It's been said that every encrusts you do, there is a RNG(100) roll compared to your instability. If it's under instability, your equipment is now slightly more unstable...
No, but instability is added with every encrust, and it adds effects such as random blinking and explosions. A lot of the time, this can make you teleport into a group of monsters, or just die from the explosions, so using over-encrusted equipment is very unsafe.
It will say in the description what grade it's unstable. "slightly" etc. each grade is 5%. Unfortunately the actual chance is 100% if you are not using the hotfix right now.
I'm not sure how it works on items that don't get used to hit like weapons, or get hit, like armor. Amulets and rings, for example--unless, of course, the unstable effect is triggered when your body takes a "magical hit" to an amulet or ring-based resistance. I've taken that path myself, and only encrusted both rings and a torque once for level 6 alchemy, since it gives a "slightly unstable" result to each.
So the explosions from my Clockwork Gauntlets with 3 Rocket Encrusts and 2 another defensive arent the added effect of the Rocket encrusts? I dunno if it's because my tank build, but they never gimme damage... (well, i use clockwork knight and the defensive heavy clockwork armor, so...)
http://patches.gaslampgames.com/dredmor/dredmor_hotfix_test3.zip I don't believe it fixes already encrusted items however.
Well I don't know what my encrust number has gotten to. I have never had one proc so I don't know what any of the negative side effects even exist.
I found over encrusting my items to dangerously to be a blessing, I managed to over encrust everything I could and the "effects" kill everything around me so I don't have to. Oddly enough I seem to resist all the negative effects and take no damage and retain my health regeneration normally. I originally just wanted to see what would happen if I did the taboo but ended up being a murderous storm that even Dred and Digula fear. Try making: Clockwork Knight Beserker Duel wielding Smith Tinkerer Axes Communist I use that skill set along with boilerplate armor +clockwork gear with chain axes all dangerously encrusted. My result was epic amounts of slow turns and unstoppable killing