An idea to improve Wand Lore

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Mr_Strange, Jun 24, 2012.

  1. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    I'm playing another wand-using character, and I think I've put my finger on why Wands are so "meh" compared to Smithing, Alchemy, or Tinkering -

    You NEVER want to level-up your Wand Lore skill ASAP.

    I have dozens of characters who raced to smithing 4 or 5 with their first few points. That gives them better weapons and armor - in many cases outshining similar gains they could have had from just finding stuff on the ground. People say that smithing loses its lustre after the first 6-8 floors, and that's true - but it's a great way to start, especially for melee builds.

    Similarly, I frequently grab some Tinkering levels ASAP. If I want to be collecting traps, getting those trap skill points right off the bat is a good investment. I might make a few random weapons or clockwork pieces as well.

    And alchemy? It's hard to justify almost anything BUT alchemy when building my mages. More health potions, more stat bonuses, gem transmutation, better staff weapons - alchemy is a totally sweet way to start off my mage builds.

    Wand Lore, on the other hand, is just a terrible way to start. You need an early pet, and probably some damage-dealing spells. You need some mana regen via Alchemy, Lay Lines, or Blood Magic. There's just nothing in Wand Lore you need ASAP - which means Wand Lore is something you grab a point or two of - and maybe come back to around Character Level 15. I have a throwing character who got it for the :dmg_aethereal: bonus, but Vegan was much more attractive, so Wand Lore still just didn't become any sort of priority.

    Now I don't think we should be working to change this - but instead, we should recognize that, unlike other crafting skills, wand lore is a late-game focus. This means we should change the way the recipes work.

    Here's my specific idea:

    Provide recipes for every wand type at level 1. Have the # of charges be lowish - maybe 4-6 charges. Then, at each level up, unlock some new recipes for the same wands, but with fewer components. Eventually, perhaps, some wands can simply be crafted out of burnt-out wands with no additional components! I'd also like to see # of charges go up with wand skill.

    For example, let's say the Rock Wand is available at level 1, and requires zinc ore, iron ore, copper ore, and tin ore. 4-6 charges. At level 2 you can make it with just zinc ore and tin ore, for 5-8 charges. At level 4 you can make it with just an iron ore piece, for 8-12 charges!

    I also think adding a money-cost to wand crafting would be awesome. I hear this is coming...

    Some wands might start at level 2, maybe the tentacle wand isn't available until level 3. But I think the basic idea is - allow Wand Crafting to be useful (but inefficient) at low levels, and improve material efficiency as you progress. Sounds awesome to me, and much more attractive.
     
  2. Daynab

    Daynab Community Moderator Staff Member

    I like your idea, but I think this would require changing the way recipes work. I don't think there's any way to change the input taken depending on your skill currently.
     
  3. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    I was just thinking of multiple recipes creating the same thing - which I believe can be done in a straight-forward manner. Making them distinct recipes also allows setting the # of charges.
     
  4. Daynab

    Daynab Community Moderator Staff Member

    You're right. The main problem then is having say... 3 recipes for each wand clogging the crafting panel.
     
  5. TSED

    TSED Member

    On the other hand, wandcrafting's list is pretty bare.

    Another problem with wandcrafting is that it doesn't make any permanent equipment. Even alchemy does that! If there were a few recipes which were possible to use indefinitely (like a sword or a staff), it would suddenly become much more useful. My big hope for CotW is that the encrusting system may be improved (but certainly doesn't rely on) wandcrafting.
     
  6. LionsDen

    LionsDen Member

    How about crafting tomes using the lathe. As far as I know, tomes aren't crafted anywhere else and this would make higher wand crafting skill attractive to many people.
     
  7. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    Crafting tomes would be cool. Some wizard-appropriate gear would also be nice.

    Honestly, I'd love to see a way to just "craft" additional charges for existing wands!
     
  8. LionsDen

    LionsDen Member

    I don't know of any way to do that until they make a command for modders to do such a thing to wands.
     
  9. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    Buying wand lore makes your wands more powerful. Not as in, you get better wands, but your bling wand does way more damage with 4 wandcrafting than with 1 wandcrafting. It is already a good early buy and wand lore as it is now can support you through the non-diggle gods levels (levels 11 and 15 have some balance trouble in general probably, so I'm not too worried).

    It's well worth buying.

    Absolutely disagree. Wand lore is strong in the early game and weak in the end game.


    Having wand charges depend on your skill level or the recipe you are using would require new features. So long as you're going there you may as well ask the devs to come up with a better solution, but honestly I think this is a non-solution to a non-problem.
     
    mining likes this.
  10. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    5 extra damage on your 10-charge bling wand is worthless compared to almost any other tier-2 skill you could get. It's certainly better than nothing, but it compares poorly to the other choices you have - which makes it a very unattractive choice for you first few levels.
     
  11. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    Keeping in mind that wands suffer from neither timeout nor mana limitations and that they're relatively easy to craft now it hardly seems necessary to buff them further. 5 extra damage also means 20 more gold on it per use, or 200 for 10 charges. Wands are versatile as well, look at the stony wand for example.

    Anyway that whole thing about wands eventually not needing any requirements other than the burnt out wand, I already tried that. It is impossible to balance.
     
    OmniNegro likes this.
  12. SilvasRuin

    SilvasRuin Member

    Wand Lore is an oddball. I would much, much sooner consider taking it on a Warrior than a Wizard. On a Warrior, you can access its full power without having to waste any more levels on the Wizard archetype and get to experience a variety of useful spells while still focusing almost all of your stats on brawn. On a Wizard... yeah, it's overshadowed quite a bit. Leveling any Wizard skill empowers most Wizard skills while Wand Lore can't be improved by any skill except maxing Rogue Scientist. It's unreliable, clutters the inventory, and requires focus to power it up while most other Wizard skills are reliable, don't interfere with the inventory at all, and don't necessarily have to be focused to be able to get increasingly good use out of them.

    If that's a problem, then Wand Lore's issue is that it's geared towards being a solo Wizard skill. To fix that... I don't know. One possibility would be changing over their scaling to work off of spell power and then making :wand_burn: instead provide a chance that a charge isn't used up. That would make more levels in Wand Lore desirable without cutting it off from the other wizard skills.

    Alchemy is probably not brought up as having the same problems because it has a Warrior alternative (Fungal Arts), because Wand Lore is designed to directly mimic certain spells most of the time and thus can be directly compared to alternatives, and because potions don't depend on the crafting skill for potency. Would Wand Lore be better if it was redesigned to mimic Alchemy? ...probably not. I'm not convinced Alchemy isn't problematic in its own way.
     
    OmniNegro likes this.
  13. Grymling

    Grymling Member

    Change the wand skill so you have access to a basic array of wands, and for each level, if you have the recepie and/or the wand you can tier it up with a slight increase of effect. That way only Wand Crafters can use better wands, thus a important early pick. Add spice to the mix by giving a failure chance the higher tier you try to make. Wands don't grow on trees you know...(returns a burnt wand)
     
  14. LionsDen

    LionsDen Member

    Wand effect/damage is already based on your wandcrafting skill level.
     
  15. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    It's impossible to have random crafting outcomes now, and there really is no need to dabble in the code just for that (because there are workarounds for that).
    But really, the point of crafting skills is the certainty that one will be able to make what he needs (barring bad luck with a hidden recipe), so introducing a random chance for recipes to fail won't really make it any more interesting, as it will act against the purpose of the skill.
     
  16. Bohandas

    Bohandas Member


    There's already other things that have multiple recipes in the core game; Ground meat and grated cheese have about half a dozen to a dozen each.
     
  17. TheKirkUnited

    TheKirkUnited Member

    There is already code for a single recipe with multiple results dependent on skill level. (iron bolts - barbed iron bolts - cruelly barbed - etc. ) This same thing might be applied to wands so that at higher skill levels you could get a wand (throbbing rock wand, pulsating coral wand, rock wand + double entendre, you get the idea) with more charges, or perhaps even a more potent effect, though since :wand_burn: scaling is already in effect this would have to be done with great caution.

    The problem with this idea is that it requires the creation of a bunch of new items, which would take work and the payoff would add yet more clutter to an already stressed inventory. It could also populate the dungeon with a stupid amount of wands if not handled carefully. Crafted wands could have a very high item value to make them craftable only I suppose.

    If all of that sounds stupid feel free to ignore me. It's late and I'm just rambling away here.
     
    Kazeto and Aegho like this.
  18. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    That's not stupid at all - in fact, being cognizant of ripple effects like that is a key part of good design.

    In my original post, I specifically did not add new wands - just "more charges" and "simpler recipes."

    Imagine if wand-crafting level 1 allowed you to make tentacle wands - but required 3 offal, 3 cubes of flesh, 2 tentacle bolts, and an black pearl. But at level 3 you could make it for just 2 offal, 1 tentacle bolt, and a black pearl. Same wand (more charges) but simpler recipes.
     
  19. Aegho

    Aegho Member

    The problem is that wands scale poorly, they do very well on the first few floors, but lose power very very quickly.

    I'd be tempted to make a core-file rebalance mod that adds more aggressive scaling to existing wands, with the tradeoff of lower base damage.

    I've also been tempted to make recepies to recharge wands. Like Wand X + Mana Potion = Wand X. So as long as you don't use the last charge, you can recraft it and get a new set of charges.
     
  20. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    That sounds hot! Unlock all those recipes at level 3, perhaps. Are mana potions the right thing to recharge wands? Seems like you'd have to have both alchemy and wands to make use of that trick... which maybe isn't a bad thing? How about recharging them with rust or alluminum powder?