An ability to repair burnt out wands should be added to the Wand Lore skill tree. Repairing burnt out wands should have a very long cooldown period. Either this or some way to obtain new wands other then randomly finding them (added to crafting perhaps). Even with maxed wand lore the min burn rate is still 5. So there is always a chance to burn out the wand after just one use. Recharging a wand has an 80turn cooldown, which relegates wand usage to occasional if you don't want to burn out too many wands. Wand Lore is a very short skill tree and could use some more levels to it anyway.
I hope they atleast change the wand tree somehow, it's not very useful atm. They might be trying to balance it in comparison to crossbows. I guess losing lots of bolts and losing wands is supposed to be the balance between the two.
I think allowing a slightly lower minimum burn rate (Say 3) and putting in an additional 4th level skill that prevents burnout below (wand mastery x 5) would make wand mastery a lot more viable as a main skill, allowing a certain number of worry free shots before having to recharge and giving a use to finding gear with a bit more wand mastery. Another idea is to have a high level passive skill that reduces the entropy of all wands carried by 1 every 10 turns or so, allowing wands to gradually reset over time, with the 80 turn recharge with penalty being used to emergency recharge wands
I do think that Wand Use Affinity should not decrease the amount of entropy it gains per use, but it should set a limit that prevents staffs from burnout. At the moment its completely luckbased if your wands burn out and if you find any new. In contrary to the others I don't want wands to become your main weapons, since they are infused with really powerful spells, I see them more as an emergency weapon if your mana gets low (and I think thats what the Designer intended to do). The problem I see, is that the benefit is too small in using the Wand Lore tree, compared to using another skill tree (benefit of wand lore vs. nearly any other skill tree -> other skill tree wins). You can shoot the wands you find for some time anyway, so as a luck based emergency weapon they are useable anyway, you don't need the tree to use the wands like that. If you get 1, or 2 "free" shots (based on Wand Use Affinity) with every wand before burning out is enabled, they would enhance your fighting power on a regular basis and not just by luck. (I had one game where every wand would burn out after just a few shots, even though I polished them after nearly every room)
I'd like Wands to be powerful tools that can let you cast any spell in the game, at the cost of reliability and staying power unless you are willing to take a risk and be adaptable. Something like: - Wands are <b>randomly generated</b> to cast any of the game's spells (e.g. Wand of the Golden Ratio). This includes joke/utility spells that are pretty worthless in combat. - Wand Lore's first spell lets you reinvigorate a burnt-out wand while <b>randomly changing the spell it casts</b> You can use Wands aggressively and try to adapt to whatever spell the RNG grants you or you can try to maintain a powerful wand but be forced to use it sparingly lest it burn out. Haven't thought of a good way to prevent people scumming around until they have 'the best' wand.
Increase the burn rate by one point each time you reroll, so that each time you do so, you shorten the life expectancy of that wand. you should get enough wands over the course of a game for it not to be too big a deal, especially with the three starter wands, but scumming would quickly turn your wands into one shot wonders, also if you made the new type of wand unidentified until the first zap, you might be hesitate to reroll... better the devil you know...
This would have the side effect of making extra wand affinity useful, as it would negate the penalty of your first few rerolls, even on a low burn rate wand.
I would dislike randomizing the effect wands have, whats the point of a "stony" wand that casts squid tentacles? I like knowing whats going to happen when I use something, gambling is not a game mechanic I would enjoy. I wouldn't care if just one wand had the ability to use all other wands spells, but it's still a horrible item if it is random.
@Tytaine Wands wouldn't cast a random spell every time you use them. I'm simply suggesting adding a corresponding wand for every spell in the game. This would make reinvigorating a burnt-out wand be less predictable and would force you to adapt to whatever spell you get.
I don't think every spell should have a wand. I would never take astrology, fleshsmithing, or psionics if their spells could be used by a wand. I only use each of these for maybe 1 or 2 of their skills. I would rather have more spells that can only be done by wands, although I don't know what else they could really add at this point. It would definately take some creativity on their part, they already have a general selection of spells for wands.
I think you're underestimating the difficulty of maintaining powerful wands. <ol> <li>Finding a wand for those 1 or 2 spells out of ~50 in the game would be difficult. @Zakastra's idea would prevent scumming so you'd have to rely on RNG. <li>There is <b>always</b> a chance of burnout with an entropy above 0. If you don't want to risk your favorite wand you could only cast once every 80 rounds. You would also be under the effect of 'Mystically Drained' (-2 sag, -1 magic power) half the time. </ol> So sure, if you don't mind relying on luck to find wands, only being able to cast one spell every 80 rounds (or risking getting a Wand of Blade Being) then you could abandon those skills. --- Just curious: which spells are you talking about in particular? Both of Psionics most useful spells (Shove and Healing) are covered by wands already.
I really like the idea of a wand skill that restors (and randomizes) burnt out wands. I see no downside to this. And in regards to your concern about scumming, here's an idea (Not sure how possible it is to actually implement it); What if using the suggested wand restoration spell also adds a debuff that causes the wand to burn out again if the player reuses the restoration spell on the wand before using it at least once or twice?
It could be like the midas touch buff, except it only gets used up when you use your want. And any attempt to use your wand restoration spell while that buff is in play makes it backfire.
@J-Factor Lol I personally don't like the idea that much. When you expand the list of wands like that, without raising the drop rate significantly, the chance of you actually finding something specific (and therefore useful) is so slim that wand lore will be even worst on average than now. I am not a fan of increasing the item list.
The drop rate doesn't matter. You don't even need more than one wand. The most important part of the suggestion is this: <blockquote>Wand Lore's first spell lets you reinvigorate a burnt-out wand but doing so randomly changes the spell it casts</blockquote> Players are forced to adapt to whatever spell they're dealt with. I can't see any other way to add repairing wands that doesn't make every 'lesser' wand worthless. When you have 'Wand Hack' why settle for a Wand of Laser, Wand of Stone, Fiery Wand or Arcane Wand when you can just convert them to Tentacular Wands? Anyway, sure, you don't have to add <i>every</i> spell. Just enough variety to keep spells from being a reliable, 'unlimited ammo', point and click ranged damage source. Right now half the wands are just single target damage spells.
Why not just leave wands as they are, but reduce the cooldown on rod charge and shift it higher up in the skill tree. Also increase the wand use affinity bonus' of the tree, this would also reduce burn out somewhat. This would allow you to use wands more often, but not make it so you could use them all the time. I do not think the devs intended wands to be used as a main weapon personally. In addition I do not think there need to be more spells that wands come with, just increase the damage on some of the weaker ones.
Add unique spells to wands that you don't find in any skilltree, it would make wand lore more distinct rather than having just knock off copies of existing spells.
@J-Factor It doesn't matter if you add 1000 new wands to it. It doesn't stop people from converting everything to tentacular or whatever it is the highest damage. I mean people jog to reroll with their archaeology, farm mushrooms, manually unstack for lurkfish, max out all skills, and hard reset for anvils. I seen people play MMORPG where they cut wood for money for 14 hours strait. What you think is impossible is nothing for those guys. I don't want wand lore into a grind skill, but that's exactly what any rerolls do. It lets people grind for something specific at the cost of a lot of time.
I would prefer to have wands be mostly offensive like they are now. I don't want a lot of defensive wands preventing any possibility of me getting an offensive wand some games..
