Cursed

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It has a curse placed upon it.

Cursed items are impossible to unequip until the curse is broken, which destroys the item. Followers of Ashenzari are given the ability to curse their gear, granting them piety and skill bonuses. Ashenzari also turns cursed items into artefacts, rending them immune to further enchantment -- see Ashenzari's page for more details.

History

• Prior to 0.27, curses were not exclusive to Ashenzari. Any piece of equipment could potentially be cursed, items that generated with negative enchantments were likely to be cursed, and certain detrimental items were always cursed. Some artefacts could also curse themselves when equipped. Curses could be removed by reading a scroll of remove curse or getting your god to bless an item; uncursing did not destroy items, and Ashenzari did not make cursed items artefacts.
• Prior to 0.24, weapons of holy wrath could never be cursed under any circumstances.
• Prior to 0.20, miscast effects from the Charms and Hexes schools of magic could sometimes curse your items.
• Prior to 0.19, the Curse card could curse one or more items in your inventory.
• Prior to 0.18, scrolls of enchant armour and enchant weapon would also remove the item's curse.
• Prior to 0.17, regular mummies and Menkaure had death curses that could curse your equipment.
• Prior to 0.14, curse scrolls would randomly generate throughout the dungeon. Also, cursed gloves and cloaks would prevent you from changing your rings and body armour, respectively.
• Prior to 0.12, the player character was unable to butcher corpses with cursed blunt weapons.
• Prior to 0.11, you could read a scroll of detect curse to examine your inventory for cursed items, just like the obsolete spell.
• Prior to 0.6, (and the removal of the Divinations school of magic), the Detect Curse spell allowed you to determine the cursed or uncursed status of all items in your inventory without any personal risk. This update also removed the Remove Curse spell, which uncursed any equipped items.