In Brogue, Weapons, Armour and Rings can be generated cursed. If you equip a cursed item, you will recieve a message:
- For Weapons, the message will say "You wince as your grip involuntarily tightens around your <item>"
- For Armour, the message will say "Your <item> constricts around you painfully."
- For Rings, the message will say "Your <item> tightens around your finger painfully".
You cannot then remove the item until you have uncursed it.
Any item which is generated with a negative enchantment bonus will also be cursed. The chance for an item in one of these three classes being generated with a negative bonus is 20%. Other items are never cursed. The two properties are separate, however; uncursing an item will not affect its enchantment bonus (although enchanting it will remove the curse, as this is a side effect of Scrolls of Enchantment). Likewise, items that are corroded into a negative enchantment bonus do not become cursed.
The easiest way to avoid equipping cursed items is to soft-ID them with a Potion of Detect Magic. Cursed equipment will show a hollow, red sigil. Note that on other item types, such as Staves, this sigil has a somewhat different meaning, so don't throw away everything that shows up red. A Scroll of Identify will also reveal whether an item is cursed, but these are too rare to use on every suspect item.
Cursed armour and weapons may bear a negative runic effect. This is a fixed 33% chance, no matter how heavy the item is.
Negating a weapon, armor, or ring will uncurse it, remove any runic, and set its enchantment to +0.
If you do equip a cursed item, there are several ways of removing the curse:
- A Scroll of Remove Curse is the most desirable option. It will uncurse everything that you are carrying or have equipped.
- Scrolls of Protect Armour and Scrolls of Protect Weapon will uncurse your equipped armour/weapon in addition to protecting it. This is slightly less desirable in that you have now used up a scroll protecting something that you probably don't want to use, but still well worth doing.
- A Scroll of Enchantment will uncurse any item that it is used on. This is the last resort, because it involves wasting a valuable enchant on an item that you won't want to use (the best case scenario is that you now have some +0 Plate Armour, which might be worthwhile, but in most cases the item is not going to be endgame material). Unless the item is putting you in significant danger, it is generally worth trying to find one of the other uncursing scrolls.
Nothing in Brogue will destroy equipped items, so these are your only options for getting rid of the item.
Negatively enchanted rings will have an effect that is roughly opposite what they normally do - these can be particularly dangerous.