cursed item which you can not remove _for a while_

[tangar]

Temp curse

In old times it was great to find a cursed ring of teleportation and won't be able to remove it, but try to survive with it by getting to town's temple to buy remove curse scroll..

But new V curse system is better, of course; perma-curse system where you couldn't remove cursed items was too hardcore.

But. Now it's a bit lack of old flavour. Player just wear all items, without any thinking; which become a bit boring approach.

Suggestion
Add HEAVY_STUCK item flag which will work this way:

if you wear items with this flag - you can not remove it for a certain amount of turns, eg X+YdZ turns.

Then if we will assign such flag to, for example, ring/amul of teleportation (and will make teleport chance on these as it was in old times) with 20+5d30 cursed-turns - a player will have a pretty funny situation - while he has to survive for a certain time under this conditions. When the time of curse ends - you are free to remove this item.

The same thing to other items - make non-removable curse not permanent, but temporary. Then we could put back old stuff:

Weapon of Morgul
Crowns of Sickliness
Helms/Crowns of stat reducing
Cloak of Irritation
Cloaks of Vulnerability
Gauntlets of Weakness
Gauntlets of Clumsiness
Boots of Noise
Boots of Slowness
Boots of Annoyance

Each type of objects should have a different amount of turns to lift a curse (armours is highers, rings of teleportation - lowest).

This will add a certain amount of additional funny adventures; at the same time won't make curses too annoying (when player had too thin chances to survive after occasionally wearing certain cursed item).

[Monkey Face]

Unless you're specifically trying for a low turncount, won't this just encourage people to WoR and wait the turn count out in town?

[tangar]

Originally Posted by Monkey Face

Unless you're specifically trying for a low turncount, won't this just encourage people to WoR and wait the turn count out in town?

Good point, thanks! Let's continue brainstorm

I suppose the solution to WoR could be: make this curse wear off only at level (or deeper) when you found this item. So if you will go to town while wearing cursed ring - curse won't get lifted there, you have to stay at the level.

Also some side notes:
1) WoR scroll also cost gold
2) It's not only turncount, but also hunger
3) For ironman there is no WoR

[Derakon]

There was some discussion at some point in this forum's long history about curses that could only be dispelled by performing some task, e.g. "increase your max depth by 5" or "kill 10 ghosts". That would block the "just wait it out" solution.

The problem with curses remains how they impact the rest of the game. Sticky curses were removed because they made ID-by-use untenable. Losing access to an equipment slot is a really nasty downside. It's most noticeably punishing when a melee-reliant character is stuck with a poor-performing weapon glued to their hands, but also imagine e.g. getting a pair of cursed boots stuck to your feet when your current boots are your only source of Free Action. That might not be an issue at 500' but it sure becomes one if you can't get the cursed boots off by 1500'...

I get that cursed gear can make for good player stories. I loved that aspect of them too. The trick is figuring out how to get the good stories, the impromptu "well I guess I'm doing this now" gameplay puzzles, without also having a high rate of arbitrarily ruining characters. Making curses optional and mixed-blessing fixes the character-ruining problem, but it does detract from the stories.

What if when you tried to equip a cursed item, it instead transferred the curse to your currently-equipped item in that slot? Then instead of it being "this slot is useless until you break the curse" it's "this slot has no flexibility until you break the curse".

[DavidMedley]

I don't know if completely removing sticky curses is good or not, but there's cool things that can be done without them. Wearing an un-ID'ed no tele curse killed me one time, and that was certainly interesting. Maybe the back biting curse (and other damaging ones) could wait for the next time your HP drop below 50%, or better yet have a chance to happen that increases when you are damaged... make curses strike at more interesting moments.

[DavidMedley]

Siren curse only when in los of a sleeping monster?

[DavidMedley]

What if sticky curse was a rune like anything else? It only comes up as frequently as other curses, and once you've seen it you know to avoid it.

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by DavidMedley

What if sticky curse was a rune like anything else? It only comes up as frequently as other curses, and once you've seen it you know to avoid it.

It was in the original curse rework. I assume it didn't work out well, as it is now not.

[Grotug]

I quite like Derakon's ideas. I think the nexus scramble solution worked out pretty well as a solution to the permanent stat swapping: it only lasts a short duration, but still makes for interesting outcomes because it often happens you get scrambled and teleported somewhere interesting/dangerous. My point is, you wouldn't have to have the criteria to break the curse be very punishing for it to still be interesting, (5 dungeon levels might be too many; maybe 3 would be enough).

In fact, I am for any design additions to the game that would encourage @ to descend quicker. Maybe sticky curses is a good platform to allow this to happen.

Or maybe even better (at least intrinsically more logical): leveling up characters already clears other "curses" such as experience and stats, so it makes sense for leveling up a character to clear equipment curses (even sticky curses), too. Each time you level up while wearing a cursed item one of the curses (chosen at random or prompting you to choose one) would be lifted. I think that could make for a much more interesting game overall. I recently got a cursed multhued dragon scale mail on DL18 with teleport banned and HP recovery impairment, but I didn't wear it because I had an abundance of other good armor choices. But had I not had other good armors, it would have been fun to risk wearing that armor knowing that the armor would become less cursed the more character levels I gained (and I'd be able to gain levels quickly as a young character).

[archolewa]

I feel like if we want to encourage people to descend faster, sticky curses are the exact opposite of what we want.

Honestly, I think it was a good thing Angband removed sticky curses, and I don't think we should put them back. Sticky curses are only interesting in roguelikes that have a richer item identification minigame (i.e. ADOM or Nethack), because those games provide alternative means of determining their BUC (Blessed/Uncursed/Cursed) status. Llots of the gear also follows certain patterns, so that you learn to recognize rings that might be an auto-cursing Ring of Doom before putting them on. An experienced ADOM player will almost never equip something to identify it until they've figured out the BUC status. The only alternatives to equip-ID that Angband provides are very rare Scrolls of Identify Rune (too rare to really depend on finding), and jumping back to town and giving the equipment to the shop.

So, if we have sticky curses then almost everyone who isn't playing ironman will constantly recalling back to town to identify everything by selling/giving them to the stores, simply because recalling to town constantly is much less tedious than restarting my character because I got stuck with the Sticky Boots of Aggravating Teleport.

But wait, then you'll have to buy the gear back! What if it has a really good rune, so you can't afford to buy it back?

Well, then people will spend lots of time mining, or just leave the gear at the shop, after all there's always more treasure. Better to miss a pair of Boots of Free Action is than be stuck with the Sticky Boots of Aggravating Teleport.

I feel like even temporary sticky curses will too strongly dissuade equip ID. It only takes one poorly timed teleport, or one round of aggravation near a pit to kill a character, and if you keep the cursed item long enough, that one teleport or aggravation ding *will happen.* So, why wouldn't I make the *slightly* more tedious, but massively safer choice?

Currently, if I equip something and it doesn't automatically identify, I already have an interesting choice: keep it on, because it might be Free Action or a resistance, but it might be aggravate monster, so I should make sure I don't wear it in a crowded space, until I find out what the rune is. With sticky curses, things become much *less* interesting because it's just not worth the risk.