Ok, so last night in the middle of my 16 hour shift, I had to stay awake. So I tried to keep my mind occupied with something that I was interested in. Cf was one of the things I tried thinking about. I started to think about what HAVEN'T I accomplished in cf over the years (filtered through a "That I have the technical cf skill to do" filter)

It came down to 4 main things. 1)explore Silent tower. 2)explore Hell. 3)get a lich quest. 4)figure out wands.

1) I don't think is possible anymore.
2) I've been to 3 of the 9 circles solo, if not explored much.
3) I've had at least 2 lvl 47 necros that were role contest winners/runner ups, and tattooed. and I like to think would have at least gotten a quest..... but real life intruded and I just couldn't keep the character around long enough.
4) I've never wanted to....so I've never tried.


Hrm. number four looks interesting I sais to myself.

I am OCD enough to figure it out, I believe, if I actually want to and put some effort into it. and by "wands", I mean the locations of the char-specific sleeks that everyone talks about, not non-char specific sleek and non-sleeks, I've stumbled over three or four of those in the past, though they have never been "in" more than two or three times over the life of a character.

I have 'not played' some of my best and most interesting role ideas because they were mage roles and I just didn't WANT to spend the time figuring out wands and I wanted to not play those roles without wands.


Ok....so....on to the questions....

(I am not looking for spoons, I don't think. Let me know if these questions are too spoonful)

So, My first idea on how to search for some wands is based on "when is the earliest wand reasonably solo-able?" Both "earliest of all sleeks" and "Earliest of each type".

Basically, the number of areas/mobs soloable at hero, is an assload more than the number of areas/mobs soloable at, say, 30/35/40.

So, I figure, if I were to make a series of "figure wands out" characters, I would want to start crossing areas off the list of places to check at the earliest possible level.

So....


What is the earliest level you Wandies would consider yourself able to solo a sleek (any sleek, given the right sleek location, of course, I understand some locations are harder and some area easier, I'm asking about the level soloable for the easiest you know)

What is the earliest level you wandies would consider yourself able to solo a shield? a barrier? an aura?

What about the above questions modified by class? Invoker will (I assume) have a cake-walk in some locations, and rough time in others, which will be different than what AP's would consider easy/hard.

What level could an (invoker/conji/tranny/ap/necro) reasonably expect to solo the easiest sleek location for that particular class? (of course, if he HAD that location)

The easiest sleeks to get can be had at level 1, at least, they could be if they spawned. I'm talking about stuff sitting in containers without any kind of guard.

Aura/shield
Transmuter - 36 (duo)
Invoker - 38 (shields)
Goodie conjie - 35 (archon)

Barrier
40+ lvl if have some good help
51 lvl if alone

I'm pretty good at finding things I want to find, and I found zero sleek wands. To be fair, I didn't have the character that long, and I never reached the level where detect artifact would have fired on barrier. But I did get detect artifact, and I did check almost every location on the "list of possible wand locations" I had cooked up prior to rolling the character. Some of those locations I knew were sleek spots because I saw mages use them while I was playing other characters.

In retrospect, though, I think most of the spots I know are legit because I saw other people use them are actually sleek blacks. So if I'd stuck it out then I might have had a good shot at finding my sleek black. Just had no luck with amber/sienna.

I think you're taking the wrong approach to this. The short answer is that there are amber/sienna locations which you can get as soon as they're available because the wand is either pick-up or because the mob is easy enough for just about any mage to kill in the 30s.

If you don't already have a long list of valid locations to check, I'd really suggest you just ignore sleeks altogether and wait until you have detect artifact and are high enough level for it to go off on ALL wand types.

Once you have detect artifact, it's just a matter of methodically going through all the areas you can think of. The nice thing about this approach is if you happen to miss an important keyword in a room (like a hidden container) your detect spell will likely notify you anyway and avoid you missing it completely.

Also, unless you're a G/O conjurer or a shifter will a really great combo, expect to need help with your barrier. A lot of people just run in with detect artifact and flee out a few times to check, but eventually you're gonna wanna kill these mobs either for the wand itself or just to be sure it's a miss. Either way, I'd say 1/3 of the barrier spots I know are kind of a pain in the ass for a lot of mages to get alone.

If you just want to experiment and learning wands is your ONLY goal, I would do this: Roll a G/O conjurer and explore a ton. Take the attunement edges as many times as you can (up to three times I believe). You now have a character with detect artifact that is excellent for exploring, can take down almost every mob a black rod could pop on, and has quite a few sleek spots that will trigger on detect artifact. In 150-200 hours, you'll probably have found and verified a half dozen sleek spots of your own -AND- learned almost all the others by palling around with other mages.

n/t