The Tavern

Being one shot (or nearly so) from full HP by an orc that happens to have a wand of death acid in the early game is not good for the game.

How is that any different from old wand of colds/fire/lightning/draining? Any of these carried a very good chance to die in early game.

It's not any different.

I admit I haven't checked the code, but presumably wands of acid have the same restrictions that fire/cold did, where they would not generate in monster hands (except for Ijyb, he is a dirty cheater) before a certain depth. Monsters can still pick them up off the ground at those depths.

It's possible wands of acid didn't get this same restriction, if that's the case then that sounds like a bug, but I suspect probably either you were past the restricted depth or the orc found it on the floor.

I played a few games of 0.10 and 0.12 recently. Wands of fire/cold were as bad as acid in monsters' hands. The only difference is that you can't actually have a kobold zapping it on D:2 or so now.

I think that part of what killed me was the acid splashing and dealing damage twice. I don't ever remember taking over 30 damage in the early game for those wands, although maybe I was just lucky.

oh I guess it actually probably does deal more damage, since monster-vs-player acid is super dumb and does lots of bonus damage if you have empty armour slots (including if you are unable to wear armour in those slots)

I had forgotten about this.

It doesn't count armour slots anymore, but it does do 4d5 extra damage to players, on top of the beam damage.