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Poke Poke Poke Boom

Poke Poke Poke Boom introduces to Caves of Qud the concept of contextual artifact examination failures. This means that, for example:

• failing at examining a missile weapon may result in it discharging in a random direction
  
• failing at examining a grenade may detonate it
  
• failing at examining a pair of rocket skates may produce a plume of flame
  
• failing at examining a displacer bracelet may teleport you

Besides the unpredictable fun involved, some balance to the added risk is provided by the fact that these artifact-specific failures generally tell you what the artifact is -- so by failing in this particular way, you at least succeed in determining the information you set out for.

Critical failures at examination (the kind that break items) are most likely to produce contextual examine failures. Ordinary failures can also, but generally at a lower probability, and some items with particularly dangerous contextual failure modes will only produce them on a critical failure. When a critical failure causes a contextual event, this happens instead of breaking the item, so that's another small benefit of the mod.