Wands Balance Patch

The Wands Balance Patch is based on essay by NetHack4 developer Alex Smith Wand balance in NetHack. The proposal outlined therein was implemented by FIQhack author and it was later merged into NetHack Fourk as well.

The purpose of the patch is to make wands more useful. 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 they the damage is so small, that zapping them might be a waste of turns. Utility wands remain little 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 they become more powerful with newly introduced wands skill. Players gain this skill by using wands. Additionally, the effective skill can be affected by wand's beatitude: cursed wands lower effective skill by one, blessed wands increase it.

Wand Power

For purposes of overcoming monster MR, the wands use following power values:

unskilled	5
basic	10
skilled	20
expert	30
master	50

Ray Effects

Rays (including digging rays, except there is never a target) work like this:

unskilled	No potential item destruction or blinding in case of lightning.
basic	Same as current
skilled	If a target is reflecting (but not walls), abort the ray and create an explosion centered on target.
expert	Now also explodes if the ray runs out of range.
master	Explodes on first target, reflecting or not, and create 1d5 explosions adjacant to target.

Wand Effects Scaling

wand of cancellation	unskilled	Protected by player MR
	basic	Protected by player MR
	skilled	Protected by player MR
	expert	Protected by player MR 90% of the time
	master	Protected by player MR 50% 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	unskilled	Create 1 monsters depending on skill, 1/23 of the time create 1d7 additional monsters
	basic	Create 2 monsters depending on skill, 1/23 of the time create 1d7 additional monsters
	skilled	Create 3 monsters depending on skill, 1/23 of the time create 1d7 additional monsters
	expert	Create 4 monsters depending on skill, 1/23 of the time create 1d7 additional monsters
	master	Create 5+1d7 monsters.
wand of death	unskilled	Drain one level unless drain or death resistant
	basic	Death unless death resistant
	skilled	Death unless death resistant
	expert	Death unless death resistant, otherwise drain one level unless drain resistant
	master	Death unless death resistant, otherwise drain one level unless drain resistant
wand of digging	unskilled	Digs out d5+4 tiles (Fourk), or digs out 1 tile (FIQHack)
	basic	Digs out d11+8 tiles (Fourk), or like vanilla (FIQHack)
	skilled	Digs out d17+12 tiles (Fourk), or like vanilla (FIQHack)
	expert	Digs out d23+16 tiles (Fourk), or like vanilla (FIQHack)
	master	Digs out d29+20 tiles (Fourk), or like vanilla, but digs out the same on maze levels as normally (FIQHack)
wand of enlightenment	unskilled	unchanged
	basic	unchanged
	skilled	Tells the source of in/extrinsics
	expert	Tells the source of in/extrinsics
	master	Wizmode-level information