this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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It is a little confusing and I agree that they don't always work the way I expect. I will say that going for a single type will ultimately hold you back if you just aren't getting the proper spells. Best to just generate something that works to some degree.
Cast delay and recharge rate are the two most important stats outside of "shuffle" in which you always want "no". Cast delay is the time between spells and after all of them are cast, recharge rate is the time before casting the new full spell list.
The order in which you place spells is important and I still have to mess around with them a bit since I don't understand it as well as I thought I did. But there are casting "blocks" which is like a set of commands. This is why you want shuffle "no" because then it will always cast left to right. Casting a trispell will cast whatever spells are in the next 3 slots (at the same time) including another trispell, which will then add the next three blocks (as an example). Then you have to do some math to see what all the cast delay and recharge rate total numbers are. That's how you see what your wand will ultimately do. If you can get cast delay to 0 or lower it will chaingun but pause almost like a shotgun if the recharge rate is higher than the cast delay. The wand will always be held back by the larger of the two (cast delay or recharge rate).
IDK if this clarified or helped at all but if you have more questions I might be able to answer or provide resources for you.
The issue I've been trying to work out is getting modifiers to work consistently. My understanding is that modifiers are supposed to stack and affect the next projectile spell to the right, but they either don't apply at all or will apply sporadically, and I haven't figured out what rule I'm missing.
I assume some modifiers just don't work with some projectiles, but the game doesn't seem to communicate whether this is the case. I also suspect it has something to do with shuffle, as you warned against, but I haven't been getting any non-shuffle wands for experimentation, and my starter wand doesn't have much mana to work with.
It doesn't help that I can only experiment with builds in the airlock chambers between levels.
The specific issue I remember having last night was that I couldn't get the pentagon shot modifier to apply to any of my projectile spells no matter what I did.
I did get the flametrail modifier working consistently, so I'm doing something right, but I'm not sure what was different between that and the pentagon spread modifier I was trying.
Modifiers (generally) cost mana too, so you have to add that mana cost to each cast of the wand. If you have a 5 mana cost spell and a 30 mana modifier, you end up with 35 mana per cast. If your wand has a total capacity of 100 mana and a recharge rate of 100MPS, you'll get 2 casts with the modifier (70 total mana) and one cast without until you regen to a capacity total of 35 mana (or greater) to cast with the modifier again. If you have a dual or tri cast spell and put the modifier before that, it will apply the modifier to the whole cast block adding the modifier mana requirement to each spell in that block. If at any point that exceeds your capacity, it won't add the modifier at all.
Right, so if you have 3 spells on a shuffle wand, and 1 modifier in front of one, than the modifier will only affect the cast "block" of that one spell. Since it is a shuffle wand it can choose to cast any of those three which gives you a 30% chance of casting a modified spell. This is why non-shuffle is so important. You can always tell if its a shuffle or non-shuffle wand by whether it has a gemstone on the wand. If it does have one, it will be NON-shuffle, if it does NOT have a gem, it will be shuffle.
A non-shuffle gives you consistency and the ability to make those spell "blocks"
That's part of what makes the game tough is how you only get to tinker with the wands in those mid-way points, unless you get a perk that says otherwise. But a pro-tip, your second wand, the bomb wand, you can switch your main wand's spell to that and it will usually work in a pinch to give you a rapid fire shot with low mana regent. Not optimal, bit functional when no other options exist.
The pentagon one, IIRC, if used with a single spell will just shoot around you in 5 directions. But if you have a trigger spell you place it like so [Trigger spell] [Pentagon] [damage spell]. I believe pentagon has a pretty high mana consumption so that may have prevented you from having the total capacity needed to successfully cast it. Therefore you would have just casted an unmodified spell.
LMK if you need more info!
I was not counting mana cost, no. So it'll just drop modifiers if it doesn't have enough mana, and still cast the base spell? That does explain some of the behavior I was seeing. I figured it would fail to cast entirely if I didn't have enough mana for the full block.
One theory I had, if you can confirm, is that shuffle doesn't just shuffle spells, it shuffles all spell nodes.
So if I have a 4-slot shuffle wand with: PPMP (P = Projectile Spell, M = Modifier)
I was thinking the cast table could either be:
P1 - 33%
P2 - 33%
MP3 - 33%
Or
P1 - 25%
P2 - 25%
MP3 - 25%
P3 - 25%
Depending on whether the modifier block was a valid place for the shuffle to land.
I was planning to try to build some wand experiments to differentiate which of these scenarios is true. Good to know that mana can be a confounding variable.
Edit: Also, is shuffle fully random or does it draw without replacement like a deck of cards until all stored spells are cast and it can recharge? Just thought of this and realized I hadn't tested for it.
You know, I'm not actually entirely sure if it sees the modifier as a valid selection, but yes, it will kill a modifier and cast a non-modified spell if it does not have the capacity. The only time it will not fire at all is when 1) the base spell has a greater cost than total capacity. Or 2) you are out of casts for spells that have a cast limit (donated by a number within the spell's block).
A shuffle wand will always cast all spells available in the selection before hitting the recharge, I can say that for sure. So if you have 5 spells each at 20% chance, then you cast one, you have a 25% for each of the remaining four, then 33%, then 50% then you will 100% cast the spell you haven't cast yet before the wand goes through recharge and all spells become available again.
When talking about dual casts and tri-casts I'm not entirely sure how it resolves what to cast when mana capacity is an issue, but I believe it goes left to right, and checks the validity against your capacity, yes=cast no=not cast which would be why someone would end up casting a couple, but not all of, a block's spells.
Spells and modifiers all can add (or remove) mana, modify cast delay/recharge delay. So do keep an eye on how that all gets changed based on what spells you use. One spell selection could be the difference between chaingun or a slow firing one shot. Some spells have 1 second delays built in (which technically can be overcome)
That makes a lot more sense now. Thank you. I know where to look for troubleshooting next time I play.