Morrowind talk:Cursed Items

Reusing Cursed Items

Lurlock, I removed these statements from Morrowind:Cursed_Items#Exploits

• "Dremora Lords make a handy distraction for guards in towns if you want to pull off some sort of sneaky business. Just be careful, as it could have unintended side effects if the Dremora Lord decides to attack somebody important who's standing nearby. You can also use them as free allied summons in hostile areas, provided you have a good Command Creature spell.
• In order to safely pick up a cursed item without summoning a Dremora Lord, open your inventory first, and then click the item and again click in your inventory to take it. You can also avoid future hassle by storing your cursed items in a container or on a Permanent Corpse, instead of out in the open.
• The summoning effect is not once-only. If you go into another cell, drop the cursed item, and pick it up again, you will get another Dremora Lord, with another quality weapon. There is no limit to the number of times you can do this. "

Nephele, rpeh and I could not reproduce these effects, with three different versions of MW. Can you shed some light on it? --Benould^•T•C 15:24, 28 June 2008 (EDT)

Hmm. I know this worked because I used to do it all the time, but it was a while ago - I suppose it's possible a broken mod somehow caused this behavior - or perhaps it may be that you need to drop the item in the room, then leave the room and come back (maybe after staying away for a few days) in order for this to occur - I know for a fact though that I had Dremora Lords attack me when I picked up cursed items in my own house, so there's something to this - it bears further investigation though. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:30, 28 June 2008 (EDT)

(I moved the first part of this discussion here from Lurlock's talk page to keep the discussion with the article for easier future reference.)

I just tested the "not once-only" part on the Xbox, non-GOTY edition. I could never get the Dremora Lord to re-appear, even after dropping the item, leaving the area, sleeping for six-odd days (long enough to fully recharge a nearly-depleted Dagoth Dagger, so long enough to recharge about 1500 enchantment points), then returning. Because of confusion on the place page about which item in Ibishammus was cursed, I actually did the test using all three items that had been on the altar.

I also looked at the script (BILL_MarksDaedraSummon). A flag (done=1) gets set the first time the Dremora Lord is summoned, which should then prevent the summoning from ever happening again.

But since this was on Xbox, there's one thing I could not test: the hint about how to pick up a cursed item without summoning a Dremora Lord in the first place. There's no way within the Xbox inventory screen to manipulate items that are still on the ground. So one remaining possibility would seem to be that in the original PC version of the game, moving an item into your inventory with the inventory screen open did not count as activating the item. Or alternatively, that there are some mods out there that allow you to pick up items in a room without picking up counting as activating. In either case, if the cursed item does not register as being activated, then presumably putting the cursed item down again later would allow the Dremora Lord to appear at that point (still once-only, but just not necessarily when you're at the altar). --Nephele^Talk 17:10, 28 June 2008 (EDT)

No, I definitely got more than one use out of these. My guess is that after a certain length of time, the script on the item that holds the variable saying "done=1" resets and the item now behaves as if it had never been picked up. As for the picking-it-up-without-setting-it-off thing, I guess that would be PC-only if you can't grab objects in the world while your inventory is opened on the XBox - couldn't say, as I've never played on console.

Addendum: It's worth noting that ONLY the Dremora Lord-summoning cursed items seemed to have this property. The ones which summon Ancestral Ghosts or Dwarven Spectres did not. So you might look to see if there's some subtle difference between these scripts. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 17:22, 28 June 2008 (EDT)

I realize this discussion is ancient history, but for the sake of accuracy, I think it's worth bringing up. I have experimented with cursed items thoroughly and cannot recreate the glitch/exploit. I've tried cursed ingredients and gear, and the more unique ones that don't summon Dremora Lords. I've tried every combination I can think of, dropping them and picking them up, changing cells, having multiple cursed items in one area, putting them in containers and taking them out, selling it to merchants and buying it back, saving and loading, and waiting. By changing the timescale in the console, I waited over 10000 days, but no luck.

Also, I can move cursed items from my inventory menu. Even if I haven't touched it before, and even if I have touched it before, I can click it, drop it somewhere else, or just put it into my inventory. No matter where I decide to put it, once I click it, which picks it up, the creature spawns nearby, but won't spawn again.

I've seen this bug reported more than once, though, and some of those reports go as far back as 2004... but even then, there were reports matching mine, saying they can't get it to work. I'm thinking that, maybe something else is causing this bug for some people, and it's just not obvious. Or maybe it's only on a very specific version of Morrowind. It's also possible I just didn't do it right, and I want to make sure of that.

I did find one way of getting one more use out of a cursed item. It involves enchanting, so it will only work with a few cursed items, like the cursed glass dagger. Enchant it (the effects don't matter), and then drop it. Once you pick it up, a Dremora Lord will spawn nearby. But if you drop it again, picking it up again won't spawn any more. I guess this is because the enchanted item is technically a new item, so the local "done" variable is 0 on it. This could be useful, I guess, as an emergency summon, because the Dremora Lord's fireballs deal a lot of AoE damage and can hurt your enemies. But not very useful for farming (unless you duplicate the cursed item a lot with glitches and then enchant each one individually, but at that point, might as well just duplicate the item you want to farm).

I want to edit this article, as well as the Cheats article because it mentions this, but I want to be sure that I'm right, that this doesn't work, and that I'm not just doing it wrong. I also don't know if it's worth mentioning that enchanting a cursed item gives it one more use. --Croup shrunk (talk) 20:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Cursed Items do not stack anymore

After patching GotY to latest MCP and Morrowind Patch i've noticed cursed items do not stack anymore. Basically with turned on full help you can see cursed script removed from item once you picked it. So obviously they no longer stack. Also for cursed dwemer coins (found in daedric shrine on the scull instead of eyes) they can change cost from 120 to 50 once picked. Requires confirmation. Oxyk 20:32, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I have the same "issue". Playing the Steam version of Morrowind, using both MCP and MPP, tested on the items in the daedric shring near Ald-ruhn. The cursed items on the altar have a different "name" in the console and they can't be moved around with your inventory open. Pick them up, drop them, and their name (in the console) is changed to that of a standard item (essentially removing the cursed suffix), with the creature summoning effect not playing again. 80.116.183.65 22:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I haven't had the same results, but I'm on the vanilla GOTY steam version without any mods other than the expansions. I can move them while my inventory is open. Their ID stays the same after dropping them, too, and "glass dagger_Dae_cursed" is still called "glass dagger_Dae_cursed". With full help turned on, I still see the script attached to the items after I pick them up and drop them. And, if I use the command "sv" to show variables, I see that the item's "done" variable is always 1 after I have picked it up (and 0 if I never touched it).

Edit: After saying this, I loaded up my backed up modded Morrowind directory, which uses the code patch, and then my experience matches yours. With the code patch, I can't interact with cursed items while my inventory is open, the script does get removed after picking it up, and its ID does change to that of a regular item. After switching back to my vanilla Morrowind install, I still get my original results, where I can interact with the items and their ID and scripts stay the same. So, I think this is related to the code patch. Though even with the code patch, I still can't reuse cursed items... --Croup shrunk (talk) 20:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)