I've actually done 4 ABS chars now since the wand changes this year, and I wouldn't particularly want to play any of them again now.

First was an AP into his 40s, I found my aura early on but couldn't find barrier until around 200 hours, and never found sienna.

Second was a gnome shifter who found aura and deleted from boredom after about 100 hours at 37th without finding any others.

Third was an elf transmuter who found aura early, but still hasn't found other wands at just below 40th level and around 200 hours.

Fourth and most recently was a dark-elf shifter just below 40th with about 100 hours who didn't find any wands.

That's about 600 hours and all of these chars have gotten atleast legendary awareness, and usually 10k-20k more in observation experience, so that should prove I've been looking hard. It's a pretty huge drain on my enthusiasm having to play so conservatively without sleek wands, even though I have very short-duration limited aura and shields usually. I've worked with numerous other mages in hunting for ABS, and they have all expressed similar frustrations. Sharing suspected locations doesn't really help with so many possibilities anymore.

I honestly liked the old system better where there were predictable locations for ABS. The thought of having to use my sparse edge pool for wand edges so I can go back and explore all of the old locations a second time is extremely frustrating. I'd rather give up on mages all together, honestly.