Curses: An Odyssey of Information Gathering

[DeepWebAssassin]

Hello!

I'd like to detail my recent experience with the new curse system.

So, I've come back after a pretty short (2-ish month?) break, which meant in the meantime I wasn't reading the daily updates posted in the discord while I was away. A rookie move, I would soon find out.

Anyways, I had the misfortune of being cursed by an NPC while leveling up my low-epics character. What followed was one of the most obnoxious series of events I've ever faced on nwn. A journey so unfun that I was actually inspired to make a feedback post about it. Here is what happened:

1 - I waded through a dungeon where every third enemy was casting bestow curse on me, so eventually I got slapped with one.
2 - I noticed it was some strange thing I'd never heard of and was seeing yellow text telling me how sick I was, so I figured there was a new curse system. So far, so good.
3 - I tried to -pray, which did nothing.
4 - I tried to use restoration, still nothing.
5 - Greater restoration. Surely that should do it, right? No?? Okay.
6 - I went and got a REMOVE CURSE scroll -- you're twisting my arm, game, but I'll do it. I'll get the right tool for the job.

Except that still didn't work. At this point, I was pretty frustrated. But it's ok, that's what we have a wiki for, right? I'll just look it up.

7- I go to the wiki, search "Curse" and get pages for "Bestow Curse", "Remove Curse", and "Curse Storm". All three of these pages are entirely useless. Bestow and Remove are just straight up pages from vanilla nwn. Curse storm is either outdated or has a different curse selection pool than bestow curse because I had one that wasn't listed there. None of them have any information on how to remove curses in modern day arelith.

8 - In desperation, I just start asking my friends OOCly. I get a mix of "huh it shouldn't be working that way" and "the only info on how this works is buried in the discord's update thread" as well as "try to get someone with caster level 30 to remove the curse with a spell, the scrolls usually don't work anymore by design."

That last one made me actually laugh out loud -- I mean, that was rough for me to take and it's when I finally gave up. I came to find out later that I might just be bugged, but the complete lack of information available to me about this new system made it impossible to tell if what I was experiencing was a bug, or just frustrating game design.

9 - I made a bug report because MAYBE I'm bugged??

10 - I used CTRL + F and searched "Curse" in the update channel, for 59 results -- most of which linked to giant posts. At that point, I decided it was truly a better use of my time to complain about it here than search for my answer. Even as I write this, I still genuinely do not know how curses work now.

In the end, nobody was really able to tell me if I was still cursed or not. I still log in 2 days later and get notified that I'm cursed even though it seems like I'm not. Apparently I was at very least 100% supposed to get some kind of feedback when I tried removing curses but I didn't, and there was no way for me to know I was supposed to get feedback because it seems like the only source of information about this new system is somewhere in a discord update thread, in a 2-month window.

(if someone says "FOIG" its going to be my villain origin story)

[DeepWebAssassin]

Right after I posted this, someone informed me that you actually have to search "Curses" on the wiki instead of "Curse" because the page doesn't appear to be searchable -- you have to get directed straight to it or it won't appear.

I'm going to set aside how hilarious that is for a second and say that the page has 2 sentences on it, and links to a separate GOOGLE DOC SPREADSHEET which leads me to my next point:

Why are these becoming the norm now? Not every system needs to be so complex that it has its own separate google doc spreadsheet.

Want to know how much damage a cavalier charge does? Well, the in-game feat description is incredibly wrong. We have a spreadsheet for that with multiple tabs.

Play a Harbinger? Spreadsheet. Invoker? Both subclasses have a separate spreadsheet.

Get cursed? Lol you're not gonna believe this kid -- it's also a spreadsheet.

None of which are accessible ingame, locking the information to only people who go down the correct rabbit hole (and remember to pluralize curses because it literally does not show up on a search unless you do.) I also am not a fan of game design that requires you to tab out of a game and open a non-game window to know what's going on with your character.

[Rubricae]

I'll speak with Iceborn about getting the wiki page more properly formatted as to include all of the current curse information.

Addendum - I meant to also include the other pages that only have spreadsheet links. Thank you for bringing this up either way, as it does make it a bit more tedious to find some pretty crucial information.

Addendum II - As far as I know, lesser & greater curses are supposed to be cured by both Restoration and Remove Curse. If not RC, at least Resto. Lesser Restoration only works for non-greater curses. I may be incorrect as they've gone through a few changes, I will attempt to get this clarified and the actual answer added to the wiki pages sooner rather than later.

I'm very sorry you've been going through all this hassle trying to figure it out. From what I recall none of this was FOIG, as all the information is supposed to still be on the public document.

Addendum III - I'll also talk with whoever necessary about adding an in-game book / guide regarding the curse system, for those that prefer in-game information to be sourced in-game.

[Kythana]

Why are these becoming the norm now? Not every system needs to be so complex that it has its own separate google doc spreadsheet.

100% agreed. When new monk was being tested on the PGCC, you needed three different documents open at the same time to figure out what was going on.

It's a really unhealthy modern design where the thought is: complexity = well designed class.

No, it should be intuitive and easy to understand, but have a higher curve for mastery.

I'll also add that I absolutely despise new spells being added that just require a new consumable to carry around. More inventory bloat and niche cases requiring specific spells to counter is so painfully unfun.