March 14th, 2010
Shadows of Dooooom! – part 2
After I drew the high heeled horseshoes my friend Steve pointed out they went the wrong way. Then we both laughed and agreed that made them funnier. Maybe that’s why no one’s bought them yet. Isn’t that what happens when you go to magic malls in video games? You think “Boots of Something Useless +1? I want a belt of Something Awesomes +5!” What are some of the worst magic items you’ve found in magic shops?
March 14th, 2010 at 12:59 am
Ring of Disappear at Inappropriate Times. (Kings don’t like it when you become invisible when they are talking to you. Upshot? Cant cut off a head you cant see.)
March 14th, 2010 at 3:32 am
Nethack has a good selection of useless-ish items, though most of them can be tricked into being useful (like a scroll of destroy armor can be made useful by taking off all your armor you want to keep and then destroying the piece of cursed armor you can’t take off). I don’t think there’s any way to trick “boots of fumbling” into being useful though, so that would be the worst magic item found. (Well, cursed -5 boots of fumbling.)
My personal favourite would be Ultima 5’s glass sword (may be Ultima 4). There’s a huge sidequest to acquire it, then when you do, it’s really just a glass sword; it breaks the first time you hit anyone with it. So maybe that doesn’t actually qualify as a magic item.
March 14th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Maybe I should open a shop selling “magic hats of stop being magic”, then whenever someone touches one I would wail “nooo, you’ve activated its power, now it is just an ordinary hat! You have to buy it!”
March 15th, 2010 at 12:56 am
Two and half words: Pants o’ fire.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:06 am
Thanks for the lucky high-heeled horse shoes! Heh!
March 15th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Kias – what game was that?
RavenBlack – glass sword? I think that’s more of a tragic item.
Daniel – Does it make you into a liar? What game is that from?
Golux – I didn’t realize I subconsciously made them purple like the Lucky Charms marshmellows. Guh. I hate that cereal – half of those things aren’t lucky. Balloons? Diamonds? Moons? Hearts?
March 18th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
I didn’t really do justice to how fantastically funny the glass sword was. When I say “huge sidequest”, I mean you had to travel the entire world following rumors of it, which eventually tell you it’s in an inaccessible part of the mountains, then you learn that to get into that part of the mountains you have to use a hot air balloon, then there’s a whole another round-the-world-following-rumors to get hold of a hot air balloon (which is not necessary for any other part of the game), and then, finally, when you fly there and get hold of the legendary almost-mythical glass sword, it is just a glass sword and it breaks.
May 9th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
high heeled horseshoes are pure genius. Even if they’re high toed.
April 26th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
In Dragon Quest IX, I gave one of my characters a cursed tattoo, not realizing that it had a terrible effect on his stats and you had to go to a priest to get it removed.
April 27th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Emma – I like magical tattoos in tabletop RPGs because they can’t be stolen or passed along. It allows the GM to keep a reign on how much magic is in the world.
May 14th, 2014 at 1:07 am
A minor thing in the game Fate. It has gems that you put in slots in your items to boost their stats. One of these gems is rare and hard to acquire, and is known as the Gem of False Hopes. Guess what it does(n’t).