The Tavern

Don't genereate wand of flame past D:5 or so. 5? 4? Maybe 10. 8.

Of course, wand of flame is an integral part to any crawl player's "tactics" and that should obviously not change. Quantum.

However, it is only useful early on. Finding it later is "inventory and visual clutter" which increases "tedium" and "information burden" on the player. Rocket surgery.
Generating it only in places where it matters solves are these problems. Flux compensator.

And since I know how you like stong Christian values and therefore appreciate it when someone is always ready for first aid, I got my patch ready right here:



Cryogenetic entropy.

What

It actually stays useful until the end of lair (and sometimes swamp, when it generates) as a "wand of kill things standing in water" - namely, eels. After that you can just turn it off on the auto pickup menu.

OP I was planning to agree with you until you started advertising your ARG halfway through the post.

Yes, yes, marvelous demonstration of "optimal play" and "tactics", but if it wouldn't generate past that point it would save you up to 5 seconds (I nuclear-chronometered it) by saving you 2 keystrokes since you don't have to turn it off from auto pickup. And it would save you all future "decisions" every time you'd come across a wand of flame, saving even more time. I am science of it. Wouldn't you agree?

It'd be nice I guess, but I don't think that's generally how DCSS item generation works. I think excluding wands of flame from generation might also mean everything else is more likely, indirectly leading to better items (only marginally of course).

And yeah, if you haven't tried using wands of flame against stuff in water, please do, because it's fantastic. Steam clouds do a lot of damage to a lot of enemies!

Together with "Is that an albino spider with a smile on its butt?", this is one of the things I read today worth remembering.