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 Zapping a cursed wand while being unskilled will cause the wand to explode, having similar effects to that of breaking wands. Monsters are also affected by this change, and has a fixed wand skill based on monster type for this purpose.
Wand Power
For purposes of overcoming monster MR, the wands use 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 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 |
| 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 alltogether, but FIQHack still has it) | |
| 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 |
