Shattered Kingdoms

This post is about wands wasting a charge even when you zap without a target, or when your target has left.

I'm a total noob when it comes to zapping wands. Finney has made some great triggers and aliases for zapping smart and generally managing your targets, but as I mostly play through the fmud client on the site, those aren't always available to me.

I was wondering if wands could be changed to check for target before being zapped, and saving the charge if there is no target there.

Cheers!

Please no.

This risk/loss is an important part of keeping wands and also scrolls balanced. Otherwise you get to have a level fifty wand of <insert spell>, which fires instantly and has 10+ charges, can fire twice a round, and then stand there and spam 'zap XYZ' until the target walks in and have it automatically stop if they flee.

If this were to be done, I think the entire collection of magical devices in the game would need looked at and heavily scaled down in terms of power. This seems like a tiny change but it would completely skew numerous things. This would give casters a risk-free insta-way to start combat with minimal lag regardless of opposing group's formation, something they currently lack and which can be very important in PvP.

I can't help you when you're using the flash client. If you use zMUD, the following should help:

#ALIAS {j} {#IF (@ZapTarget=1 AND @ZapTarget!=self AND @Zaptarget!=insertcharacternamehere) {zap @ZapTarget} {#SAY ~>~>~>~>~>~>~> Think Again n00b! ~<~<~<~<~<~<~<;CO 11}}

#ALIAS {z} {#VARIABLE ZapTarget %1}

#ALIAS {x} {#UNV ZapTarget}

So, in other words, didn't Finney just made woahboy's argument moot?

No because there's still a delay there. It's looking at the room or glancing at your target or something every time you zap, or there's no way it'd be able to tell if they're there or not. And that delay is enough for somebody to dart through a room. Where as if you're just spamming 'dirt xyz' over and over you might catch them.

The triggers will help with not wasting charges on empty air though.

No. The player is still required to manually set and clear the @ZapTarget variable for the zap alias to function. Skill cap still in place and SK rules followed. This setup will provide a visual cue and/or reminder to the player. I guess it also provides anti-Edoras protection mode too - lulz.