Annoying Features in Roguelikes

No, I don't mean permadeath - even if it is frustrating to get your promising character killed. With 'annoying features' I mean things that cripple your character or your items to a point you no longer want to continue playing.

I have played mostly only two of the major roguelikes - ADOM and Angband (of which the later I have not finished) - so my knowledge is bit limited. But let's see what annoying features these two games hold inside.

The most defining element of ADOM is - of course - corruption. It is the theme of the game, and affects the player in form of different kind of corruptions that provide bonuses - and penalties, which can be very annoying at times. For instance, having the unholy aura corruption makes villagers/shopkeepers hostile, and there's no way to undo that, even if you manage to get rid of the corruption. Quite annoying.

Another very annoying feature in roguelikes is item destruction - or even better - slow deterioration of items. I don't like this at all in Angband, where even artifacts can be subject to things like disenchanting (at least in the version I last played), which reduces the item's stats. I want my items to stay intact - at least if the items have been given a freaking name. "Sorry, your Anduril, Flame of the West, has just become equal to an ordinary longsword."

At the same level of annoyance with item destruction is stat draining. Damn I hate seeing one stat colored different from others in Angband, because some icky thing has touched my character and drained one point of strength away. And then I need to find something to restore it - to get the annoyance away!

In truth, many of the "annoying features" are just things that make the game more than a simple walk in the park - obstacles the player is usually able to overcome. Newcomers don't have the required knowledge to do that, though, and thus the obstacles have greater annoyance factor for new players than to old ones - possibly so great that the new player doesn't want to play anymore. That's pretty much what happened to me with Angband.

ADOM has no features that annoy me so much that I would stop playing - it is the lack of them that does it; the gameplay of each class is way too similar, some are just less powerful than others. Something I intend to do differently in URLP.