Wand of light

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Name	light
Appearance	random
Abundance	9.5%
Base price	100 zm
Weight	7
Type	non-directional
Maximum charges	15
Spell	light
Monster use	Will not be used by monsters.

The wand of light is a wand that appears in NetHack

Generation

There is a 9.5% chance that a randomly-generated wand will be a wand of light, making it the most commonly generated wand.

Effects

When zapped or engraved with, the wand lights an area with radius of 5, or the whole room if on the Rogue level.

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Like other wands, applying a wand of light will break it, resulting in an explosion dealing 1 to (4n) damage, with the hero being blinded for (n+1)d25 turns, with n being the number of remaining charges. The same area is lit as when the wand is zapped; surrounding monsters may also be blinded, and gremlins take damage.

Strategy

In the early game, a wand of light may be useful to help mapping unlit floors of the Gnomish Mines. Certain quest levels also have large unlit sections, where it may be useful to mark where the player has been (though there is an option to make this redundant). It can also aid in jumping to get away from dangerous situations if you have no lamp.

Some players use a wand of light to mark the location of the Vibrating square and light paths between staircases in Gehennom; this will be a great help if you happen to get amnesia, but is probably not worth the effort in most cases.

Once you obtain and can reliably cast the light spell, the wand of light becomes practically useless unless you are constantly low on energy, and is superseded by the spell for all of the above usages. The wand is good polyfodder at this point, as it is usually generated with a lot of charges.

Variants

Sporkhack

In Sporkhack, wands of light blind nearby creatures when engraving or zapping with them. Be wary of using them close to aligned priests or the Minetown watch.