do cursed items exist?

[quarague]

I have never seen any normally cursed items in v3.3.2. There are a few cursed artifacts but they are all heavily cursed. But there still are a spell, scrolls, staffs, etc with the spell remove curse.
The ingame help also mentions that some items might get the approximate id of 'terrible' or 'bad' indicating a cursed items. I have only ever seen 'special, cursed' for cursed artifacts.
On a sidenote, if the char immediatly notices if an item is cursed, you will never equip accidentely so it seems it makes the whole concept somewhat pointless. If the pre id would only indicate the strength of the magic, ie 'magic', 'ego' or 'special' independent of whether the magic is good or bad there would be at least some chance of inadvertidly equipping a cursed item.

[PowerWyrm]

Remove curse is pointless in 3.3.2 and has been removed in 3.4 because no more items are cursed, except a couple "terrible" armor/weapon artifacts which can be uncursed with enchant scrolls.

[pharaoh]

Remove curse is pointless in 3.3.2 and has been removed in 3.4 because no more items are cursed, except a couple "terrible" armor/weapon artifacts which can be uncursed with enchant scrolls.

Does this work for artifacts such as the Iron Helm of Gorlim, which have a +AC bonus, but other minuses that wouldn't be improved by enchant scrolls?

[Zyphyr]

IIRC, in the current versions Enchanting always has a chance of breaking the Curse, regardless of success or whether the item was + or - prior to the attempt.

[buzzkill]

The more I think about it, the more I feel the exclusion of (sticky) cursed items from Vanilla Angband needs to be reverted. I know why it was done. I just don't care. It doesn't seem right.

[Magnate]

The more I think about it, the more I feel the exclusion of (sticky) cursed items from Vanilla Angband needs to be reverted. I know why it was done. I just don't care. It doesn't seem right.

At the risk of re-treading a well-worn debate, just answer me this: how do you make ID-by-use viable with sticky curses? If remove curse is too common then they're not really sticky and thus pointless. If it isn't then ID-by-use is too risky.

The basic consensus is that ID-by-use is more important to the game than sticky curses, and that the two are fundamentally incompatible.

[Antoine]

At the risk of re-treading a well-worn debate, just answer me this: how do you make ID-by-use viable with sticky curses? If remove curse is too common then they're not really sticky and thus pointless. If it isn't then ID-by-use is too risky.

The basic consensus is that ID-by-use is more important to the game than sticky curses, and that the two are fundamentally incompatible.

"Fundamentally incompatible" is a bit strong.

For instance a few weapons could be sticky cursed, and the curse could be released by killing any monster with the weapon.

Pesky but still allows id-by-use.

A.

[Magnate]

"Fundamentally incompatible" is a bit strong.

For instance a few weapons could be sticky cursed, and the curse could be released by killing any monster with the weapon.

Pesky but still allows id-by-use.

Sorry, I meant incompatible within the current codebase. You're right that sticky curses could be made more interesting and tolerable by being curable in interesting ways like that one (and threads passim) - but until someone does a Gabe and codes up a whole new set of curse mechanics, we can't explore them. So in the meantime sticky curses have gone and ID-by-use remains.

[Timo Pietilä]

At the risk of re-treading a well-worn debate, just answer me this: how do you make ID-by-use viable with sticky curses? If remove curse is too common then they're not really sticky and thus pointless. If it isn't then ID-by-use is too risky.

I would like to change sticky curse to prevent dropping the item instead of prevent removing it from equipment. That way The One Ring becomes more canon, you don't use it all of time, but can't get rid of it either.

Inventory space is valuable and with many cursed items you really start to feel the penalty, but you could afford having few cursed items in there.

I would also like to make cursed items kind of powerful ones, make it more a case of you don't want to get rid of it than you can't get rid of it. Also curses should have other side-effects, as starters maybe automatic aggravation until curse it removed, later in development maybe twist monster generation to "attract" certain kinds of monsters or lower your saving throw to zero or make you vulnerable to some attack types or increase your spell failure rate or (add your favorite penalty here).

Curse should also be active even when item is not used.