Terrible, terrible luck.

[Nightmarjoo]

Superb level at 250'. Potion of constitution! Fuck yeah! Stack of scrolls, pretty unremarkable. A black aura blasts your weapon, wait what? Curse weapon scrolls, nooooooooooooo!
No problem, I'll just dive until I get a *remove curse* scroll or I die, shouldn't take long at all. Came out of a staircase into a 4-roomed pit. Hey look, a shiny ring! I'll put it on. Oops! Deathly cold ring of searching (-4). Whatever, who needs searching anyway, I'm a half orc warrior, I don't search for things anyway. Well, time to leave this pit, where's the door again? 's' "You can't make out your surroundings [something like that]" What? My search skill is so low I *can't* search? I didn't know that was possible.

Luckily a lost soul brought me out of my misery not long later. Fuck identify by use, again -_-

[Djabanete]

Ehhh.... that sucks that you read a ?CurseWeapon, but really I think if you're putting on unID'd rings then you're just asking for it. The first rings you find tend to be either cursed or only marginally good, so the calculus of risk weighs in favor of not putting them on.

[Jungle_Boy]

Just play a priest then you can uncurse them easily and squelch them

[Derakon]

Can't uncurse Morgul weapons as a priest, though. Anyone who puts a Morgul weapon on in Vanilla is screwed, unless they've been lucky enough to find a *Remove Curse* scroll earlier. I know I lost a young character to trying on a weapon at around 800' and having it turn out to be Morgul...

[Nightmarjoo]

I can't play priests. For some reason, I can only play warriors and mages, with some marginal decency with a rogue (the warrior-mage, go figure!).

[Derakon]

Try a paladin. They're miles better at melee than priests are (and with no silly blunt weapons restriction), so you can play them as warriors with basic utility spells until you get to stat gain and start getting a decent WIS score.

[Sirridan]

Personally I think Morgul should have a light curse, but then again, most characters who are hit with it are either really early on in their career or are deep enough to find *?rc*.

Although I do think ?curse_weapon should just ruin the weapon, not the character. (IE, make the weapon practically useless without giving it a heavy curse)

[fizzix]

Personally I think Morgul should have a light curse, but then again, most characters who are hit with it are either really early on in their career or are deep enough to find *?rc*.

Although I do think ?curse_weapon should just ruin the weapon, not the character. (IE, make the weapon practically useless without giving it a heavy curse)

I agree with the general statement.

Anyway, in 3.1.2 I think you can remove heavy curses with enough enchantment scrolls.

[PowerDiver]

Although I do think ?curse_weapon should just ruin the weapon, not the character. (IE, make the weapon practically useless without giving it a heavy curse)

I think the opposite is better. Put a heavy curse on, but do not ruin the weapon. As it is, proper technique is to wield a crappy weapon and armor before testing a scroll and then unwield them. That really gets tedious.

I find it too tedious to test scrolls once you care about your weapon enough for it to be too painful to see it cursed. I'd rather test-use them, but it simply isn't feasible IMO.

[Sirridan]

I think the opposite is better. Put a heavy curse on, but do not ruin the weapon. As it is, proper technique is to wield a crappy weapon and armor before testing a scroll and then unwield them. That really gets tedious.

I find it too tedious to test scrolls once you care about your weapon enough for it to be too painful to see it cursed. I'd rather test-use them, but it simply isn't feasible IMO.

I like that idea better actually. By the time I find ?curse_weapon I have a weapon I wouldn't mind wielding for a while, and it would last at least until I find *remove curse*.

In any case, after dlvl 40 I id all scrolls I find anyway, just because I don't want to blow something up and I don't want to waste useful things.

And all this makes me think, do things like ?curse_weapon discourage ID by use?

[Pete Mack]

I think the opposite is better. Put a heavy curse on, but do not ruin the weapon. As it is, proper technique is to wield a crappy weapon and armor before testing a scroll and then unwield them. That really gets tedious.

In fact, that's what happens in Angband 3.1.x

The old curse weapon code destroyed the weapon, but put on a light curse. The new curse code is both more interesting and less tedious.

[Derakon]

And all this makes me think, do things like ?curse_weapon discourage ID by use?

Items that, if used un-ID'd, can potentially ruin your game? Yes, they discourage ID-by-use. As I noted earlier, I lost one young character to a Morgul weapon. You can bet that bumped up the depth at which I start IDing everything before equipping it.

[PowerDiver]

In fact, that's what happens in Angband 3.1.x

The old curse weapon code destroyed the weapon, but put on a light curse. The new curse code is both more interesting and less tedious.

The new code still has way too high a chance of doing irreparable harm to the object. One time was enough for me to swear never to let it happen again. The current situation means I'll throw away a scroll rather than test it if I run out of slots and ID, after DL30 and maybe after DL20 if I have a particularly nice weapon.

Anyone who tests unaware scrolls past DL30 is making a serious mistake unless they go through the wield/test/unwield rigamarole. It is better to throw them away.

[Pete Mack]

I agree it's pretty hard on Ringil, but it's only a minor speed bump (in terms of damage to the Weapon for most midgame weapons.)
So what if Dethanc/Sting/Narsil goes from +11 to -2 and requires ~50 scrolls of enchantment to get back to +7, with a very good chance of breaking the curse in the meantime?

[PowerDiver]

I agree it's pretty hard on Ringil, but it's only a minor speed bump (in terms of damage to the Weapon for most midgame weapons.)
So what if Dethanc/Sting/Narsil goes from +11 to -2 and requires ~50 scrolls of enchantment to get back to +7, with a very good chance of breaking the curse in the meantime?

That is a significant loss. What relative odds would you need to risk that to gain the effects of reading a scroll of prayer? That calculation might overflow if using int arithmetic. [edit] talking about something like Dethanc here.

Scrolls are mostly useful for escapes. There are very few that offer a benefit comparable to the loss above. I can only think of 3: acquirement, *ACQUIREMENT, and banish. Banish counts because you can ESC out and keep it for later, unlike e.g. mass banishment. Those 3 are much rarer, and there is also the question of whether summoned objects will be useful. The odds appear prohibitive.

I believe, on a risk/reward basis, that it is much better to throw away a scroll than to read it unaware if you have a weapon you would mind losing and have not learned curse weapon yet. In fact, I think the reward is so unlikely that I'm not even willing to go through the bother to swap my weapon to test the scroll. In comparison, I wield-test all weapons without pseudo when I need pack space, despite the chance of a morgul blade. IMO the situations are that different.