Are shuffle wands actually good for anything?

[Misery]

Seems an important question, considering that 99% of the wands the game generates are shuffle wands. And as far as I can tell, shuffle wands are good at.... nothing. They're good at nothing.

This usually means that in MOST runs, I'll spend the entire time with yet another shuffle wand with exactly one spell and maybe a modifier, because trying to add more combinations and such just results in a total mess. Hell, even the guide specifically says: "The only thing shuffled wands tend to be good for is rapid fire low damage wands." And indeed, that's usually the best I can manage.

And on the occaision the game does generate a non-shuffle wand, it's usually terrible due to bad stats.

I mean, right now, the way this works makes the whole wand editing thing just feel pointless. I dont exactly find myself engaging much with what should be one of the game's most exciting features. Why bother with that when the infinite pile of shuffle wands just screw it all up?

Am I missing something here? Please tell me I'm missing something here, and the game isnt THAT dependent on sheer RNG. SURELY there's something I'm just not spotting. Like some more reliable way (or ANY way) to get non-shuffle wands that arent awful? Hell, at this point I'd settle for the awful ones... just SOMETHING.

So.... yeah. I gotta be missing something.... right?

[Eriktion]

sounds like you leave the zones too early - like in zone 2 (+fungal area) I pretty much always find a good or amazing no-shuffle wand - in zone 1 there is maybe a 50% chance that I leave with a working no-shuffle wand

the shuffle wands can be rapid fire decent dmg ones and should be good enaugh in a pinch until zone 3-4 - you can fill a shuffle wand with projectiles that reduce cast delay and get pretty fast ones

[ShnitzelKiller]

IMO the game would be more fun if wands were non-shuffling and edit wands everywhere was the default. Shuffle is such a confusing feature too, like how is a new player supposed to understand what that means with regards to modifiers and triggers? I still don't understand the rules for what modifiers in different positions on a shuffling wand do (I've noticed a difference when "draw 2" is at the end vs when it isn't, even on a shuffle wand, e.g. bypassing the reload delay).

[Eriktion]

yeah the wand editing is a big restrictive - right now there is no tutorial that teaches the player about wand-editing - I hope this is only due to early access

Originally posted by Misery:

I havent gone into the fungal area much, as the times I have gone in there havent ended well (due to bad wands, mostly). Is there a higher chance of decent wands spawning in there or something? Should I be going in every time?

yes they are of higher quality

[Misery]

Originally posted by Eriktion:

sounds like you leave the zones too early - like in zone 2 (+fungal area) I pretty much always find a good or amazing no-shuffle wand - in zone 1 there is maybe a 50% chance that I leave with a working no-shuffle wand

the shuffle wands can be rapid fire decent dmg ones and should be good enaugh in a pinch until zone 3-4 - you can fill a shuffle wand with projectiles that reduce cast delay and get pretty fast ones

Actually I explore pretty much everywhere (to a point). Not exactly uncommon for me to spend 20 tedious minutes in area 1 alone (ugh).

I havent gone into the fungal area much though, as the times I have gone in there havent ended well (due to bad wands, mostly). Is there a higher chance of decent wands spawning in there or something? Should I be going in every time?

Originally posted by ShnitzelKiller:

IMO the game would be more fun if wands were non-shuffling and edit wands everywhere was the default. Shuffle is such a confusing feature too, like how is a new player supposed to understand what that means with regards to modifiers and triggers? I still don't understand the rules for what modifiers in different positions on a shuffling wand do (I've noticed a difference when "draw 2" is at the end vs when it isn't, even on a shuffle wand, e.g. bypassing the reload delay).

Yeah, I agree. Not just for the shuffle wands, but for all of it, I just get confused. 20 hours in and frankly I have no bloody clue how the spell system *really* works (as in, the details), since I dont exactly get a chance to USE any of it. All I find are shuffle wands that might almost do something sometimes kinda. Or they might violently detonate, who knows? One way or another, I usually end up stripping most of the spell effects out of them and then not actually using any of those spells.

I very honestly dont understand why shuffle wands are even in the game. Though, I've said that about *alot* of things in this game.

[Guts]

shuffle wands tend to have faster cast delay and recharge rate. They're good if you have a bunch of projectiles that don't need to be cast in a particular order. For instance, I made a wand that had bouncing burst as the projectile, and it would have a 50% chance of being a gunpowder trail bouncing burst or an explosive one. It didn't matter which one cast first, it was going to eventually create a field of explosions everywhere.

[Lizzard]

They make really good rapid fire, machine guns. If you happen across a knock back spell and/or perk, those rapid fire, shuffle wands can absolutely destroy a level full of enemies!

Imagine a wand shooting those small bouncing green things, nonstop, every fraction of a second, pushing back everyone and knocking things out of the sky and off ledges continuously.

[sparrowbird611]

Originally posted by N473:

shuffle wands tend to have faster cast delay and recharge rate. They're good if you have a bunch of projectiles that don't need to be cast in a particular order. For instance, I made a wand that had bouncing burst as the projectile, and it would have a 50% chance of being a gunpowder trail bouncing burst or an explosive one. It didn't matter which one cast first, it was going to eventually create a field of explosions everywhere.

This is pretty much it. If you're need a chaotic spell that doesn't need to be cast in any special way, hold the trigger and watch the world burn.

[SilentCaay]

Shuffle wands are fine at the start when you don't have enough spells to worry about chaining together modifiers or triggers/timers in any particular order. You just fill it with projectiles and a couple "would be nice" modifiers and go nuts. By the time you actually have enough modifiers and trigger/timer spells to think about making useful combo wands, you should have found a decent non-shuffle wand or two.

Originally posted by ShnitzelKiller:

IMO the game would be more fun if wands were non-shuffling and edit wands everywhere was the default. Shuffle is such a confusing feature too, like how is a new player supposed to understand what that means with regards to modifiers and triggers? I still don't understand the rules for what modifiers in different positions on a shuffling wand do (I've noticed a difference when "draw 2" is at the end vs when it isn't, even on a shuffle wand, e.g. bypassing the reload delay).

They work exactly as you should expect them to. A shuffle wand will just pick spells at random until it gets a projectile and then it will fire it with the modifiers that got picked before the projectile. The same is true of triggers/timers. Trigger/timer procs are randomly queued up as soon as the initial projectile is fired, meaning they're gone from the pool of spells for that cycle. Trigger/timer spells are kinda bad on shuffle wands for this reason. Then tend to burn mana in unpredictable ways which can lead to erratic firing patterns.

[Shrinkshooter]

Shuffles ARE good for something: projectile spam. Depending on what you find, this can be an incredible boon, especially for early game. Shuffles are much more commonly found with faster cast delays and recharge rates and so are ideal for building a "machine gun," which is very reliable for keeping you alive for the first few levels.

In fact, the bomb wand is your perfect fallback if level 1 doesn't treat you well. Pop a spark bolt into it once you've walked into your first Holy Mountain, and that's your backup emergency machine gun (or primary, if the Mines were REALLY that bad). Gets even better with a green bouncing projectile.

Point being, non-shuffles are meant to build one or two shot incredible combo blasts; as such, their cast delay doesn't matter really, and it's generally fine if the recharge rate isn't amazing. But shuffles are the inverse of this and are adept at laying down a stream of wandfire, as it were. You CAN find non-shuffles that are good for doing this, too, but they're much more uncommon and you're generally not going to find one quickly, unlike the fast shuffles.

[Doombringer]

You can reduce the randomness of shuffle wands by adding lots of multi-casts (more than needed to cast everything), this makes it more likely to chain together your multi-casts and cast everything in the wand. Works better if the base spells/cast >1 on the wand.