Wands and how they work in BatMUD
=================================
Wands are expensive, but very useful items for mages and others
who can use them (one must have 'zapping' skill to use a wand).
Wands can be found, bought from shops and made by skilled casters
of magic via 'wandmaking' skill. See below for information how to
make a wand.

Being powerful items of magic, wands tend to be dangerous in some
situations. If more than one wand are in the same room, an magical
explosion may occur. Sometimes it may even happen that you buy a wand
from shop and it immendiately explodes - sad but true. :I

Every wand shows up in your inventory as something similar to:

  Wand of something (N/M)

Where N and M are numbers, for example:

  Custom wand named teleport without error (2/100)

N is the number of charges available in the wand, it simply means
how many times you can use the wand. After N gets to zero (0), the
wand is basically useless unless you have a way to recharge it.
Wands can be recharged with "scroll of charging". If you don't have
a way to recharge the wand you can sell it in a shop for 475 gold
or such.

!!WARNING!! If you try to zap with a wand with zero charges (n = 0),
the wand will most probably explode!

M represents the loadstatus of the wand. When you zap with the wand,
it needs some time to rest before you can use it again. When M is 100,
wand can be used again. Usually after zapping M gets to 60-70 and I
suspect that it depends on user's 'zapping' skill how low it goes.


Using wands
-----------
When you have a wand, you use it by zapping the target:

>zap <somebody> with <wand>

For example:

>zap monster with wand 1

Some spells (field type spells) do not use target,
so the syntax is bit different then:

>zap with <wand>

The success of zapping depends on your 'zapping' skill.
It may fail, but you can immendiately try again until it works.


Creating wands
--------------
Mages and other spellcasters have a skill called 'wandmaking' which
can be used to create custom wands from spells available to the maker.
To make a wand, you need a "Wand of nothing (1/100)". Wands of nothing
work as templates to embed the magical energies into. To embed the
magics into the wand, maker must know the spell very well - minimum
of knowledge is 50%, more is better.

You can buy wands of nothing from shops in bigger cities of BatMUD and
occasionally you may find them from various other places too.

To start making a wand, have the wand of nothing in your inventory,
choose the spell to make into wand and invoke wandmaking.
In following example, I'll create a wand of teleport without error.

Example
-------
>help skill wandmaking

Skill duration: 20.
Type of skill : special skill.
Affecting stats: De/In/Wi.
It uses 50 endurance points.
...

hp: 339 (339) [] sp: 802 (802) [+49] ep: 244 (244) cash: 0 [] exp: 16 []

>use wandmaking at teleport without error

You start concentrating on the skill.
You are prepared to do the skill.
The wand of nothing is transformed into Custom wand named teleport without error (2/100)!


--
Written by Ggr Pupunen <ccr at tnsp dot org> in 2004.
Thanks to Dagel and others for information and corrections.