular items in that only one of each artifact may exist at any time (though if it is lost and not recovered it can be reforged by any player) and in that, using the default game settings, a player may only forge one artifact per turn.

Should multiple players attempt to forge the same artifact on the same turn only one of them will get it, the winner is chosen at random and every player contesting for the item loses the forging cost.

Some items are capable of boosting the wearer's magic paths. These magic boosters can grant a mage access to higher level items as well as combat magic and rituals.

Magic boosters will not boost magic paths that the wearer doesn't have at least a single point in.

Many (cross-)paths allow players to reach high level magic using a low level mage with little to no empowering, by simply boosting the mage with items until they can summon a higher level mage and passing on their boosters, see MelficeBelmont's Boosting & Access Guide for detailed information on boosting each path.

After a battle, each item from dead commanders has a chance to be found by a random commander as follows:

However, if the randomly picked commander has no free slots for the item it found, the item is lost anyway. Some items are marked "nopickup" and are lost when the commander dies in battle. These include Soul Contracts, items that replace body parts such as Crystal Heart and Eye of Aiming, and a few more.

If a commander dies outside of battle, such as from disease, Transformation or a Seeking Arrow, the items are lost unless there is a lab in the province. If there is a lab, the items are saved and go in there.

• Does the Storm Spool let the carrier discharge multiple times per battle?
  • Yes. As opposed to the similar spell and bless, the Storm Spool does not lose its overcharge when hit.
• Why isn't my Magic booster giving my Mage a new Magic path?
  • Path boosts only work for Mages who already have levels in those Magic paths, just like with Path-boosting combat spells.

• List of Trinkets (Construction 0)
• List of Lesser Magic Items (Construction 2)
• List of Greater Magic items (Construction 4)
• List of Powerful Magic Items (Construction 6)
• List of Artifacts (Construction 8)

Magic
Concepts	Blood Hunting • Communions • Empowerment • Gems • Items • Magic Sites • Research
Categories	Combat Magic • Ritual Magic • Notable Spells
Paths	Fire • Air • Water • Earth • Astral • Death • Nature • Blood • Holy
Schools	Conjuration • Alteration • Evocation • Construction • Enchantment • Thaumaturgy • Blood • Divine