Curious: tooltip versus data
Players expect a lot from this trait name. Curious sounds like it should touch exploration: finding hidden rooms, sniffing out loot, maybe a bonus to whatever a procedural dungeon keeps behind its secret doors. The datamined answer is humbler: Curious carries exactly one combat-AI coefficient, recklessness +0.06, the smallest recklessness value attached to any trait in the game. The exploration side the name promises does exist, outside the combat AI: sealed doors, trap and puzzle rooms, expedition finds and the Council scryer’s seat all read the trait. Those hooks are covered further down; this first part is about the fight.
Inside a fight, a Curious hero’s combat AI discounts danger very slightly when scoring its options each round. Restless is the trait’s near-twin at +0.08, and the two are mechanically interchangeable for almost every purpose, and the analysis on the Restless page transfers here nearly whole. At the far end of the same dial sits Reckless at +0.3, five times the size and carrying threat and discipline baggage besides. Curious is not a small Reckless in the way a candle is not a small housefire; the difference in degree is a difference in kind.
In-delve effect of +0.06
What does +0.06 buy in an actual fight? A tiebreaker. The combat AI scores every option every round, and in the large majority of rounds one option wins by a margin no small coefficient can bridge. Curious lives entirely in the residue: rounds where two choices score within a hair of each other, where the trait tips the hero toward the slightly bolder line. Sometimes that’s engaging a round earlier; sometimes it’s holding an exposed position a beat longer than a neutral hero would.
You will not find this in a delve report. Genuinely. The wiki’s position is that no single logged action can be attributed to a coefficient this size, and reading reports for evidence of Curious at work is pattern-matching on noise. Across a full season the bias exists in aggregate, tilting a hero’s marginal decisions a few degrees toward risk. On tempo-rewarding floors that aggregate is worth a sliver of value; on punishing ones (darkness, floods, the conditions that tax every positioning error) a sliver of cost. Under permadeath, a career-long lean toward danger isn’t literally zero, but it is close enough that no roster decision should hinge on it.
The practical instruction for reading reports: when a Curious hero does something rash, resist the urge to blame the trait. At +0.06, the rashness was almost certainly going to happen anyway.
Fit, roles and stacking
There is no role that Curious rules out. Damage dealers, front line, anchors: fine, obviously. Even the protective roles pass: where a genuine risk trait on a healer is a refusal, a +0.06 lean is a shrug. Slot the hero by attributes, class and synergies, and let this trait ride along.
Stacking is the one context where the number earns attention, because coefficients on the same parameter add. Curious sitting on top of Reckless or Hot-Headed is a few more degrees of tilt on a hero already committed to the aggressive line. That is no reason to pass, but it is part of an honest read of the full sheet. Pointed the other way, Curious roughly cancels a Stoic’s −0.06 damping and takes the edge off Watchful’s −0.07; combined with the kill-hunger family (Ambitious through Glory Hunter) it adds a whisper of extra willingness to chase the finishing blow into awkward spots. In every case the arithmetic is the analysis: add the numbers, and let the sum tell you which trait is actually driving.
Named party synergies don’t interact with it, so spend your synergy planner time on pairings that move real value.
Recruitment maths
Treat the combat lean as a zero when pricing a recruit. Not a plus, because the tempo value is too small to pay for. Not a minus either: docking a support prospect for a +0.06 lean is the kind of over-fitting that loses you good heroes to less nervous managers. Scouts who bounce a recruit off your shortlist over the combat lean are reading fiction into the data; the recruitment guide covers how to keep trait-weighting anchored to what the code does.
Curious changes no oath calculation or wage. What it does change is how a party explores, covered next, and that is where any premium or discount belongs.
Sealed doors, traps and finds
As leader at a fork. A Curious leader leans hard toward a sealed side door (+3, the strongest sealed-door lean in the game). On its own that is about an 89% chance to open it, and the lean ignores whether the party is hurt. A leader with no lean takes a side room 60% of the time when the party is fresh and 20% when it is hurt. For treasure rooms and named lairs Curious has no lean.
Trap and puzzle rooms. The game normally sends the hero with the best attribute for the job. If any Curious hero is active (or a Glory Hunter, Hot-Headed, Reckless, Arrogant, Ambitious or Vain one), there is a 35% chance that one of them grabs the attempt instead, and the report says they could not resist taking the lead. When the grabber is weaker at the attribute, the roll is harder.
Expedition finds. A triumphant expedition can turn up something from the region it crossed. The chance is 7% times the best “finder” score in the party, scaled by length, and capped at 40%. A hero’s finder score starts at 1, and Curious adds +1.1, the largest bonus of any trait (Pathfinder +1.0, Watchful +0.5, Lucky +0.3, Methodical −0.35). On a 12-day expedition that lifts the chance from about 8% to about 18%. See Pathfinder for the full table.
Around the hall
- Council. When a retiring hero joins the Council, Curious adds 6 toward the scryer’s post, the strongest trait for that seat.
- Festivals. +2 in the wit discipline. See Crowd-Pleaser for how festival scores are built.
- Flavour. On pair duty the hero speaks with the “curious” voice shared with Quick-Witted, Restless, Pathfinder and Trap-Wise, and quest reports have their own Curious lines. Neither changes a result.
The hero card links the trait to Decisions. That link is descriptive and does not raise the attribute.
So a Curious recruit is a neutral combatant with a real exploration profile: worth a little more to a guild that runs expeditions or wants a scryer, and worth watching as a leader if you would rather the party left sealed doors alone.
Tracking Curious through patches
From v1.9.6 through v2.1.8 the lone combat coefficient has not moved. The exploration hooks above are read from the 2.1.8 code; earlier versions of this page missed them.