Wands of light should light up when wielded (in a radius of perhaps 3 or 2). To give them some limiting factor, they either lose a charge each time they are wielded, or there is a fixed chance per turn it’s lit that it loses a charge. It’s been noted that this would provide an incentive to try wielding every wand in order to determine if it’s light, but this may not be a big problem.

Proposals to address the situation where all the candles needed for the invocation are guaranteed in Vlad’s Tower. The current situation removes frustration but many players feel that it’s trivialized, whereas the system in 3.4.3 was frustrating because it was a common occurrence to have to backtrack to the Mines for candles after forgetting they needed to be collected, or worse, having to wish for them because the game didn’t generate 7 of them.

• Make the Candelabrum come prefilled with 7 candles; this doesn’t address the trivialization concerns but does make it slightly less blatant.
• Put Izchak’s store on a bones-ineligible level and guarantee at least 7 candles in the shop.
• Rely on gnomes in the Mines being generated with candles, with a certain minimum amount of candles guaranteed.
• Candles generate randomly on the floor of Gehennom levels, zero or one stacks per level.
• Monsters in Gehennom sometimes generate with candles (though this would be difficult to tune and would not be as discoverable via object detection).
• Make bees occasionally drop beeswax, which you can craft into candles; or they just rarely drop wax candles, or wax candles appear in beehives.