Any suggestions for a build with wands and potions as primary rather than secondary skills?

[Psy-Kosh]

I really want to try something like this, but the reagents and such needed makes it tricky.

The biggest problem is that non renewable resources are needed in the chain of stuff to many of the consumables/use-up-ables. (bituminous coal, I'm looking at you!)

Looks like to even theoretically be able to reliably use, say, wands as primary damage dealers, have myself continuously buffed by potions, etc, requires a lot of secondary skills just to even begin to have a chance of reliably have an ongoing flow of the needed ingredients.

piracy supplies gems, rogue scientist gives ooze... but looks like the only way to at all renewably get coal is to also take perception and level it up several times. You get the idea.

Are there any mods that will help with this without being totally gratuitously game breaking?

Or is my dream of wands and potions being my primary tools just a hopeless fantasy?

[Haldurson]

I don't know if any mods that will help with this, but maybe there are some. Regardless, I think that you'll never be able to make wands and potions your primary means of doing damage. But there are some synergies that can make them more useful:
1. Piracy -- will give you more gems
2. Perception -- will give you more loot, and specifically, a lot more with regards to crafting mats
3. Rogue Scientist -- this is a great skill that benefits from Wands, Alchemy, and Tinkering -- but really the benefit from Wand Lore is minimal. Rogue Scientist though is a great skill to create a build around, IF you also take Tinkering and Alchemy.
4. Fungal Arts -- this primarily benefits alchemy because a vareity of 'shrooms are useful in crafting.

Alchemy is a really underrated skill (in fact, crafting in general is quite underrated). As far as Wand Lore is concerned, I find it to be underwhelming, when compared with all other crafting skills. You aren't likely to be crafting a whole lot of wands over the course of the game. But you ARE likely to use its encrust recipes. Also, wands has the potential to give you an easier time of it early in the game because of its starting gear, and that's the most cited reason I've seen for people to include it in their builds. But most people (for good reason) find better alternatives to it in most builds.

Usually, the only reason why I personally will take Wand Lore is when I'm doing a themed build (I've won several times on Going Rogue with Permadeath with every crafting skill + skills that synergize well with crafting). But I always know I can do better had I substituted something else (and there's always something better than Wand Lore).

[Psy-Kosh]

Thanks and yeah, I specifically mentioned piracy + rogue scientist + perception in my original post. (Though for rogue scientist, I was thinking more of it being used for the ooze)

I realize that it may not be the most efficient build, but seems like it would be quite fun to try to do a build based around those... if I could get it to work. :p Would give an interesting space for variety and a different "flavor" than other builds. It's a theme I'd like to try.

Though, let's say I go with wandlore, alchemy, rogue scientist, piracy, perception, fungal arts.

You suggest I should make the last slot tinkering rather than a weapon skill or such?

[OpenSheep]

For wandlore if you prioritize level three wand crafting you can craft the meat wand. Every time you use meatwand you create either meatcube or offal, which are components in making more meatwands. So each 8 charged meatwand would give 4 meatcubes/4 offal, which are the components in making meatwand besides salt. So as long as you have salt you can make infinite meatwands.

For alchemy prioritize rust and aqua vitae to make health potions. I'm pretty sure you can make rust from rusty swords and stuff and aqua vitae from ooze or something (not sure). Invisability potions and teleportation potions are also good potions to rush.


For your last slot I would reccomend archery skill, or some combat related skill. Something to make you tankier

[Psy-Kosh]

So your recommendation is Alchemy, Wandlore, Rogue Scientist, Piracy, Perception, Fungal Arts, and a weapon or otherwise combat skill? (I'd probably only take crossbow if I was taking tinkering... besides, idea is for wands to be my primary ranged damage.)

(That's more or less what I was thinking originally, Haldurson seemed to be suggesting Tinkering instead of weapon skill. Either way, the problem that I need four support skills to make potions and wand lore work as primary (ie, want to be able to be regularly chugging nice variety of potions the way a wizard chugs booze. ;)) is annoying. I was hoping there was some way to reduce the amount of support needed. Perfectly happy to use mods to help with this, if there're any that would help without being totally game breaking.)

[lionhart]

I tried doing a wand build a couple of times and it never worked. The problem with wands is that they suffer from "too good to use" syndrome. The finite number of charges make you reluctant to use them unless it's "necessary," so you keep trying to hack your way through everything with your melee weapon (which takes twice as long because you haven't optimzed your character for melee combat) while the wands just sit in your inventory. I find that wands are really only useful as a backup for a pure mage, to finish off a tough opponent when you're out of mana.

Edit: The only way a pure wand build could work is if you could recharge a wand by converting mana into charges, rather than having to craft new ones from limited raw materials. I don't know whether it is possible to mod this into the game or not, but it might be an interesting way to play.

[Psy-Kosh]

Yeah, what I wanted to do to deal with "too good to use" syndrome was to see if I could set up my build to ensure that the ingredients needed to keep crafting wands (and potions) would keep flowing.

(So if any mods that in a non game breaking way help with that or provide a wand recharging method that doesn't consume wands, etc etc..)

Hrm... I don't know enough about modding to know if it could be done. I imagine could be done with a skill that had a spell that basically would consume a wand and replace it with another fully charged wand of the same type... But internally it would probably have to brute force list each wand type.

I don't know if it could simply be flat out "edit the number of charges" spell. (I've only a couple times skimmed some of the modding info out of curiosity)

[YetiChow]

The only build I play at the moment is a Rogue Scientist based character based on the Holy Trinity Synergy (aka tinkering, alchemy and wandlore with RS), Archaeology, Magic Training, and Mathemagic. Predictably, it's an "all or nothing" type of character -- I either power up spectacularly by floor 2, or I'm squished into a paste on floor one. 90% of the time I'm not paying attention and get cornered; but that's more my fault than the build -- I avoid using the random teleport options (and I get plenty of them, not just the starting Mathemagic spell) in case they stick me behind enemy lines, but then I get surrounded while trying to escape.

I burn through Sonic Wands like they're cheap cigars, but with other wands I also suffer from "too good to use" syndrome. That said, the Wand of Bling is amazing for the early game -- easy to make, it gives you heaps of zorkmids, and it basically allows you to buy reagents for better wands.

The good thing about wandlore is that there's literally a wand for every situation; so boosting those effects can turn you into a veritable Mary Sue... well, at least until you run out of charges. The synergies which others have pointed out will help you keep your charges up though, and of course more damage = less castings to kill enemies.

Interesting note: the Savvy and Sagacity skill boosts you get from alchemy and wandlore will make your magic pack quite a punch, even with my obviously sub-optimal "Indiana Jones" build I can dish out reasonable hurt with Diminuating Calculus and Curse of the Golden Ratio. My absolute favourite, however, is using License to Cast as a cheap damaging and silencing spell since the haywire chance is so high -- turning a 0 damage spell into a reliable 2-4 damage makes me feel like I'm breaking the game; and that's before I start throwing Diminuating Calculus into the mix. Or, you know, a seething mass of Hyperborean Winter/Fiery Vengeance/tentacles/Arcane energy/whatever happens to be in the wand I'm using...

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that while wandlore isn't a great foundation on its own; when paired with a solid base and a few sneaky wizard shenanigans it can become a flexible way to achieve multiple actions at once -- e.g. damage + lock in place, damage + silence/stun/daze, damage + get new reagents, create safe zones (usually damaging enemies along the way), and generally get around enemies' strengths. That gives you time to build up your other skills.

[Psy-Kosh]

That sounds like a fun build. Wait, at the end you said that wizard shenanigans let you get more reagents? What do you mean?

(or did you mean just making it easier for you to wand of bling your way into buying more ingredients?)

[OpenSheep]

Right now I am playing a wandlore character and I am playing it a bit differently.
My build is paranormal investigator+wandlore+axe+shield+burg+assain+armor. Since wands don't count as spells it allows me to use magic effects from wands in paranormal mode. However if I wanted to reroll I would do something like this Kicking+Shield+Assasin+Smithing+Wandlore+Paranormal+(Piracy?), and I would craft those magic reflecting silver shields

[Psy-Kosh]

Huh. I've never actually tried Paranormal Investigator before. I think I see where you're going with this, interesting.

[jabberwok]

Unless you're against non-wand magic, I always found Pyromancy to be good for dealing early damage when I wouldn't have many other options as a caster. Specifically for the dragon familiar, who could dish it out and distract mobs pretty effectively for the first 5 floors or so. Seems like you probably need a renewable damage source so your wands and potions aren't wasted on lesser enemies. Maybe that's not the idea, though...

[Psy-Kosh]

Not against it as such, but what I want is to be able to set up a build where I can spam fire wands freely, knowing that I'll have ingredients to craft more, and similar for chugging potions the way a wizard chugs booze.

ie, I want enough flow of reagents that most wands and potions will be effectively sufficiently renewable.

Dredmor doesn't seem really set up to allow that, but it seems like it would be fun if I could set up a build where potions and wands are the primary things I'm using.

The big annoying part is setting things up so I'll have adequate flow of reagents to allow that to happen. At this point I think I may have to learn modmaking just so I can try to design a skill that helps with giving reagents. (And nothing else. Not trying to do some ridiculous power grab, just want to ensure a flow of ingredients sufficient to make such a build workable at all.)

Am still experimenting with a few builds and already existing mods, but..

[Haldurson]

Another problem with wands is that the damage does not scale, like it does with spells or physical attacks. In other words, as you get deeper into the dungeon, the less you will be able to depend on them, EVEN IF you get lucky and can just churn them out like clockwork.

With mages, at least with a decent build, they can reach a point where they can maintain buffs, and spam their spells without having to worry too much about mana -- and their spells simply just get better and better, as they will be increasing their spell power, etc. With wands, you are going to be left in the dust, because your damage cannot keep up with what it should be as you get deeper EVEN IF you could have an endless supply of them. Fire wands are great early on, but as you get deeper, they just won't cut it.

[Psy-Kosh]

Many wands scale with wandlore, actually. Actually, let's see... looks like fire wands are among those. I'm not sure if the scaling will be sufficient. But if I can churn out the higher end wands that do scale _and_ am churning out various buffing potions, might work.

(At this point I know I'm just being stubborn. I've been spending this evening learning how to mod and been making one that provides a skill that helps keep the ingredients flowing. (Now that at least I've finally got it somewhat working, will start to figure out balance and such and then test to see if builds based on it are viable.))

I do realize this is _not_ the most efficient build to aim for. It's more a theme build that I've been wanting to make work for ages.

[lionhart]

If you are going to create a mod, I would suggest a "Wand Lore Enhanced" (or maybe "Wand Lore Recrafted") skill tree mod. The problem with Wand Lore is that it just doesn't provide enough benefit right now to justify putting any points into it. Here is what I would do to fix it:

- Make all wand damage scale with Wand Lore level, not just certain wands. You'll have to test various scaling ratios to find one that is balanced at deeper dungeon levels.

- Make the number of charges for a newly crafted wand scale with Wand Lore level. On level one a new wand should have maybe only 5-7 charges, but by level six a new wand should have 20-30 charges.

- Add an active ability called "Wand Recharge" at Wand Lore level five. This ability converts the entire mana pool into additional charges for one wand. The number of charges scales to the number of mana points consumed. Note that in order for this to work, the wand must have at least one charge remaining (in other words it is not possible to recharge a burnt out wand). This ability also has a small random chance to "overcharge" a wand, thereby burning it out completely. The possibility of overcharge prevents the skill from becoming OP and also necessitates the stockpiling of ingredients for crafting replacement wands.

If you do create a mod along these lines, I will certainly give it a try, as I am also interested in making a wand build work.