In general, the ring does exactly what it says in the tooltip, which for reference I attach below:
In is usually handed to you when you first spawn in the world, but some modpacks change that to a checkmark quest or something of that kind. You put it on, you can't take it off, stays with you on death, you get a bunch of permanent debuffs, but also a bunch of benefits.
Here's a brief practical explanation of each curse and blessing of The Ring of the Seven Curses:
- "You receive double damage from ANY source." - yes, ANY source.
- "Neutral creatures are aggressive towards you." - this specifically affects creatures implementing vanilla
net.minecraft.world.entity.NeutralMobinterface. There are additional effects for Endermen, such as them being more likely to teleport behind you. I'd say this curse alone constitutes most of the difficulty in cursed playthroughs. - "Armor is 30% less effective." - basically just applies an attribute debuff to you that decreases vanilla armor points and armor toughness by 30%. This naturally doesn't affect any custom protection mechanics from other mods that don't consider armor points/toughness in the calculation.
- "Monsters receive 50% less damage from you." - applies to both direct and indirect damage, such as from projectiles. For the purposes of this curse and other mod mechanics, a monster is anything that implements
net.minecraft.world.entity.monster.Monsterinterface, as well as Ender Dragon specifically. - "When on fire, you burn forever." - just resets fire ticks every once in a bit, so that they never run out once the player is burning. This doesn't prevent the fire from being extinguished externally, such as by jumping into water, or using items that provide burning immunity.
- "Every death tears your soul apart." - probably the most frequently misunderstood curse. When you die, there is a floating, immovable and inderstructible item spawned at the exact location of your death, which is called a Soul Crystal. You also receive an attribute debuff that reduces your max health by 10%. Dying repeatedly can stack this debuff up to -90%, beyond which point it will no longer increase, and Soul Crystals will no longer spawn upon death. Approaching a Soul Crystal can pick it up like a normal item, but it doesn't get added to your inventory, and instead you gain 10% of your max health back. However, players can only pick up Soul Crystals they dropped themselves. There is also a creative by default item called Soul Crystal, which can be used with right-click to consume it and restore 10% of max health. Under no circumstances can the player exceed 100% max health, even if they use this creative item or somehow duplicate the in-world crystals.
- "You suffer from incurable insomnia." - the player can lie in vanilla bed and set their spawn point, but they can never "fall asleep" and skip the night. It's the same as if there was another player on the server who doesn't go to bed.
- "+1 Looting Level" - exactly what it says, killing mobs is always treated as though you have 1 more level of Looting on your weapon than you really do. Works with any damage source attributed to the player.
- "+1 Fortune Level" - same as Looting, but for Fortune.
- "+400% Experience Dropped" - this only really works with mobs, again with any damage source attributed to the player. Multiplies experience dropped from them by 5.
- "+10 Enchanting Power in Enchanting Table." - frequently broken by other mods which modify vanilla Enchanting Table, especially Apotheosis. In the future I will probably just add a custom cursed version of echanting table to counteract that. On a rare occasion that this blessing does work, it increases maximum enchanting level for all enchanting options in the table by 10. So a maxed out table would allow you to enchant for 40 levels instead of 30.
- "Unique drops from some creatures." - this means most vanilla mobs drop additional stuff when you kill them. This additional stuff includes some items from the mod, but mostly it's just vanilla resources. Below is provided an up-to-date list:
- "Functionality of the Ring of Ender." - allows you to access Ender Chest inventory anywhere, anytime, and completely free of charge. This is doable via either a dedicated keybind, or a GUI button added to the player's inventory.
- "You can create and use unique relics." - one of the biggest advantages of wearing the ring. A large portion of Enigmatic Legacy's items are limited to cursed players via this curse, and this is also a good place for integration content in other mods.
Below are a couple example of unique items that only bearers of the cursed ring can use:
Worth noting that players in survival mode cannot read the tooltips of those items, unless they actually wear the ring. The only lines in the tooltip excluded from obfuscation are those that inform the player that the ring is required to use this item:
There also exists a subset of cursed items with a more strict requirement: not only does the player have to wear the ring, but they need to do it for at least 99.5% of their playtime in a given world. Since every minute spent in a world without the ring then translates to 199 minutes that need to be spent wearing it, this effectively means the player will have to put the ring immediately after spawning, commiting to a full cursed playthrough. Most curses become less dangerous in mid- and late-game, so this mechanic exists to incentivize taking on a full challenge:
Well, that's about as much as there is to know on a conceptual level. Put it on and find out the rest through the power of on-hands experience 🙌