What actually causes shadow curse?

[manollette]

Getting our first foray into NG+ and at first I thought it was something that builds over time, but without any pyres, my partner has 20 stacks and I have like 4. Clearly something's different, what causes it/how do you avoid it? Sucks balls going into boss fights with 20+ stacks of that crap.

[jp1477]

Certain enemy attacks have a chance to apply shadow curse (check the "Shadow Curse Gain" stat on the Info -> Stats page, which you can modify with trinkets/food/drinks/gear).

Generally speaking, at the risk of sounding too obvious, it's the attacks that look "shadowy," with dark puffs of smoke around them.

Nothing applies it in the forest or cave levels, so you'll first start encountering it when cultists appear. Some of the most common offenders are the shadowy wraiths/ghosts that get summoned from dead cultists (the same ones that appear if you use the tower shortcut), all the shadow projectiles in the Face boss fight, and the green-robed casters in the barracks, though there are plenty more.

[manollette]

Ah, it's the "chance" part that was throwing us off then. We were trying to test it by letting different attacks hit us and see what caused it.