Wands of death bounce off walls...

[steveie986]

...thus ends the illustrious career of an absurdly promising dark elven beastfighter. While fighting the cat lord, I got the great idea to zap him with a wand of death. I was not familiar with wands of death and there was no wiki page for them. I was actually winning the fight and would have him beat with a few more blows, with several more healing potions to spare. But I decided to finish off in style and busted out that wand. I was about to use it for the first time... standing two squares away from a wall.

He was born on the day a falling star killed the village elder. He discovered seven league boots in the UD and had stumbled upon an amulet of life-saving just before Dwarftown. He had a bunch of unidentified rings that he IDed after learning to read from the potion of literacy and among them were -- of course -- two rings of ice. He came across almost half a dozen shops and numerous lawful altars. He was precrowned with some useless weapon, but was crowned just in time for the ToEF with Nature's Companion(!) Literally everything that could have gone right went right.

After ToEF I was starting to get my hopes up. I got my first victory (with a compatriot dark elven archer) after 15 years of play last week, and I thought I was headed toward the astronomically unlikely achievement of a second consecutive victory after not winning for 15 years. Of course, TB/RNG/my stupidity had other plans.

I think I'm going to take a break until Steam.

[AlterAsc]

Also Death Ray spells(and wands probably too) can be aimed on yourself.
That's why i never use them without having/equipping deathray resistance first.

[Blasphemous]

Death ray resistance is cheap - AMW is guaranteed and amulets, although not particularly common, aren't that rare either.

[plllizzz9]

That's why generally you don't go for style points in ADOM.

[gym21]

On a promising wizard who'd just finished clearing out the ToEF, I once forgot to hit the + button on my spell list for Teleport while descending from the ACW fight.

Guess what was bound to the same key as Teleport! Guess who didn't notice and targeted himself with that spell!

[steveie986]

Death ray resistance is cheap - AMW is guaranteed and amulets, although not particularly common, aren't that rare either.

I had AMW and not one but two amulets of death ray resistance at the time of death. I think my decision to use the wand against the wall while not knowing if it would bounce is entirely attributable to having played for five hours straight without a break. I've learned over the years that you have to break up your game sessions because after a while you stop thinking straight and start to take ridiculous risks just for the hell of it. Even for just a regular ending, the game is long enough that you can't complete it in one session (or at least I can't). Sometimes my brain is fried and I think to myself "let's end this ASAP" -- well, that usually means death, not victory.

[moonshine]

The spell's radius is usually only 3 or 4 squares, and the Cat Lord would've likely shrugged it after all.. It is useful for stupid monsters who are very strong but unable to shrug often. If used as a spell, it is a good way to train Mana if you're careful. And yes, I also get killed often by playing when tired, that's definitely something to be avoided.

[plllizzz9]

it's actually a very powerful spell for some late game encounters - it easily clears swathes of chaos wizards/warriors in Mana Temple/Gat level and also instantly slays Ancient Blue Dragons with great efficiency.