This is a page about a property of items in ADOM. For other uses, see Cursed.
Being cursed is a property of items that generally confers a significant penalty on the general function of that item. Any item has a 10% chance to be generated cursed. Cursing is almost an universally negative effect, and it is generally desirable to remove cursing of useful items as soon as feasible; there are a few items, however, (particularly potions of invisibility) that have very desirable effects while cursed. Equipped cursed items cannot be removed directly (exception: those in the missile slot), but there are ways of removing cursed gear. Items can be cursed by dipping them into unholy water, spells cast by certain monsters, such as green hags, or acts of divine malevolence.
- Cursed gear cannot be removed without applying special means, such as using a scroll of uncursing.
- A PC with a cursed melee weapon cannot voluntarily unequip it, but they can be disarmed.
- All cursed items are more likely to be damaged by inventory destruction.
- Cursed weapons have a 50% damage penalty against undead and daemons. This is on top of any other damage-increasing modifiers, such as critical hits and slaying.
- Most items with effects of a magical nature will often behave in a way that is contrary to their original purpose, particularly in the case of scrolls and potions. Cursed potions of invisibility will blind the PC (or opponents if thrown); potions of strength will reduce Strength instead of increasing it; cursed scrolls of corruption removal will cause corruption, etc. Other items will simply have a much weaker effect than uncursed or blessed status — cursed potions of extra healing heal a negligible amount, for example.
- Cursed food is more likely to rot, has a 50% lower satiation yield, and may produce some negative effects on normally safe food.
- An exploit involving a cursed scroll of repair was usable to bless stacks of items too large to be dipped in a single potion of holy water. This was fixed in 1.2.0 Prerelease 11.[1]
- In addition to being unable to remove the cursed item, various items restrict other inventory slots:
- Wearing cursed gauntlets prevents the PC from changing their rings.
- Wearing a cursed girdle prevents the PC from unequipping their armor.
- Wearing a cursed weapon prevents the PC from removing their gauntlets, and subsequently their rings. (Due to a bug[2], cursed shields do allow the removal of gloves.)