Finding a new item in a video game is usually a good thing. More powerful equipment means taking on tougher challenges, which in turn means getting even better loot. In some rare instances, though, leaving a treasure behind is the right thing to do — whether they're cursed, diseased, or the vessel for a being of pure evil, some artifacts are too dangerous to remove from their hiding place.
Some of the artifacts on this list are simply items that will make a player's life hard. Others are the focus of one or more entire games, a persistent threat that heroes need to neutralize again and again. Either way, these are a few of the most dangerous artifacts in video games.
6 Cursed Necklace and Cursed Belt (Dragon Quest)
The original Dragon Quest (localized in North America as Dragon Warrior for its initial release) invented JRPGs as we know them today. With its simple storyline and one-on-one battles, it's a game that definitely shows its age today. Fantasy games in the '80s, whether they were digital or tabletop, were full of devious traps and "gotcha" moments, and Dragon Quest is no exception.
Not once, but twice throughout his adventure, the Hero can find accessories that will slowly drain his HP when worn. Eager players excited to find a new belt or necklace will find that upon equipping these cursed items they cannot be removed without a blessing from a priest. The only person up to the job resides way back in the game's first town, necessitating a long and dangerous journey back or the use of a precious Wyvern Wing to teleport home.
5 El Dorado (Uncharted: Drake's Fortune)
In Nathan Drake's first adventure, the treasure hunter is looking for the fabled city of El Dorado using the notes left by his ancestor. After several dangerous encounters, he eventually discovers the location of its prize and learns that El Dorado is not a place, but an object. The golden sarcophagus is easily worth millions, but carries a terrible curse — exposure to the mummified corpse inside turns humans into berserk zombies. Upon discovering the danger posed by El Dorado, Nate attempts to stop his nemeses Roman and Navarro from opening it.
Navarro, apparently aware of the sarcophagus' mystic properties, tricks Roman into becoming a zombie and shoots him before attempting to airlift El Dorado away to sell as a weapon. Nate is able to halt Navarro's escape, sending the cursed treasure to the bottom of the ocean in the process.
4 Soul Edge (Soul Calibur)
Soul Edge is a sword so steeped in bloodshed and violence that it became sentient, corrupting its wielder to seek battle and consume the souls of defeated foes. The blade's evil influence is at the center of the Soul franchise, the most famous branch of which is Soul Calibur. While Soul Edge's most well-known wielder is the knight Siegfried, who was transformed into the monstrous Nightmare by it, many of the series numerous fighters have found themselves under the demon blade's influence at one time or another.
As if an evil sword looking for victims across the world wasn't enough, Soul Edge also left fragments of itself to enable it to corrupt multiple people at once. The axe-wielding giant Astaroth is the most notable bearer of such a shard. No matter how many times heroes like Xianghua and Sophitia are able to stop Soul Edge, it always seems to return for another victim — and another sequel.
3 Pandora's Box (King's Quest 4)
The venerable King's Quest series often used famous myths and fairy tales as the basis for its plots. In the days before the internet, this was a good way to give players hints without being too obvious — a player who knew the story Hansel and Gretel, for example, would know to be wary of an inviting gingerbread house in the middle of the woods. In the series' fourth entry, the villain Lolotte forces protagonist Rosella to recover a series of magical treasures for her, the last of which is Pandora's Box from Greek mythology.
In the myth, Pandora was given a box (or, more accurately, an urn) by the gods and instructed never to open it. Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she peeked inside, unleashing sickness, death, and other evils on the world. Pandora's Box does much the same thing in King's Quest 4 — opening it unleashes a horde of demons, killing Rosella and, to add insult to injury, forcing the player to restart the game or close the program instead of loading from a save.
2 The One Ring (The Lord of the Rings Games)
The gold standard for evil objects, the One Ring to Rule Them All requires little introduction. Forged to control the other nineteen Rings of Power, the One Ring was used by Sauron in his bid to rule Middle-Earth. After Sauron's defeat at the hands of Isildur, the mighty trinket vanished for centuries until it was recovered inadvertently by Bilbo Baggins. The main story of The Lord of the Rings sees Bilbo's nephew Frodo and his companions set out to destroy the One Ring before Sauron's minions can recover it and restore their leader to his former power. There are plenty of video games that focus on these events in particular, but even side stories in the same universe all come back to keeping the Ring away from Sauron at all costs.
In Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Shadow of War, Talion becomes bound to an elven ghost who turns out to be the spirit of Celebrimbor, the smith who created the Rings of Power in the first place. While the pair never encounter the One Ring, they do meet its former owner Gollum, who is desperate to recover his "precious." As in the books and movies, Gollum is living proof of the devastating effects prolonged exposure to the One Ring has on a person's body and soul.
1 HADES (Horizon: Zero Dawn / Horizon: Forbidden West)
In Horizon's far-flung future of tribal societies and robot dinosaurs, the entity known as HADES lurks inside a metal shell waiting to complete its purpose; the extermination of all life on Earth. Originally designed as part of a massive terraforming project meant to restore the planet's ecosystem after a complete collapse, HADES' function was to return the world to a lifeless state if the process went too far awry, allowing the system to start over and try again.
HADES is much more than a mindless killing machine — whether by accident or by design, it has become a malevolent intelligence devoid of empathy. It proves itself to be capable of calculated deception, posing as a god to convince the Shadow Carja to further its ends. HADES is even willing to reactivate the war machines that destroyed human society in the first place if they will allow it to complete its objective. While Aloy and her allies are able to prevent HADES from resurrecting the Faro Plague in Horizon: Zero Dawn, it survives the destruction of its physical body. HADES is still out there, patiently planning its next move.