Terrible, terrible luck.

[Jungle_Boy]

I have a current warrior who was using 'Avavir' and not carrying any ?WoR or Rod of Recall because of the activation. I found the dagger of Rilia so I switched to that because I needed poison resist and was at about 2500'. Then I read an unIDed scroll, curse weapon, now my weapons bonuses are negative and it is heavily cursed so I cannot take it off to wield Avavir to recall either. So I spend some time trying to find ?WoR, I read another unIDed scroll and got curse armor on Thalketoth, fortunately it only reduced the bonus by 1 but did heavily curse it. Luckily I found ?WoR in an orc pit right before I ran out of consumables and I had a *remove curse* sitting in my home.

[buzzkill]

It sounds like some people really like ID by use, as long as nothing bad can happen. Bad stuff is supposed to happen. Under the 'old' ID by magic system, bad stuff could happen. Under the 'new' ID by use system, bad stuff should continue to happen (IMO, because of the very nature of ID by use, bad stuff should happen more often). As Jingle_Boy's post indicates, it's a (major) inconvenience, a setback, not rock falls-you die (and I'm assuming he feels pretty good about overcoming it). Luckily, you won't have to deal with it more than once per game. Else, we could just make all curses trivial, or better yet, just eliminate all detrimental objects and items from the game. After that we can focus on introducing new and more powerful items. Really, why should the player face any adversity at all.

It's only a matter of time now before someone comes out with the 'all flavors known' patch .

[fizzix]

well we could always ask 'what do the presence of 'curse weapon' and 'curse armor' add to the game?'

If the answer is, causes you to ID scrolls that you would otherwise test by use, it's a net negative to gameplay. Kind of like an amulet of Doom or a ring of woe. If you would otherwise ID scrolls (you may not want to accidentally read valuable scrolls like mass banishment, *destruction*, and acquirement) then it's not so much of a loss.

In my games, by the time I get to ?curse depth, I usually carry with me enough ID that identifying all unknown scrolls is not a hassle. I also start IDing potions around that depth mainly because there are very few unid'd ones left and I'll want to save !life or !*healing* should they arise. So I'm fine with wasting ID on !salt water or whatever crappy potion I missed in the first levels. Therefore ?curse scrolls don't really affect my gameplay and they're a moot point for me, since I'll likely ID all scrolls at that point anyway. So in my case they add pretty much nothing to gameplay, but subtract nothing also.

Now, if I was a better player and dove faster, or played more ironman, I could see them being a net negative to gameplay. A net negative means that they actually eliminate choices and force annoying routines instead (saving SP for identify, wield/test/unwield etc.) So, I guess, I wouldn't mind weakening them greatly until they're at the annoyance level of reading *destruction* by accident or removing them altogether.

[fizzix]

It sounds like some people really like ID by use, as long as nothing bad can happen. Bad stuff is supposed to happen. Under the 'old' ID by magic system, bad stuff could happen. Under the 'new' ID by use system, bad stuff should continue to happen (IMO, because of the very nature of ID by use, bad stuff should happen more often). As Jingle_Boy's post indicates, it's a (major) inconvenience, a setback, not rock falls-you die (and I'm assuming he feels pretty good about overcoming it). Luckily, you won't have to deal with it more than once per game. Else, we could just make all curses trivial, or better yet, just eliminate all detrimental objects and items from the game. After that we can focus on introducing new and more powerful items. Really, why should the player face any adversity at all.

It's only a matter of time now before someone comes out with the 'all flavors known' patch .

Is it enough of an inconvenience that once you go through it once, you'll never take that risk again if you can avoid it? If so, then it shouldn't be there.

Personally, I don't think detrimental objects really add anything at all to the game. They just cause me to ID stuff (which I guess, I'd do anyway) so they're completely useless to me. Might as well replace ?curse with a scroll of nothing.

Now if people come and say that they read unid'd scrolls at dlevel 35+ before knowing the ?curse scrolls because they can deal with the risk, then it should remain in the game. If everyone agrees that the proper technique is to ID all scrolls at this point until you find those two, then it's detracting from gameplay.

[PowerDiver]

It sounds like some people really like ID by use, as long as nothing bad can happen. Bad stuff is supposed to happen. Under the 'old' ID by magic system, bad stuff could happen.

In the old system, there were potions of death. Items were inserted to *force* the player to ID everything. If your argument is that we should use past paradigms, then you are opposed to ID-by-use. I've always assumed that the curse scrolls were added as a counterpart to !death, but it's hard to know what was intended so long ago.

A bad effect would be the opposite of bless. Say -10 to hit and AC for 20 turns. No one would complain about that, except to wonder why anyone bothered to code it. A current bad effect is the first time you read a scroll of teleportation you have a chance of landing somewhere dire, and as it is your first you won't have a good escape available. In contrast, the curse weapon scroll is so ridiculously awful that "bad" just doesn't describe it.

I have played multiple games patched with no ID allowed at all. No selling to stores for ID either This was back when I first implemented noticing flags when attacked, in 3.0 before so many junk items were removed. I removed only !death and !detonations and left the rest, including !ruination. I could cope with !ruination. However, even as a zealot out to prove a point, I found that the curse scrolls ruined the game for me.

[ewert]

I sort of agree that bad effect items, be they potions of scrolls, in the mid or deeper levels, are mostly just TMJ. Lets see:

a) the effect is so bad nobody wants it to happen, ever -> id everything
b) id everything -> the bad effect items may just as well not exist

I'd see two choices:

a) change the bad effect items into either temporary (like low level bad effect items suchs as blindness, darkness etc.)
b) remove the bad effect items

Temporary bad effect items are already in game, but mostly in the lower levels. There are some though, such as the -stat potions (vanilla did have them too right? can't recall right now), at later levels too. They work. They give some risk to ID by use. But are not killer items for something. For example myself I have never read a curse scroll, why? Because really by dlvl15 or so I ID everything since magic weapons start to be plentiful enough to have enough money to ID everything...

[Derakon]

I'm still trying to figure out why it's a good thing to penalize the player for IDing items by using them. What purpose does this serve? We could effectively accomplish the same thing by charging the player an insurance fee of one extra turn and 150AU each time they use an un-ID'd item.

[Sirridan]

Because really by dlvl15 or so I ID everything since magic weapons start to be plentiful enough to have enough money to ID everything...

Easy enough to do, but there are two problems with this really:

1. carrying _id or ?id takes up an inventory slot and adds weight, something that may not be affordable, (especially later in the game with more swaps and detection and such). This is a non problem for anyone currently with the spell identify, but that's reliable only for the mage types early on.

2. Ironman. You have to be lucky enough to find what you need, so you either waste slots saving ID for those last few flavors, or take risks.

On one hand, you take the risk and read new flavors, and you end up possibly nuking your weapon and ruining your character. On the other hand, you don't learn new flavors and you may miss out on some useful things (?aquirement, ?banish, ?massbanish, ?rune etc)

Thankfully the nuke scrolls seem to show up in 2's or 3's in one stack, so I can somewhat figure them out without ID, but sometimes you get them in 1's.

[Nick]

Once curses are changed to the FA model, it will all be good.

Play the competition for a taste of the future!

[miyazaki]

Once curses are changed to the FA model, it will all be good.

Play the competition for a taste of the future!

I agree. Once multiple pvals are implemented as well, there will be many more options for negative effect-type consumables that are not game-enders.

For example, a scroll that has the effect of "lose-one, gain-one" stat modifier that affects your weapon, rather than the potions that effect your character.

[Nightmarjoo]

I agree. Once multiple pvals are implemented as well, there will be many more options for negative effect-type consumables that are not game-enders.

For example, a scroll that has the effect of "lose-one, gain-one" stat modifier that affects your weapon, rather than the potions that effect your character.

Like, oops my sword is heavily cursed and has a horrible to-hit, but now *slays* evil? Darn, my armour gives no armour at all and is heavily cursed, but gives res_pois?

[Rizwan]

Now that I have found Raals on dl13 I am sure to die a horrible death. See here.

[Timo Pietilä]

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...

(old topic, but unread to me)

Yes you can, but it takes a dungeon book. There is "Dispel Curse" in Holy Infusions, and that gets rid of heavy curses. It equals *remove curse* scroll.

Obviously anyone playing priest would be in trouble like anybody else with Morgul weapon, but not for entire game and not completely screwed, you could still use spells like OoD and missile-weapons to survive until you get that curse broken. Usually just few enchant scrolls is enough for that.