Why do some items have funky colours?

[ambi]

I just bought the game, and noticed some items have weird, funky colours. Is there a point to that? Do they indicate the power or rarity of the item?

This game is so weird, lol. I'm still trying to get my head around all the weird names and creatures.

[Alugere]

Odd, somewhat random colorations seem to be rarer, though I'm not 100% on the why for some of them. Other items are useful when colored, though:

Purple items are artifacts that have special effects when equipped.
Yellow books are the books that aren't procedurally generated, but are either set content, or have specificly generated content (like heirlooms of qud tells you what heirloom items factions have in a given game)
Painted items can be looked for either sultan lore or a ruin location
Engraved items are the same as painted. I assume at some point the items that can be effected by one will be different than the other (engraved furs seem rather odd)
Injectors are color coded for quickness of idenfication in your inventory.
Stopsvalin is a unique buckler than is semi-guaranteed to appear somewhere in every game.

[LunaticMethod]

It generally denotes some special property that can be discovered by [L]ooking at the item in your inventory.

[ambi]

This is a screenshot of my inventory. Alot of my items have multiple shades. I'm not sure what that means.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148730859

[CHOO CHOO]

That's just for fun and flavor.

[Uboa]

It's just to make the text more lively and engaging, presumably to offset the relatively large amount of time one spends rooting around in their pack in CoQ.

[Aquillion]

It's something that used to appear a lot on old MUDs (text-based precursors to MMORPGs.)

Generally speaking, it indicates that an item is unusual, important, rare, legendary, or has strange powers, although a few in Caves of Qud are just for fun.