I recently lost the best character I had so far, a gray elf wizard level 43; I feel he could've been a gate closer, damnit.

I followed a pretty standard route:

Early game:
SMC -> HMV -> CoC dive until Dwarftown -> Graveyard -> Water temple
Somewhere along the way I got crowned N= with the Robes of Resistance and Fire immunity, which was *very* useful later on.

Mid game:
ToHK, Darkforge, IQD & FGJC (Which contained a greater vault of firey monsters)
This is where I started to wander into uncharted territory, it was quite thrilling.

Went to the TOEF (the AKW was a breeze with the trident), then to the Library to get a few extra spells.
Both times I visited it I fell in the Rift: I had Climbing of 100 and a blessed climbing set, I thought that meant you were very unlikely to fall?

Headed back to the CoC, found a black whip of extinction in the Casino shop (I was really skeptical about the low damage, but I decided to trust the wiki and oh boy);
Kitty King proved to be fairly easy even though I was really afraid of him.
I did the Air and Earth temple, and I was starting to get ready for the Mana temple, when the unexpected happened.

Around D46 I got surrounded by an Ogre king and an Ultimate Doppleganger.
I said to myself, fine, I'll melee the first and finish the other the same way (I had a pool of roughly 600HP, so I was feeling pretty confident).
Got critted for 125 by the ogre, and for a total of 500 damage by the latter.
I wasn't aware that they were able not only to copy your appearance, but also your stats

I'm curious to know, did this character get particularly lucky, or it's normal to have obtained around 8 wishes by the point I was at?
The second best character I had was level 22 and he got I believe just 1.