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I've read in several posts that people tend to accumulate wands of Drain Life and Annihilation for use in the final battles. I'm wondering why this is the case, because it seems to me that good missile launchers using decent missiles consistently outperform the wands.
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“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead -
Mages are pretty bad at melee and archery, but they're great at using wands. If you only hit 50% of the time with a bow that has +1 shots and does 250 damage when it hits, then you're better off using a Wand of Annihilation that does (250*1.75) damage (multiplier coming from the mage's high device skill) when it hits and has a 95% chance of being used successfully.
These wands are also valuable for that period in the mage game where all you have for attack spells is what's in the town spellbooks, and you're running into uniques who have resistance to all four basic elements. A Wand of Drain Life will really do a number on Mim, for example. -
Thanks, Derakon. It finally makes sense to me. Mages, not rangers or rogues. And also the calculus of which launcher @ has at the end-game. A mage with a great Lothlorien, Buckland, or Belthronding might be better off shooting, but it all depends on that 2-Hit percentage for the particular battle. I knew there was some multiplier for magic devices, but I never knew what it was. Thanks again for the explanation.“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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Are there any reasonably accessible recharging options in vanilla that don't blow up your devices? The zangband descendants all seem to have stores that let you safely recharge your stuff for a price.Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'Comment
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Surprisingly, just killed Mature green dragon (the average number of 352 HP) with a single shot from the Wand of drain life. Magic device is 95. If wand of drain life does 150 damage standard was applied, as about 202 more damage. So, all was caused about 230% damage. But on this forum I have seen the formula damage multiplier=(magic device - level of wand)%. What did I miss?Comment
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It's possible that the dragon just rolled stupendously horribly on its max HP. The average is just that -- an average. I think the game uses a Gaussian fit to distribute actual max HP to monsters, though I don't know what the standard deviation is. Probably something like 10-20% of the average.Comment
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poor dragon
he was probably bullied by other dragons and then met an adventurer and was one shotComment
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