ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I encountered a rare that insta-killed my character. Luckily I had a blood of life, which I used to revive my character.
To prevent being killed again the next turn, I let my character equip the unique armor The Untouchable, which has the following description:

When you take a hit of more than 20% of your max life, a shield is created equal to 130% the damage taken.

The next thing that happened was that my character received another 1800 damage, and died again in one turn.
This might be a bug, if it is intended that the shield is created before the damage is taken (which would be pretty overpowered). But I think it´s more probable that I misinterpreted the description.
I still file this bug, since I do not know the intended behaviour. This shows a problem that is present for certain. Either I'm an idiot, or the description is not very clear.

Since, as this situation shows, the interpretation of this item's description can be a matter of life and death, I would appreciate it when the description is improved so that it's clear at which moment the shield is applied. Changhing "When you take a hit" into "After you take a hit", would already help.

It created after you took damage.

But I heard of another bug - it just stopped to create that shieldfor some reason.

Yes, if you get one-shot a shield created after you take damage won't help you.

Yes, if you get one-shot a shield created after you take damage won't help you.

Last time i've tested tested it, it didin't worked with cauterize (one shot proof), sadly.

Untouchable's functionality is a bit unusual. As I understand it, it checks your health every game turn, and if it's gone down by more than 20% of your maximum, it creates a shield based on the difference.

The description is wrong in several ways - it doesn't care about "a hit", it cares about the total life you lose in the period of time occupied by a default speed-100% turn. If you take a ton of hits in one turn, they'll all combine into one super-buff shield, but on the other hand, it doesn't create the shield immediately (so if you take eight hits in a single turn, it's not going to block half of them the way you might expect, and you'll probably be dead before the shield can appear.)

It doesn't work with Cauterize because after you take the hit that kills you, Cauterize kicks in immediately and heals you; Untouchable doesn't check in until way later, when it sees you with no life lost and therefore decides it doesn't need to shield you. (This is probably a good thing - if it worked with Cauterize it would make you nearly invulnerable!)

It's still one of the best artifacts in the game, BTW. It just behaves a bit oddly. And its description ought to read When you lose more than 20% of your max life in a single turn, a shield is created equal to 130% of the life lost.

Even that would be slightly misleading, though, because it wouldn't make it totally clear that reactive healing effects like Cauterize interfere with it (because it cares about net life loss, not gross life loss.)

On the other hand, it works really well with Blazing Rebirth.

Also, if you somehow already have a damage shield (but still manage to lose that much life), it will not create a shield.