The Tavern

Now that the hunger cost officially isn't an issue anymore, invoking this instead of resting has become quite a tedious no-brainer.
How about
a) when resting below max MP you auto-invoke it
b) unwielding it drains MP (to prevent swapping just for resting)

not sure about (b), but (a) would certainly be nice.

To be honest, I'm not sure it makes sense to have it as an evokable, instead of simply having it give MP regeneration over time.

This item should probably be removed, tbh. Note that b) doesn't solve the swap-to-rest behavior entirely; if evoking the staff gives average mp equal to your natural mp regen rate, it's still faster to swap and evoke when below half mp, for example. You'd have to use some sort of attunement effect like the old mp regen amulet behavior.

If we need additional emergency mp sources, how about an xp evoker or just increase the weight of potions of magic? If it's more about adding faster mp regen, you could add mpregen as an armor ego.

A staff of energy does a lot more than MPregen+ though. MRregen+ gives 0.2 mp/turn, whereas a staff of energy gives about 2mp/turn (just guessing based on what it felt like). I've always found myself leaning heavily on staves of energy in Hell & Pan, and other regions where you can't stairdance (when playing with mages). It can also be used in combat, which can make combat less tedious, though also more risky.
Without staves of energy the Staff of Wucad Mu would be even more game-changing than it currently is.

TL;DR: staff of energy >>> MRregen+

Hellmonk wrote:if evoking the staff gives average mp equal to your natural mp regen rate, it's still faster to swap and evoke when below half mp,

I think you misread the OP.
He said to drain mp when the staff is unequipped.

petercordia wrote:A staff of energy does a lot more than MPregen+ though. MRregen+ gives 0.2 mp/turn, whereas a staff of energy gives about 2mp/turn (just guessing based on what it felt like). I've always found myself leaning heavily on staves of energy in Hell & Pan, and other regions where you can't stairdance (when playing with mages). It can also be used in combat, which can make combat less tedious, though also more risky.
Without staves of energy the Staff of Wucad Mu would be even more game-changing than it currently is.

TL;DR: staff of energy >>> MRregen+

Maybe pay for it through contamination or drain or HP, then?

petercordia wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:if evoking the staff gives average mp equal to your natural mp regen rate, it's still faster to swap and evoke when below half mp,

I think you misread the OP.
He said to drain mp when the staff is unequipped.

You're right. That does prevent rest swapping, more or less. Still not a fan of the item.

If mpregen is too weak as an equipment property, it's pretty easy to increase the value.

petercordia wrote:A staff of energy does a lot more than MPregen+ though. MRregen+ gives 0.2 mp/turn, whereas a staff of energy gives about 2mp/turn (just guessing based on what it felt like).

well, there's your problem

staff of energy should go though, or just have its effect changed to mp regen instead of having an mp regen effect with different rules

2 mp/turn isn't that far off for staff of energy - that would be the mean value if evoking never failed (a successful evoke channels 1d3 mp). Mp regen provides 0.25 mp per turn, which is significantly less. But staff of energy is really two effects; it's a large stack of mp regen amulets when out of combat and a very bad but unlimited source of emergency mp when in combat. So you can maintain these two effects by adding swap rules and doing something absurd like autoevoke while resting to solve the interface tax, or you can separate the effects into "better mp regen" and "emergency mp restoration" and pursue those in some different direction. I think the latter is a lot more interesting than trying to retain staff of energy with swap rules.

Hellmonk wrote:2 mp/turn isn't that far off for staff of energy - that would be the mean value if evoking never failed (a successful evoke channels 1d3 mp). Mp regen provides 0.25 mp per turn, which is significantly less. But staff of energy is really two effects; it's a large stack of mp regen amulets when out of combat and a very bad but unlimited source of emergency mp when in combat. So you can maintain these two effects by adding swap rules and doing something absurd like autoevoke while resting to solve the interface tax, or you can separate the effects into "better mp regen" and "emergency mp restoration" and pursue those in some different direction. I think the latter is a lot more interesting than trying to retain staff of energy with swap rules.

IMO the "better MP regeneration" effect is pretty uninteresting, to the extent that I think it should just be removed. The "bonus emergency MP" is actually an interesting effect, if it can be done reasonably without the regeneration effect.

My first thought was some kind of "significant, but not-too-frequent MP refund on being hit" (possibly =damage taken?) ego (That feels like a robe ego to me, but robes are already pretty overloaded) but I think that encourages leaving hostile nonthreatening things around for the express purpose of using them to regen MP, so I'm not sure if that's viable or not (How practical and useful would that actually be? I'm not sure).

Better MP regen makes extended -to me- a lot less tedious.
Instead of going into every fight thinking
"Is 6mp for Iron shot worth it? It's kinda sorta popcorn. Maybe I should bash it with my sword/stick/axe. Maybe health is more important now. If I try to bash it I could get hit. I don't know. If I have to wait for health/mp to regenerate more monsters can spawn and I can get hit with Hell effects. What do I do????"
You can just think
"I'll hit it with Iron shot, it only costs a few turns to get it back."
Much less choice paralysis.

It seems that getting 1mp/turn in combat & whilst running away is generally considered a powerful effect. I'm not 100% certain how important the distinction is, maybe getting 1 or more mp for free every turn would be too powerful, or maybe it isn't. It would certainly effect the tactics mages employ.

I recon you could make equipment-based regen scale with evocations skill, and mutation-based regen with XL. That would follow the line of work which has removed charms, but evocations is also pretty overloaded.

It could be like the Robe of Vines, or the Gong Shield... one massive advantage coupled with a very perceivable disadvantage. The shield is particularly good at this, since it only blocks (and it blocks very well) when it rumbles.

The problem with this is that MP regen is something you normally do out of combat. But something like the Robe of Turbocharge that, when enemies are in sight, activates itself giving MPRegen7+ and sounding like an helicoper, could be fun.

How about the staff of energy might grant some mana whenever you kill something (provided you had it wielded for all of the damage done).

FYI a macro for auto-evoking the staff of energy :
viewtopic.php?p=326294#p326294

Another idea might be to have the staff of energy reduce MP expenditure by half (rounded up or down, depending on chance). It would only do that if it had full MP before the first use of magic.

I would simply remove the item.

F for the auto-evoke macro; it was too pure for this world

I haven't seen it in awhile in trunk, so maybe it's been removed. If that's the case, this is the result I see:

Now heavily leaning spell-caster builds only have resting a billion turns between almost every encounter (and Vehumet/Sif I guess..?) to gain their mana back, especially without a food clock in the game. This means that their optimal score versus melee that just hacks and slashes nonstop went way down in relation.

Secondly, if the heavily leaning spell-caster build wants to have any means of gaining mana back during an actual conflict (where they can't rest), their only steady options (not counting very limited mana potions in this) now are Sif and Vehumet, which really would be lovely if they didn't suck so much to keep for a full extended game (which is a game that casting developed characters have enough time to become more interesting) thanks to that cutting off their options for a life on kill god (TSO/Mak) which is all but necessary to handle some things like mummy curses damaging you for removing the threats (which smite and torment, etc.)

TLDR: I guess it's a pretty heavy nerf for spell casting vs. melee, something we didn't need, going the wrong way.

If this kind of difficulty/limitation is really badly desired, then melee builds more than ever need a form of fatigue that parallels mana depletion.

I think there is still Sublimation of Blood. And well-played, Vehumet can take you through mummy floors, provided you know Death's Door. All that said, I wish the Staff was still part of the game.

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