The Tavern

Past the (very) early game 'cursed' items are rare enough and 'scrolls of remove curse' are common enough to make being cursed completely trivial. Except for the rare case of a good fixedArt/randArt with {Curse} attribute, in that case forcing to the player to choose to stick with the item and never switch or expend very common items and Ashenzari, whose whole core is around cursing and uncursing items.

Since curses are irrelevant past D:4 for 90% of games, I propose the following:

• Items do not spawn cursed.
• Scrolls of Remove Curse don't spawn.
• Ashenzari maintains flavour with a 'binding' mechanic.
  • From start you can 'bind' an item at any time for free. Bound items behave like current curses.
  • Unbinding items requires *** and costs significant piety. (Enough to be a non-trivial decision; Ballpark at 15-20).
• The {Curse} attribute on items is replaced with the harsher {Contam} attribute or a new {Soul Drain} attribute, which causes red-level draining on unwield (this draining source ignores resistances, like Ashenzari wrath).
  Fixed Arts Receiving the Soul Drain Attribute:
  • Sword of Zonguldrok
  • Obsidian Axe
  • Large Shield of Ignorance
  Fixed Arts Receiving Contam:
  • Robe of Folly
  • Robe of Misfortune
  Fixed Art being Removed by Change:
  • Scythe of Curses. (RIP)

How will we be annoyed without cursed rings of teleporation flinging you all over the place every ten steps?

I would rather see cursed items apply temporary mutations, where "cursed" just determines whether an item is bound to you or not.

The Broad Axe "Mumsy": +6,+4, rF+, Blurry Vision.

The Cloak of Gum: +1, rElec, Shoutitus

That would lead to a lot of annoying wielding/unwielding.

I like this idea a lot, and it makes Ash so much less annoying to use. Tying piety gain to consumable use is so frustratingly RNG dependent

I think the scythe of curses could be kept. The random cursing of your inventory isn't that bad, it's just annoying.

I like the idea of curses becoming unwield penalties. But red drain on an early character just means 0.0 skills for a short time (it's short because you die quickly).

I would definitely agree cursed status is meaningless after very early D.

Now, do cursed items add anything to the game anyway? All they serve to do is punish you for equipping floor loot sometimes. Is it really a good thing to punish players for trying on floor loot?

If you're going to get rid of curses, the first thing you do shouldn't be to screw with random unrandarts. Rather, it should be to remove equipment identification, since there would no longer be any noteworthy risk in equipping every item. This would NOT remove identification in the one place where it is actually potentially interesting (consumables), of course.

Also this reminds me that I really don't understand why shield of ignorance still has curse. Wearing a large shield is enough of a malus on its own, surely.

I would love having all equipment be automatically identified. It'd remove one of ash's tricks, but I think ash has enough tricks left over to still be worthwhile. if you really wanted to, she could be buffed in some other way.

15-20 piety to remove one bound object seems a bit high to me, but maybe I'm off. You don't really have much to spend piety on since she doesn't really have any actives except for transfering skill exp, which you probably don't need to do that often anyways. I don't have a great deal of ash experience, though.

Ash lets you Scry, which unlike skill transfer is actually a useful ability. But Scry doesn't take up a lot of piety so even if you use it liberally you still don't have to worry about piety, I find.