warriors and their "rod"

[Sky]

Until now i've played exclusively High-Elf warriors, and lately the game has been throwing my way a ton of rods of ice/fire/lightning/acid bolts/balls. I generally squelch that stuff as soon as i see it, because it looks like arrows do more damage. Just yesterday however i have managed to kill an OOD vampire using a rod of acid i had forgot to squelch (and a stack of 30 Phase), so i was thinking ... any use to carrying these around, specially after CL40 or so?

(also, would be nice if the game had a pre-squelch option for all books)

tons of stuff in the game never gets used by me, because by the time i get it, i don't need it .. some stuff might be marginally useful, but then they take us a precious inventory slot, which i would rather keep stacked with Phase and arrows and CCW.

[Mondkalb]

Rods of lightning bolts are useful because you get a beam (as with rod of light, wich is useful to light up corridors and to weaken/kill light sensitive creatures).

The ball damage can be useful to control a room full of fast breaders (the ball damage can also be used to lure one or more creatures around a corner).

[Carnivean]

High Elves have a good device skill, which is a modifier to the base damage of magical items. Warriors on the other hand don't, but it still increases with character levels.

[Pete Mack]

Short answer: If it does perceptibly more damage than archery, sure. Otherwise, stick to the basics: Various detection, TO, and Light if you are deep without ESP. (And eventually the deep utility rods of course.)

[Estie]

"There might be a situation where it could come in handy" is not enough to justify an inventory slot.

In the early game, if you have the space, rods are an option, but at some point they compete with things like banishment scrolls.

[Sky]

ok,

what about mages? do these rods actually do stronk damage (assuming you target a non-resisting mob) when you level up, and is it worth it to save mana?

[Estie]

ok,

what about mages? do these rods actually do stronk damage (assuming you target a non-resisting mob) when you level up, and is it worth it to save mana?

To such a general question as "should X use rods" there can be only one answer: it depends. Under the right circumstances, everyone "should" use rods.

If you have a specific situation, post the dump and list the alternatives, and I can tell you wether I would carry the rod or the alternative, and other people might agree or not.

Very generally speaking, mages get more out of damage rods than other classes because a) they do more damage with them thanks to higher device skill, b) their damage is otherwise normally lower than other classes and c) they have more inventory space thanks to spellbooks.

[Derakon]

The big issue with attack rods for me is that you can only fire each one once before waiting for it to recharge. When I want to use attack items, I usually want to fire them multiple times in rapid succession. That means I have to find a lot of rods. Whereas I only need to find one wand to get the same benefit. Of course, wands can blow up on recharge, but for most characters that's not a huge issue.

Plus wands tend to be higher-damage than equivalently-leveled rods. A little after you find rods of Acid Balls, you start finding wands of Dragon's Frost, etc.

[Sky]

well, i figured that pots of dragon breath, rods of drain life, and wands of annihilation, are the top tier items; but by the time i find these, i have an artifact bow and at least ammo of wounding, and i'm already carrying !heal, !CCW, rod of TO, speed, detect, recall, possibly !heal, staff of teleport / identify, scrolls of phase, satisfy hunger, arrows, plus consumables for whatever i'm expecting around that level, like RLL, or Clear Mind, or Second Sight + banish for vaults. Not a lot of room left to swap.

[Derakon]

Potions of Dragon's Breath are pretty niche; they show up too late to be useful IME. Wands of Annihilation are the only real top-tier wands, but in the midgame, the Dragon's Breath and Drain Life wands can be quite useful for some characters. Particularly, mages and priests have pretty lousy archery skills, but good magic device skills, and mages are of course better at recharging things than anyone else is. Before you have the SP pool (and, for mages, the spellbooks) to take on big targets with just pure spellcasting, wands can go a long way to helping you kill things.

[AnonymousHero]

I'm getting the overall sense here that there's no single bestg design for a single perma-death game where we want "level-scum-as-much-as-you-like" to balanced against "only-one-level-on-the-way-down". (My only half-assed idea would be to make level-scumming increse danger levels to ridiculous degrees, but that just means you need to do it more to get that rare easy kill.)

Hmm...

[Derakon]

I'm getting the overall sense here that there's no single bestg design for a single perma-death game where we want "level-scum-as-much-as-you-like" to balanced against "only-one-level-on-the-way-down". (My only half-assed idea would be to make level-scumming increse danger levels to ridiculous degrees, but that just means you need to do it more to get that rare easy kill.)

Hmm...

Uh, sure you got the right thread here, chief?

[Sky]

was thinking the same.