The Tavern

When it comes to melee usage, how does the unrand elemental staff compare to a plain old staff of air/earth/fire/cold? I'm already aware of the lack of spell enhancers and the presence of its sweet sweet resistances to every bloody thing, but I'm curious about the elemental damage triggers.

learndb wrote:elemental staff[1/3]: A +3 staff (not quarterstaff) {rElec rF++ rC++ MR++ AC+5}. On melee attacks, rolls two (evocations/27) checks, and if either succeeds, it does an extra 9+1d15 damage that randomly checks one of rF, rC, rElec, AC.

learndb wrote:staff[1/3]: (staves; +5 acc / 5 dam / 1.2 base delay / 0.6 min delay)

learndb wrote:quarterstaff[1/1]: (staves; +3 acc / 10 dam / 1.3 base delay / 0.6 min delay; two handed)

Elemental staff has poor base damage (5, less than a whip), but grants all the resists you want. With 15 Evo, you have ~80% chance that extra damage triggers...

Yeah, I saw what LearnDB has on it. Basically I'm just looking to confirm if the two Evoc/27 checks are accurate. If so that is not half bad at all.

I used it on a couple of characters and it seems to be a decent enough weapon at around 10-15 Evo that was killing most things fairly well except for orbs of fire (which it didn't kill at all).

I guess it's a neat weapon if you find it early enough (I remember back then fixedart staves generation chances were way higher so it was pretty common). You will probably be able to switch to a lajatang later.

Oh, and compared to ele staves: doesn't boost your spells.

True, though trading in a robe of resistance for robe of the archmagi would certainly ameliorate that and then some. I'll just make sure not to bother with it against oofs and hell sentinels then.

Note that it isn't completely useless against oof, just much less good ( the earth attack is physical and does decent damage to oofs, if only one time in four)

Not my first choice of oof fighting weapon by far, But better than a club

I've tried to kill an oof with the elestaff on this character, and it just wasn't working. I had haste, might on and I was tabbing that orb and at best I brought it to something like 1/4 HP. My haste and might run off, I've lost too much HP and I just finished it with a spell and called it a day. I think I maybe tried it twice, even, with no success. Oofs have really good AC and earth damage checks it so even if you roll earth you still won't do spectacular damage to one.

Sar, you are eerily well-prepared for this thread. Not that that's a bad thing.

ooo, me too, me too! http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 192620.txt

I used it heavily on this DDHe who got 15 runes. I found it early - d:5, used it throughout the entire normal game. Switched to TSO and branded a Trishula for extended. I don't recall if I tried to hit orbs of fire with the staff or not, but eventually if you're doing extended I would replace it. It procs enough and does enough damage that for a normal game you'll be killing things very easily. A few omni-resistant things like OOF I'm less sure of, but basically any game you find this staff early enough to have not yet committed to a weapon, I'd use it. It's very good.

Note that even in extended I switched back and forth between the staff and trishula, but there were definitely times the trishula was the better choice.

Elemental staff kills stuff just fine, for the most part. Probably I would carry a lajatang for the odd things like crystal guardians or OOF that would present a problem.

ackack wrote:Elemental staff kills stuff just fine, for the most part. Probably I would carry a lajatang for the odd things like crystal guardians or OOF that would present a problem.

The lajatang will probably also kill the rest of the things just fine, too.

I actually found and have been using it on my GrIE, coupled with a robe of the Archmagi. Until I got Evo up to 9 or so, it was just a bad artefact with phenomenal defenses that OCCASIONALLY proc'd for a decent jolt of damage. Now that I've got Evo a bit higher, it's triggering much more often. It's a pretty good one-handed killing tool, but I agree a well-enchanted, nicely-branded lajatang would probably do better, especially if I keep training Staves. It's just nice having 2 rings of protection from fire, 2 rings of protection from cold, 2 rings of protection from magic, and a +5 ring of protection all in my weapon slot (the rElec is redundant because of my gargoylehood). This is definitely a weapon for the paranoid at heart.

njvack wrote:
ackack wrote:Elemental staff kills stuff just fine, for the most part. Probably I would carry a lajatang for the odd things like crystal guardians or OOF that would present a problem.

The lajatang will probably also kill the rest of the things just fine, too.

Can / should you use a shield with elemental staff? Probably would affect the lajatang swapping.

XuaXua wrote:Can / should you use a shield with elemental staff? Probably would affect the lajatang swapping.

At present I've got a happy little +2 buckler in my off-hand. Normally my biggest reason to go 1-handed is to have a shield of resistance of some sort, but on this guy, I don't really think that's necessary... Maybe I'll find Donald and get a shield of reflection? Or (better by far) a +slaying or +INT artefact shield. Or I can just leave my off-hand open for some sweet sweet auxiliary punch attack action when I'm not lajatanging <3

It's been a long time since I had one, but I believe it's 1 handed, and you can wear a shield with it. You shouldn't if you're going to be swapping to a 2h weapon often, although if you aren't swapping, then yeah get a shield.

My last game used a demon trident/longbow combo and so I didn't use a shield with the demon trident.

Yeah, the elemental staff is one handed, but a lajatang is two handed. So I would assume you'd want to use a shield with the elemental staff, which means it's not sensible to try to swap to a lajatang for specific foes. Of course, you could swap before going into an area where you think you'd need the lajatang, like when you enter Zot.

That's another reason why I went with the trishula over blessing a bardiche. Of course that my shield was the shield of resistance didn't hurt. That was a great run

Aren't there some weapons that can be used 1- or 2-handed and are more effective 2-handed? Is trident/trishula one of those? I thought we had a bastard sword at some point.

XuaXua wrote:Aren't there some weapons that can be used 1- or 2-handed and are more effective 2-handed? Is trident/trishula one of those? I thought we had a bastard sword at some point.

Those were taken out around .v13.

That classification was removed because it was stupid and terrible in every way. Double swords were renamed to bastard swords, and then later, renamed back to double swords again; IIRC this took place long after removing "1.5-handedness".

Unfortunately there's still an arbitrary set of 1-handed weapons that turn into 2-handed weapons if you're a small species, for no apparent reason.

There was actually something like that - in form of heavier penalties from shield if skill wasnt' high enough - but it was removed long time ago

Code:: Remove HANDS_HALF. author elliptic <hyperelliptical@gmail.com> Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:43:39 +0000 (17:43 -0500) committer elliptic <hyperelliptical@gmail.com> Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:01:17 +0000 (18:01 -0500) commit bcabc470e91cf72fe675463c870a06f3caf5e48c tree 156b795d3765211dc6f01cc090743bf5e49320a9 tree | snapshot parent 7f4492e595a2fa7246af8f24f2ef2b0a4815fc63 commit | diff Remove HANDS_HALF. 1.5-handed weapons were supposed to be differentiated from 1-handed weapons by having larger penalties to accuracy, damage, and delay when used with a shield with not enough Shields skill. This was not a very large difference, especially since it disappeared after raising Shields skill; the main effect was making trident + shield less good in the early game for fighters. And confusing players, of course. In fact, bugs were present ever since 0.10 that meant that 1.5-handed weapons actually had the same penalties to damage and delay as 1-handed weapons. So instead of putting those unnoticeable penalties back in, let's remove HANDS_HALF. A couple notes: * This commit shouldn't change which weapons are usable with a shield for any race. This required refactoring the code and changing some weapon sizes, but those sizes are only used to determine handedness and wieldability anyway. This is how the weapon sizes are currently used for one-handed weapons: - SIZE_LITTLE one-handed weapons are one-handed for everyone - SIZE_SMALL one-handed weapons are two-handed for spriggans only - SIZE_MEDIUM one-handed weapons are two-handed for all the small races * Blowguns no longer have a small penalty for being used with a shield. This can be added back in if desired, but it was previously implemented using HANDS_HALF and seems fairly unimportant.

Also there were heavy penalties to attack speed while wielding double-handed weapons (like xbow or lajatang) with a shield, but that's gone since long too.

duvessa wrote:Unfortunately there's still an arbitrary set of 1-handed weapons that turn into 2-handed weapons if you're a small species, for no apparent reason.

I can only think of the hand axe here, where all other 1-handed axes would be 2-handed, and all other 1-handed non-short-blades would be 2-handed.

So I'm looking at this staff here... Per the flavour text, it was owned by the leader of the Guild of Five Elements. It offers five distinct defenses (rF++, rC++, rElec, MR++, +5 AC). And for some reason it only deals four special damage types (fire, cold, electricity, and beatings (I don't count base damage as a special damage type)).

FR: Add a quicksilver damage proc to go alongside the other four elements. Since that's pretty much irresistible and would dispel enemy buffs, you'd probably want to reduce the damage output. Or not; hey, upgrading artefacts with 20% chances of doing awesome things is always welcome.

-OR-

FR: Change the flavour text to have it be owned by the leader of the Guild of Four Elements. Keep the MR++ because Reasons. All sorts of unrandarts offer MR because Reasons.

-OR-

FR: Change this staff's name to Stormcaller, and have its flavour text declare it to be a special item created by Qazlal. I think that's suitable now that we have a god of four elements. You could even add a miniature version of Qaz's storm shield effect, randomly blasting nearby tiles and generating a moderate amount of noise, kind of like how that one eveningstar artefact "Brilliance" gives you a trial-sized TSO halo.

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