How does it work? I heard people get "sets" of wands and stuff as opposed to having to go out and find them now. Sorry if this question isn't meant for the forums as A/B/S used to be a big thing in the past, but I'm thinking about playing a mage but in my experience without prep knowledge they're near impossible to PK with at the hero range, so I was just looking for some help.

If you have a mage of appropriate level mages will help you IC as long as you are a well played character.

It's how I did it, and I continue to help other IC people figure theirs out.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of sets.
Each set has it's own Amber, Black, and Sienna location.

You can not start searching for them until you reach level 30. At level 30, you can find your black, amber and sienna.

You can actually USE your amber at level 30. You can zap with your sienna at level 32, and your sleek black at level 35.

So let's say I find my wands in these locations.

Amber:Market Square in a chest
Black:On Tarus
Sienna:An elven noble in Aldevari

That's a set, it's not randomly generated or anything. If another character finds his Sleek Black on Tarus, he will find his sienna and amber in the same places I do. They are built in to the game.

I was assigned this set at character creation. My sleek wands will ALWAYS be in these places. I will not find sleek wands in any other locations.

So let's pretend I found this entire set with my last character. And by some stroke of luck I happened to find my amber in the same spot as I did with my previous character. This means I have the exact same set, my black and sienna are going to be in the exact same place. All the sets are like this, so if you can find at least one of your wands, you could ask another character where you might find your others, and they might exactly where they are, if they've had that set before.

A specific example being the level useage of wands. On a subject like this you really should let the Immortals answer as they feel appropriate rather than you doing so(thus eliminating such mis-info as presented within).

CraftedDeception

There are also sleeks available that are not necessarily part of your "set", and all characters in the game can find.

The imms can't even tell us what's up with orcs appearing to change size with level. And they have the code.

I haven't personally experienced the new system, but I gather it goes like this:

Every mage gets a "set" of amber (aura), sienna (shield) and black (barrier) rods. This set never changes for that particular mage. If another mage, who doesn't have one of those locations, looks in, he won't see anything. The guy who does have that location will see a wand. I think they actually appear when you walk into the room. So, if you walk through but don't get it out, then someone else could. Also, I gather that you only start seeing them once you're high enough level to actually use them.

There are also other a/b/s wands that aren't specific to any one mage. These are limited, and often at their limit. Typically these are named something *other* than "amber", "sienna" and "black", but I think there are some amber/sienna/black rods that aren't actually part of the "mage-assigned" group.

One thing I'm unclear on is whether particular a/s/b "groupings" are always handed out as a set, or if you're just randomly assigned aura, shield and barrier locations independent of one another.