Being a Motherf*#%ing Sorceress (With Complete Spell List and Cookbook)

This guide gives a thorough overview of the Sorceress in WazHack and a great strategy to win the game with her, as well as an overview of the magic system in WazHack and a cooking guide.

A Forewarning

The author of this guide is a seasoned player of NetHack, the game which WazHack is based off of. I will often use terms and notations that may be unfamiliar to those who have never played NetHack. I will define each term after I use it for the first time, but after that, you are on your own. Writing out entire names of objects and concepts gets tedious to read.

Why play the Sorceress?

The sorceress is, at least in my experience, the most powerful class in WazHack and an omen of death to all who stand between her and the "oZ (Amulet of Zaw, " is an amulet in Nethack). I have ascended (won the game) dozens of times in WazHack, mostly with the Sorceress, and I can tell you that she is also the most fun class to play. She is a master of fire, ice, and deception. She uses her magic to incapacitate foes and to manipulate and twist their forms as she pleases, and to beat a hasty retreat when overwhelmed. She revives slain foes just to kill them again. She cheats, she betrays, she slaughters the innocent. She is evil incarnate in a dungeon where nice hackers (characters) finish last!

An Unabridged Summary of the Sorceress

Here is her description in the game:
"The Sorceress starts with a robe, a +1 staff, a +1 dagger, and 2 scrolls of create monster. Her weapons are cursed, but she has a spellbook of absorb curse."

Here is a list of what you get with the sorceress:

Possible Alignments

• Neutral
  
• Lawful Evil
  
• Chaotic Evil

Available Talents

• Battle Magery
  
• Magic Precision
  
• Weapon Precision
  
• Commerce
  
• Dweomery
  
• Wizardry
  
• Fury
  
• Literacy
  
• Nightmare Mode

Starting Skills

• Death Magic: 1
  
• Dark Magic: 1

Starting Pet

• Black Kitten

Starting Attributes

• STR: 6-8
  
• DEX: 6-13
  
• ♥♥♥: 6-10
  
• INT: 16-18
  
• WIS: 8-18
  
• CHA: 9-15

Starting Equipment

• +2 Black Robe
  
• Scroll of Create Monster x2
  
• Spellbook of Absorb Curse
  
• Cursed +1 Staff
  
• Cursed +1 Dagger

My Optimum Sorceress Build

Alignment: Any (Alignment basically only affects the frequency of spellbooks from particular schools. The Lawful alignments affect Light/Dark, and the Chaotic alignments affect Life/Death)
STR: 8
DEX: 12
♥♥♥: 10
INT: 18
WIS: 18
CHA: 9

Strength is a low priority because you can easily increase it by eating royal jelly and giant innards or pies. Gauntlets of power can also increase it by massive amounts (2 points per positive enchantment). There are rings to increase STR, though they are only useful when you don't have anything better.

Dexterity is probably more important because it affects the accuracy of attacks, especially ranged attacks, which you will (hopefully) use often. It cannot be permanently increased with food like Strength can. Gauntlets of dexterity can increase Dex by their enchantment. You might want to set this to 13 instead of 12.

Constitution affects the HP gained per level and also shortens sickness and slows hunger. It is nice to have, but not essential for a Sorceress, as there are easy ways to cure sickness instantly and you can increase maximum HP by quaffing noncursed healing potions at or near full HP, and also by quaffing blessed wine at max HP. You may want to set this to 9 instead of 10.

Intelligence affects your spell success chances and the chance to successfully learn a new spell when reading a spellbook. This is a priority for the Sorceress, so you want to start at maximum value. At 25 INT with no metal armor, you can cast pretty much any spell without failure. Metal equipment other than body armor has a negligible effect on failure rate with high INT.

Wisdom affects your chances of learning new spells and the length of time you will remember spells. I believe it also affects the mana you gain at level up. Although maximum mana can be easily increased by quaffing noncursed mana potions, this is an important priority for a Sorceress because the effect of WIS on the time it takes to forget spells is massive. The reason I prefer the Sorceress over other, more combat-oriented classes that can start with high INT and thus potentially cast lots of spells early in the game (ie bard(ess, bardess, hunter, huntress, druid(ess), rogue, or thief) is because the Sorceress has both high INT and WIS. With low WIS (~5), these classes tend to forget spells in literally less than 10 minutes of game time, almost immediately after you learn them. With 18 WIS, I rarely forget spells before winning.

Charisma affects prices in shops and I think it also affects the music skill. It's not important.

To increase your stats as much as you can, always bless !oGA (potions of gain ability) before quaffing them.

Talents to increase:
1: Wizardry I
2: Dweomery I
3: Wizardry II
4: Weapon Mastery I
5: Dweomery II
6: Wizardry III
7: Spell Mastery I
8: Weapon Mastery II
9: Dweomery III
10: Commerce I
11: Spell Mastery II
12: Weapon Mastery III
13: Fury I
14: Commerce II
15: Spell Mastery III

An Ideal Ascension Kit

An ascension kit is basically the gear you will want to have in order to ascend. I will list my personal favorite items for an ascension kit. We will start with the absolute necessities.

• Some form of teleport control, whether intrinsic (can be gained by eating tengu or daitengu) or extrinsic, from the ring or a wielded weapon of teleport control
  
• Spellbook of Teleport Away (the spell provides infinite on-demand teleportation)
  
• Some way of locking and unlocking doors. A skeleton key is preferred, but the Knock and Wizard Lock spells are also acceptable.
  
• Fire Resistance, preferably intrinsic from eating a fire monster (You feel a sudden chill.), although the ring can work too.
  
• Various attack stones, ie. firestones, frost stones, power stones, and gas stones. Learn how each one works and know that charges are limited. Save a few for the huge dragon and remember that the dragon can be immune to any one of these except for power stones.

Here is some additional gear that is very helpful:

• +8 Blessed Immutable Battle Bow of Teleport Control (acquired by having a smith reforge a +7 battle bow along with a =oTC (ring of teleport control)), or another weapon with high skill level.
  
• Stack of (rustproof) +7 Steel Arrows [or iron, copper], if using bows
  
• +5 or more Rustproof Helm of Brilliance (increases INT and WIS) [cornathaum also works]
  
• Immutable or Fireproof Ornate Robe (of Reflection, if possible) (increases speed and mana regen) [silver dragon scale mail may work if you can wish for it, but ornate robes are my favorite for a Sorceress] 3 blessed immutable +3 ornate robes can be wished for from a fountain for around 580 coins.
  
• Fireproof or Immutable Speed Boots
  
• Amulet of Life Saving
  
• Cloak of Magic Regeneration, Wraith's Cape, or Lich’s Cape (the “black cape” worn by battle liches, always found at +2)
  
• Enchanted Gauntlets of Dexterity (increases DEX) [Gauntlets of Power also acceptable]
  
• At least one blue and one orange Portal Stone with one placed as near to the top of the Dungeon as possible
  
• A leather bag or bag of holding to hold your inventory

There are many other items in the game which are useful, but these are my favorites. Feel free to include other things like lenses, tubs of grease, or whatever you want.

Enough words! Let's fight!

Whoa, slow down there! An important thing you need to know about the Sorceress is that she is weak in the early game. The Sorceress really shines around level 5 and onward. Your kitten is your best friend. Keep it alive and it will keep you alive. In the early game, you want the kitten to be fighting most of your battles for you. When you see an enemy, access your pet menu and order your kitten to attack. If you charge right at the monster, the kitten will think that you don't need help and will stay back. This is often a fatal mistake, as even with your +1 weapons, level 1 sorceresses rarely land hits in melee. NetHack players might be surprised at how inaccurate level 1 characters are at low strength values, but you need to take into account that NetHack gives a bonus to-hit chance to level 1 and 2 characters to make the start of the game slightly easier, while WazHack does not.

First thing to do as Sorceress: Read your spellbook of absorb curse and cast it twice to uncurse your weapons if there are no monsters nearby. Wield the dagger instead of the staff. Daggers seem to have an inherent to-hit bonus over other weapons, plus they attack faster. Give the book to your kitten to hold. Your pet cat should be holding all your spellbooks for you, as they are rather heavy and the cat can hold a ton of things.

Next step: Rest to fill your health. By this time, you should be getting hungry. Locate sufficient food as soon as you can (see the food section).

Your ideal weapon is a bow, but they may not always be available. See my section above about what weapons are easy to use and train with. If you cannot get a regular bow or longbow, then swords or clubs are both good choices for a melee group. Swords are easy to get and train with by using shortswords dropped by large kobolds or dwarvish shortswords from dwarves, and clubs can be trained with maces dropped by kobold shamans, in addition to being very common finds. Do not use orcish (crude) shortswords carried by regular kobolds or clubs carried by goblins, as they both usually appear at -1 and thus are terrible weapons, in addition to being a bad base type as well. Backswords can also make a decent choice if you find a +0 or better sabre or scimitar, as they increase your AC when wielded and reveal their enchantment, as well as being fast to swing and easy to hit with. They also have three artifact weapons which use the skill, Werewindle, which strikes enemies with lightning that scales with Light skill, Grayswandir, which does the same but scales with Dark skill, and the Katana of Muramasa, which hits very hard. Backswords are also the fastest weapon class (aside from knives, maybe), which means that they benefit much more from enchantment than slow weapons like a spiked flail. The wiki's weapon table only compares damage for +0 weapons, so don't underestimate backswords by the values listed there.

The best kind of bow is a battle bow (appears as "bladed bow"). Try to get 380 coins and dip them in a fountain, then wish for "3 blessed immutable +3 battle bow". You will know if your wish is granted if the message "You wonder if wishes come true." appears, rather than the message "You wonder if wishes ever come true." You should find your wished for bow somewhere in the dungeon below you. Explore all areas to make sure you find the bow. It will display as "immutable". The best arrows are steel arrows, although iron and copper may also do if you can't find steel. Try to get both your bow and a large stack of arrows to +7.

Keep in mind that WazHack actually makes nearly all weapons in weapon classes useful at some point in the game. The inferior damage weapons tend to be easier to use at no or low skill value, meaning that a battle bow or composite bow (horned bow) will be hard (read: nigh impossible) to hit with at low skill level in the bows class, but a bow (short bow) or a longbow (long bow) will be easier to hit with. These low level weapons are ideal to build your weapon skill until you reach two points, which seems to be the threshold for hitting often with the best weapons. You also will rarely hit with two-handed weapons if you wear a shield with them, unless you have massive strength, meaning 20 or above, like barbarians/vandals. Artifacts each have their own skill requirement to use well. Below is a list of weapons and how they are classified, not necessarily in order of damage. The wiki has damage values in the list of weapons, but my list has the difficulty of using the weapons. Note that monsters have no problem using any weapon.

Once you get a good weapon you can hit with, you should prioritize the weapon skill when increasing your skills, not forgetting to increase your spell skills if necessary (meaning it directly enhances spell success rates. Death and Darkness should be prioritized over Life and Light, although one slot is useful in each Life and Light (With your INT raised to 23, you really only need one slot in each skill to get 100% success with any level of spell). Read every spellbook you find, as your 18 Wisdom will help you read sucessfully almost every time, unless you are level 1, and you will remember the spells for a long time. I usually can ascend before I forget any spells.

The Evil Endgame Strategy

Once you have teleport control and can cast Teleport Away, there is really nothing stopping you from teleporting 100 feet at a time to reach the bottom of the dungeon. You can do this to bypass many difficult monsters and quickly reach the huge dragon. The huge dragon sits in a no-teleport zone, meaning you will want to lock every door that can lead to the dragon's floor so that monsters won't come after you when you have less methods of escape. You also will want a portal stone to teleport to the one you placed near the top of the dungeon. Once you come out with the "oZ, you can drop your portal stone and instantly go all the way back up. Then it's just a few teleports to the exit!

To kill the dragon: Provided you have fire resistance to resist the breath attack, you can just stand at a distance and throw a bunch of attack stones at the dragon. Use your bow to deal more damage if you want.


Colors of dragon vs. stones to use
Red: Resists fire. Don't use firestones.
White: Resists frost. Don't use frost stones.
Green: Resists poison. Don't use gas stones.
Silver: Has reflection. Spells bounce off, but all your stones work.
Gray: Magic resistant. Spells won't work, but all your stones work.

Note that all colors of the dragon have incredibly high magic resistance (MR). MR allows monsters (and you!) a chance to negate the effects of any spell cast at them. Spells are generally ineffective against the dragon and many types of deeper-level monsters, so you should be using your bow.

Good luck!

Spellcasting

Spellcasting is a huge boon in WazHack. The ability to cast every spell in the game is incredibly helpful, and I can't imagine ascending without being able to cast at least a few spells.

Metal armor inhibits your spellcasting. Try not to wear any. Large weapons have a small effect, but it is generally negligible.

Your best spells in the game are utility spells. Attack spells come in wands and are not usually as damaging as arrows, though you can attack groups with them.

Full List of WazHack Spells
Levels in brackets

Death Spells

• Absorb Curse [1]: Uncurses an object or a number of objects in your inventory, taking 20 HP for each one or making you sick and dropping you to 1 HP if you don't have 20 HP to take. Your cat can detect cursed items if you tell them to fetch an item for you. Many items are not worth uncursing if your only method is this spell. You start with this spell.
  
• Knock [1]: Unlocks something and also knocks back enemies and deals 1 damage.
  
• Drain Life [2]: Damages enemies and heals you. Mostly useful against monsters that resist all elements, like energy vortices or against large hordes.
  
• Raise the Dead [2]: Creates a number of friendly undead monsters to help you in combat, but they will turn against you after some time. **RED FLAG** Don't use this spell with squishy characters! The skeletons will probably kill you!
  
• Sickness [3]: Makes the target sick. Not very useful.
  
• Finger of Death [4]: Extremely high damage, but the range is ludicrously short, plus it seems to miss often, even though all other spells always hit (although not always work). The wand is better because it has more range. Has zero effect on undead and I assume on balrogs, because demons in NetHack have immunity to death rays, but because of the danger of balrogs and their tendency to resist all WazHack spells, I have not tested this.
  
• Fireball [4]: Burns monsters and cooks meat (see food section). Cast this on fire-sensitive monsters for a one-hit-kill! Don't use at close range, as it will burn you and your stuff.

Dark Spells

• Darkness [0]: Darkens a lit room. Almost entirely useless. The only potential advantage is for attacking floating eyes in melee without seeing them.
  
• Teleport Away [1]: Teleports the target to a random location nearby, unless the target has teleport control. You can cast it on monsters to move them away from you, or on yourself to teleport.
  
• Wizard Lock [1]: Locks containers and doors, but its best use is that you can zap monsters with it to paralyze them temporarily. After further testing, I've found that you can zap monster with it multiple times in a row to increase the time they stay paralyzed without giving them a turn to act! An incredibly useful combat spell, especially when paired with volleys of arrows.
  
• Force Bolt [2]: Breaks doors open and hurts monsters. This spell does huge damage to frozen monsters.
  
• Sleep [2]: Puts the target to sleep. Since monsters wake up if you hit them while sleeping, this is really only good for getting one free hit, although I think it counts as a surprise attack for double damage.
  
• Cone of Cold [3]: Damages monsters and freezes them solid. Cast this on cold-sensitive monsters for a one-hit-kill!
  
• Polymorph [4]: Cast this on monsters to turn them into another, usually weaker creature. This is very helpful for difficult monsters with relatively low MR, such as ogres. I often refer to this as the Spellbook of Infinite Bread. See the cooking guide below for more details.

Life Spells

• Create Monster [0]: Creates a number of monsters based on your level. Could be useful for getting food and drops, as well as XP.
  
• Cure Sickness [1]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Also cures blindness, hallucination, and lycanthropy.
  
• Haste Self [1]: Temporarily boosts your speed. Stacks with speed boots, potions of speed, and ornate robe, although no more than one of these.
  
• Jumping [1]: Temporarily makes your jumps go further and higher. Same effect as jumping boots.
  
• Magic Missile [2]: Transforms you into a roleplaying nerd wielding a Roman Candle Fires a purple beam that damages all enemies it hits.
  
• Restore Ability [2]: Restores stats that have been lowered by potions of sickness, mindflayers, etc.
  
• Healing [3]: Heals the target. Can be used to resurrect monsters.

Light Spells

• Levitation [1]: Gives you all the powers of floating eyes, minus the passive paralysis gaze, sleep resistance, and partial magic resistance. So just the floating part.
  
• Light [1]: The opposite of Darkness. Lights up a dark room. Much more useful.
  
• Clean Wounds [2]: Provides a small amount of healing, but has more limited range than Healing. Can be used to resurrect monsters.
  
• Magic Mapping [2]: Maps the current 3 floors of the dungeon. Same as reading the scroll, and quite useful.
  
• Remove Curse [2]: A better version of Absorb Curse that does not hurt you. A vast improvement. Also cures lycanthrophy, like the scroll.
  
• Protection [3]: Grants additional AC for a few seconds. Not very useful.
  
• Identify [4]: Insanely useful spell and cannot be recommended highly enough. Identifies a single item in your inventory.

??? Spells

• Psi Bolt [0]: That annoying spell that kobold shamans like to spam at you. Not very damaging. You can gain this spell by polymorphing into a kobold shaman and will retain it when you turn back, but spellbooks also exist for it, though they are rare. As this is the only attack spell that targets individual monsters, it can be used on the gnomes driving gnomish walkers, as the reflection of the walkers won't protect them.

Note for all spells: Beware of deep monsters that can resist spells, as your magic will often not work on them (skeletons, dwarf lords/kings, wraiths, dragons, and (master) mindflayers come to mind). This is why you carry a bow.

About food and cooking guide

Nutrition is serious business in WazHack. You and your pet are quite often in danger of starvation, and the Darkness won't help with that (at least in the current version).

If you want better food, you may want to invest in having your comestibles turned into pies at a Bakery. Pies never spoil and provide a great deal more nutrition than the raw food, but still provide the same effects (STR increase from giant innards, telepathy chance from floating eye goo, poison from kobald innards).

In addition, the fireball spell or a wand of fire can be used to cook any sort of eggs, meat, or monster innards (NOT GOO). Cooked eggs/meat last longer and give more nutrition than the raw versions. Casting fireball directly at a piece of meat (not egg) will cook only that one piece, so a more efficient strategy for cooking lots of meat is to drop all your meat and innards in one big pile, then drop any fireproof item, such as a metal object or anything that has been fireproofed, or any item that you don't mind burning up. Zap fireball at the object, and the spell will explode in a fireball, burning everything nearby and cooking all the nearby meat with one spell. Your item will not be harmed, provided it is fireproof.

I have also recently discovered another method for making food last longer. Zapping a wand or cone of cold at food will cause it to become "chilled", making it last longer before rotting. I don't know if the efficient method for cooking works, but I would assume so.

A particularly evil method of gathering food is to kill and resurrect an edible monster repeatedly. The Clean Wounds and Healing spells can both be used to bring a monster back to life. They will have low HP, so it is a simple matter to kill them again. Loot the body each time and you will get more and more meat. A monster does not drop meat every time it dies, so do this repeatedly. After a certain number of times being resurrected (I think), a monster will not come back to life anymore, so find a new monster to kill and harvest. This method can also be used for gathering large amounts of XP from a monster that leaves a corpse.

In addition, although WazHack does not have NetHack's Spellbook of Infinite Meatballs (Stone to Flesh) that turns rocks and stone items into meat, WazHack does have the Spellbook of Infinite Bread (Polymorph). Zapping polymorph at most items in WazHack, instead of turning them into similar, random items like in NetHack, instead causes them to turn into loaves of bread corresponding to the type of item. For example, weapons turn to baguettes, rings in ring loaves, shields into cob loaves, and helmets into cottage loaves. Zapping the spell again at the bread will turn it into a random item from the same category as the respective bread, so baguettes into weapons, etc. This can be used to let you turn all those junk weapons and armor lying around into food for both you and your pets. Be careful not to zap the spell at too large a pile of items from the same material (wood, iron, etc.) or you might create a golem. Anything more than 2 is risky.

An excellent pet for any character is a skeleton hound. You can tame them simply by feeding them, but they are inediate creatures, so you never have to feed them again, and they have a good amount of HP (>50). However, they never leave corpses, so be careful not to let them die, because you can't resurrect them.

About the dungeon branches

The two optional dungeon branches, the Gnome Mines and Fort Ludios, are both very, very dangerous. I actually advise you to avoid them altogether if your focus is on winning the game. Any character that can make it through these branches is capable of ascending. Do it for fun or bragging rights.

A note about the Huntress

The Huntress is my second favorite class, and she can actually pull off most of the things the Sorceress does. She starts with a bow and arrows and skill, which makes her excellent for ranged killing. She plays very similar to the Sorceress except with her magic and bow reversed. The Huntress should depend on her bow more than her spells. But the overlapping skillset (Dweomery and Weapon Precision) tend to result in a powerful utility spellcaster and ranged combatant that you should aspire to as a Sorceress.
The Huntress generally requires INT boosting items (enchanted spectacles, helms of brilliance, or cornathaums) in order to cast spells, but that could be said of any class. The main advantages of the Sorceress class is that you don't need special gear to start casting powerful spells, and the Dweomery skill.

Complete Table of Weapons in WazHack

The wiki has a table listing the weapons and the damage of a +0 version relative to a +0 dagger, shortsword, and longsword, but my table lists skill requirements. In addition, the faster a weapon is, the more DPS it gains from enchantment, since enchantment gives a flat damage boost that is constant across all weapons.

Note that you can pour a potion of sickness onto a bladed or pointed weapon to poison it, causing sickness when you hit enemies. This is particularly effective on stacks of arrows or shurikens, as the poison coating will last a very long time.

Weapons rated E (easy) can be used effectively at any skill level. Hard (H) weapons require two points of skill to use reliably. Two-handed weapons are marked with (2) and can only be used well with a shield or something else in the other hand if you have incredible strength, meaning 20 or more, impossible without items for any class other than Barbarian or Vandal. Artifacts are listed with a %. Weapons marked with * have special properties. The unidentified appearance of weapons are in brackets [].

Weapons are listed in order of relative damage for their category.

Knives: These are the weakest weapons in terms of raw damage, but they are very fast and have a to-hit bonus. They also can be thrown, but this uses the Throwing skill.
Sickle (E) * Very effective against molds, blobs, and wood golems, and causes plant creatures to drop goo far more often ("You harvest the foo.") Terrible against everything else.
Orcish Dagger [crude dagger] (E)
Dagger (E)
Elven Dagger [wooden dagger] (E)
Athamé [black-handed dagger] (E) * Drains mana and adds to yours when hitting enemies. Two of these are always generated on battle liches, with one being +1 and the other being +3.
Kris Knife [asymmetrical dagger] (E)
Grimtooth [crude dagger] % requires skill 4

Swords: Your standard and trusty problem solvers. Nothing too fancy here, but the most variety of any weapon class, very common, and nice damage.
Orcish Shortsword [crude short sword] (E)
Shortsword [short sword] (E)
Gladius [Roman sword] (E)
Dwarvish Shortsword [broad short sword] (E)
Broadsword [broad sword] (H)
Elven Shortsword [wooden short sword] (E)
Longsword [long sword] (H)
Tsurugi [broad sword, but the model is different from broadswords] (H)
Elven Broadsword [wooden broad sword] (H)
Bastard Sword [odd-length sword] (H)
Excalibur [long sword] % skill 3 * Causes blindness to monsters you hit
Tsurugi of Muramasa [broad sword, same model as tsurugis] % skill 2 * Bloodthirsty, will attack peacefuls and pets if cursed

Greatswords: This category is generally useless unless you start with skill in it or find a hugely enchanted one, due to lack of trainee weapons. Has longer range than most weapons and heavy damage, but hard to hit with and very slow.
Greatsword [two-handed sword] (H) (2)
Flaming Greatsword [flaming two-handed sword] (H) (2) * Burns enemies that are not fire resistant
Vorpal Blade [odd-length sword, but uses greatsword skill] % skill 4

Backswords: Faster and more accurate than swords, but lower damage and fewer higher-tier options. Also provides a small AC boost when wielded, and the artifacts are great. Honestly underwhelming unless you find an artifact.
Sabre [curved sword] (E)
Scimitar [curved sword, different model than sabre] (E)
Katana [oriental sword] (H) The longsword of backswords. Unlike in NetHack, their damage is inferior to longswords, though only by a tiny bit. They are also faster than a longsword.
Werewindle [curved sword, sabre model] % skill 3? * Deals lightning damage that increases with Light skill
Grayswandir [curved sword, sabre model] % skill 3? * Deals lightning damage that increases with Dark skill
Katana of Muramasa [oriental sword] % skill 1 * Bloodthirsty, will attack peacefuls and pets if cursed

Axes: Not an outstanding weapon class, but very common, hit hard, not too slow, and Cleaver is nothing to sneeze at.
Pickaxe (E)
Axe (E)
Battleaxe [double-headed axe] (H)
Massive Axe (E) * gnomish woodcutter weapon, tricky to acquire, does not display enchantment, heavy
Cleaver [double-headed axe] % skill 3

Clubs: Surprisingly good, but best to stick to the lighter ones, generally.
Wooden Club (E) * Considered unwieldy, so it rarely lands hits
Mace (E)
Warhammer [war hammer] (E)
Morning Star [spiked mace] (H?)
Spiked Flail (H) Though this deals more damage than the morning star, it is a lot slower and rarer. I recommend the faster morning star for enchanting.
Giant Club [huge club] (E) Heavy as hell, slow, unwieldy. However, giant skeletons can be generated with a +10 giant club, which HURTS.
Auger (E) * gnomish digger weapon, tricky to acquire, does not display enchantment, very heavy.
Mjölnir [war hammer] % skill 3 * Strikes enemies with lightning
Boulder (?) These break after bashing a monster, and also stun them. Not sure why they only weigh like 32 pounds each, but they do. Giant skeletons often have these. Obviously not a practical choice.

Polearms: * All staves can be imbued with a spell to charge and cast from the staff. Staves of a school will charge that school's spells faster, especially under certain conditions, and can be imbued with a valuable gem to hold extra casts. You have to break the gem to change the imbued spell, though. You need to wield a staff to charge its spell.
Staff (E) (2)
Staff of Light [white staff] (E) (2) * Charges light spells faster when held in light
Staff of Darkness [dark staff] (E) (2) * Charges dark spells faster when held in darkness
Spear (H) (2) Very long reach, able to poke molds/blobs/cubes at a distance without provoking their passive attacks. You can also use the knockback to kite enemies outside of their melee range.
Staff of Life (E) (2) * Charges life spells faster when held at full health
Staff of Death (E) (2) * Charges death spells faster when you kill enemies with it
Red Hot Poker (E?) * Burns enemies that are not fire resistant, really awesome weapon. You can get one at +2 off a baker merchant along with her badass apron (same as ornate robe), but she won't go down easily, and summons a bread golem to take her place on death.
Thrysus [pinecone staff] (2) % skill level ? * Charges any bound spell incredibly fast, holds up to 3 charges without a gem, can confuse enemies when hitting them

Bows * Cannot be used if the other hand is not free
Bow [short bow] (E) * Has much shorter range than the other bows
Recurve Bow [curved bow] (H)
Longbow [long bow] (E)
Composite Bow [horned bow] (H)
Battle Bow [bladed bow] (H)
Certus [bladed bow] % skill level 4

Arrows * Arrows are all equally easy to hit with. Bows are not. Arrows also inflict different amounts of damage depending on enchantment and material.
Wooden Arrows
Copper Arrows
Iron Arrows
Steel Arrows

Throwing: Relatively useless weapon skill because of the need to wield stuff before throwing it, meaning a lot of time and annoying key presses, but throwing daggers at molds from a distance is useful to get their goo.
Misc weapons (E) * ideally use daggers, as they are light and thus fly far, and hit often
Shuriken [throwing star] (H)
Boulder (H) * breaks after hitting, also stuns enemies.

[Homage]

You dive like a motherfucker and pray for teleport control. I just found out that collars of jaunting can grant it as well as rings of teleport control. Also, try using stones to kill monsters that come out of doors/drains. It can get you the XP you need to get a decent HP pool and start building your weapon skill.

[Brad]

the darkness takes every bit of food, how do yoou even win anymore?

[Homage]

In addition, I actually recommend ornate robes over SDSM. Those are the robes that shopkeepers wear. They provide the same permanent speed extrinsic as speed boots, but they stack with speed boots to give permanent very fast speed. It also helps regenerate mana faster. You can give an ornate robe reflection by combining it with the amulet at a tailor, but you can't give SDSM mana regen or speed. SDSM provides more AC, but the benefit of AC in WazHack isn't that great anyway. The greater speed is much better for helping you "run and gun" your enemies.
Telepathy is quite useful, but unfortunately the only sources besides floating eye goo are the helmet and amulet. I prefer a helm of brilliance or cornathaum for bonus INT. With 23 INT you can cast any spell 100% with only 1 skill point. You could use enchanted lenses for INT bonus, but they are very rare.

[Homage]

Better options??? Dweomery is quite possibly the most amazing skill in the game!!
The ability to identify for no cost not only the BUC of objects you pick up, but also the enchantment and charges makes you an omnipotent god!
Most skills in WazHack are marginally useful at best. Critical hits, for example, are not something that you should be relying on. At early levels you should not be invested in direct combat. Engaging in honorable combat is a great way to get yourself six feet under. Never play fair. Ever. Hit and run is best in the early game. Dweomery lets you pick and choose the best loot to gear yourself up at lower levels. Only once you get a larger reserve of HP at higher levels, enough to take several blows from powerful monsters, should you be thinking about combat skills.

[walkerfn2002]

Cobalt, great work man. So nice to see a magic user guide up.

I'm still not sold on Dweomery. Is it lack of better options with this build or something else?

Do you use telepathy at all? I see you recommend magic mapping which is in the same category though.

What's your preferred alignment? What's your opinion on starting skill talents that don't mesh with alignment choices.

What's your armour choice? SDSM or the starting robe enchanted up?

LOL Raise the dead needs a disclaimer for squishy char. I use it for red-flag situations and take their weapons away after the fight if they could kill me.

Nice info on Psi Bolt. Great cooking tips. Awesome delving!