Wand-lore and wands in general seem a bit underpowered at higher levels, (and not just the extra five levels from RoTDG). What we need to bring this back into balance is more high level wands, as well as more utilitarian wands like the Stony Wand and the Zodiacal Wand. Edit: In addition to high level wands, wand-lore would also benefit from low-level encrusts Edit: We also need an override flag to more tightly restrict the high level wands to the higher levels.
The idea is good, but do you have any suggestions for what wands should that be? I mean, I do agree that it might be good if Wandlore got something, but I'm too tired now (I'm pretty much on standby mode because I'm shifting between sleeping and not being able to now and I have 8 such hours ahead of me, unless I manage to fall asleep for real in the meantime, until I'll have to get up and go to work to interact with intellectually difficult people and to move heavy stuff for the next 8 hours) to think of any ideas and I don't feel entitled to suggest anything because I have a set of Wandlore-craftable equipment for Heimdallr that is waiting for a trigger to be "made" (which in itself could be a really large boost).
In terms of utilitarian wands, there could be, for example: -A wand that resets a random countdown, as per Wright's Irrefutable Argument -A wand that removes invisibility as per Third Sight In terms of combat wands, there could be: -A wand that casts Tenebrous Rift -A wand that casts Alien Weapon
-Wand that Heals HP and MP in a manner similar to Haematic Phylactery, except it applies a similar debuff afterwards (although not permanently-- maybe for a long time, like 300 turns). You could balance it by giving it very few charges (2-3), but also make it unsellable like Phylactery. -A super Tentacular Wand that does a spell effect similar to Tentacle Bolts (any excuse to use Root of T'Char in a recipe is good) -Wand that has the same effects as Spatial Instability Potion -A few more wands which spawn items, like Transmogrification and Meat Wand. Maybe fruit, alcohol, cheese, lutefisk, mushrooms, etc? -A wand which does the Cloud Gremlin AOE spell -Wand which randomnly gives you a buff with a mana per turn cost. -Wand which generates a stack of traps? -Wand which casts a stronger Tesla Mine -Stronger Midas wand -Wand of recipes? -Wand of wands (this is in someone's mod already, can't remember which)
Wand of Love Will Teleport Us Apart (aka the Emo Stick). (This one would deserve a high skill req or steep craft cost, as for a non-Emomancer being able to wave away named monsters is pretty significant.)
The main problem with this is that wands do NOT follow level restrictions on spawning - like potions, no matter what level you assign them, they can spawn on any dungeon level. Hence, there is no such thing as a high-level wand or potion unlike, say, high-level weapons or armour, and it can be seen why the devs balanced low instead of high given the circumstances.
Make their effects weaker but scaling with the wandcrafting stat more? That way they would be as strong as they ought to be by the time you could craft them, but weak enough to be comparable with the rest when you just randomly find them in the dungeon. Of course, that would not work for all wands (any utility or buff wands that can't scale), but it's not impossible to add a backslash effect that would damage you when your wandcrafting was below a certain level (negative scaling to self-damage) to emulate you not being able to use them well enough not to hurt yourself without having the required knowledge. Either way, it is possible to make higher level wands that would be useful when your wandcrafting was higher, it just would require more work due to need of making them balanced even with different scaling and/or drawbacks.
I think it would be better to add scaling to both Magic Power and Wandcrafting. That way wands aren't a joke for non-crafters by floor 5, but only people serious about it would use wands as a primary source of ass-kicking by floor 13.
I'd propose considering DnD's wand system. There, wands can be quite potent because artificers can make wands of spell levels that scale to there own level for a gold fee. Consider: What if wandcrafters could "purchase" a care pack of special wand parts for wands for a fee (i.e. via spells) which can make higher level wands, with sufficient wandcrafting.
Except there is, because of Wandcrafting. Maybe if Wandcrafting gave better statboosts, or wands were simply easier to craft.
I think what we need is a clear division between Wands that can spawn for anyone and Wands that can only be crafted with the skill tree. That could open up a lot of space for balancing.
Would it be possible to spawn a "booster pack" of random wands (like Odius Puffball, right-click to receive new items), that gives more/better wands based on your ? And lampshade the similarity to MtG/Pokemon by saying some wands are Foil Ultra Rares and printed with Perfectly Safe Addictive Ink?
Since wands scale off of wandcrafting and therefore get less valuable the deeper you get, it would be kind of cool if another skill was added to the end of the wandcrafting tree that that gave you additional wandcrafting skill simply for the benefit to the wands... something like 1 point for every 2 character levels you had and continued to work as you leveled.
