Curse removal

[Oraticus]

Ok, how does this work? Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem very transparent on what your chances of success are vs. failure. I got my first RoS on my melee (only +5, but who's gonna complain?), and of course it's cursed with teleportation. Oh, well, easy enough, right? I'll just nip back to town, pick up a ?Remove Curse, and clear that right up.

Yo, Bosk the Wise... gonna need me some ?RC. *buys scroll of remove curse*
"Uncurse which item?" -> Diamond Ring of Speed (+5) {cursed}
"Remove which curse?" -> teleportation (power 57)
The spell fails; your Diamond Ring of Speed (+5) {cursed} is now fragile.
*grumble*

Hey, Bosk... another ?RC, please. *buys scroll of remove curse*
"Uncurse which item?" -> Diamond Ring of Speed (+5) {cursed}
"Remove which curse?" -> teleportation (power 57)
The removal fails.
Really? Fine...

Me again, Bosk... yet another ?RC, please. *buys scroll of remove curse*
"Uncurse which item?" -> Diamond Ring of Speed (+5) {cursed}
"Remove which curse?" -> teleportation (power 57)
The removal fails.
FFFFFFFFFFWUT?

*Repeat two more times, both times failing*

Ok... what's going on? Is that teleportation just too powerful? How am I even supposed to know this? What does a power of "57" even remotely mean in relation to ?RC? I know I'm gonna shatter this ring for no good reason at this point, simply because I don't know if I should be looking for ?*RC*, or if I'm just getting REALLY unlucky.

Anyone got more info on how to interpret this?

[Oraticus]

Oh, and for clarification, one more try ended up in shards of diamond everywhere. I was desperate for that speed, so I couldn't just let it sit in my home hoping I'd stumble on ?*RC* at some point (does it even exist?).

[Pete Mack]

The basic RC spell is only power 50. It'll never work on a curse of power 57. *RC* is power 57. You're stuck teleporting. Recommend using it as a swap.

[Derakon]

The basic RC spell is only power 50. It'll never work on a curse of power 57. *RC* is power 57. You're stuck teleporting. Recommend using it as a swap.

If it's literally impossible, why do we allow the player to try?

[Pete Mack]

It's a good point. And the menu system already has a clean way to disable individual entries.

[Derakon]

I would argue instead that when you try, you get a message "the spell is too weak to remove the curse", and no attempt is made / the scroll is not used up. That seems like a better catch-all, and more informative than simply blanking out a menu entry.

[Nick]

I would argue instead that when you try, you get a message "the spell is too weak to remove the curse", and no attempt is made / the scroll is not used up. That seems like a better catch-all, and more informative than simply blanking out a menu entry.

Seems reasonable.

[kandrc]

It would also be nice to be able to know the power level of a curse without having to treat a remove curse scroll as a super special magical ID. It's pretty disappointing to do inventory jockeying to haul something back to town only to discover that you can't uncurse it.

[Sky]

i've removed curses of power 94 with *RC. pretty good dice roll.

[fph]

Personally, I'd like to see that opaque "power level" number replaced with "probability of success".

[Sideways]

Personally, I'd like to see that opaque "power level" number replaced with "probability of success".

There are two relevant probabilities of success, though; probability of success in removing the curse on any one Remove Curse or *Remove Curse* attempt, and probabliity of success in removing it at all (given enough sources of curse removal) without destroying the item; both of which the uncurser would probably like to know. In the case of Sky's power-94 curse, for example, he had a 14% chance of uncursing the item with a single scroll of *Remove Curse* and a 48% chance of uncursing it with infinite sources of *Remove Curse*.

[Oraticus]

Wow... it was literally impossible? How was I to know from in-game info only? I don't mind curse removal, honestly, but there does need to be more transparency. Like @fph suggested, it'd be nice to see your chances so you know what's the probability of curse removal (especially if it's 0%), and chance to destroy the item.

So, if ?RC is only good up to power 50, what's the limit on the other curse removal options such as ?*RC* and the priestly spells?

Now I'm even more bummed that I blew up that RoS.

[Sideways]

Wow... it was literally impossible? How was I to know from in-game info only? I don't mind curse removal, honestly, but there does need to be more transparency. Like @fph suggested, it'd be nice to see your chances so you know what's the probability of curse removal (especially if it's 0%), and chance to destroy the item.

So, if ?RC is only good up to power 50, what's the limit on the other curse removal options such as ?*RC* and the priestly spells?

Now I'm even more bummed that I blew up that RoS.

*Remove Curse* is 50+d50 and good up to power 99 (it can roll a 100 but not remove a power-100 curse, because 100 is used as a placeholder value for "permanent"; though I'm not sure if power 100 curses actually exist, normal curse generation only goes up to 99). Of the prayers, Remove Curse is the same as the Remove Curse scroll (good up to power 40, not 50) and Dispel Curse is good up to (character level) + 50.

(In some ways it would make sense if Remove Curse did go up to 50 instead of 40, because now curses of level 41 to 51 are caught in between; apart from low-level Dispel Curse, everything uncurses them either 0% of the time or 100% of the time; and for every class except priest, there's no practical difference between a curse of level 41 and one of level 51.)

[Oraticus]

Thanks for the info. I'm guessing a staff of remove curse is in the same camp as the equivalent scroll.

I hope the next patch makes this a little more transparent. Angband is one of those games where you generally get all the information you need to make a sensible decision, so this feels really off when you get "useless" info like curse power that you can't tie to anything tangible.

[Sky]

Angband is all about learning the hard way.