Curse items

Curse items is one of the most despicable monster spells in NetHack. It can be cast by monsters such as liches, or encountered in other ways. It will unbless or curse a number of your inventory items, which can reduce their effects or make them dangerous and difficult to remove.

The spell will normally affect six random items in your inventory if it succeeds; blessed items will become uncursed and uncursed items will become cursed. If you have half spell damage or magic resistance, only three items will be affected; if you have both, only two will be affected.

Magicbane will absorb the curse harmlessly 95% of the time if wielded, protecting all of your items. Intelligent artifacts will individually resist the curse 80% of the time.

While containers can themselves be cursed by this spell, their contents can not. Because a bag of holding becomes much heavier if cursed, it is common for players to carry some means of uncursing a bag of holding outside of the bag itself, such as in a non-magical greased bag or oilskin sack. Good items for uncursing a bag of holding include a blessed scroll of remove curse, potion of holy water, or a wand of cancellation.

In order to minimize the negative effects of this spell, it may be worthwhile to bless items in main inventory that are not intrinsically improved by being blessed (such as armor). Another tactic involves filling up inventory slots with individual rocks or gems, each given a different name so that they will not stack together. Since the cursing effect randomly chooses items from inventory, this reduces the chance that a valuable item will be hit.

Non-spell sources

• One of the possible negative effects of praying is a malignant aura.
• Once the Wizard of Yendor is dead or the invocation has been performed, various effects will occur at random intervals. One of these effects will curse your items.
• Sitting on a throne with non-positive Luck can produce a curse effect.
• Failing to read a spellbook can theoretically result in a malignant aura, but this cannot actually happen in vanilla 3.4.3 because no spellbooks are difficult enough.

Messages

"A malignant aura surrounds you. You feel as if you need some help."

Some random inventory items were cursed.

"You feel a malignant aura surround the magic-absorbing blade."

Magicbane, when wielded, has a 95% chance of harmlessly absorbing the curse, producing no ill effects.