West Karana

A blog about EverQuest, EverQuest II and MMORPGs in general

Browsing Posts in Wizard 101

My friend Michael Stormpyre and I were farming for grandmaster gear the other night. I was on my myth wizard, Marissa Spiritcaller, and I was getting a little frustrated by the awful nature of the higher level myth spells. My Minotaur and Orthrus spells did a trap-destroying weak attack before the now-debuffed main attack. Setting up an attack required casting two myth traps, two feints and so on, so that, having wasted traps on the weak hit, I would still have some left over for the main damage. Otherwise, I would be very lucky to break 1K damage on blades alone.

You can’t farm effectively on 1K damage, not in Dragonspyre, not even after the general hit point nerf meant to make DS more tolerable. I tend to run a very lean deck. For farming, nine or ten cards in the main deck, plus whatever ends up in the sideboard, is all I want.

What I really wanted was a ninja pig.

You get them occasionally as treasure cards; five pip myth spells that do 650 points of base damage in one attack. Since this attack doesn’t waste traps, you can easily buff it up to 3K or more if you have a balance wizard helping (which I do). For a two mob fight like Yeva or Snowcrusher, I could eat the weak add with an Orthrus and still have fun with the boss.

Treasure cards are kind of hard to come by, and the good ones are never so common that you would be able to use them as a matter of course.


Then, I remembered The Hat.

The Wayfinder Hat, found at the top of the tower in Marleybone that is the prequest to Celestia. The Wayfinder Hat is part of the Wayfinder collection, which also includes a Uniform and Boots. In the top picture, Marissa wears the entire set. The only notable aspect of any of the pieces is the hat — which comes with a Ninja Pig card.

Salvation.

I excused myself for a moment, ported home, got the hat and returned. I slimmed down my deck even more so that I would be certain to draw the ninja pig from the sideboard during any given fight.

The rest of the night was spent buffing up the ninja pig and debuffing the mob, and the pigs flew again and again and again. They were so effective that I decided to pack away the grandmaster hat, and use the pig hat. Sure, it’s missing some stats… but the added damage MORE than makes up for it.

Solo, myth wizards are fairly powerful, due largely to our golem minion — the first one we get. For zero pips to summon, a golem minion is the gift that keeps on giving, pumping out those 1-pip monsters turn after turn. Beats wand attacks seven ways from Sunday. But in groups, setting up a Minotaur or an Orthrus takes too long. By the time we have double traps all set, the other wizards in the group have killed the boss, all the adds, and wonder why we never bothered to cast a spell.

Well, because our best direct damage spell is Cyclops — or Humungofrog, if we’re facing a group. It’s really embarrassing to see everyone unleash their scarecrows and dragons and ice gods and whatever, and then we pop Orthrus and it does 150 points on the first hit (as it swallows the traps) and then follows it up with a 1K kiss good night. And now all the other wizards are angry because we ate their feints.

So, Myth wizards… learn to love the pigs. They love you!

Michael said afterward that he just knew he’d be dreaming about Ninja Pigs. So, Michael, this one’s for you.

I should be preparing for my trip to NH for a family reunion tonight, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to help a friend with Labyrinth… a couple of times… and also finish up the Dragonspyre stone rose and books quests. Combined with another side quest I’d totally missed first time around, and Marissa gained the last two bubbles to hit Grandmaster Conjurer.

First thing: Put on the Malistaire robe she won. Second thing: Take that UGLY THING OFF AGAIN! Since she had hit the money cap (150,000 gold), she couldn’t even sell her stuff, so she went to the Bazaar and bought a good outfit for stitching — price was no object. Stitched it to her robe and level 45 hat and boots and another well-dressed Myth wizard is ready for Celestia.

That’s three grandmasters, and I have the choice of Life+Balance or Myth+Balance as I go through Celestia the first time. No contest, really — it’s going to be Life+Balance, the combo that got me to Grandmaster Theurgist in the first place. A Balance wizard fills in all a Life wizard’s shortcomings, and vice-versa; a perfect team.

Anyway, KingsIsle, I’ve finished with the leveling. I want to go swimming while we still have some warm weather left!

In a vain attempt to get my Myth wizard to 50 (so close!) AND also get the rest of her level 50 gear, I’ve been farming Yeva Spiderkeeper for her Myth hat. No luck so far after about ten tries, but I DID get the Queen Spider pet (seen above) on my first try.

So that’s something.

The big question to my mind, though, is… where’s Celestia? I was hoping it would be out in July, but we’re approaching the middle of August and it’s not here.

Well, more time for farming.

The latest Celestia reveal brings us a rather husky looking bulldog Marleyboner in waders and a fishing cap, smashing my faint hopes that there would be some sort of human protagonists in Celestia. Note that dressing as a fisherman when you’re exploring an underwater realm populated by FISH (and crustaceans) PROBABLY won’t win you any friends.

If you accuse me of identifying more easily with humans than canines, well, there you go. All these beast races get in a fix, and they call the human wizards to go rescue them. We’ve seen this with the lizards of Krokotopia, the pets of Marleybone, the farm animals of Mooshu, the drakekin of Dragonspyre and now the piscians of Celestia…. they just can’t keep their house in order.

It’s the Magic Man’s Burden, all over again. It’s looking like the only Celestia folk that understand the responsibilities and pressures of being a human wizard, are the villains.

Wizard101 producer Leah Rubin writes in her inaugural producer’s letter about her history at KingsIsle and a little bit about what we’ll find in Celestia. Water! And SHARKS! Both mount and pet versions, and I just can’t wait to be riding a shark around the Spiral. My main character, my Life wizard, is still making do with a broomstick. Next step: SHARK.

This caused quite a stir in the MMO community. When informed of KI’s new “Shark Week” homage, World of Warcraft Lead World Designed Alex Afrasiabi added flying epic sharks into WoW. With laser beams. And dinosaurs. And an undead zombie playing metal guitar.

Nobody at KingsIsle was immediately available for comment at the time of this post, but we await an official response.

Even though you no longer have to do the Celestia pre-quest in order to eventually head to that undersea expansion when it arrives later this year, why wouldn’t you want to, right?

The pre-quest has you fighting bosses in Krokotopia, Mooshu and Dragonspyre in order to assemble a Rosetta stone that will allow the deciphering of a mysterious message. The message is from a lost Marleybone expedition into lost Celestia in search of the truth to rumors about Astral Magic.

Though we can’t get to Celestia yet, the guardians of Celestia’s spiral key plan to ensure we never can. This leads to a tower in Marleybone modeled after the Briskbreeze tower in Colossus Blvd; many floors, and two boss encounters who break the rules.

Each fight has a strategy, but even knowing the strategy is no guarantee of success. In the final fight against Estrakir Gloomthorn last night, accompanied by the famous Thomas Lionblood, Bailey Skystaff and my balance alt, Allison Goldtalon, I hadn’t drawn any of my group heals, so, at the few points in the encounter where it is safe to heal, I was reduced to using spot heals — and mostly on myself, which is a clear danger sign. I finally managed to score some rebirths just as Thomas and Bailey were ready with their big spells. I believe we even finished the tower with full health.

All the mobs but Estrakir immediately respawned for some reason, so… we killed them again.

We tried to keep everyone in the same spaces for the duels. I sent Allison, the balance wizard, in first. As the first to cast, she would be able to send buffs to the wizard that needed them most. Tara, my life wizard, took the second spot to again be in the best spot for healing. Thomas and Bailey, the ones who would need healing and buffs the most, would be in the third and fourth spots.

Worked really well!

If, though, Celestia towers are built on this model, groups are going to have to get used to working with strats and perhaps certain required classes. I think it would be possible to do this tower without a life wizard, with everyone using self-heals and perhaps someone with a life secondary passing out satyrs as necessary, but it would be tougher.

More worrisome, like Briskbreeze, the Ravens and the Grand Spire, it is probably impossible to finish the encounter with only one or two wizards, even with wizard hirelings (who are nearly worthless, in my experience).

I’m weird, though. I hope every boss encounter in Celestia is of this level. But then, I play a life wizard :P