>Did you or did you not (Nepenthe) have a large hand in
>redesigning/implementing the neo-wand system.

I did not. The basic idea is Zulg's. (I'm aware of roughly how it works; I've explained the gist of it a time or three on the forums.) Zulg and Thrak and I don't know who else did most of the initial placement.

>Did you also
>have a direct hand in the placement of said wands?

I want to say no, but it's probable that a few of the initial 80 or so (that's a wild-assed guess, but I'd bet it's not extremely far from accurate) locations came from suggestions of mine.

>How many
>mages have fully sets of wands at 36?

Some! A lot have shield and aura... being able to come up with a barrier reliably at that level is rarer, but there's always a couple mages who can do it at any one time.

I wish I had good metrics for this, but the reality is that most mage players level like crazy straight for hero and then start looking.

>How many of your mages
>have full sets of wands at 36?

I can think of one. :) Most don't. I can nearly always come up with shield or aura reliably at that level if I've taken the time to stop and search for wands. Often I do, but sometimes I level right through. In most cases I can't come up with barrier at that level.

>Do you consider this
>particular easter-egg type reward that grants significant
>in-game advantage to be unfair in the context of being the
>person (one of the persons) that designed/hid the eggs?

Answering for the designers and hiders, which I don't consider myself to be... it might've in the first few years. Now most of the heavy mage players know a lot more of the locations than I do. There's a short list of people (Lightmage is on this list in most incarnations, as are a few currently active characters I can think of) that I look at and wonder how they always manage to have so many wands. I guess no matter where you're at with wand-whoring, there's always someone who makes it look frustratingly easy. ;)

>The above is pseudo-speculation, based on my own tainted
>memory of posts, and your apparent ability to gather wands.
>It is currently being manifested because of my utter
>frustration with the wand system. Also, this was the only
>part about Cabdru that annoyed me, because I think (though
>I'll likely never know) that if I had knowledge of a full set
>of wands I could make "the next Cabdru".

Having played mages with and without, I'll say that the really fun part about reliably being able to have a set of wands is that you can try some things that would normally be stupid, like jump a group of three as a character that is a moderate to poor tank. You can take a shot at cabal recoveries or defenses that would otherwise be suicide. But, you still die to fights you're not expecting, you still have moments where you've run dry of wands at the wrong time, and you still do stupid #### that can get you killed.

50% of the wonder of Cabdru to me is that generally, that kind of luck went my way. People would try to disarm me when I couldn't be and then stop trying once I stupidly could be. I'd get held by (super secret hell item) and killed, but when no one was in a position to loot me or did. Stuff like that. I don't think I could even replicate the feat without a bunch of tries.