Okay, my thoughts here.

A player, to be PK-successful, must get this wands. The problem is that the process of getting them is boring and tedious and in many times player cant find his wands. Two problems. There is a third as well - some mage builds can have 'hard' wand spots, and in general wand spots (especially barrier ones) are 'not equal'. Fourth problem is that fully abs-ed mages (especially Scions) are damn tough.

So, I think all them should be solved in more or less degree.

Your 1st solution - detect artifact improvement - partially solves the second problem.

Your 2nd solution greatly improves the solution to first two problems. It gives some hint for those who failed to find at all and it makes the process less boring and slow.

Your 3rd solution solves all problems to some degree.

I think while they are great, a few things could be and should be done in addition:

1. Make another edges only available from IMMs hands for good RP or general goodness with another hint. Or let IMM give such hint directly in IMM-teraction. I mean if the player is really good, maybe he is even a leader, he could get some additional hint for that, could not he?

2. Make detect artifact really useful by working when you enter the area as well. Some signal or tingling.

3. Think about that idea when if you have lots of protections on you, you can have troubles with wording/teleporting out. I'd just make something for barrier, maybe just a decent chance for word/teleport to fail.

This additional things will encourage RP and general goodness whatever IMMs think it is. Encourage real exploration (not visiting the same lowbie areas looking at the same places) because you need some exploration exp for detect artifact. And you are free where and what to explore. Its much more fun than checking the same wand spots. And detect artifact will be much more useful now.

And this partially solves the 4th problem - if you are a fully abs-ed badass mage, you can have some troubles escaping.