Wands Balance Patch
The Wands Balance Patch is based on an essay by NetHack4 developer Alex Smith, "Wand balance in NetHack". The proposal outlined therein was implemented by FIQHack, and was later merged into NetHack Fourk as well. Note that the two implementations have slight, generally minor differences.
In addition to the changes to wands, the wand rebalance made monsters zap each other with helpful wands (polymorph sometimes, invisibility and speed monster), and made monsters zap enemies with slow monster and undead turning. FIQHack has further changes to monster AI in general.
The purpose of the patch is to make wands more useful later on and avoid GWTWOD cases (which is an issue with a lot of wands, not just death). In addition, most of the wands in NetHack cease to be very useful as the game progresses: Attack wands have fixed damage that might be effective in the early game, but later on the damage is so small that zapping them might be a waste of turns. Utility wands remain a bit more useful, but even they have fixed, quite boring behaviour, often supplanted by spells.
To improve wands in NetHack, this patch makes wands scale. The effects are no longer fixed, but become more powerful with the newly introduced wands skill. Players gain this skill by using wands. Additionally, the effective skill can be affected by the wand's beatitude:
- Cursed wands lower effective skill by one, blessed wands increase it.
- Zapping a cursed wand while being unskilled will cause the wand to explode - this has similar effects to breaking wands.
Monsters are also affected by this change, and for this purpose have a fixed wand skill based on monster type.
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"Please give more information about monster wand skills."
Skill Caps
Like most skills in Nethack, different roles can reach varying amounts of proficiency with wands. Starting after June 2023, FIQHack swapped the wand skill abilities of Barbarian and Cavemen (the former now topping at Basic, and cavemen being restricted).
| restricted | Barbarians, due to their distrust of magic, are unable to train in wand skills. |
| basic | Cavemen are capable of only basic wand proficiency. |
| skilled | Archeologists, knights, rangers, rogues, samurai, and valkyries may reach the skilled level of proficiency. |
| expert | Healers, monks, priests, tourists, and wizards may reach expert level wand proficiency. |
| master | No role can truly master wand usage innately. However, because having the wand blessed raises the effective skill level by one, an expert user with a blessed wand can get the master-level effect on a particular zap. |
Wand Power
For purposes of overcoming monster MR, the wands use the following power values in FIQHack (Fourk still works like vanilla in this regard):
| unskilled | 5 |
| basic | 10 |
| skilled | 20 |
| expert | 30 |
| master | 50 |
Ray Effects
Rays (excluding digging, which never reflected in the first place) work like this:
| unskilled | No potential item destruction (nor blinding, in the case of lightning). |
| basic | Same as current. |
| skilled | If a target (but not a wall) is reflecting, abort the ray and create an explosion centered on the target. Explodes at the end of the ray. |
| expert | If a target (but not a wall) is reflecting, abort the ray and create an explosion centered on the target. Explodes at the end of the ray. |
| master | Explodes on the first target, reflecting or not, and creates 1d5 explosions adjacent to the target. |
Wand Effects Scaling
| wand of cancellation | unskilled | Protected by player MR |
| basic | Protected by player MR 80% of the time | |
| skilled | Protected by player MR 66% of the time | |
| expert | Protected by player MR 50% of the time | |
| master | Protected by player MR 33% of the time | |
| wand of fire wand of cold wand of lightning wand of magic missile |
unskilled | 3d6 or 40% maxHP damage, whichever is less |
| basic | 6d6 damage | |
| skilled | 6d6 damage | |
| expert | 6d6 damage, MR only halves magic missile damage | |
| master | 6d6 damage, MR only halves magic missile damage | |
| wand of create monster / wand of summoning | unskilled | Create 1 monster. |
| basic | Create 1d2 monsters. | |
| skilled | Create 1d4 monsters. | |
| expert | Create 1d8 monsters. | |
| master | Create 1d16 monsters. | |
| wand of death | unskilled | Drain one level unless drain or death resistant |
| basic | Death unless death resistant | |
| skilled | Death unless death resistant; explosions will only deal 50% of current HP + 6d6 in FIQHack | |
| expert | Death unless death resistant, otherwise drain one level unless drain resistant; explosions will only deal 50% of current HP + 6d6 in FIQHack | |
| master | Death unless death resistant, otherwise drain one level unless drain resistant | |
| wand of digging | unskilled | Digs out d5+4 tiles |
| basic | Digs out d11+8 tiles | |
| skilled | Digs out d17+12 tiles | |
| expert | Digs out d23+16 tiles | |
| master | Digs out d29+20 tiles, ignore maze restrictions (Fourk removed it altogether, but FIQHack still has it) | |
| wand of enlightenment | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | unchanged | |
| wand of light | unskilled | Lights up a lamp radius (3 radius) |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | Similar to a blessed scroll of light (9 radius) | |
| expert | Lights up in a 15 radius | |
| master | Lights up the entire level | |
| wand of locking | unskilled | Closes doors |
| basic | Closes and locks doors | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | Replaces doorway/door with a secret door | |
| wand of make invisible | unskilled | Gives d50 turns of invisibility. Unchanged from vanilla in Fourk |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | Toggles invisibility | |
| expert | Toggles invisibility | |
| master | Toggles invisibility | |
| wand of nothing | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | unchanged | |
| wand of opening | unskilled | Opens doors |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | unchanged | |
| wand of polymorph | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | Re-rolls hostiles once for a weaker form | |
| expert | Re-rolls once for weaker form (hostile) or stronger form (pet) | |
| master | Re-rolls twice for weaker form (hostile) or stronger form (pet), never shudders pets | |
| wand of probing | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | Gives enlightenment on monster zaps | |
| expert | Gives enlightenment on monster zaps | |
| master | Gives enlightenment on monster zaps, reveals their spell repertoire (FIQHack) | |
| wand of secret door detection | unskilled | Reveals hidden things next to you |
| basic | Reveals hidden things in a 5 radius | |
| skilled | Reveals hidden things in a 9 radius | |
| expert | Reveals hidden things in a 15 radius | |
| master | Reveals hidden things on the entire level | |
| wand of sleep | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | unchanged | |
| wand of slow monster | unskilled | Gives d4+5 turns of slowness |
| basic | Gives d8+11 turns of slowness | |
| skilled | Gives d12+17 turns of slowness, removes intrinsic speed | |
| expert | Gives d16+23 turns of slowness, removes intrinsic speed | |
| master | Gives d20+29 turns of slowness, removes intrinsic and temporary speed | |
| wand of speed monster | unskilled | Gives 2d20 turns of speed |
| basic | Gives 2d20+20 turns of speed | |
| skilled | Gives 2d20+20 turns of speed, gives intrinsic speed | |
| expert | Gives 2d20+50 turns of speed, gives intrinsic speed | |
| master | Gives 5d20+100 turns of speed, gives intrinsic speed | |
| wand of striking | unskilled | Deals 1d12 damage, never misses |
| basic | Deals 2d12 damage, never misses | |
| skilled | Deals 3d12 damage, never misses | |
| expert | Deals 4d12 damage, never misses | |
| master | Deals 8d12 damage, never misses | |
| wand of teleportation | unskilled | Cannot teleport on noteleport levels |
| basic | Cannot teleport on noteleport levels | |
| skilled | Cannot teleport on noteleport levels | |
| expert | Can teleport on noteleport level unless self-zapped. Doing so allows no controlled teleportation (4k) / Cannot teleport on noteleport levels (FH) | |
| master | Can teleport on noteleport level unless self-zapped. Doing so allows no controlled teleportation (4k) / Cannot teleport on noteleport levels. You are prompted for where to teleport hit monsters (FH) | |
| wand of undead turning | unskilled | Scares undead that fail to resist |
| basic | Scares undead that fail to resist | |
| skilled | Destroys undead that fail to resist, scares otherwise | |
| expert | Destroys undead that fail to resist, scares otherwise | |
| master | Destroys undead that fail to resist, scares otherwise | |
| wand of wishing | unskilled | unchanged |
| basic | unchanged | |
| skilled | unchanged | |
| expert | unchanged | |
| master | unchanged |
