Strategy:Arena Master's Staff

The Arena Master's Staff will deal 10 fire damage to all enemies in your line of sight, at the expense of tiring you. Unless you find yourself swarmed by formers, this effect is rarely useful; it'll deal a pittance of damage to anything else, and if you're in a situation where you would want to use this, it would almost certainly do you better to activate run instead and get out of that situation into a more advantageous position. And don't think you can use this to easily wipe out a Lost soul swarm such as in the City of Skulls; with their 75% fire resistance, Lost Souls will be barely damaged by this thing and you'll pretty much give them free attacks while tiring yourself out.

This staff is pretty much useless as an item and a waste of an inventory slot, but it has one special use that it is primarily meant for; opening the vaults in, well, The Vaults. The left and right vaults can be opened without the staff, but the center staff is completely inaccessible without this staff, unless you get lucky with a Phase device. But besides relying on luck, doing that would put you right in the middle of a contained room full of nasty enemies, so clearing The Vaults this way isn't a sound strategy.

So if you intend to clear The Vaults, the Arena Master's Staff is essentially a must. However you get the staff in The Chained Court after level 5, while the stairs to The Vaults don't appear until all the way at level 19, so you'll be lugging around this useless item for a looooooooonnnnnnnngggggg time. Is it worth it? There is a five times increased chance of Unique weapons and armors spawning here, but otherwise the guaranteed loot is only some ammo, and basic weapons/armors you probably won't have any use for at this point. And if you're playing on HNTR difficulty, you're going to have Barons of Hell here who will most certainly steal the armor here from you while brutalising your armor. Indeed a lot of times, The Vaults isn't a worthwhile level itself to enter and beat, which makes it even more questionable to carry 1 less inventory slot through most of the game just for The Vaults.

In conclusion, if you're not going for a Conqueror run and don't care about ruining your chance at 100% kills by entering The Vaults without the Arena Master's Staff, it would be worthwhile more often than not to just leave the staff in The Chained Court and not have it take up inventory space for 14 or more levels. Omega Tyrant (talk)