Just deleted my mage experiment and I have to say in my opinion it seems completely and totally broken. Now, before you explain to me how I should have gone about finding my wands, or how easy they are to find, let me explain. Once I hit hero and got detect artifact, I found all three of my wands in a couple nights. Barrier was somewhat hard getting, but I had what to me was an endless supply of aura and shield that I just had to walk up and get. So much so that I had no compunctions whatsoever in using them to fight mobs. Especially with enough game instability that even if I was empty, I could come close to getting all four in a single session.

Now I know why it feels like every mage I fight in the hero ranks has damage reduction out the yingyang. The sleek wands are just too plentiful in my decidedly self-serving opinion as a non-mage player.

All three were easy.

One was on a mob that gets killed regularly. One was pickable up off the ground in a non-dangerous area. One was grab and flee in a dangerous area, but very easy for Victoria to get since most mobs there were not hostile to her.

So abs effectively unlimited from the point that I found the sleek black (which took forever!).