Hey, so I'm looking to get into running this game at some point, and I've heard of this trick called "cursed item debuffing" which I'm not sure what it entails. Would anyone care to enlighten me?

Hi Zwataketa, The blessed weapon trick is you use a weapon strengthen scroll on a cursed weapon and it cleanses the curse and makes it super powerful.

In my opinion this trick isnt worth doing in a speedrun and here is why:

1. the game is highly randomized, each floor, potion, scroll, weapon drop, etc changes every new game. So there is no telling when or where a cursed weapon and strengthen scroll will appear. Plus with each type of weapon (lance, sword, axe) having their own type of stats I dont know if it would be worth doing on the Skull Lance because it has low attack damage vs the Golden Axe and you may be waiting a while to see the Golden Axe drop.
2. The blessed weapon trick will not work in conjunction with the unarmed axe damage trick which is equip an axe, drop it, and pick it up again but dont equip it and you will fight with better accuracy and the strength of an axe and you have to do this on every new floor to get the buff. With the cursed weapon if you drop it and pick it back up it becomes cursed again. So you'd need to cleanse it every floor. You could wait to use the blessed weapon trick until you get to final boss but then you'd be losing a second or two cleansing the weapon when you could be jabbing the dragon's face off.

In summary, with the unarmed axe trick being a must have I dont think it is worth doing in a run. But this is just my opinion and I havent done extensive testing to warrant it a viable option.

Hope this helps!

I will tell you not only will this be faster in any run, its optimal to do this strategy IF and ONLY IF you just happen upon the combination. Do not go searching picking up every scroll/weapon. If you just happen to find a cursed weapon IMMEDIATELY see if you can uncurse it. And if going for a glitched % the infinite power glitch is NOT worth it as weapon power scales much higher than character power. But if you happen to find a power ring and a spare ring within level 1-5 it is worth wasting 30 seconds to put yourself to about 21 power. The cursed weapon glitch will work BEST if a lance, and Still better than axe drop glitch with sword. If you use the cursed glitched on the golden axe its a waste of time tho. You can in FACT find a cursed spear/lance in level 1. It will be called Spear/Lance so you would have to be lucky enough to equip it to find out and have a weapon power up scroll. I just submitted a 1h25m non glitched, I might try for the Glitched% but whizz RNG is quite good.

Every time you drop a weapon it has a chance to be cursed when it is picked up, just as a fresh weapon roll. This is a factor in any% where your battle axe is sometimes not your friend.

For any% you could repeatedly drop your polearm until it becomes cursed. The odds feel like 1/64.

you said for glitchless you could repeatedly drop your weapon until it becomes cursed. but using the power up scroll would cause it to glitch which would immediately invalidate the run. if we allow cursed weapon but not fixed cursed weapon that would be weird lol

Agreed. However it's difficult to determine whether using a power up scroll on a cursed weapon counts a legit glitch in the first place - it may have been intentional.

I do agree on this and I believe it is intentional, the rules state it is a glitch nonetheless. Can we change it? I'm for changing.

Yes. Looking again at the dropping item and picking up to make cursed item, it's an unfun strat that isn't something anybody would want to do. I'm definitely happy proceeding with banning the original named cursed item power scroll strat and also dropping and picking up items to force a curse power up strat.

You may change it. I agree. No drop 1/100 chances, only already cursed item power ups allowed.