The Tavern

Is it a rule of nature that every magic leather armour found on D:1 and D:2 is worthless and cursed? I keep trying them on, hoping against hope to actually find a nice piece of leather eventually. So far, no dice.

PS: I play trunk.

The chance for them to be cursed is really really high, but not 100%. Good ones do happen.

but, why?

What? This isn't even remotely true. They have the same chance to be cursed there as everywhere else, i.e. not enough to really matter. Magic items are often crappy but there's nothing special about the early game that makes them more likely to be crappy there.

He meant that glowing/runed items have a really high chance to be cursed now. Which they do, thanks to every cursed item having a chance to be glowing/runed, and items with egos or high enchantment being fairly rare.

Seems like any glowing/runed/etc. items in the first few dungeon levels = cursed junk; then there is a massive drop-off where you never see a cursed item again, until late dungeon.

Don't know if this is clustering illusion or whatever, but assuming it is true... Then, well, that *is* the only point in the game where things being cursed kind of matter outside of Ash worship, and thus where taking a bit of a gamble to try on possibly better-than-average stuff with risk of curse is something like an actual decision. (Also, just +1 or +2 extra AC is very nice early on, doesn't have to be a good ego to be worth it.) It doesn't matter *a lot* either way, of course, since curses don't usually mean much even early on. But they mean even less later. So it would make sense for there to be a disparity like this, whether that disparity actually exists and/or was intentionally put in place at some point.

Remove Curse scrolls are (usually) so common, trying on cursed gear is generally only a trivial annoyance. Cursed weapons can bone you depending on your build however, so I usually wait until I have the scroll ID'd or am reasonably sure that stack of 5+ that didnt seem to have any effect is what I need.

It is highly aggravating tho, if you are playing a build that relies heavily on good melee output, to consistently find cursed/unbranded weapons in the early game. It makes the game tedious (tho it can be a fun challenge sometimes if you are really getting shafted and you can barely survive). I rank this behavior right up there with Okawaru gifting items of 'I hate you and I want you to fucking die.'

Not sure tho if its just a clustering illusion or not. I think I find less branded weapons than in some earlier versions, but I do still find them and not everything is cursed. Same goes for ego'd leather armors.