Cursed Pixel Dungeon

Overview[]

Cursed Pixel Dungeon is a mod of Powered PD first released in July 4th, 2019 by reddit user SmuJamesB and it was constantly being updated in its discord server. After several months of very active development, the mod is experiencing a slowdown in that regard. Nevertheless, if you want its latest beta version it is recommended to enter that server and have a look in the "Cursed-apks" section.

Cursed PD has followed a peculiar evolution. Its version 0.2.0 was based on Shattered PD v.0.7.3b and Cursed PD's subsequent beta versions followed Shattered PD's updates very closely, and thus as of July of 2020 Cursed PD's beta version 0.3.9 was based on v.0.8.0. After that, SmuJamesB decided to port his mod to his second project, Powered Pixel Dungeon (formerly known as Yet Another Shattered Dungeon). Hence, present Cursed PD has almost nothing to do with its older versions which could be considered as small mods of Shattered PD; now It aspires to be a full-fledged roguelite game with a strong presence of lore and completely distinct mechanics from what's usual to spot in the Pixel Dungeon modding panorama.

For details about the additions and changes up to version 0.7.3 of Shattered PD you can visit this link and up to version 0.8.0 this link. This wiki page describes almost exclusively Cursed PD's public version 0.2.0, and just includes at the end of each section a few summarizing remarks about the more recent beta versions.

General[]

Although the game is not in principle easier than Shattered PD, it is much more generous. In some parts it is even more difficult than Shattered PD, but its generosity balances things in favor of the player.

Hero classes start with advantages in comparison to Shattered PD:

They start with all containers already in the inventory, including a new food container (in the public version it shares texture with the Velvet Pouch in the inventory window, which is a visual bug).
Hero is now resistant to the Grim enchantment, so Animated Statues with it are less annoying.
Strength requirements are reduced by two across the board aside from thrown weapons, but in exchange these requirements are no longer affected by upgrades.
Wands must now get equipped to be used, similarly to Yet Another PD, but in exchange the player has also 4 misc. slots available instead of the standard two.
The inventory has now 35 slots in the backpack and in each container.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions these features are more or less retained, but the food container is missing from some of them.]

Beginning area - Completing the Game[]

All heroes spawn on depth 0, which is an empty area without anything to do there, other than talk to the Old Wandmaker NPC that offers the Water Challenge. Players should not accept this challenge at the beginning of the run, as the hero at level 1 will get insta-killed in the first encounter with any of the Water challenge enemies. Nevertheless, if the player accepts it by mistake in the beginning of the run, this is easily corrected by immediately ascending the stairs of depth 31, the first depth of the Water challenge, which will lead the hero back to depth 0.

To get to the familiar depth 1 of Sewers the hero has to descend from the staircase at the center of the depth. Note also that that the staircase leading to the surface and the "Happy End" badge is located on depth 0, so in Cursed PD the hero can ascend anytime from depth 1 of the Sewers, but he/she will just get to the beginning area with the Old Wandmaker. Lastly, after the hero obtains the Amulet of Yendor, there is no option to "End the Game" in it, and if the player selects "Return", the hero will be teleported back to depth 0, from where he/she can ascend the stairs leading to the surface and end the game this way. In other words in the public version of Cursed PD the only way to End the Game is by also obtaining the Happy End badge.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions a beginning area on depth 0 has been generally retained but depending on the specific version the NPCs encountered on this depth can be totally different, and even the option of challenges is not available in all of them. There might be also a shop on depth 0 or depth 1 of the Sewers. The stairs leading down to the Sewers and up to the surface is a stable feature in all of them though.]

Challenges[]

Exisitng from Original PD[]

The public version does not offer familiar challenges like Pharmacophobia etc. at all, even after the player completes the game. In contrast, they are available in some of the subsequent beta versions, along with a few new challenges, (Collapse / Corrosion / Rust, depending on the specific beta version).

Mod-specific[]

The Water challenge is offered by the Old Wandmaker on depth 0 already from the beginning of the run, but heroes should not try it before they are ready complete the game with the Amulet, as the enemies of the Water Challenge will insta-kill them them at the beginning of the run. But even in the end of the run, the regular enemies of the Water challenge are still rather difficult to handle.

The Old Wandmaker is also mentioning the Air, Earth and Fire challenges, which have been partially added in subsequent beta versions, but in the public version only the Water challenge is available. Accepting the Water challenge gets the hero to depth 31, where he/she has to fight with Goos (the chapter boss type, not the regular enemies of Demon Halls), Water Elementals, Water Larvae and Magical Crabs. Water Elementals divide on hit and heal over water, in addition to chilling the hero. Water Larvae do immense damage, but have very low max HP. Magical Crabs shoot freezing bolts at the hero and flee like Scorpions. When the hero reaches depth 35, he/she will get to a depth with a boss named "Nightmare" that zaps the hero with lightning bolts and with each hit against him releases Darkness Gas around the hero, gets Terrified and runs away, and also spawns constantly wraith-look-alikes (they are not evasive at all and get easily hit by melee attacks, but are rather strong opponents, especially when attacking in groups, and are also resistant to magic), a situation which is generally challenging. After the Nightmare gets defeated he drops the Water Amulet Gem, that when Cursed PD is fully completed it will be getting embedded in the Amulet along with the other three challenge gems, but in the public version it is just a token showing that the player has also completed the Water challenge (it can be embedded to the Amulet with the Amulet's "No text found" second option, but this has no practical purpose for the public version). Note that there are two ways out of the Water challenge: a) on foot by going back to depth 31 and ascending the stairs leading up and back to depth 0, or b) by using the Return option of the Amulet to get back to depth 0 automatically.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions more mod-specific challenges and alternative chapters have been added to Cursed PD (the availability of them depends on the specific version though, and in some versions mod-specific challenges are not even available in the first place), but in the public version only the Water Challenge described above is available.]

Curses[]

See also: Curses in Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Some curses have become almost blessings in the public version, and most of them have become lighter in their negative effects:

Armor Curses[]

Anti Entropy freezes enemies for longer, and as the Dew Vial can now pour water, its burning effect can be less dangerous.
Bulk reduces all incoming damage by 25%.
Corrosion activates more often (now 50% chance).
Displacement gives 5 turns of invisibility upon teleportation.
Metabolism heals 5% of max HP instead of dealing 4 damage.
Stench gives 5 turns of gas immunity (not enough to stay safe in the gas area of effect, but enough to run away to a safe spot).
Multiplicity and Overgrowth have not been changed yet.

Weapon Curses[]

Annoying amoks enemies and procs more often.
Displacing puts the enemies it teleports to sleep.
Fragile inflicts paralysis based on the amount of degradation.
Friendly charms enemies more than the hero, rather than vice versa.
Polarized deals 0 or 2.2x damage.
Sacrificial increases damage based on HP taken.
Wayward has not been changed yet.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions curses might have only their familiar negative effects which are described with details in the link of Shattered PD above. The existence of positive effects in curses or not depends on the specific version.]

Enchantments and Glyphs[]

The enchantments of the public version are those of Shattered PD v.0.7.3 with some additions and tweaks:

New rare enchantment: Swift. This enchantment has a chance of not consuming a turn on use.
New uncommon Enchantment: Precise. This is currently unavailable due to causing major bugs, but will return.
Grim enchantment chance to proc now depends directly on damage (the formula is half the damage dealt out of enemy HP).
Vampiric enchantment has been replaced by the Shielding enchantment, which adds shielding instead of HP (proc chance is higher).

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions the weapon enchantments and armor glyphs might be the same with Shattered PD. Them being differentiated or not depends on the specific version.]

Enemies: regular, Chapter bosses and Yog-Dzewa[]

Familiar enemies

Most probably it is already obvious, but let it be noted anyway that because the public version is based on Shattered PD v.0.7.3 none of the recently added enemies in Shattered PD (Snakes, Necromancers, DM-100s, Demon Spawners etc.) exist in this version, while enemies and bosses that had their behaviors changed recently in Shattered PD retain their old behaviors in the public version of Cursed PD.
As the upgrading of items is more easy because of the plenty scrolls of Upgrade, boss' HP has been buffed: Goo has 150 HP, Tengu has 240, DM-300 has 800, Dwarf King has 800 as well and Yog-Dzewa has 1,500 (instead of 300!).
DM-300 also now resists damage above 20, making good weapons somewhat useless against it
Dwarf King has a larger arena, but skeletons now do damage scaling with number spawned.
Also the regular enemies' HP has been buffed: the Sewers enemies are unchanged, but Prison enemies have 50% more HP, Caves enemies 75% more, and City and Demon Halls Enemies have double HP. All enemies also do *1.5 more damage. This makes the game a lot harder and so rings along with a good armor are rather necessary, at least from the Caves and on.
Evil Eye beams can now destroy all terrain, including active trap tiles, staircases etc. This means that a ladder leading upstairs or a staircase leading doewnstairs can disappear after an Evil Eye's attack (this bug has been fixed in subsequent betas, but still exists in the public version). Nevertheless, this bug is not that serious and is only visual, because ascension/descension is still possible from the tile that used to have the ladder/staircase, the player will just have to figure out by the arrow in the hero's avatar the location of the former ladder/staircase, get the hero on that tile and ascend/descend.

New enemies

Water Challenge: Water Elementals divide on hit and heal over water, in addition to chilling the hero. Water Larvae do immense damage, but have very low max HP. Magical Crabs shoot freezing bolts at the hero and flee like Scorpions.

[Note: The subsequent beta versions have followed closely Shattered PD's updates, and as a result in the most recent beta (as of July of 2020), all the current enemies of Shattered PD with their current behaviors exist also in it. Which new enemy types or behaviors will be existing or not depends on the specific version.]

Hero Classes[]

The hero classes are the familiar ones from Shattered PD and the Mage, Rogue and Huntress get unlocked also in the familiar way (use 2 scrolls of Upgrade / kill enemies with surprise attacks / kill enemies with ranged attacks), but there is also one new class added, the Priestess.

Her description in the mod's hero selection screen is: "The Priestess is a master of leadership and taming animals. She starts with a Poison Dragon Crystal. Defeat 20 enemies with the help of allies in 1 run to unlock her." Her subclasses are described as: "The Necromancer has a deep connection with evil magic, causing wraiths to not attack her. In addition, she has a chance to resurrect the souls of mobs she kills as wraiths. The Medic charges her equipped dragon crystals when attacking at melee. Additionally, when allies attack an enemy, the enemy focuses their attention on the ally, and not the hero. The Medic can also upgrade her Inscribed Knife to +25"

The Warrior's specific starting items are a level +1 Worn Shortsword and a level +1 Leather armor with a Broken Seal already attached to it, and also 3 throwing stones. His HP also starts at 24 (up from 20), scaling at 6 per level up (up from 5 originally, intended to compensate for the ring of Tenacity removal, which was also a Warrior's starting item in previous versions).
The Mage's specific starting items are a level +1 Staff of Magic Missile and a level 0 Cloth armor.
The Rogue's specific starting items are a level +1 Dagger, a level 0 Cloth Armor, 3 throwing knives, and a Cloak of Shadows.
The Huntress' specific starting items are a pair of level +1 Studded Gloves, a level 0 Cloth armor and a level +1 Spirit Bow.
The Priestess' specific starting items are alevel +1 Inscribed Knife, a level 0 Cloth armor and a level +1 Poison Dragon Crystal. She has also potions of Healing preidentified, so hers will already have their distinguishing symbol from the beginning.

In the public version the subclasses of the already existing from before classes are the same with Shattered PD. All hero classes also have as starting items all the game's containers (Food Container, Magical Holster, Potion Bandolier, Scroll Holder, Velvet Pouch) a Food Ration, 3 potions of Healing and 1 potion of Purity (in the beginning the potions are not identified, but you will figure out which is which by their number).

Huntress' changes[]

Spirit Bow can now be upgraded.
Scaling of Bow depends on hero level.
Bow starts at +1.
Huntress starts with 16 HP, scaling at 4 per level, to compensate.
Huntress' mind vision range is increased to 5.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions these five hero classes have been kept, but their starting equipment and stats might be different, based on the specific version. Another important difference in more recent betas is that all classes have 5 different subclass options, which in many cases means that they share "traditional" subclasses of the other classes or the original subclasses of the Priestess (for example the Mage has the extra option of becoming a Warden, and the Warrior of becoming a Warlock) but also the new subclasses Brawler, Cultist, Enchanter, Paladin and Valkyrie have been added and can be shared as well.

Lastly, also in more recent beta versions the hero's stats improve only by the player assigning Skill Points to a skill tree, with the skills being named Attunement and Focus (wand-related), Evasion, (also affects stealth), Perception (accuracy and detection), and Power (strength), while all hero classes have also a Mana stat and can cast spells. The existence of the above features or not depends on the specific version.]

Items new or changed[]

Various Dragon Crystals have been added and they summon a dragon ally similar to the dragon pets of Sprouted PD (Earthen Dragon, Fire Dragon, Poison Dragon, Vampiric Dragon, Water Dragon). Unlike Sprouted PD the dragons don't level up by earning XP, but the crystals can be upgraded with scrolls of Upgrade, which will increase the HP and combat abilities of the dragons spawned. In order to summon the dragon, the crystal must be equipped in one of the hero's slots. After the pet dragon is defeated, the equipped crystal will have to get back to 100% charges to spawn its dragon again (the crystal is always found as loot already with 100% charges, so it can automatically release a dragon the first time). Note that when a a dragon crystal is inside a crystal chest, the item contained will be described as a ring.
On depth 1 heroes will be always finding an Alchemist's Toolkit, which is very similar to its version in Shattered PD, but in Cursed PD it can't get equipped in a slot, dropped or sold, and by just being in the inventory it is available for use after it gets charged enough.
Potions of Healing have been reworked. Now they regenerate 1/3 of the missing character's HP while granting a shield during regeneration.
Perhaps this is the most important game change: the ring of Wealth does not drop anymore as loot but a Lucky Badge with the same function is always sold for 820 gold at the depth 6 shop instead. This is an item transferred from SPecial Surprise PD and has an identical sprite but a similar while not identical function there. The Lucky Badge in Cursed PD doesn't need to be equipped, can't get upgraded, and instead of increasing generally the drop chance of loot from enemies, it has two specific effects a) a single drop from each enemy can be obtained (apart from the expected ones) often but not always, while vaults might contain an extra item as well and b) it gives a chance for a scroll of Upgrade to get generated with each enemy kill. The Lucky Badge shows the current chance for a scroll of Upgrade in its description window, and if the hero doesn't get a scroll of Upgrade, the chance increases until a scroll of upgrade is dropped by an enemy, so sooner or later a scroll of Upgrade is guaranteed to get generated. It automatically returns to the lowest possible chance after that, no matter if the hero has taken the scroll from the floor or not.
Rings scale linearly and cap at sensible values. For example, Furor caps at 4x attack speed, Might at 2x etc. Rings of the same type only stack up to the limit. Ring of Tenacity has been removed and ring of Elements caps at 50% resistance. Huntress' bow no longer benefits from the ring of Sharpshooting, and the ring of Force only benefits from up to 20 strength, so it is not affected by the ring of Might in the end-game.
Runic Blade's min damage no longer scales with upgrades.
Magical Infusion is reworked: it now upgrades tier and not level, and upgrades never erase enchantments.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions the variation in the specific features of items is chaotic. Generally the potion of Healing retains its non-fully healing and its shielding attributes (with differences in details depending on the version) and the Alchemist's Toolkit is still found on depth 1, but the Lucky Badge is heavily changed in some versions, in which it either a) is a starting item of all heroes and instead of making enemies generate more loot, it ports the hero to a special depth with Guardians, who have a chance to drop a scroll of Upgrade or any other loot or b) it can have a more moderate but consistent effect in loot generation or a more generous but incosistent effect, a feature that the player chooses in the beginning of the run. The existence of differentiated items or not depends on the specific version.]

Mechanics[]

Dew Vial:[]

It has now the "Water" function added to it, which creates water tiles and water vapours around the hero (useful in cases of burning, caustic ooze etc.). It needs at least 5 drops to do that, but its effect increases with the dew amount in the dew vial, and with a full dew vial (+20) it creates a 5x5 area of water tiles around the hero.

Tier System, Strength requirement and starting equipment:[]

Weapons are divided between 6 tiers (unlike the former standard division of 5 tiers) and the strength requirement of all the equipment has been reduced but it is now static in exchange of that (scrolls of Upgrade don't reduce the strength requirement), just like the SPecial Surprise PD's strength requirement system. So now:

Tier 1 equipment have a Strength requirement of 8 and succesive tiers increase by 2 the strength required to effectively equip the item. This means that the hero generally will be able to equip higher tier items from earlier, but the fact that upgrading doesn't lower strength requirements will make him/her unable to jump to high tier items very quickly.
Note that tier 6 items spawn rather rarely, even in Demon Halls, so highly upgrading a tier 4/5 weapon or armor after the hero gets them is the more straightforward approach for surviving from the Caves and on (especially the fight with DM-300 is very challenging for mid-game).
The Magical Infusion exotic spell (which has the former dragon crystal sprite, the yellow diamond) now increases the tier of any weapon (not armor) by one if the equipment is not tier 6, recalculating the equipment stats for the new tier. The only weapon that it can't get applied unfortunately, at least not in the public version, is the Mage's Staff, but when highly upgraded it deals decent damage with its melee hits anyway, so this is not such a problem. This means that any weapon can be powerful enough to beat most bosses if upgraded up to tier 6, but it is worth to mention that high tier weapons by nature will be stronger than artificially upgraded low tier weapons. Note that in the public version its game description is still that of Shattered PD, so it inaccurately (for Cursed PD) still describes it as upgrading and enchanting weapons and armors.

Drops:[]

High grass when trampled can now drop runestones, even rare ones like of Augmentation and Enchantment. Upgraded sandals of nature do increase the chance of getting runestones a lot.
The hero can also find as random loot exotic scrolls and potions.
For the effect of the Lucky Badge in the generation of item drops generally and scrolls of Upgrade specifically read "Items new and changed" section above.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions these mechanics of Cursed PD have more or less remained similar, but details are different depending on the version, for example the strength requirements are still generally low in comparison to other mods, but they can reach down to 6 in the gear of some versions, while in recent beta versions the player assigns skill points to skill trees and raises the hero's Strength only in this way, so the hero can have access to high tier equipment from early on.]

Wands[]

The wands of the public version of Cursed PD are those of Shattered PD v.0.7.3 and with the features they had back then, so the wand of Warding doesn't exist in the public version. Nevertheless, the wand of Living Earth was implemented from Shattered PD v.0.7.4 with all its features there. Generally wands need to get equipped in order to be available for use.

Most wands have had their scaling buffed by +1 max damage to keep up with weapons.
The wand of Blast Wave now inflicts Vertigo to enemies.

The wand of Magic Missile now scales up its damage with upgrades by +2/+5 instead of +1/+2.
The wand of Transfusion's self-shielding is reduced and now charming scales with upgrades.

[Note: In the subsequent beta versions the wands of Cursed PD have generally followed the changes in Shattered PD's wands sooner or later, but in more recent beta versions the wands of Acid, Damnation, Darkness, Flow, Life Drain, Plasma Bolt, Swarm and Thornvines have become shared with Yet Another Shattered Dungeon of the same developer (some of these wands are transferred from Yet Another PD and some other are original conceptions of the developer).]

Upgrading[]

All chapter bosses and Yog-Dzewa now drop from 2 to 4 scrolls of Upgrade with an average of 2.5. This means the hero will have obtained from 25 to 35 scrolls of Upgrade in sum by end-game without entering a challenge chapter.

Most equipments' level is capped generally to +15 but:

Mage can upgrade wands to +20 and Battlemage his staff to +25 (the other wands still to +20).
Huntress can upgrade thrown weapons to +20.
Priestess can upgrade her Inscribed Knife to +25.
Rogue can upgrade melee weapons to +20.
Warrior can upgrade his broken seal to +5 and as a consequence his armor to +20 with the seal attached.

[Note: In subsequent beta versions all the above numbers might be different depending on the specific version, but the availability of more scrolls of Upgrade is a general feature of Cursed PD.]