The whole abs debate is pretty complicated but this is what i see at the root of the problem. A lot of players make the case that mages need abs a lot to compete with high end melee characters, these high end melee characters want less abs because it simply makes it very difficult to deal with highly conservative players. My solution to this problem is a little bit of a compromise to assuade both parties.

The first step is adding edges to give you a clue about where to find a specific rod, you can pick the edge once and it will give a clue to the area in which you look or perhaps on or around what type of mage. Perhaps make them mutually exclusive so you can only get a clue to one location. In the grand scheme of things this might not be useful even for most players but it will go a long way towards assuaging those loud few who cry I tried forever.

To balance this out I suggest putting a penalty on players for using a lot of non class dam redux. As the redux goes down the mages ability to fast escape via word/teleport go down, you can spin it as the magical barriers interfering with transportation magic. So now mages have to choose between the neccesity of more dam redux vs ease of getting away from a bad fight, perhaps have this hinderment exceed the duration of the dam redux in the case of barrier.

now on the whole I recognize that this would be a serious downgrade to abs in general... but hey people should complain less about finding them!