Have wands of tele changed their behavior?

[PowerOfKaishin]

I got the "Nothing happens." message, but there were clearly charges left. What gives?

[duvessa]

you zapped it at empty space

[Sandman25]

I hope you were not confused when zapping it.

[PowerOfKaishin]

I was indeed confused. Since when has this been a thing? Wand of Tele is supposed to circumvent all of the problems that the scrolls has.

[crate]

Wand of Tele is supposed to circumvent all of the problems that the scrolls has.

no, it's vulnerable to confusion instead of silence

scrolls are actually more valuable than wand charges, since there's no more scroll destruction but IIRC there is still wand charge destruction from zot traps, and confusion is much more common than silence

[PowerOfKaishin]

Scrolls are also vulnerable to confusion. That doesn't seem very good from a game design perspective, especially when tacking on the fact that this information is not listed anywhere in-game.

Confusion OP plz nerf

[crate]

right, I never actually try to do anything while confused other than quaff potion of remove confusion so I forgot that it blocks scrolls

[Sandman25]

I was indeed confused. Since when has this been a thing? Wand of Tele is supposed to circumvent all of the problems that the scrolls has.

I don't know, I learned it recently after more than 2 years of playing. The character died when returning back to Lair after getting spider rune, that was very unpleasant surprise as you can guess.

[Sandman25]

There is a "bad" mutation that makes you spend up to 9 MP when evoking a wand, one more reason to spend wand charges first.

[duvessa]

Confusion has always made wands useless. It's not something new. You cannot actually take useful actions while confused other than quaffing potions.

[Rast]

You can also evoke summons.

[rchandra]

Confusion has always made wands useless. It's not something new. You cannot actually take useful actions while confused other than quaffing potions.

This should also be clear from confusing wanded enemies, who would happily blast their wands in every direction ... though I think something about this was changed recently?

[duvessa]

Yes, last time I checked, monsters with wands are specifically coded to empty their wands if you confuse them, instead of taking other actions. It's a pretty bizarre penalty for using confusion, but I guess it isn't alone (e.g. using fear around intelligent monsters can destroy scrolls of blinking and teleportation).

[nago]

You can also evoke summons.

Just clarify a convoluted mechanic.
While confused, you can eVoke (elemental) evokers or decks of summoning (as any other deck) but you can't:

read scrolls of summoning (as any other scroll)
evoke rod of shadows (as any other rod)
cast summoning spells (like any other spells)
use gods' summoning abilities (like most gods' abilities)

Just because confusion is confusing

[tasonir]

imho confusion is pretty rare once you have MR+++. If you don't have MR+++, just whine and complain about RNG until you do.