Whenever I get a wand and identify it, it says x:x. For example, the castle wand I got says 0:1.
What is the meaning of the first number? (0 in the example)
I know the second number is the number of charges left.
What does the first number mean on a wand
nethack
Related Solutions
Since it doesn't look like anyone is jumping on this, I've decided to give it a go myself.
Wands
This chart doesn't show every possible way to identify, but I've tried to at least cover all wands. I don't believe there's a way to distinguish between exhausted, cancelled and nothing wands, short of a scroll/spell of ID, but I may be wrong on that.
View diagram in its full glory ↗
Potions
It's highly inadvisable to quaff unidentified potions if they haven't been checked with a unicorn horn first (where I noted you may want to stop). They could be hallucination, confusion, blindness, sleep or paralysis, and that's a lot of ways to be incapacitated. If some or all of these are already identified, or you have a safe place to wait it out, the risk is mitigated.
It's also worth noting that I didn't list all potions that can be identified by tossing at a monster. For example, potion of sickness gives a message, but is easily identified by dipping.
Rings
Rings are fairly difficult to identify indirectly. Aside from the ones that increase an attribute, relatively few are automatically identified by wearing. However, if you're willing to sacrifice the ring (or if you have duplicates), sink identification is a surefire method.
This is standard D&D terminology, where the first number (x) indicates the number of times (or the number of dice) you roll and the dx indicates the type of die that is rolled (with the x indicating the number of sides). In the case of 8d8, you would roll an 8 sided die 8 times and then sum the results.
Therefore, the damage done by Touch of Death is the sum of 8 random numbers between 1-8, which works out to a number between 8 and 64. As per liori's comment, this value is more likely to be in the middle of that range than at the ends. If you take all the possible outcomes of 8 rolls of 8 sided dice and graph the sums, you'll get a very nice bell curve. Rolling 8 or 64 would be extremely unlikely, but rolling 32 would be extremely common.
A few examples:
1d20 would be 1 roll of a 20 sided die.
3d6 would be 3 rolls of a 6 sided die.
1d8 + 2 would be 1 roll of an 8 sided die, with 2 added to the result (so a number between 3 and 10).
Related Topic
- What do I need to do to ensure I don’t kill theself with a finger of death (or wand of death)
- When is tripe safe to eat
- Identify rings similar to the way I can identify wands
- When a wand is broken, does the charge status affect its potency
- Wishing to equip the pet Archon
- Ny way to return from explore mode
- If a smoky potion is diluted, does it still have the same chance of producing a djinni as an undiluted smoky potion
- How to escape from the Stronghold of the Master Assassin
Best Answer
The number on the left is the number of times you've recharged the wand (using say the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, scrolls of charging, etc.) This is useful so that one does not accidentally recharge the wand too many times (which can cause it to blow up).