Dark Knight cursed weapon is busted now

[ivindel]

The 'new' dark knight's curse weapon is kinda useless now in my opinion for the following reasons:
- the level of the cursed 'forever' weapon is stuck at the level as when you first used the spell to register your soul. My experience: I cursed the weapon at level 35 and the weapon stays at 35 with Ave dam 20. Now I am 50, the weapon is still level 35 no matter how many times I destroy it or beckon it. Ironically, I fed the weapon with a slain player character once and the weapon level dropped to 30, with Ave dam 22. I sacced it and beckon, it went back to level 35 Ave dam 20. Shouldn't the weapon retain permanent 22 Ave dam? It's kinda stupid if all the effort put into enhancing it is just gone without retention, and it isn't even easy to get kills to begin with.
- the cursed weapon requires weapon freeing to remove from hand, so why would I use an inferior weapon with only Ave dam 20, when I can easily obtain a simple rare weapon at level 50 that has higher Ave dam. This just kills any reason why I should even use the cursed weapon.

[Davairus]

Losing stacks that way seems like a bug. I fixed that.

[ivindel]

Somehow, I still feel that there is no incentive to using that cursed weapon still, the no_remove flag is not much use in my opinion, more of a hindrance really. And it takes kills to charge up the weapon to maybe become the same as a forged polearm, ave 27 (if you choose a polearm that is). Anyone able to share some use cases?

[BlackWidow]

The best comparison I can come up with for the DK's cursed weapon is Mourneblade as someone who carried that around for months.

Putting aside some unique benefits and downsides to Mourneblade itself, the weapon from the spell is very similar in function. It gets stronger with each kill up to a limit (Though I have yet to actually determine what that limit actually is in curse weapon's case), and is noremove (but can be removed with the weapon removal spell).

Cursed weapons automatically have their weight reduced to 0 or practically 0, which means they're poor one-handed options. I've used the kobold's rusty pickaxe from Tenebria as a jotun's cursed weapon; it became an oversized (one-handed for the character) axe made of iron with 20 avg before any kills were actually applied.

The old halberd from Thalos Ruins will explode whenever you try to use curse weapon forever on it, so presumably wild weapons are blocked. I've successfully used the steel poleaxe with red trim from Gasteride (orderly weapon) as a cursed weapon before though.

I think the main considerations for a cursed weapon are what weapon type you want to use, whether you want a specific material (e.g. iron to strike at elf vulns), and possibly the specific damage type. Piercing is nice against dragon armor hoarders or for fighting dragons, slashing can help against illithids, and bashing is good for gnomes or that Titanium Tenor freak who might be giving you trouble.

[ivindel]

@BlackWidow, thanks for sharing the experience you had with curse weapon, really insightful. Just wondering about the steel poleaxe you cursed, did it actually become an average 20 weapon? or retained its average 24?

[ivindel]

I saw the change in the helpfile for "curse weapon". Does this mean that dark knight's special curse weapon is gone for good?

*edit* scratch the above, I noticed that there is a new spell called bind weapon.

[Mr. Forgotten]

Object 'iklwa spiked' is type weapon, material iron.
Extra_flags: anti_good anti_neutral.
Made to be wielded.
Weight is 9 lbs, value is 3000, level is 15.
Weapon type is polearm.
Inflicts 3 to 24 degrees of pierce (average 13).
Two-handed weapon.

When Jotuns had a pierce vuln, this was my favorite since it hit Elves and ns, but now I'll have to rethink because of the changes.

[Davairus]

What changes are those? All I did was make it a separate spell.

[Kornhole]

I beleive Mr. Forgotten was referring to changes to Jotun Vuln, now that weapon will not hit both races.

[Mr. Forgotten]

Yeah, I thought what I said was pretty clear, but Kornhole is right.

[Davairus]

Oh ok I just didnt realize you were calling back to a change that is literally over a year old.

[BlackWidow]

In response to this general thread...

I didn't actually identify my poleaxe after cursing it so I don't know what happened after I did that.

noremove *can* be an advantage sometimes, though when a DK can simply beckon the cursed weapon back into their hand(s) this mainly involves disarmament in combat after being dirted/blinded.

I don't know if berserkers can actually destroy a cursed weapon, though I hear they *can* destroy druidic staff weapons. Just something to keep in mind/experiment around with/etc.

The codex can be helpful for coming up with ideas. Here are some items I feel are worth mentioning:

a wooden spear

Object 'wooden spear' is type weapon, material wood.
Extra_flags: anti_good.
Made to be wielded.
Weight is 30 lbs, value is 10000, level is 40.
Weapon type is spear.
Inflicts 13 to 26 degrees of thrust (average 19).
Two-handed weapon.
Affects damroll by 3.
Affects hitroll by 3.
Affects intelligence by -1.

This is from Shadun Dalghul, on one of the balrogs. It hits the storm giant wood vulnerability and it can be used like a polearm to charge at an opponent with a two-handed weapon. As a spear, it is also good against jotuns and not a weapon they can use effectively.

a tepoztopilli
Object 'tepoztopilli spear' is type weapon, material obsidian.
Extra_flags: none.
Made to be wielded.
Weight is 20 lbs, value is 4580, level is 45.
Weapon type is spear.
Inflicts 4 to 32 degrees of pierce (average 18).

Coming from the new area, this weapon more directly hits the jotun vulnerability that came out this patch. It could be used as an offhand weapon after being cursed because it will become practically weightless. It also has another potential use which I won't reveal...

a short-handled shovel
Object 'short handled shovel' is type weapon, material steel.
Extra_flags: none.
Made to be wielded.
Weight is 2 lbs, value is 10, level is 8.
Weapon type is polearm.
Inflicts 4 to 20 degrees of smash (average 12).
Two-handed weapon.
Affects hitroll by 1.
Affects damroll by 1.

From the Mausoleum in Seringale, this weapon is a blunt polearm which is easily accessed (the codex also lists the lion-crested polehammer for some reason but that's obviously not an option for DKs). If somebody is rampaging in an unstoppable fashion in Titanium Tenor this could be the weapon that puts them down.

a spiked wooden maul of judgment
Object 'maul judgment wooden spiked' is type weapon, material wood.
Extra_flags: none.
Made to be wielded.
Weight is 27 lbs, value is 3300, level is 40.
Weapon type is mace.
Inflicts 6 to 36 degrees of smash (average 21).
Two-handed weapon.
Affects damroll by 4.
Affects hitroll by 2.

Although this weapon from Gasteride would mainly be great for role-playing as a Justice DK, it *does* both have blunt damage and wooden material.