Curses are grouped into 3 types:

• Red/Daring: Offensive type curses that mostly affect Scythe and Cloak weapons. Signature unique effects are Bleed and Frozen.
  
• Blue/Innovation: Defensive and support type curses. Focusing on defense, healing and Soulary gain. Signature unique effects are Arcane, Stuck, Poison and Burn.
  
• Green/Excellence: Offensive type curses that mostly affect Spells and some few survival options. The signature unique effect Lightning.

All curses have a rarity. Each rarity has a different weight when determining the available curse for each node in the tree:


Example: If there are 3 Common, 2 Rare and 1 Legendary curses in the pool, The chances are: 68% for a Common, 27% for a Rare and 5% for a Legendary.


Depending on which department you chose, it will "buff" either red, blue or green curses. What that means is that it changes the weight of all common curses of the respective type to 0 for the duration of the department. It does not actually remove the curses from the "pool", because there might be the case that you rerolled all other curses which only leaves the 0-weighted curses, so you would actually do get them eventually.

Note: As of version 1.0 this mechanic is broken for Natural Disaster Department and Eternal Time Department.


Curses have a rank that reaches up to 6. Depending on the depth of the node in the curse tree all curses that have the same rank number will be pooled for random selection.


BUT: This is not guaranteed. Before selecting which rank pool of curses is selected, the game randomly determines if the rank of the curses should be the same as as the node, higher or lower than the node (if applicable). This process is also weighted:


Curses with unique effects have a special property of being able to appear in the first 4 node depths. In case you are at a higher node depth than these curses, their weight is decreased.


Some curse nodes are covered with thorns. That means picking these curses will cause you to choose a penalty. However the actual hidden penalty is that the average curse rank is lowered by 1. So it's as if the node was 1 depth lower than it actually is.


When rerolling a selectable curse 2 things happen:

1. The current curse is removed from the pool
2. The rank of the curse pool is selected again

That means if you got lucky and got a higher rank curse than your node would normally give you, it is very likely you will get a lower rank than before. Also note that curses won't be removed by rerolling them for the remaining duration of a run, but only for the duration of that room.


As of now there are 2 ways how curses are excluded from the selection process:

1. Picking a unique effect (Bleed, Frozen, Arcane, Poison, Burn, Stuck, Lightning) will cause the other and their respective associated curses to be excluded.
2. Not having reached the required progression tree level for Bleed, Lifesteal and Stuck curses.

Infuse: Apply a stack of Bleed on the enemy for a certain duration. For each stack on the enemy you deal +1 bleed damage. Innate cap of 10 stacks.

Pros:

• Armor piercing
  
• Scales well with fast multi-hit weapons
  
• Only needs 1 additional curse to be extremely good: 60 extra damage per damage instance
  
• Synergizes well with Butterflies and Energy waves, which are also obtainable Infuse curses

Cons:

• Can be underwhelming if you only have slow attack speed weapons

Infuse: Slows enemies for a short duration. Duration is refreshed upon each attack.

Pros:

• Speed upgrades are good for dodging
  
• Gives you more time to do combos and Fury

Cons:

• No innate damage increase
  
• Hypothermia damage will pretty much only proc on bosses and is very likely to not deal its full damage because of phase change i-frames or premature death
  
• Worse version of Stuck, doesn't slow actual attack animations
  
• Can potentionally mess up dodge timings for you, if careless

Infuse: Apply a stack of Poisoned on the enemy. For each stack of Poisoned, the enemy takes 1 Poison damage per tick. Roughly 2 ticks per second. Innate cap of 10 stacks.

Pros:

• Armor piercing
  
• Scales well with certain upgrade curses, up to 100 damage per tick

Cons:

• Short innate duration
  
• Requires some investment to scale properly
  
• Does not scale with high attack speed.

Infuse: Apply a burn effect on the enemy for a few seconds. While burn is active, the enemy takes 5 burn damage every tick. Roughly 2 ticks per second.

Pros:

• Armor piercing
  
• Does not need to hit multiple times to gain its full damage potential, up to 35 damage per tick with all damage upgrade curses

Cons:

• Legendary rarity, so it's hard to find
  
• Effect is not stackable, so scaling only comes from curses
  
• Incandescence has a very short range and usually enemies are not that tightly grouped together
  
• Incandescence is pretty much useless against bosses
  
• Pyre is clunky to proc, because it requires you to not hit the enemy
  
• Incandescence and Pyre are mutually exclusive, so they are NOT combinable

Refinement: Apply a stack of Arcane on the enemy. After an enemy reaches 5 stacks, clear all stacks and deal 50 arcane explosion damage to the enemy.

Pros:

• Armor piercing
  
• Scales with fast multi-hit weapons
  
• Good damage scaling with just 2 upgrade curses: 200 damage per arcane explosion

Cons:

• It's only a refinement: so it does not work with spells
  
• Can be underwhelming if you only have slow attack speed weapons

Refinement: 10% chance to applying the Stuck effect. Stuck enemies are frozen in time for short duration.

Pros:

• Perfect Synergy with Overtime (+3s on each alteration)
  
• Scales well with fast mutli-hit weapons to trigger the effect as fast as possible
  
• The effect it arguably the best out of all

Cons:

• Legendary rarity, so it's hard to find
  
• Overtime is also a legendary rarity curse with the same rank as Stuck, so it's even harder to find unless you are lucky and have fitting randomly generated blue curse tree with penalty nodes
  
• Bosses have resistance against this effect, which means the chance of actually getting Stuck is way lower
  
• No actual damage
  
• Can potentionally mess up dodge timings for you, if careless

Infuse: Summon a lightning bolt from the sky after a short delay, initially dealing 3 damage.

Pros:

• Scales well with fast multi-hit weapons
  
• Scales with base damage increasing curses e.g. Bramblebones (unlike all other unique effects)
  
• Has no damage cap

Cons:

• Does not work with Butterflies or Energy waves (unlike Bleed)
  
• No armor piercing, will basically do 0 damage in early levels with higher breakdown levels
  
• Needs some sort of investment from other curses, since it's really weak initially

Some of the keywords are not explained by the game, here is what they mean:

• Backstab: +20 Damage
  
• Pierce: +15 Damage
  
• Retrain: +15 Damage
  
• Retrain: +10 Damage
  
• Transfer: +10 Damage
  
• Inflation: +5 Damage

Base damage of certain projectiles:

• Bombcloak: 25 Damage
  
• Axe: 15 Damage
  
• Crows: 15 Damage
  
• Butterfly: 5 Damage
  
• Lightning: 3 Damage

Bleed is arguably the strongest of all main Infuse effects, because it synergizes well with most weapons and spells and is the best way to kill Thanagers and Sorrows. However I don't suggest you pick the curse that adds 100% duration for bleed stacks, it is irrelevant.


These curses provide good damage upgrades for their respective rank. Special thanks to aerial damage increase, since their combos already are better in general.



These curses provide considerable increase in BASE damage, which buffs all instances of damage you do from Sinister Gear, Spells and other effects like Lightning etc. However Manic Monday is the weakest of all of these, since you can't rely on Retaliate, especially in higher breakdowns.



These curses offer great damage increase for effects that are relatively easy to proc. Unfortunately I don't exactly know the actual dmg increase of Transfer, but it certainly feels good.



It is pretty easy to proc stuns, so you can heavily increase your damage potential, especially with Terrific Luck.



Unfortunately Lifesteal curses are locked behind high levels of the progression tree. However they are a good way of making Anima redundant and being able to stack them to golden Anima. In higher levels of breakdown healing will be more and more difficult, so this is a great way to survive arenas. Note that at higher breakdowns Sorrows no longer inflict injuries, so Lifesteal is actually not helpful there.



The higher your base/scythe damage is the more you are gonna have a good time during arenas and clearing whole floors.



Great alternatives in case you didn't get Bleed + Firescreamer. Big damage/CC from these awesome unique modifiers.



These curses offer great sustain over the course of your run. Nothing much to say here.



Getting enough soulary to buy extra curses or upgrades in the control room is even harder, now that soulary floors are even rarer now. These curses offer great financial help!



These dash upgrades might give you the edge for just barely dodging an attack. Also Aggresive Anima can provide a lot of useful base damage if found early.




Amp up your damage with these offensive curses. Archdruid is the strongest option here because it buffs base damage.



Lightning starts out weak, but has no damage cap and grows insanely strong with the correct base damage upgrades.



Butterflies are now a pretty strong addition, since they don't count as unique effects. So you can enjoy your bleed build with even more dps!



These curses help you spam spells more often. RIP Death Priest...



Copium curses, if you aren't so lucky to get the rare mana regeneration curses or you are scared of overcasting.



Great sustain options!

• Both Cloakswish curses have a great homing effect, but depend on you having a spammable Cloak weapon and having good base damage against minions with defense
  
• Death Metal is lackluster in your average run, but could be worth taking, if you have a good way to refill your frenzy or if it contributes to a big chunk of your actual DPS
  
• Energy Surge requires you to have good base damage against defense minions or Bleed
  
• Cloak and Swagger, Fake it 'til ya make it and Stop overemphascything it offer good damage upgrades depending on the run you have
  
• Kamikaze is not good if you are having a bad run and low HP, but can make a great run even better. Obviously high risk, high reward.
  
• Frozen is just a worse version of Stuck. However some people seem to like it for defensive purposes, I personally still don't recommend it, because it's the worst of all unique effects. See "Cons" in the Frozen explanation above.

• Compared to all other unique modifiers, Burn scales the worst. See Cons in the explantion of Burn above.
  
• Mithril Chainmal's effect only last for a short duration, so it's not really realiable, but can be better with increased buff durations from Overtime
  
• There are very few Cloak weapons that have ammunition
  
• There are very few Cloak weapons that benefit from having a lower cooldown, which are pretty much only those with ammunition
  
• Lacis Mysticor is a weaker version of a lower rank HP curse and it should only be taken if you have something like Bramblebones or you have no need for mana
  
• Millanima Eye is probably only worth taking when you already have Archdruid

• Dolce Gamana and Embroidered in the stars can be clunky to use
  
• Stable Job and Daredevil are better for beginner players
  
• Mana Bonanza can give you that extra mana for spamming an important spell just 1 more time later on, but due to its rank it's outclassed by a lot of other curses

While these curses won't negatively influence your run (with some exceptions), they make for great reroll candidates if there is nothing else to pick.

These here suck because of one of the following reasons:

• Retaliate is not a good mechanic to rely on, especially in higher breakdowns
  
• Relying on low HP is not a good idea
  
• Charged attacks are a joke
  
• Negative damage is usually just bad
  
• Ceasefire effects are a joke
  
• As Frozen is already not a good unique effect, the +25% is barely noticable
  
• Too little of a damage upgrade/impact for the given rank/rarity
  
• Having base lifesteal is good enough
  
• Some are very situationally good, but take up a slot for other good curses of the same rank (e.g. rank 3)

• Dash cooldowns are pretty much irrelevant
  
• There are extremely few good periodic curses and the good ones are about healing, where you could just wait the whole time anyway
  
• Retaliate is not a good mechanic to rely on, especially in higher breakdowns
  
• Negative damage is usually just bad
  
• Some poison upgrades are way too weak
  
• Incandescence is a joke
  
• Too little of a defensive upgrade/impact for the given rank/rarity

• Retaliate is not a good mechanic to rely on, especially in higher breakdowns
  
• Mana Regen is a joke stat
  
• There are almost no good Ceasefire curses
  
• Negative damage is usually just bad
  
• You usually only buy curses from the shop and it's way more efficient to get other curses that give you soulary during combat
  
• Consuming Anima as a trigger for a temporary effect is extremely weak
  
• Too little of a damage upgrade/impact for the given rank/rarity

Updated all curses for official game release.

• Added some curse keyword explanations
  
• Added a in-depth explanation on unique effects

• Identified Frozen, Arcane and Lightning as unique effects
  
• Added example for weight calculation
  
• Identified node depth availability of unique effects

• Added Animoolah, Anima Lambic, Arcane Metallurgy & More where that came from...
  
• Added Infuse Butterfly, Morthral kombat, Through the kaleidoscope

• Added Denzel's Flow & The tortoise and the hare
  
• Added Third-party payment, Oak-aged animaline & It's on the house!
  
• Removed Frozen
  
• Added Zeus's Wrath

• Added Frozen & Absolute Zero
  
• Added Lacis sanguechor
  
• Added Where's my charger??, I hear thunder! & Sinistrocirrus's vibrato
  
• Removed Infuse Butterfly

Initial post