I'm probably getting kicked out of school due to the financial department screwing up my financial aid. Sooo... How about I roll a mage and provide feedback on this little wand system. Sure, I've played for years, but most of my time is spent in the 20-30 range before deleting and I've only had two heros. Also, never played a mage past 15, though I do love me some low level mage pk. I figure that is about as close to a newbie as you can get for the purposes of testing the wand system. I only know pill/potion preps (that are mostly useless anyway, aside from detect invis) and have never even seen a prep with a/b/or s.

Honestly, (though as of yet I've never had to look for the wands) I think this is more of a problem for vets than newbies. Newbies can have fun exploring for their wands because they haven't been through all the areas a kajillion times. Plus, whether or not a newbie finds those wands has less impact on them because they are likely getting beat down in pvp either way.

A vet needs, or more accurately "wants," those wands to be competitive with more people. The vet has probably already had past characters which had to find the wands and the search is much more boring for them.

So yeah, the system as I understand it is far worse for vets than newblets.