Amber Staff

The gem staves are the early magic ladder, and this one shares a rung with the Ruby version, so whichever gem your world coughs up first is the one you build. There is no reason to make both.

The bolt punches through one enemy before it stops. That is enough to matter in a corridor with two zombies stacked in it and nowhere near enough to treat it as a piercing weapon in an open fight.

What sets this one apart is the cost. Every other staff on the ladder wants metal bars on top of the gem and this one does not, so it is the cheapest way into a magic weapon when your ore is going into armor instead. The trade is the gem itself: amber does not sit in cave walls like the others, so getting any usually means running an Extractinator first.