Suggestions to make wandlore less of a rubbish skill.

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Ruigi, Apr 7, 2012.

  1. Ruigi

    Ruigi Will Mod for Digglebucks

    These ideas are not presented in an order for any reason, and in no way suggests skill level progression.

    1. A "wand recharge" cooldown ability: recharge the wand with some mana, or maybe a cooldown, or maybe both! wand can't hold more charges than its "max" capacity.

    2. A "wand efficiency" skill that lets you use a wand multiple times per charge (effectively multiplying the number of effective charges on all wands) or simply a skill that doubles the number of min-current-max charges on all wands used by the player.

    3. A "luck based" wand ability, gives a wand a percentage based chance to not burn a charge when the wand is used. especially if combined with the "wand efficiency" upgrade, it allows a wand to last much longer before burning out. perhaps this percentage stat could be affected by the now defunct wand affinity skill.
     
    Glazed and SkyMuffin like this.
  2. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Member

    I'd like to see the zorkmid value of wands go down, while their overall charge number goes up. Most of the time if I get a wand early game it's an automatic sell for the money. There's not usually enough charges to justify keeping it, the monsters aren't that hard yet, and the zorkmid value just gives me even more reason to get rid of it-- especially if there's good equipment in the shop.
     
  3. J-Factor

    J-Factor Member

    The trick is to use wands until they have 1 charge left and then sell them. Their cost isn't dependent on the number of charges left.

    ---

    4. New "wand recharge" recipes that aren't quite as ridiculous as the base wand recipes. Eg:

    [​IMG](N charges) + [​IMG] + [​IMG] + [​IMG] = [​IMG](N+M charges)

    ...where M is an appropriate number. Perhaps the min # of charges for the wand so it can scale with the wand's usefulness.

    I'd also take the randomness out of the "wand craft" recipes - all wands crafting should have the maximum number of charges, not a random number.
     
  4. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Member

    WHAT?!

    200 hours of Dredmor, and I still feel like a noob.
     
  5. HowlingLotus

    HowlingLotus Member

    100 here almost and I hear ya.

    What about the n-Dimensional Lathe? Does that thing register Burnt out Wand repairs yet? I've heard people have repaired over the 500 asked for the achievement without any luck. I also know the Wand Lore skill is still bugged so I was wondering if that was also making Wands a little more useless?
     
  6. Ruigi

    Ruigi Will Mod for Digglebucks

    it would require some kind of tile based crafting ui, where the player could specify exactly which wand he would want to recharge.
     
  7. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    I tried this. The problem was (at the time, with 1.0.9) that items crafted would stack. The result of this was that the wand you were trying to recharge would be placed on the same stack as that wand. This meant it would have the same charge it had before.

    It did lead me to discover another bug in which you can use a stack of wands to get infinite charges by repeatedly breaking and reforming the stack, not sure if that is now fixed.
     
  8. J-Factor

    J-Factor Member

    I think that's more of a problem with the current 'multiple identical wands' system. Why do players waste inventory space carrying around 2 of the same wand?
    • No way to combine wands
    • They want to sell one of the wands
      • Would be fixed if charges acted like stacks and could be split
    • They want to craft a Bolt of Mass Destruction with one of the wands
      • Again, stacks would fix this

    Charges are just a more limited, more annoying version of stacks that only exist because 'splitting a wand' doesn't make any sense. I guess you could pretend that snapping a wand would cause the two halves to grow back to full length or something...

    That's a shame. I'd definitely call that a bug, considering the result of the craft shouldn't be able to stack with one of its own ingredients.
     
  9. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    I haven't tested this in the latest version. Both may be fixed in 1.0.10. I did report it.

    Both bugs still persist
     
  10. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    Sorry for the double post. I was working on this problem a while back with my first attempt to make a mod, and here is what I came up with. These are specifically things that can be modded in without changing core files.

    A) The game needs more low end (to make crafting more feasible) and high end (for diggle gods) wands

    B) Enchantment of small items using the lathe. Anything small enough to fit into the lathe can be engraved with magical runes. For example with Wandcrafting 5 you might produce an "Exquisitely Engraved Iron Dirk" and with Wandcrafting 3 a "Finely Engraved Iron Dirk" which are all exactly alike save for enchant values on them. Other candidates include the broken orb, duelist's buckler, and small wooden crossbow.

    C) Hidden recipes that are cheaper than the starting ones, like a hidden recipe for the bling wand that takes 1 gold ingot instead of 2.

    D) Hidden recipes that allow wands to be upgraded. Like turning a Bling Wand into a Wand of Superior Bling that inflicts mega midas or something. Or upgraded wands that hold more charges than their base ones, like an Overcharged Tentacle Wand.
     
  11. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    Enchantment with anything would be good, but the problem lies in how the items are treated - right now the only way to make something like that would be to add a multitude of non-spawnable items and just as many individual crafting recipes.

    Nah. If you think the cost for something is too high, then you can propose lowering it. But making hidden recipes like that is only going to decrease the chances of players getting good hidden recipes, which would be pretty bad. That is, unless we get more bookshelves in rooms, which wouldn't really be that bad if they can make it without causing bookshelves to start being too common.

    The same as C, here, if they were simply upgraded wands. Though I do agree that there could be recipes for modified (slightly changed so that the effect wouldn't simply be stronger), more potent, versions of some wands.
    Oh, and I do agree with your A point, though I don't really use wands save for the occasional lucky find.
     
  12. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    YES. Also, as far as stacks and stuff go, I'd be quite happy with a skill that let me break one wand in order to add it's charges to another wand of the same type. That seems pretty simple and straightforward.
     
  13. klaymen_sk

    klaymen_sk Member

    Or add one or five new recipes. If it is possible to change the crafted item depending on the skill level, then one recipe would suffice. Otherwise add five of them, each requiring the same or slightly different materials and each eill require different level of the skill.
    Basically that recipe(s) will create an "enchanting token" - name it however you want - which could be used on another item to give it some enchantment, depending on level of the token. Even if you want to give them a corruption chance, stronger tokens will have lower chance of corrupting.
    Quite a simple solution, if it can be done this way.
     
  14. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    ~sigh~
    No, it can not be done that way.
    Because the only way to get a modified item from crafting is to include another, modified, item in the game. And we can't use one item in our inventory to modify another one, other than using it as a crafting ingredient.
    Thus, it would have to be "one or five new recipes", or rather, "as many as there are possible enchantments", for every item that could be enchanted. Meaning "a multitude of non-spawnable items and just as many individual crafting recipes".
     
  15. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member


    That's exactly what I was doing. After I finish Fax's skill art I think I will pick that mod up again and flesh it out. Viking Medicine can wait.

    Engraved versions of things can have different sprites, too, to reflect them getting smaller each time they go through the lathe.
     
  16. FaxCelestis

    FaxCelestis Will Mod for Digglebucks

    I think the only way you're going to get that work without some new core code is to make new recipes for every item you want to be engrave-able in the game. Like, Knight's Sword + Rune of Digging + Rune of Pillars = Inscribed Knight's Sword. And Inscribed Knight's Sword would be an item that duplicated the Knight's Sword itemDB.xml entry, but gave it an artifact quality (equal to the item's level, maybe?) and (possibly) included the special="1" flag. That said, it is totally feasible, and I'd do it myself but for that I don't really relish the idea of making several thousand duplicate items. HOWEVER, if you do decide to go ahead with this (and you also decide to not use the core art) let me know and I'll see about tossing together some runic item pngs, or even overlays so you can make runic item pngs quicker.
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  17. SamBC

    SamBC Member

    It'd be a pretty cool feature to add if core code were going to be written, though... a "slot" on certain items to be marked with an enhancement. Categories of enhancement. Relatively straightforward code, as well. Not exactly low-hanging fruit, though.