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[G-Flex]

The curse is just on their death. You can also avoid it by having another monster or a summon kill it, since the curse only affects the killer.

Luckily, the game's at least nice enough to tell you what's been cursed, and it's sometimes not even something you're wearing.

At any rate, mummies are still perfectly avoidable in most cases, so it's not a huge deal.

[Duuvian]

Just had my first stat death.
You really shouldn't put on any unidentified randart you find.
Because it may be cursed and set your intelligence to -1, rendering you unable to remove the curse.

Hmm, I wonder if a good idea would be for the game to allow you to continue to play and have the -int mentally handicap a character randomly in different ways for every -3 intelligence like a mutation or something? That would be pretty cool, and it would introduce more intelligence damaging monsters or something.

EDIT: Also, maybe intelligence could scale differently when negative.

[Mindmaker]

Just had my first stat death.
You really shouldn't put on any unidentified randart you find.
Because it may be cursed and set your intelligence to -1, rendering you unable to remove the curse.

How much int did it drain, and what was your int before you put it on (sounds like you already had some stat damage)?

It was a -6 randart I believe and I was playing a MdFi.

[Leafsnail]

I pretty much never wear randarts if I haven't either scanned them or got a remove curse scroll handy.  Just because of the sheer variety of negative effects they could have (teleportisis and random berserking as a spriggan enchanter?  Great).

[Mr.Person]

Which is, frankly, bullshit. Right now if you put on something cursed that reduces your Int below 0, there's nothing you can do to solve the problem outside of drinking a potion of brilliance or put on a +int item powerful to get it back above 0. Don't have either or they're not powerful enough? You die.

Here's an idea: If you have stats that are hideously low, don't put on random artefacts that you find on the ground.

Seriously, it's pretty rare for a single source of stat drain to bring your stat below 1 unless you're playing a Troll and your Int is 3, or something else silly like that. And if you do, act accordingly.

Stat death isn't that easy to come by. It takes a while for it to actually kick in, and it's easy enough to avoid.

A better solution would be to not generate cursed items at all. Really, what benefit do cursed items bring to the game?

An incentive not to wear-ID everything you find, especially because of items with negative modifiers.

With the crazy amount of ?oRC and ?oDC, cursed items are rarely relevant. And the only times they are relevant are when they're stat-deathing you.

If there's a crazy amount of Remove Curse and Detect Curse, then why are you complaining about it being hard to remove cursed items that lower your stats?

The problem isn't the difficulty of removing them, it's actually the opposite. They're too easy to remove and detect, so there's no challenge or fun. Optimal play is to ID every randart ring and ?oDC every randart armor and weapon. It's a no-brainer, and the Crawl devteam HATES no brainers. They either need to make curses more relevant to more players besides low-Int characters or they need to cut curses. They bring nothing to game. Using those scrolls is kind of tedious depending on your Str and how many you have to spare.

[Leafsnail]

Doesn't Ashenzari qualify as a way in which they made them more relevant?

[G-Flex]

The problem isn't the difficulty of removing them, it's actually the opposite. They're too easy to remove and detect, so there's no challenge or fun. Optimal play is to ID every randart ring and ?oDC every randart armor and weapon. It's a no-brainer, and the Crawl devteam HATES no brainers.

I don't quite agree. There have been plenty of times mid-late game when I just didn't have enough curse detection/removing scrolls on hand to handle all the artefacts and such that I found, and where my ID scrolls were valuable enough that it prevented me from just wearing the things right away. I've had times where I've had to bring artefacts back to my stash to ID/wear later, because I couldn't spare scrolls.

Also, even if remove/detect curse is common, curses still prevent you from trying on every single item you find the instant you find it. Also, mummies.

[Antioch]

Once everything burns to ashes in the hell branches and you want to clear out the tomb, it becomes a rather larger issue.....

[G-Flex]

"Clearing out the Tomb" is often a very, very, very bad idea.

[Mr.Person]

I don't quite agree. There have been plenty of times mid-late game when I just didn't have enough curse detection/removing scrolls on hand to handle all the artefacts and such that I found, and where my ID scrolls were valuable enough that it prevented me from just wearing the things right away. I've had times where I've had to bring artefacts back to my stash to ID/wear later, because I couldn't spare scrolls.

Also, even if remove/detect curse is common, curses still prevent you from trying on every single item you find the instant you find it. Also, mummies.

How? Every time I walk into Vaults, I've got 10 spare ?oCD and ?oRC each in my stash plus probably another 2 or 3 of each in my inventory. It only gets worse with time. I've walked out of Elf:7 with 20 ?oCD and ?oRC each. That's AFTER using as many as I needed. I've ran out ?oID before, yes, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking solely about curses in general.

I will accept that there's other ways to make curses relevant, but mummies and Ashenzari are not even close to enough. A 3-runer taking Okie or Nemelex will meet an absurdly small number of mummies and of course doesn't care about Ashenzari. So the only curses are items generated cursed and the 3 items that will be cursed by ?oCW, ?oCA, and ?oCJ. Of those curses, the ? based curses are irrelevant. The generated cursed items are only relevant if they post a danger, which basically means =oHunger and -stat stuff if it causes stat death. That's not a whole lot of cursed stuff. Anything else you can easily either head back to your stash to remove or wait til another ?oRC generates. Or if it's still the early game, then "oInaccuracy is relevant. Everything else, it's no big deal.

Once everything burns to ashes in the hell branches and you want to clear out the tomb, it becomes a rather larger issue.....

Why the fuck are you carring scrolls into Gehenna? Or any Hell, for that matter? Or here's a better idea, do Tomb first. And in any case, it only takes a single ?oRC to get rid of all the curses, so just walk into Tomb with your best equipment on and uncurse only when you leave.

[G-Flex]

Why the fuck are you carring scrolls into Gehenna? Or any Hell, for that matter? Or here's a better idea, do Tomb first. And in any case, it only takes a single ?oRC to get rid of all the curses, so just walk into Tomb with your best equipment on and uncurse only when you leave.

Doing Tomb in general tends to be a bad idea. Most characters simply can't handle all the torment and smiting(?) and mummy cursing, and the place doesn't even have food or much of any loot to speak of except at the bottom. I don't recommend it for any character unless it's a character who has very reliable ways to avoid curses and/or resists torment. Undead characters, characters worshipping Kiku, and DS with rTorment are good options.

[Soadreqm]

I think you need to quit bitching. If you think it's a huge issue, convert to Ashenzari for the free curse detection.

[Mr.Person]

I think you need to quit bitching. If you think it's a huge issue, convert to Ashenzari for the free curse detection.

That doesn't solve the "-Int is impossible to cure generally" problem. There's also the issue that Ashenzari really, really sucks if you're not a spellcaster.

Doing Tomb in general tends to be a bad idea. Most characters simply can't handle all the torment and smiting(?) and mummy cursing, and the place doesn't even have food or much of any loot to speak of except at the bottom. I don't recommend it for any character unless it's a character who has very reliable ways to avoid curses and/or resists torment. Undead characters, characters worshipping Kiku, and DS with rTorment are good options.

Very, very true. I took a character who killed The Royal Jelly with, maybe, 50 damage. Died in Tomb. Took a character with rN++ and like 60 combined SH and EV. Died in Tomb. I am not going to Tomb. Never again.

[G-Flex]

I think you need to quit bitching. If you think it's a huge issue, convert to Ashenzari for the free curse detection.

That doesn't solve the "-Int is impossible to cure generally" problem. There's also the issue that Ashenzari really, really sucks if you're not a spellcaster.

"Spellcasters" consist of most Crawl characters, most being at least hybrids. It's okay for a god to not be a good choice for some characters.

Ashenzari was pretty neat on my last SpEn. When you're being sneaky like that, the detection/mapping helps.

Of course, Clarity, SInv, passive mapping, detect monsters/items/portals, the bonus XP, and skill transference are useful to pretty much everyone.

Very, very true. I took a character who killed The Royal Jelly with, maybe, 50 damage. Died in Tomb. Took a character with rN++ and like 60 combined SH and EV. Died in Tomb. I am not going to Tomb. Never again.

Yep. The curses rot you enough that you'll waste a ton of potions/jellies, and rN only protects you a bit against Torment. Now if you're undead, or something else I mentioned, it can be worthwhile.

That, or if you can figure out a way to ninja the place.

[DJ]

My SeTr found a book with Swiftness AND Boots of Running. This can't end well, but it's really fun while it lasts. Anyway, I found a shop with some interesting books, got one with Statue Form and one with Necromutation. I'm using Petrify to grind up some Earth magic, since I figure Statue Form will be easier to get.

Anyway, there's some deep water in the Hive 2 that I can't cross. From what I read this should be a wasp vault. Is it worth memorizing Flight for it? I never really used that spell, how useful is it overall?