The Tavern

Have a lvl 18 Gh m&f character. Currently have a +7 great mace and a +3 Morningstar, both of draining. Follower of Kiku and planning to put pain brand on first demon whip I find. Meantime, found a scroll of brand weapon. Should I rebrand one of my weapons? If so, which one? M&f skill is 19.2 and usually using great mace.

Draining is a pretty cool brand as long as you're up against living targets. And I feel like nice new maces and flails drop fairly often. If you can hold your ground with that fairly well already, then branding a moderately enchanted evening star instead (or possibly one of those demon weapons) could be more impressive.

Depends how the rest of the character build is going and what part of the dungeon you're focusing on, but I'd probably hold onto the scroll for a while. I wouldn't mind a flame or ice weapon either, but draining is quite good.

Judge for yourself; when you rebrand draining, the resulting (rounded) brand probabilities are

I don't like those odds to rebrand. Am I losing a great deal of XP by using a draining weapon?

I don't think so...

If as the wiki implies, the effect on actual HD isn't kept anymore?

I've heard on the subreddit multiple times that the reduction of xp value isn't a thing anymore.

And even when it was a thing, it was insignificant.

No longer a thing. Draining is a nice brand IMO. It becomes less useful if you do extended. Also doesn't do much against some of the bigger badder enemies (OoF, curse toe, lich). If you are going for a 3 rune win, you should be fine. Pain brand also becomes less desirable the later in the game you play due to more resistant monsters. You might be better off just branding something now if you have high necromancy. Freezing and vorpal tend to be better for Zot I think if you are just going for 3. Well pain will do well on draconians, freezing will slow them and affect OoF.

Speaking of branding, I would honestly pain brand the +7 great mace and then it doesn't much matter what you do with the scroll. It's not like you're guaranteed to find a dwhip before extended, at which point you don't care much about pain brand any more.

EDIT: well obviously don't pain brand the gmace and then use the scroll on it, that would be ridiculous

Thanks for the advice all. I did find a demon whip to pain brand, but died on the orb run from double pan lords with firestorm.

Omg, better luck next run!

And fog-evade/blink or port/stay away from big nasty pan lords when possible.

Yeah, I have a tendency to not have a fog scroll when needed. I think they are better then I tend to give them credit later in the game. On the plus side, about half my characters get at least 1 rune before dying now. Way up from just a few months ago.