in Rod we trust?

[Tulse]

f - 1045 gold a +1 rod of clouds (13/13)
l - 1045 gold a +3 rod of clouds (11/11)

Which is better and why? I currently have access to up to 4 scrolls of recharging.

[luckless]

Rods max out at +9/17, so if you're going to max out the rod (bad idea imo--you're playing 0.19, so save the scrolls for wands of haste/teleport/heal wounds), the latter is more efficient.

Otherwise: clouds uses what, 6 charges? In that case, the first is definitely better. Recharge rate doesn't matter much, but getting to use the rod twice in a fight rather than once is a big deal.

[Siegurt]

Rods max out at +9/17, so if you're going to max out the rod (bad idea imo--you're playing 0.19, so save the scrolls for wands of haste/teleport/heal wounds), the latter is more efficient.

Otherwise: clouds uses what, 6 charges? In that case, the first is definitely better. Recharge rate doesn't matter much, but getting to use the rod twice in a fight rather than once is a big deal.

If you're picking one to recharge, I'd spend the first recharge on the one with 11 charges, so you always had 4 clouds on tap (recharging the 13 max charge one is unlikely to get you much closer to a 4th cloud spell in a combat, and it's highly likely that a single ?recharge will take the 11 up to a 12 or higher max charges)

Of course I presume you'll keep and use both rods.

There's no reason not to keep both rods, and there's no reason to max out either one (4 is probably as many times as you can reasonably expect to use even a maxed-out rod in a single combat)

If you can't afford them both, then buy the better one (with 13 charges), and save up for the worse one later, and maybe recharge it once.