I recently had an idea for countering the burn effect. It would be interesting to have an "alum" item that makes every adjacent & diagonal piece of armor remove burn rather than simply block it (alum is used to make flameproof cloth in real life).
I really love this game, but even with the pick axe, 2 archangel armors, and a haste shield, the fire geckos on floor 16 were too much for me. It would be nice if there were some way to defend against curses, since as of right now, you're basically guaranteed to either lose items or take damage.