please explain Recharging stacks

[Sky]

i've always assumed, given that a wand is best recharged when it has 0 charges left (to lower the chance of explosion), that if you had a stack of wands, you had to drain ALL of the stack (and then patiently lay the wands one by one on the floor .. etc) before recharging.

I did read - when discussing Morgoth fight and using wands of Annihilation - people saying they use Greater Recharging "on the stack" but i always thought it meant to do the above "drain all, then separate, then recharge" procedure. Not something you would do in combat, for instance.

But now i just had a crazy thought and used a scroll of recharging on a stack of 6 wands of TO, which had a total of 12 charges, and .. no explosion. I now have 19 charges.

So, how does it work? Safety in numbers? Are the max numb of charges spread out evenly amoung the wands, lowest first?

[wobbly]

The odds of explosion for 6 with 12 are the same as 1 wand with 2. Note if you wanted to recharge multiple times at once its still better to seperate, as 2 recharges on single wands is recharging wands with 2 charges. Where as in your example the 2nd recharge on a stack with 19 charges would be a wand with 3 charges.

[Pete Mack]

What he said. But when fighting M, you just recharge once, then blast a few times, phase away, and repeat. You certainly dont want to stack recharges, and you dont dare leave wands on the floor for mana storm to destroy.

[bughunter]

Interesting.

I've been recharging stacks before fights, not when they get to zero charges, so I don't have to spend a turn reloading during the fight.

As soon as the fail probability gets low enough for me to tolerate (<5% generally, less if there's only one wand/stave) then I'll recharge.

But then, I'm a relative noob.

Can someone link to the old thread on this topic?

[archolewa]

Personally I so the same thing Bughunter. I find that the failure chance doesnt change enough in the drop from almost empty to empty to matter.

The only wands or staves I wait until empty to recharge are utility ones, since those are used outside of combat, and I want to get every last possible use out of them before they blow up.

[Pete Mack]

@Bughunter.
Sure, before the fight, recharging empty (0 or 1 charge) wands individually is worthwhile. I do it with TO wands regularly, and annihilation just before fighting M.