The Tavern

There are 3 parts to this: wand types, wand ID, wand stacking/recharging. There are two purposes: a less cumbersome inventory interaction, and giving the player fewer, more meaningful options.

1. Wand types

My proposal is to reduce the wand types to only three.

Wand of Zotbolt: the bolts ignore AC and elemental resistances, but can be dodged. They can also drill holes into walls.
Wand of Clouds: summons smite-targeted clouds, like e.g. freezing cloud. The kind of cloud depends on evo (could also give mixed clouds).
Wand of Hexing: confuses, paralyses and dominates. It gives you a a-b-c choice, and higher evo increases the chance that it will cause the effect you chose and not one of the other two.

The reasoning:


I personally would be OK with random effects disappearing; however, since the available wands would now be much fewer, maybe it would be more attractive and worth keeping than it is right now.
I think that polymorph as a wand should go, if HD cannot be made visible. It could also be incorporated by random effects.

2. Wand ID
Remove it completely. Wands can come up fully identified.
Identification by type is already automatic, so there would be no difference if they simply came up already identified.
Charges identification instead would screw up stacking.

3. Wand stacking and recharging
Remove scroll of recharging. Wands of hexing can generate with a good number of charges (15?), the other 2 can have around 4 charges.
Wands stack: if you find a wand of the same type as one you already have, the wand you find is destroyed, and its charges are added to the one in your inventory.

I support the sentiment behind this proposal. Reducing the number of potential inventory items is a worthwhile objective.

That said, maybe this proposal is too radical for me. Starting with stacking (and reduced spawn rate) and trimming a few more wands, like Enslavement, Acid or Lightning, Confusion or Paralysis, and Random Effects.

Once wands stack, scroll of recharging can be removed safely. At the moment it is more convenient to have a few useful wands and a stack of scrolls, rather than to carry multiple wands.

I think the point of scroll of recharging is that different players may choose to recharge different wands, it is not equivalent of finding another wand. Of course it works only if wands are close in power to each other, otherwise everyone would recharge the same wand.

With Heal Wounds and Hasting gone, and Digging having so many charges, what is a current use for the scrolls anyway? I tend to go with Clouds later in the game, or Hex wands early, but it never feels particularly necessary or powerful.

Do you mean too many wands are generated currently? I basically agree, I had about 10 wands at XL 12 in last game. Scroll of recharging does not make much sense then indeed.

Yes. I think recharging only makes sense if wand charges are actually scarce, but that just isn't the case.

I frequently recharge acid, I find that it does good damage, and the debuff helps me kill things with ranged/melee attacks in much shorter order (I'll often use it once to soften up things that would otherwise require a lot of firepower). I'll also frequently choose clouds when available (as it's pretty effective) and rarely I'll recharge digging (if, for example, only one /dig has come up and I don't have oodles of charges on it already) I rarely recharge scattershot (as I don't care for it all that much) and almost never recharge fire (only if that's the only available tool I have to safely manage some situation(s) like hydras and elec eels) and rarely recharge iceblast/lightning (I think iceblast is the better of the two wands, but I almost never need more charges than I find laying around of either one) occasionally I'll recharge a hex wand if I've exhausted it's charges, am using it at least somewhat frequently, it's my only one of confuse/paralyze/enslave, and have a reasonable success chance with it against anything challenging (>25% or so)

I treat recharging very similar to how I treat enchant weapon or armour now, I optimize for short term increased survival chances, and if there's nothing that will make any noticable difference in the short term, I drop it and come back for it later, should something come up that it would be useful for.

For me, removing ?recharge would barely effect my inventory management at all, as I very rarely hold on to them for "future purposes" (Only when a heavily used wand is due to be recharged soon "after a couple more uses") and when I don't need them in the short term I can just leave them on the ground and come back later.

I would personally hate the secondary menu proposed for hex wands and hex wands are already inconsistent enough as-is (you might do something, or not do anything) I don't need them *also* having a chance of doing the wrong thing.

I don't understand why /clouds should change from cone to smite targeting (there's no rationale provided, it seems like a straight power-up to the existing wand, which is already pretty powerful).

It doesn't seem worth the minor convenience addition to get rid of the distinct attack patterns available from the different types of attack wands, which are all pretty reasonably distinct.

Collapsing /dig into one of the attack wand types does seem pretty decent to me, as dig is pretty powerful, and having to choose damage vs positioning is interesting (I'd roll it's effect into acid, personally, as it makes some sense to me, and it'd provide a good contrast between using a powerful wand for attack and getting a powerful secondary effect.)

The idea behind clouds smite targeting is that iceblast would disappear, and iceblast is a long-ranged direct damage attack with mass effect which ignores EV. Maybe a starting fixed smite 3x3 cloud with range 6 would be more reasonable, gradually growing to actual freezing clouds proportions. Right now, clouds has a 1+2+2+3 cone at evo 0, and becomes 1+3+3+4+4+4 at evo 27.

If my proposal were not accepted, I would like acid digging.

The hex wand objection also is reasonable. From my point of view, the three hexes are have clear differences, but how much these differences count is just too situational: the most relevant (life-saving) results are: paralysis to block a corridor, dominate to lead an enemy away from you, confuse to have the enemies drown. The theoretic other uses aren't as good as running away. I would like a "one choice, forever" system: maybe make the hex wand 25% better than it's now (now 20% success becomes 24% success, 50% becomes 60%), but have the player make a definitive choice at first use: will it only work as confusion, paralysis or domination (or even polymorph)? It would give agency, but make the single games more different from each other.

recharge is for spamming good wands more, right? wands are finite even if plentiful and using them very liberally lets you kill stuff earlier and faster than without