rechargeable craftable staffs

[disastro]

this is probably a lot of work, but adding an option to recharge MA arcane upgraded staffs for less xp/gold would be a welcome addition. (even if it's as simple as replacing the old staff with a new identical staff fully charged).

Or possibly change each of it's spells to 1x per day rather than charges once it's upgraded.

otherwise I can't see spending 250,000 gold and 7500 xp for an item that will vanish after I use it 25-50 times.

[VagaStorm]

How about buffstaffs that are upgraded, either the lvl 25 or the 30 one should have x uses a day insted of charges....

[disastro]

How about buffstaffs that are upgraded, either the lvl 25 or the 30 one should have x uses a day insted of charges....

sorry if I wasn't clear, but those are exactly the staves I'm talking about (and that's one of the changes I'm suggesting.)

[kingfatzo]

otherwise I can't see spending 250,000 gold and 7500 xp for an item that will vanish after I use it 25-50 times.

ya know thats a really good point !

[Dynmi]

But then everybody will eventually get a rod and then theres no point in having them..... (If that makes sense)

[Mythri Wolfwood]

What are the stats on the upgraded buff staves? If the spells on them are worth making an upgraded or twice upgraded buff staff, then I don't really see an issue. Maybe the costs of making a buff staff could be lowered, but that's about it. Basically, you don't want something that replaces mages for non-casters.

Now, at first I thought the once per day idea was good. However, the whole point of making buff staves have limited charges is to make them a useful commodity to create. As Dynmi pointed out, once everyone has one, why make more?

[Binkyuk]

It'd have to be some *seriously* powerful spells to justify the normal 7500xp and 250k of gold for a staff with the usual 10 charges, or even 50. I'd expect Power Word: Apocalypse at the very least.

For staffs (that you can also whack stuff with, and hence have *some* lasting value) cheap recharge only by the right level crafter sounds like the way to go.

For rods and wands you can just make the upgrade costs much lower and have them work the way they do now.

[disastro]

the level 30 upgraded buffstaff has:
. +6
. about 4 dice worth of mixed elemental damage
. 50 charges
. greater bulls, bears, cats, etc. all the flavors (1 charge) level 11 iirc, good luck getting that past the now-common dispels.
. spell breach (2 charges).

truly a nice staff. but 7500 xp on a lvl 30ish toon is nontrivial, as is 250,000 gp. not hard to get by any stretch, but given that anyone capable of crafting this staff can cast all those spells anyway, it's a losing proposition.

even more so when you compare it to the easy-to-get Staff of the Mountain, which also sports Greater versions of all the stat buffs.

since you cant focus or get imp crit in magic staffs as far as i know, giving it decent melee stats is kind of irrelevant. anybody who's intending on doing melee (including the probably pure class creator via tensers) will be better served by using any other weapon anyway.

the time limit for master arcane item creation on reflections is 12 hours last i checked, so it's not exactly a spammable item. (and in that time you should be able to grind out quite a few Staffs of the Mountain)

[Netrom.dk]

Itemproperties in scripts are some nasty things, and I can only imagine spells is even worse then what is allready used in the upgrading script.

Thats the reason staffs don't upgrade its charges, as only itemproperties that have a logic next tier is upgradeable with our current design. It is proberly posible upgrade charges as well, but to be honest its just not worth the effort.

About rods, you can just craft a new one if the one you are using expires, so no need for upgrade posibility for that.

[disastro]

how about just replacing the current staff with a brand new staff, and charge 1/20th cost? (375 xp / 12,500 gp.)

no recharging per se, just put a staff in there, click upgrade, script deletes the old staff, and out comes a new staff. no need to check for anything other than it's the right kind of staff (or possibly creator if that's easy).

then it might be worthwhile, since it would basically save you a few empowered buff spell slots and save you a trip up to get a Staff of the Mountain.

on a related note I suggest making it a +7 or +8 weapon to cover the fact you can't focus in it.

[Dynmi]

Or, is there a way to make a recharge script, say leave the innital price the same, but if one goes to recharge it then make it cost signifacantly less expensive, if you forget to charge it then you'd have to remake it.

[Mythri Wolfwood]

If the stats on the twice upgraded buff staff listed by Disastro are correct, then I don't really see a point in taking the upgrade path. Basically, I see an upgrade in enhancement and possibly elemental damage, that's it. Now, if someone wanted to use the staff for fighting, then maybe they'd want to have an upgraded staff. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to just use the level 20 staff since the spells, spell levels and charges are the same.

Edit: I've been looking at the magic staves listed in the wiki and notice that some of them give bonus spell slots. It's too bad item properties are troublesome in scripts as adding spell slots bonuses to the higher level buff staves could make them a bit more useful.

A quick question for the level 30 Arcane crafters, what are the stats on the other staff, the one with +search and +spellcraft? Did the skill bonuses get a boost after upgrading?

[Lokey]

Edit: I've been looking at the magic staves listed in the wiki and notice that some of them give bonus spell slots. It's too bad item properties are troublesome in scripts as adding spell slots bonuses to the higher level buff staves could make them a bit more useful.

Conceptually it isn't bad, and there aren't too many things to watch out for (unintended consequences). It's just the way Bio handles item props makes such scripting really tedious to do.