# Talk:Wand
I'm still stumped by some of the RAY geometry. Basic wall bouncing I am OK with, but exact details about range, bouncing off hidden corridors and doors, reflection etc would benefit from some diagrams; perhaps in a ray article- especially as a RAY is a phenomenon common to several types of magic and item.--PeterGFin 10:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Missing... breaking a wand of fire?? --PeterGFin 04:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Contents

1 breaking wands: blast
2 range
3 Extra message on engrave
4 Nethack Wands in the Media
5 Strategy
6 Engraving Identification?
7 Zapping the wand of undead turning at yourself...
8 zapping a wand at yourself
9 charging a cancelled wand
10 new redirect
11 Slash'em
12 unnethack trap creation
13 Effects of exploding cursed wands

breaking wands: blast
If I break a charged wand of death without being magic resistant, I survive. If I zap myself, I die. If this always holds, it should be added to the article. Tjr 10:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

range
what range do wands / spells have? Tjr 16:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Extra message on engrave
I engraved with an unknown wand in Sokoban and got the message "You cannot wipe out the message that is engraved in the floor here." Since it was Sokoban (which is non-teleport) I assumed this meant the wand was a wand of teleport but it turned out to be a wand of nothing. Perhaps there are a few wands with different messages in Soko?

You have to engrave in the dust, not the floor beforehand. Perhaps there already was an engraving on the spot you didn't notice. -Tjr 21:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Nethack Wands in the Media
The Nethack Wand "/" gets a mention in the BBC news article 10 ways to use /— Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterGFin (talk • contribs) 

Bloody 'ell, the URL's busted, guv!  I took the liberty of fixing it.--Ray Chason 22:38, October 22, 2009 (UTC)
Strategy
As perhaps suggested by the subject line of Qazmlpok's last edit, some of the advice in the Strategy section seems tendentious. To start with little details, a wand of death often isn't the best use of a wand of wishing, and clearing out the castle isn't really the best use of a wand of death (save your charges for Rodney, the high priest of Moloch, and Pestilence). And some of the other wands stay useful even in the endgame. Fire and lightning are useful for burning permanent Elbereths, as when you get caught in a summoning storm on a no-teleport level; cancellation can uncurse your bag of holding, make some monsters less dangerous, and mass-blank items when you need to do so in a hurry; no one who has ever fought Master Kaen will disdain the wand of sleep; and even the wand of slow monster will get you out of an air elemental (though I usually wind up right back inside). Also, you can never really have enough wands of teleportation; they're very useful for clearing out crowds (especially on Astral), and are a good way of getting rid of those air elementals.

All that said, it is worth pointing out that polypiling will never get you a wand of wishing or polymorph, and using your charges on wands may not be the best way to go. (If you have leftover charges, polymorphing the air elemental that's engulfed you can be very satisfying.) Slandor 18:50, July 3, 2010 (UTC)

Engraving Identification?
Just wondering, does it matter if you engrave over the previous engravement or add to the engravement?- - DemonSlayerThe3 :: The Neutral Gnomish Wizard, with my kitten Ellinis! 17:42, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't matter (just to be clear, we're talking about answering (y/n) to "Do you want to add to the current engraving?", right?) The wands that affect the previous engraving (polymorph, teleportation, cancellation, invisibility) will have that effect without/before asking if you want to add to them, and the wands that let you do more than write in the dust will automatically wipe out the engraving, and I think they autoidentify anyway. 132.198.96.84 18:30, September 2, 2010 (UTC) (that was me Slandor 18:31, September 2, 2010 (UTC))
Zapping the wand of undead turning at yourself...
I zapped a wand of undead turning at myself, so does that mean I'm undead now?~♥DemonSlayerThe3rd 18:41, December 8, 2010 (UTC)

You're perfectly fine (except a few points of damage if you were polyselfed into an undead creature). Corpses in your inventory (think lizard) do revive from zapping, and the wand is identified. --Tjr 19:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
A long time ago I had thought "turn undead" would work like this too.  --FJH 15:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
zapping a wand at yourself
i zapped a wand of death at myself (short, dull, embarrassing story) while i was reflecting, magic protected and MC3. if a monster had done this i would have been fine. instead i got DYWYPI? is this always a certainty? --194.116.198.179 11:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, see Wand of death. The spell does the same. Zapping yourself with a wand always ignores reflection, but for whatever reason the wand of death also ignores MR. -- Qazmlpok 13:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
charging a cancelled wand
Can you recharge a cancelled wand? Does a cursed scroll uncancel it by setting its charges to zero? --Tjr (talk) 06:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

As mentioned in charging, yes on both counts. -- Qazmlpok (talk) 12:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
new redirect
to be a useful a redirect needs to be mentioned on the destination page. You bash yourself! redirects to this page and isn't mentioned here. AFAICT it's the message you get if you zap yourself with a wand of striking. whose page doesn't mention it either. is it a SLASH'EM thing? --194.116.198.185 11:32, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Slash'em
The slashem section could use some info on what happens when applying wands. From what I understand their generic magical blast is changed to have a more appropriate effect depending on what type of wand you broke.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.232.43 (talk • contribs) 01:01, 4 August 2013‎

unnethack trap creation
in addition to the vanilla effect, sometimes a trap is created
What does "sometimes" mean? Can somebody find out the probability and put it here, please? --Tjr (talk) 12:32, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Effects of exploding cursed wands
What exactly happens when a cursed wand explodes? Reading zap.c -- lines 1839-1842 and section "backfire" -- it appears to abuse strength, destroy the wand and deal a few HP ("d(otmp-&gt;spe+2,6)")? Is this true, and in which case, how many? And is this phenomenon completely different from shock-induced explosions?__Train (talk) 09:20, 5 June 2015 (UTC)