Discovered that there was a Wand of BlastWave lying in the floor of floor 14 right as I was ascending with the amulet… Not that I needed it (got a good armor early on and just upgraded it and… Well, if you’ve ever played SPD with a +13 plate armor you know that hard doesn’t enter on its synonyms list) but still, the best wand in the game just laying around? A gnoll probably dropped it after I killed it without even noticing…
Random weapons I find do the job. And the strat you’re missing is this one: you are pretty much inmortal with one of these, except if they hit you with magical attacks, which then becomes your whole objective, to minimize magical attacks