Soft Leather Boots of Wormtongue

[Jenks]

I'm wearing a pair of Soft Leather Boots of Wormtongue(-8,-8)(2+1)[+3]. I've uncursed them and they add +3 to speed, stealth, intelligence and Dexterity BUT they have the to hit/damage downside. Is there any way to reduce the negative hit/damage stats?

[zaimoni]

No, as the Enchant to-dam/to-hit scrolls won't even consider the boots.

They're useful if your melee is already awful relative to your ranged attacks, but they are not endgame material.

[will_asher]

I seem to find the Wormtongue's boots almost as often as the *thancs. It seems to me they would be very nice for mages who almost never melee anyway. too bad I almost never play mages.

[Garrie]

I'm wearing a pair of Soft Leather Boots of Wormtongue(-8,-8)(2+1)[+3]. I've uncursed them and they add +3 to speed, stealth, intelligence and Dexterity BUT they have the to hit/damage downside. Is there any way to reduce the negative hit/damage stats?

Personally I think most of the low-level artifacts should be similar trade-offs: is the speed and stat bonus worth throwing away melee?

This is what aggravation is meant to introduce but generally it just brings about a situation where you stockpile all this stuff that all aggravates and don't put any of it on until you want to wear all of it.

Mind you, deep artifacts should just be outright powerful magic that makes for an awe inspiring kit. But there should be enough variety that it is silly for a mage to wear the same kit as a warrior...

[Zababa]

How to uncurse them?

What do you need to uncurse them? Is it *remove curse*? I think before I get that scroll, I'll stumble upon much better boots. So I guess the best solution is to throw them away, right?

[Derakon]

For normal cursed items, Remove Curse will do the trick. For heavily cursed, you need *Remove Curse*. For both, trying to enchant the item has a chance of breaking the curse even if the enchantment fails -- you'd have to use Enchant Armor on Wormtongue, of course, but either Enchant Weapon To-Hit or To-Dam would work (unreliably) on Calris, say.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'm wearing a pair of Soft Leather Boots of Wormtongue(-8,-8)(2+1)[+3]. I've uncursed them and they add +3 to speed, stealth, intelligence and Dexterity BUT they have the to hit/damage downside. Is there any way to reduce the negative hit/damage stats?

(-8,-8)? That rendered that piece of gear unusable. Might as well remove it from game.

[SSK]

(-8,-8)? That rendered that piece of gear unusable. Might as well remove it from game.

Yeah I seem to remember something more like (-2, -2) or (-1, -1). -8 is too unbalanced--a piece of trash.

[Tobias]

Yeah I seem to remember something more like (-2, -2) or (-1, -1). -8 is too unbalanced--a piece of trash.

I might wear it ( as a mage ). My current mage wears 2 rings of the mouse for a total of 0,-19.

[takkaria]

(-8,-8)? That rendered that piece of gear unusable. Might as well remove it from game.

They're not -8, -8 here... acid damage bug maybe?

[jens]

Please note that the original post is from march 2008, so we are not talking about any recent events here...

[Zababa]

Yes, this is an old post. I did not want to make a new thread just to ask something for which there is a thread already.

The Boots of Wormtongue I found were (-1, -1) which is an acceptable malus for what they grant you (speed and resistances).

[Tobias]

You know this made me think.

Maybe it would be a good thing to move the plusminus egos to be more class or build dependent. Instead of being only short term items.

So you have items that a mage would throw away, and warrior would pay much money for. Those even exist already with most gauntlets.
On the other side mages do like rings of escaping, while a warrior never would wear one.

There could be more items like this. Maybe even artifacts ( the 9 or 7 rings maybe).

[Zababa]

Back to the boots:

The only thing which puzzled me was that I wanted to remove curse from the boots without putting them on. Just so that I'd be able to sell them. It did not work. I had to put them on and then read a scroll of Remove Curse.

[Nolendil]

If I remember correctly, the boots of Wormtongue I found in my 3.2 game were not heavily cursed. Using the priest spell of Remove Curse did the trick.
I think I wore them to remove the curse too.