“Wizard101 the game will be offline on Friday April 24 from 3:00am to 4:00am Central US Time. During this downtime you will not be able to log in to the game, and players in the game will be prompted to log out.

The website will also be unavailable during this downtime. Thank you for your understanding while we continually improve the game and the website for all our players.”

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There’s nothing as sad as seeing any empty quest journal. Er, assignment book. We are, after all, all wizards at Ravenwood, and in between saving all the worlds of the Spiral from the renegade Death professor, Malistaire, we’re meant to be getting in our assignments on time and are graded on neatness!

I’ve done all the assignments, been to every alley of Wizard City, every monument in Krokotopia, every rooftop in Marleybone and every temple in Moo Shu.

Many times.

I think I would give up EQ2 and Spellborn together if I could log into Wizard 101 tomorrow and find Dragonspyre open for business.

I even spent the weekend farming Onis for gear I probably don’t need. My alt went from level 9 to 21 pretty much on experience from instances.

So now that I’ve been everywhere and fought everything, what have I learned?

A much-appreciated dryad brings me back from the brink of death in a fight with the Jade Oni.

Every fight is different. Because of the card battle mechanic, no fight ever plays out the same way. Sometimes you win easily; sometimes the cards just aren’t there, but they seem to be there for the other side. Sometimes your Sprite Guardian spends the whole fight healing herself as your life plummets downwards.

Just saying.

Deck construction becomes an art. The best decks are constructed for specific fights, and usually tend to be only about 20 cards or less, nearly guaranteeing the cards I needed and not expecting any surprises from the foes. Fights against unknown enemies or many different sorts at once meant a more expansive and general deck.

The schools of magic of the enemies always called for certain responses. Life beats Balance and Death. Fire beats Ice. Spirit and Elemental magic don’t mix. You can’t effectively ward against Balance. Go Ice if you don’t like taking damage but can take it better than anyone else. Go Storm if you want things to die fast (and wear +Accuracy clothing and accessories at the expense of anything else). Go Myth and never fight alone.

The need to weigh all these factors means fights are never “hit autoattack and get some coffee”. Nor are they especially fast. Sometimes you’d LIKE fights to be over in just a couple of seconds.

A mystery in Krokotopia: What IS that island? It’s not the Tomb of Storms, that’s to the left and below. It’s not the Krokosphinx — no sphinx (and it’s clearly visible, just not in the picture). It’s not the secret island, because I’m standing on it. It’s a mystery.

Bad parts? The quests are almost always unimaginative kill fests — kill ten cats :) kill these until you get five of this rare drop. Bring this to that person. The missions break the tedium of the kill quests; some of them are pretty imaginative, and they get better as you proceed through the worlds. If only a young wizard could level solely through missions — which have the best loot, usually. To stop players from powerleveling by repeating easy, high level instances, though, KingsIsle added diminishing returns. You get to do any certain mission twice; after that, no experience.

That places an effective cap at leveling. After you have emptied your assignment book and done every mission twice, you’re between 44 and 46, depending on how much additional killing you did. The level cap is 50, but only those who got there before the diminishing returns patch are there now.

Tara and Allison speak with Wavebringer after defeating the Plague Oni in Shiritaki Temple

This points out Wizard 101′s greatest failing: You can run out of things to do. The diminishing returns patch removed any way to progress your character after a certain point. There’s gear to get, but any specific gear takes so long to get that it takes a Herculean effort to run the same instance just one. More. Time. And then the next.

If gear were tradeable, it would encourage people to gather their friends and keep on fighting the bosses to get their loot. But to do Plague Oni four or five times now and see my class boots keep going to people who can do nothing with them but sell them to a merchant? That’s painful. To run the Krokopatra instance (which is admittedly pretty fun) (you can’t put lipstick on a lizard and you look silly if you try) and to have the rare robe drop for Tara twice but not for Allison who needed it after all the times we ran it (it’s a pretty quick instance)? Disappointing. Crowns armor available for huge sums of gold from merchants, making it so that most people have that armor as a baseline (and a crutch)? Disappointing.

The almost total lack of a community in the game is absolutely distressing for an MMO of this quality. In the name of protecting children from imagined threats (games where kids and adults mix freely, such as World of Warcraft or any game on Xbox Live, show the hollowness of the threat), KingsIsle has made it nearly impossible to meet real life friends in the game without extensive out of game communication. The text filter makes it extremely difficult to discuss how to even play the game in any useful way, meaning to actually play the game well, friends need to use a third party program to talk with each other around the game.

Wizard 101 played with Ventrilo is a different game.

Wizard 101 played with Menu Chat, as you must do when kids join your group, is like trying to sing with your mouth taped shut.

Guilds and clans let people who play many games build a community and an identity through friendship. Guilds are a good way of making real the idea that if I like you and I like her, then maybe you will like her. And you and she like him, so maybe I’ll like him. And maybe when I log on, I can say hi to everyone in my guild at once, and we can perhaps group up and do some instances you need, or decide to take on Kensington just for the fun of it.

Without any community tools, there can be no community, and so Wizard 101 feels emptier than it is.

W101 is a great game, it’s a fun game, it’s an innovative game, but it’s a game that has bought into the hysteria that every adult is a real or potential child abuser, completely disregarding that children are in considerably more danger from people they know in real life than from anyone they might meet playing a video game. That attitude cripples an otherwise amazing game. Adults wonder why they are being suspected of being criminals. Kids wonder why a game company thinks they can’t take care of themselves. Everyone just wants to have fun and play the game with friends.

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Finished Moo Shu’s first quest hub, Hametsu Village. It’s nice to have kinda-safe sidewalks to run around in; there’s nothing more annoying than the Marleybone rooftops, where the middle of the roof is safe, most of the time. Unless the mobs have decided to use that roof to turn around, in which case — grats on being chain-pulled into encounter after encounter.

The night started off with one last Knight’s Court quest, in Marleybone. I had to talk to a lady there about her purse. Well, I guess she had borrowed it from someone else, it got torn up, needed to be repaired, was really someone else’s, and her purse had been stolen, so needed to defeat larcenous kittens for that one, then re-deliver everything to everyone, and so on — this kind of quest chain is really common in Wizard 101, and I think the main purpose of this quest series is to get you to run along those traitorous rooftops some more :P

While I was there, I bought an airship ticket to Kensington. Not because I was about to do it, but because taking the airship there was the final airship trip out of Digmore Station, which gave me the Aeronaut badge. Don’t see many people with that one, so why not?

Back to Moo Shu afterward.

While working on Hametsu quests, the girl I’d helped with Katzenstein’s Lab last week ported into one of my fights, brought an add, and then used the exploit to fade away. I notice KingsIsle has somewhat fixed the exploit; you no longer come back at a safe spot, but just where you were when you ‘sploited. Still free of the fight, though.

I sent her a tell, asking her if she had just ported to me and left after bringing me an add. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”

Yeah, I’m sorry, too, I muttered, as I removed her from my friends list. Then I had to flee an encounter which had become too hard for me to win.

Compare that with Oran OgreWielder, the lower-level wizard who had been helping me with the last of my Krokotopia quests a few weeks ago. He needed help with a boss on Triton Street, so I helped. He asked me how the pig killing up in Moo Shu was going. I suggested he come see for himself.

A few minutes later while I was fighting some ninja pigs, he showed up, and stayed and helped with a couple of fights. That’s what friends do! Then he apparently went AFK and got dragged into a fight solo…

Having multiple decks really worked out well in Hametsu; there were a lot of Life mobs, which fell to my prism-heavy (converts life to death magic) life deck; and the mobs from other schools who didn’t last long against my more balanced deck. The trick is not to engage mobs where they are mixing different types, like Life trees walking along with Balance samoorai or Myth ninja pigs. Once you find a spot where there’s only one type, you can tune your decks for maximum pwnage.

The end fight was against a (YAWN!) troll sergeant. Wow, are we back on Cyclops Lane? So that was pretty dull. Picked up my first book there. Actually, given the design of the arena, you can sneak around and just safely grab the book if that’s all you want to do. Fight was simple; don’t think I even needed any healing.

Looking forward to the more interesting (ie, PHAT LEWT DROPPING!) mobs.

I started in Tatakai Outpost. Where the NPCs in Hametsu were managing fairly well, though the village was in flames, in Tatakai, the inmates have taken over the asylum and the good guys are forced to camp along the road. The new most fearsome monsters are the horse people. Not centaurs; these are people with the heads of horses and the bodies of people. Reverse centaurs, I guess. You can see one up in Golem’s Court in Wizard City and another in the Krokotopia Oasis. Well, now we know where they are from; they are from Moo Shu. And they are red to me, so meeting them should be a laff-a-minute.

Just barely into level 37. No new upgrades, but I have gotten some interesting new hats which I’m gonna try to make into outfits. Moo Shu is one of the larger worlds, so I think I have a good shot at making level 45 before I finish there.

And a bit of a correction: I talked with the Emperor who was lying on his sickbed in the Jade Palace, and he told me that Malistaire had been after him for the key to Dragonspyre. So I guess Malistaire hadn’t been there yet. He has the key now, and if I finish freeing Moo Shu from evil, the Emperor will give it to me as well.

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What was the hurry? None, really. But — I love Wizard 101. It’s original, has deep, strategic gameplay, it’s different, fun and funny… So when EQ2′s expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, comes out, and Chronicles of Spellborn, I don’t want to just dump the game.

Just like World of Warcraft was for me, when I played, what I like about Wizard 101 is that it’s a MMO you can finish. There is a storyline that runs through the game, and each “world” is another chapter in it. And though you can’t finish the story yet, you can play through the first four chapters — the corruption and evil of the Professor of the Death School, Malistaire, in Wizard City. His search for the source of ultimate evil, the Krokonomicon, in the Egyptian-themed world of Krokotopia. Following the book to the Victorian, steampunk world of Marleybone, where it had been shipped unbeknownst to the Royal Museum. The theft of the book by master criminal Meowiarty, who sold it to Malistaire, who took it too his home in the world of Dragonspyre. Traveling to the Oriental world of Moo Shu in hopes to discover a path to Dragonspyre.

That’s as far as the story goes. So I figure I have about a month to get to the end of the story and to help all my friends get there as well, and then I can put the game away until Dragonspyre is opened .

So as of this afternoon, I am in Moo Shu.

But first, the clothes. There’s such an enormous variety of outfits in the world that after awhile, you have several sets that have decent enough stats that you can pick out what looks best to you. And you can dye them any combination of colors.

Here’s mine :)

Level 30	Level 31	Level 32-33
Level 34	Level 35

I liked the black one in the center the best. I wore that for a long time. Around the same time I picked up a steam-power staff which you just have to admire for the sheer kookiness of it. It casts Myth magic which, unlike my previous Life magic staff, doesn’t trigger my Life blades and traps, so it makes it a little easier to play my hand for maximum damage.

The robe in the last picture is an RMT robe from the Zeke in Moo Shu. Why buy one? My old robes weren’t bad by any means. But I had the Crowns, so why not? I got to level 35 without them, so the better stats and the special card that comes with it — I didn’t need.

Besides, I had my Sprite Guardian to keep me alive and a bunch of friends to help the time go by swiftly.

This picture seems so long ago. Here I am trying to convince a dirty stinking rat to give up a secret code. At my side is my faithful kitty, Millie. She actually gives a card that lets her attack occasionally, so unlike most pets, she isn’t just for show. She is fiercely intimidating that rat, and he does end up giving me the code.

They always do, in the end.

Ah, the nefarious Dr. Katzenstein. The boss, as you’d guess, of Katzenstein’s Lab. A friend and I were doing Katz’s Lab, but in different instances, and we could simply not get over to the others’ instance, so I ended up doing it myself.

This is where I got the steampunk staff, by the way, though I didn’t start using it until afterward, when was back in town and going over my loot and found it.

After Katty’s defeat, you have to help Katz’s assistant, Grunt, try to figure out who is controlling the clockwork army by making a clockwork out of parts and powering it up using the immense devices in the lab. It’s a regular fireworks show. The answer led to a prominent monument in Marleybone.

But there was a little side quest you could do. There seemed to be more buildings out back, and if you just built a little bridge you could cross over to them. Hidden in the back was a huge clockwork named Smogger, along with a sneaky friend.

It was late and I wasn’t paying careful attention, so it was a few rounds in before I noticed that Smogger had four. Thousand. Health points. I wasn’t sure I even had that many points of damage in my deck. I’d been doing my typical play style of madly discarding through my deck until I had the cards I wanted to play in my hand.

That had to stop immediately. I would need every single card I had. Luckily, I hadn’t played or discarded my Judgment card. Judgment does 125 points of damage for every pip spent, so in theory, playing that card can take down any monster in one hit — if you wait long enough. Since it’s a Balance school spell, Life power pips won’t count for double, but 4000/125 = 32 pips = 32 turns of passing or playing cards without a pip cost would kill it. I dealt with the add before they killed me. There’s only so much damage a Sprite Guardian can heal, but once I was facing just the boss, it was manageable (though one of Smogger’s AE killed her, so I had to spend four pips to bring out another).

I’d recently put some very high rank cards in my deck; the rank 5 heal over time (50 points + 1100 points over three turns) and the rank 6 centaur spell. When boosted by Life Blade, the centaur can do over 700 damage (I have gotten it over 900).

I’m not sure how long that fight took. It seemed nothing I could do with it budged its health. But eventually, I whittled it down until he died. I had to help out my Sprite a couple of times with those massive heals over time. My only worry really was that I would run out of cards with which to do damage — in which case we lose — or my Sprite would run out of cards to heal me with — in which case, we lose, unless I have another Sprite in my hand.

Which I did, the one time I needed it in the fight. I’d stopped discarding any cards. I only had 30, plus another 10 on my sideboard.

Anyway, that eventually ended. I was so keyed up, I continued on even though I was exhausted, and went on to Big Ben, which I knew was the last storyline instance in the game. I struggled through Counterweight East somehow, and collapsed afterward into bed.

I helped some friends with some quests and boss fights when I sat back down to the game around noon. I convinced one of them to help me with the other side of Big Ben, Counterweight West. That went fairly well. Neither of the Counterweights are really all that exciting; eight or nine or ten battles, culminating with a boss fight at the top.

Naturally, once we finished with Counterweight West, it was my turn to help with instances. Here’s a friend and I traveling to the Ironworks, with the faithful Mr. Personality at the controls of the balloon taxi. We finished Ironworks in short order. This being my third time through it, I got no xp from it. Thanks, KingsIsle. Exp for helping friends? Pshaw!

After a couple of hours of helping with boss fights and instances, I delicately broached the subject of a couple of easy — EASY — fights in a small clocktower. Ten minutes, TOPS.

Heh… no, I was up front about it. I knew it would take at least an hour, and I think it may have taken a little more. Seemed like we were in there for a long time.

Not sure how many floors there are, with a boss fight on most of them. Maybe a dozen? The fights were actually really well-paced. After a few fights, there’d be a rest floor with mana and health wisps. So after each fight, you could run back down to the most recent rest floor and get full health and mana before moving on.

One floor, we found a bottle of milk. My friend Andrew tried to pick it up, but it spilled (he didn’t cry, though). A few floors up, he found another, and spilled that as well. A voice whispered to him that he ought not do that again, or there would be trouble.

A few floors up, there’s ANOTHER bottle, and Blaze, the level 13 wizard who’d tagged along, knocked it over on purpose.

That triggered a really tough fight. We grumbled, but it was all good.

Big Ben is pretty much a level 30 instance. I was 34, Andrew was 24 I think, and Blaze was 13. One of Wizard 101′s strengths is that low level and higher level people can group and still be totally effective. Blaze even ended up tanking in some battles. He and my Sprite grew very close. I was unsure about having him along, but he did so well that I soon was relying on him.

At the top of Big Ben, we found Malistaire taking the Krokonomicon from Meowiarty. Malistaire paused to insult us, then fled off to his home in Dragonspyre, leaving us for Meowiarty to deal with. The Friendly Necromancer had warned us to take out the Life wizard first, so we did just that. It was a long fight, but the end was never in doubt, and in the end, when we’d divided the loot and run around and gotten the quest bits in the area, when they asked NOW what, all I could think to say what I do after each fight.

Take screen shots :)

So that’s what we did.

Andrew is the wizard in the red tux. Blaze is the colorful one.

I’m in the middle, along with Baby Ben, one of the two rare pets I obtained while helping Andrew and his friend, Richard, in the Tomb of Storms in Krokotopia. So yes, I finally have some rare pets. The other one is an orange Mander, looks awful so I don’t let him out.

I didn’t really want to continue, but I really wanted to level to 35. I was so close to it after Big Ben. I went to Moo Shu at 34, did some of the first quests — the Test of Body, a combat test, is pictured above. You can see my faithful Sprite. Without her, I’d have to heal in groups. Well, heal more. It’s not like I never heal.

I don’t know what the scroll reads. My Kanji dictionary has the top and bottom kanji to mean “mosa” (moe-sa), a brave man. The top kanji has the meaning of brave, ferocious, fierce, and can be read as “take” (ta-keh), as in the name Takeshi.

The center kanji I couldn’t find in any dictionary, not paper and not online. So I dunno what it all means, probably something about being a brave man.

So, Moo Shu at last. I have to return to Marleybone and finish up some quests in Knight’s Court. My plan was to completely finish with Knight’s Court before doing Big Ben and moving to Moo Shu, but I got impatient and took advantage of having friends on to help.

But since I have fifteen levels to make up and with the fast xp exploits closed (which is indirectly why instances only give experience the first two times you do them), I can’t afford to leave any quest undone.

From what I understand, Moo Shu is one of the largest worlds, but with the xp exploits closed, I keep hearing there’s only enough content to bring you to your mid-forties even so. Once you’ve finished all your quests and done every instance twice, you literally cannot progress (straight killing gives nearly no experience). There’s a lot of people sitting in their 40s, waiting for Dragonspyre to go live so they can finish leveling.

Sorry for the picture-heavy post :P

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Marleybone’s Regent’s Square at the end of last night’s adventure. New staff, the Staff of Rejuvenation; my school, of course, which is kind of a bummer because using it triggers all my Life traps and blades, but with careful planning, it works. Its advantage over Britt’s Flamelicked Staff? 75 Life damage vs 70 Fire damage means slightly more damage and somewhat more effective against Fire enemies. It also gives an extra pip at the beginning of every battle which means getting the good spells out becomes significantly faster. Since I begin most boss battles by trying to bring my four pip Sprite Guardian out to handle healing, being halfway there on the first round — and with luck with power pips, 3/4 of the way there — is extremely powerful.

Freddy Nine Lives demanded I kill him nine times in a row to get my level 27 Life spell, a powerful heal over time.

Shakes O’Leary was one of the many mice I had to rough up in the Ironworks.

The clockwork boss of Chelsea Tower.

I started the night out by returning to Hyde Park and finishing up the various quests I had going there. They may be boring FedEx and kill quests, but quests are how you advance in Wizard 101, and I’m looking toward the future. I don’t want to get in to Moo Shu and run out of stuff to do before I hit level 50.

In one Hyde Park fight, a wizard on my friend’s list flickered into a fight, brought an add and fled, which earned her a removal from my friend’s list. I had an angry kid on the W101 forums take me to task for not freely accepting random friend invites because I was tired of kids flickering in to my fights, bringing an add and fleeing, but… it happens, it happened last night.

A young fire wizard joined that same fight, he was maybe level 24 but had the title and pet from killing the Jade Oni, the final Moo Shu boss I believe, so I immediately pegged him as someone who randomly friended people and then ported to them, hoping to get lucky. The very first words out of his mouth were, “friends?” And at least he was fighting, which is all I ask of any W101 friend, so I said, “Sure!”. And then he pleaded with me not to delete him. Not because he recognized me, but because, I guess, he’s been removed from friends lists before.

Rest of my time in Hyde Park, he’d be flickering into my fights (but staying to help kill), bugging me to give him my Mutate cards (which I did, why not?), and so on.

Newgate Prison, the next quest hub.

On to Chelsea Court, a section of Marleybone centered around the massive Chelsea Tower. The whole place has been overrun with clockworks, and they have Baxter, the moll who has the goods on the infamous crime kingpin, Pops O’Leary, penned up in the tower. I joined with another Life wizard to take on some of the random trash clockworks, and we made short work of them. A couple of mini-boss fights later, I had access to Chelsea Tower, defeated the clockwork boss and rescued Baxter.

The whole zone was so short. I did ding level 30 during it, but I was kind of disappointed. I was hoping for more.

Sherlock Bones requested I meet him and Baxter at his home at 221B Barker Street and plan our next move against Pops.

Baxter revealed that Pops ran things from his factory, known locally as The Ironworks. A depressing place filled with the worst of the criminal element. The law would be no help, as all the bobbies were at tea, and the heroic detectives like Sherlock himself, would go but, alas, he had a masterclass scheduled with a violin maestro who was visiting Barkingham Palace and just couldn’t tear himself away.

Not to anyone’s surprise, least of all my own, I would once again be sent off to battle Marleybone’s greatest criminals, entirely by myself.

Whoa. City of Heroes flashback.

The Ironworks is an instance, meaning I had to complete it in one sitting. Pops O’Leary was no dummy; I couldn’t go two rooftops without being challenged with a code phrase, or a special knock, or a chimney puzzle to solve. But ya know, that might work for your every day household pet, but not with a wizard straight from Wizard City. Headmaster Ambrose don’t graduate any stupid wizards.

I was apprehensive about doing the entire instance without seeking help, but I have my Sprite Guardian, and nothing much gets past her. Unless she herself gets hurt, then she forgets entirely about me.

Seriously, though, she’s my absolute best companion in the game. I even have removed most of the heals from my deck because she does such a great job or keeping me healed. This comes back to bite me when I join a group and they expect me to heal and I’ve forgotten to add the heals back in. Oops.

Anyway, the Ironworks was no challenge, which was fine by me, as I was distracted watching the debates. Ironically, when I finished the Ironworks instance and returned to Regent’s Square, there was a doggess right there with a quest for me to collect crates… in the Ironworks. So I suppose I’ll be heading back.

Full experience the first trip, but only half experience the second trip, and none thereafter, so unless someone asks me for help in the Ironworks, this next trip will be my last.

Chim Chimeree, Chim Chimeree, Chim chim, Cheroo…

After the Ironworks, I was asked to drop everything and head to Kensington, Marleybone’s answer to Wizard City’s Sunken City. The W101 forums paint Kensington as a punishing, two to three hour instance with no rewards, so… I’ll probably skip it unless I see other people about to do it.

Sherlock Bones sent me to talk to his compatriot, Dr. Watson, on the rooftop of Scotland Yard. Because, that’s where meetings are normally held. Or something.

Anyway, Watson warned me that the situation had just become more dire. Professor Meowiarty was on the prowl, and certainly up to no good. I needed to head into Newgate Prison and confront him there.

Meowiarty is the final boss of Marleybone, so the game is afoot!

I better cool it with this game, or I’ll be done far too quickly.

The game was challenging when I was a Myth/Fire wizard in beta. Once I earned the Sprite Guardian in the live game as a Life wizard, though, I no longer had to particularly worry about losing a fight (though I have had to pick up my own heals once or twice when it took too long to bring her out).

Her heals may not be up to the task later on, but I’ll worry about that when it happens.

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Adora did hit 70 last night, though. This puts her in the right place to take advantage of the Shadow Odyssey’s Moors of Ykesha solo zone, though. She has done barely any of the RoK quest grind, but I find that having done it twice, I can’t bear the thought of doing it even once more. Maybe the Moors will help make the 70-80 run more exciting.

Notes, notes, everywhere notes. I’m a bard at heart.

This morning I ducked into Wizard 101 and finally managed to find Baxter. They SAY he’s at the Warehouse, but the Warehouse instance didn’t work for me. He’s actually at the little map location that says “Baxter” on it, clear on the other side of the map.

Oops.

So I made short work of that and finished a couple of other minor quests on the way — killed some scurriers, picked some flowers, ran back and forth in Regent’s Square a couple of times. This led me to Chelsea Court, which means I can FINALLY finish my Life School quest. A friend who was sent to Chelsea Court for his Storm School quest says he, at least, had to enter a solo instance with a very high health boss and a friend.

I’ve just done exactly that with the Baxter fight, so I’m not worried. A Sprite Guardian lets me do damage without worrying about my own health. Actually, it wasn’t a fight against Baxter. I was about to speak with him, when he was whisked away by clockworks. My job in Chelsea Court is to find these clockworks and rescue Baxter… so I can arrest him, I guess.

A boosted Seraph delivers the coup de grace to the clockwork. I’ve chased these guys from EverQuest to EverQuest 2 to City of Heroes to World of Warcraft and now Wizard 101. They’re as bad as Orcs. Worse. Bad as ELVES.

Anyway, if I rush through these storyline quests, I should be in Moo Shu in a couple of days. But I won’t, because Moo Shu is the end of the line, world-wise, so far. Who knows when Dragonspyre is coming out? I hope it’s soon, but as it is, there’s no need to hurry. After I finish my Life School quest in Chelsea Court, it’s back to Hyde Park to finish off those quests.

I’m still incredibly bummed that I have not found any Marleybone clothes that are better than the ones I brought from Krokotopia. I’m SO DONE with that faux-Egyptian look.

Dinged 29 and expect to hit 30 before Hyde Park and Chelsea Court are done. I’d like to be 35 before Moo Shu, but I’m not sure there are quests enough in Marleybone to take me there. I know there are a lot of long instances left to finish in Marleybone, but killing alone is barely any XP at all. You advance, mostly, by completing quests.

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I didn’t intend to spend all night playing Wizard 101, but after I finished the Hallowe’en quests and finished the Krokotopia quests I’d ignored to get to Marleybone, I met up with a couple of friends and we spent the night working on Hyde Park quests.

So this is going to be kind of a long post.

Wizard City was decorated in Hallowe’en colors. The staff had scary standees all over the place, but the staff was scarier. Jack Hallows was in the Commons, giving out quests; and Bob from Bob’s Discount Crown Gear was in the Shopping District, selling RMT costumes, pets and staves.

Jack gives out four quest lines. The first is to collect ghosts in various zones. The second, to collect pumpkins in various places. Third, to bob for apples in various places. Yes, it’s a lot of running around, and these typically net only Black Cat treasure cards and sometimes a random piece of gear your level (he was giving me Marleybone gear, even though all quests take place within Wizard City).

The fourth quest line was the combat — ie, the fun — series. There was a three fight tower challenge going on in Ravenwood, given there by the Death graduate student. I went with two other people. The first fled during the first fight, the second fled during the second flight (which made me then re-do that fight), and so the third stage was me alone.

This, btw, is why I no longer accept friend invites from people with whom I have not grouped, any more. I only want to group with people who will stay through a fight.

The last fight in the series kinda surprised me — a Rank 4 boss with a Rank *6* helper. This is way above anything in Wizard City or even Krokotopia. I have no idea if I just got a higher level version because I was level 27 or what. Someone followed me in (and stayed), so there was some welcome help.

See my cards in the screenshot above? First — WRONG DECK. I forgot to switch out to my battle deck. Second, I’m facing high level Death mobs (note the skull next to their names). So I have to prepare myself for facing death magic. Also, these being high level, I have to bring out my Sprite Guardian as soon as I can. She requires four pips to play, BUT she can handle all the healing for a one or two person group, so I need to get her out just as soon as possible. I played the Myth/Death Shield card. This costs zero pips and absorbs 80% of the damage from one Myth attack and one Death attack. Playing buffs, debuffs, and wand attacks is required for bringing out higher ranked cards.

After I finished the fight and picked up my “final rewards” (which was a plain pumpkin mask. It looks like I have a pumpkin stuck on my head. No carvings or markings; just… a pumpkin). I headed off to Krok to calm things down between the dead Ahnic and Djesserit families, who are doomed to repeat the errors of life in death, throughout eternity. Now there’s a cheery Hallowe’en thought for you.

And FINALLY — starting the Marleybone quests! Which! Inevitably! Led me back to Krokotopia to help their people in the Pyramid of the Sun. Sigh.

Once I finally got to Hyde Park, Marleybone’s first quest hub, I almost immediately met a couple of new friends with whom I did many of the storyline quests. For some reason, the Warehouse didn’t activate for me; I’m thinking that because I skipped over some of the other quests, I missed a hidden pre-requisite. Or maybe it’s because I’d helped a friend kill this same boss earlier in the night. Regardless, I went back to the beginning and started working on some of the boring fights (kill eight scurriers; kill six burglars, etc.) until it got late enough that I had to go.

I did get plenty of chances to bring out Judgment, summoned by my RMT hat, bought with crowns. She is more powerful the more pips you spend to summon her. At 125 damage per pip, she is slightly more powerful than my Life spells at the same cost, but since she is a Balance card, if I have my Life boost up (+40% to Life damage), it’s more cost-effective to just play a Life card, like Seraph. Judgment is likely a poor choice for schools with more damaging spells.

RMT gear that boosts but does not overpower, is the best kind.

I ended the night by doing some of Marleybone’s FedEx quests (one of which was delivering mail, a real Fed Ex quest…), and then ported to my dorm room. That’s the new map option; instead of just being able to port to your current world’s teleport point, you have the additional port to bring you to your dorm room in Ravenwood. This makes getting back to Wizard City when you need to go, easy-peasy.

Me in Marleybone clothes, along with a Ninja Pig mask (you can buy the whole costume), a pumpkin staff and a black cat, all bought with crowns from Bob’s Discount Hallowe’en Supplies and Crown Store. Well, not the Marleybone clothes. The stats on those aren’t good enough to wear so it’s just for looks.

Wizard 101 needs appearance slots, a la EverQuest 2… Sure, it’s cool to generally be able to tell someone’s school by the color of their robes, but.. still… why sell appearance gear but not actually allow it to be worn while playing?

Trick or treating can be fun! The wand vendor in Wizard City’s Shopping District sold me a white lollipop. I just had to switch over to my Tatooine Ice Wizard gear to eat it :)

Full patch notes after the break.

You may have noticed you patched this morning! Surprise!
Welcome to our very first Hallowe’en celebration here at Ravenwood School of Magical Arts!

I’d like to introduce you to Jack Hallow. He is a newcomer to Wizard City, and he’s just here for a few weeks so be sure to talk to him the next time you come to school. You can find him in the Ravenwood Commons.

He’ll send you on many new adventures, throughout all the different areas of Wizard City. Free to Play players can participate in most of these new adventures, while subscribers can complete the entire story, if they prove their strength!

There are lots of Hallowe’en decorations, bubbling cauldrons, apple tubs, pumpkins and ghosts and surprises all over Wizard City. But beware, a new boss is waiting to test your skills!

Be sure to visit Sven Stonebreaker, the Wands Shopkeeper in Wizard City Shopping District for a special limited edition wand which you can purchase with gold. While you’re in the Shopping District, visit the travelling salesghoul, Spooky Bob to see all his new Hallowe’en Crowns items.

Pet Renaming!
If you’re not happy with your pet’s name, you can now choose a new name by going to the Dye Shop. You will see a new icon there that will instruct you on how to rename your pet, for a small gold fee.

Return to Dorm
You’ll find a new button on your map, that will take you to your Dorm room. Use this button whenever you find yourself in an area you do not know how to leave. This is also a quick way to drop items in your storage and get back to the dueling!

Dismiss Tooltip
When a ToolTip appears, if you do not want to read it, you can now Right Click the ToolTip to dismiss it. Beware though; your teachers may have something important to tell you!

Show Names on Mouseover
If you have your “Show Names” view set to “Non-Players” you can still move your cursor over someone to see their name appear above their head! If you have your “Show Names” view set to none, you can still move your cursor over other players, shopkeepers and residents, as well as creatures to see their name and title.

Auto Add New Spells
New spells you earn through training will be automatically added to your spellbook. New spells you receive through quests will still need to be added manually.

Available Treasure Cards
Treasure cards that are unavailable to purchase will have their icons grayed out. If you do not have enough gold to purchase a card, it will be the color grey in the library.

In other news:
-Treasure cards that are unavailable to purchase will have their icons grayed out. If you do not have enough gold to purchase a card, it will be the color grey in the library.
-Purchases made in game with Crowns, either at Zeke or Spooky Bob will now ask you to Confirm your purchase.
-Marleybone’s Hat Shopkeeper is now named “Houghe Warner”
-There is no longer a level 30 restriction to get the quest “Welcome to Moo Shu?”, but you still have to complete the quest named “Moo Shu” first!
-”Eyus, Conqueror” quest now offers the “Helm of Dependability” as a reward
-Ahnic Striders no longer use Natural Attacks that are stronger if they spend more pips on them.
-Forgotten Djeserit Souls now count for defeats during ‘Restless Souls’ quest.

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I didn’t reroll as an Ice wizard :) I was just spending my mornings as I often do, killing Bastilla in Firecat Alley to try and get one of her rare pet drops — it KILLS me that I haven’t gotten a rare pet yet — and she dropped, along with a rare staff, some rare robes, Chillcloak. For all that it looks like Luke Skywalker’s second best clothes, it’s a pretty unique look. Half cape slung casually over one shoulder. Matching hat and shoes to complete the outfit.

If you look behind Tara, you won’t see the crowds of Wizard City or the blinding glare of Krokotopia. Tara is standing in the central square of Marleybone, its eternal night lit dimly by the glow of shop windows and the flickering magics of the minigame portals. She finished Krokotopia. Well, that’s not *exactly* true. But she did earn the right to go to Marleybone; she didn’t get there by tagging along on someone else’s ticket.

The Arena Master.

I started off Saturday night, after getting back from helping my son move to college, having just barely achieved access to the Krokosphinx, the second quest hub in Krokotopia. The main storyline for that section is the rebuilding of the Order of the Fang, an ancient society that once protected the Krokonomicon from misuse by those undeserving of power. That vile tome was stolen and the Order killed or scattered. Those wizards who venture into the Krokosphinx are there to gather them together once more, both the living and the spirits of the dead. And if the situation of the servile Mander people may be improved, so much the better.

I met up with someone who was just a quest or two ahead of me. He helped me catch up, and we worked together through the Grand Arena and the Vault of Ice.

In the Grand Arena, the Arena Master sets you ever greater challenges to prove your worth to (if I remember right) earn one of the three badges that identifies the bearer as a member of the Order of the Fang. That, and a trip through the Vault of Ice, earns you the right to defeat the minotaur champion at the front of the Sphinx. There’s always people willing to help with that boss, who has 2000 points of health and three friends, because he has some interesting rare drops.

The Order of the Fang sends their love.

That fight ended the night. This morning, I soloed the Emperor’s Retreat instance (which I did again later to help someone with the scarab collection quest), and that earned me my second badge and membership in the newly invigorated Order of the Fang. I left them to continue the good fight and headed into the Temple of Storms.

Somewhere along there I picked up a friend, Oran Ogrestrider (or something like that, call him Oran O.) He was level 10, and I’d probably met him while farming Bastilla at some point. There was definitely no reason for him to be in Krokotopia — 15 is really the minimum level for the second world. But, what the heck.

Unlike most kids who zap in to high level zones, he would stay to fight. Even low level people can be somewhat effective, and while I wouldn’t want level 10 people popping in in Marleybone or Moo Shu, Krokotopia is still easy enough that it doesn’t matter so much. Farming boss mobs so much gives me fairly decent gear (though no rare pets…).

I’d been hanging out with ANOTHER Oran (call him Oran T.), helping him with some boss kills, and zapping over to Oran O. to help him with boss battles in the Krokosphinx, a place he couldn’t even get to without help. I enlisted them both to help me in the final instance of the Temple of Storms. I could use the help, and the final ten bosses or so might drop good loot for folks.

There’s plenty of other things to do in the Temple of Storms, but I was getting impatient to get to Marleybone, just the same way I’d been eager to leave its sands behind when I played in beta. The secret is, you only have to finish the storyline quests to move to the next world. There’s a lot of quests left waiting for me in the Temple, but…

I didn’t get the kill shot. It sure wasn’t my Guardian Sprite who, like usual, was making her own healing her number one priority. Oran T had some sort of lightning elemental pet, probably that got the kill shot. But — DUST! The Buffy fan in me screams with glee.

This is me and Oran T. dusting the ultimate boss of Krokotopia. Oran O. was helping, but left mysteriously during the Trial of Strength. Oran T. asked me why I kept Oran O. in my friends list when he was kinda annoying. That was a good question. I’d been thinking about removing him from my friends list so he couldn’t tag along all day, but didn’t.

I told Oran T., finally, that if we were playing a kid’s game, we kinda had to expect kids were going to act like kids.

So I don’t think I’ll be removing him. But I do hope he learns to call first before porting.

Some Marleybone pics (you’ll be seeing a lot more of these as my friends and I work through this alternate version of London):

Marcel Meow… hey, I don’t name ‘em.

By Jove, Holmes, you can’t be serious!

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I forgot to add something!

You will find a new setting in your Options panel under “Show Names”.
The selections are now
Everyone
None
Players
Non Players
All Others

This will allow you to only see everyone that is not a player, such as creatures, shopkeeps and items.

Yay!

Very useful. I usually go with names OFF when I am in public spaces. You kind of need them ON to see the primary schools of the monsters you battle — and this is the best of both worlds.

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After being a one-wizard elimination team on the Niriki royalty, it turned out it was all for nothing. Professor Winthrop told me with an astonished tone that the missing Order of the Fang was on an *entirely different island*. Not in the Pyramid of the Sun *at all*, it turns out.

So, I had just gone through and spread terror throughout the Pyramid *for nothing*?

Just so.

All those hours, all those endless card battles, all of that — and I was on the wrong island the entire time?

Sadly, that is the case. And now, would you hurry along to the Krokosphinx and get on with the killing?

How do I know that the real evil won’t actually be on that mysterious looking Temple of Storm island nobody is talking about yet? Why can’t I just skip right there? HUH?

At least I got to see the cool Map Room, which certainly has nothing to do with the Map Room Indiana Jones discovers in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bah, who am I kidding? Krokotopia has such a love affair going with Raiders that it almost hurts. From the music, to the quests, it’s all there. Just give me a whip and a fedora, please.

Thankfully, the Krokosphinx is the home of creatures that use Ice. My secondary school, Fire, was mostly useless in the heat of the Pyramid of the Sun. But nearly every critter in the Krokosphinx will be baking in the cleansing fire of my Sunbird. Especially if I can get to level 22, my next spell level, before I get too deep. I think this level is the meteor storm, that does fire damage to every enemy.

The Pyramid of the Sun quests left me off partway through Level 21, so I’m just about there.

Last night I had to “de-friend” my first “friend”. I normally approve all friend requests — and why not? But when one of these random friends kept teleporting to me in the middle of a boss fight, I had to let him go. It didn’t matter so much in these instanced fights if people join the fight and immediately leave, because the fight won’t get any harder. But if that had been an open fight, a fight tuned for just one wizard could quickly turn impossible with the adds an extra wizard would bring, but who wouldn’t stay to fight them.

Some people say this is a cheesy way to PK someone, where people will intentionally try to make fights so hard that you’re forced to flee or die, but I don’t think it’s that malicious. These were likely just kids — it’s nearly always children — who were hoping I would be heading to Marleybone or Moo Shu and they could hitch a ride with me to those higher level zones. When this kid saw I was just fighting the final bosses of the Pyramid of the Sun, he lost interest.

But I just couldn’t have him, in the future, pulling this stuff in Marleybone or Moo Shu where that kind of behavior would get me killed, so I de-friended him. Today’s patch, that limits the size of the friends list, will likely have me de-friending a lot of the people I don’t know.

Wizard 101 released a huge patch this morning, but it doesn’t seem to have fixed that many things. The notes, such as they are, are below:

—

Big News!
1. All new pets dropped by bosses will no longer only be named Baby Abbey, they will now have a randomly generated name.

All boss-dropped pets were named “Baby Abbey”, the default name for everything. I wonder if Baby Abbey pets will become rare, now? I still haven’t found a dropped pet…

2. The floating book pedestal in Crimson Fields appears to have been fixed.

This has long been an issue with people trying to complete a certain Moo Shu quest. It’s been said to have been fixed in each of the last couple patches. So we’ll see if it finally is :)

3. Choose your friends wisely. The size of the Friends List is no longer unlimited. Each character can have a maximum of 100 friends, if you have 100 or more friends now, you cannot add new friends until you remove enough people from your list to bring the total under 100.

So much for indiscriminately adding friends :P

Spells
1. Steal spells now describe the “steal” action.
2. Accuracy for the Stun and Freeze spells has been increased to 70%
3. Quench spell Rank has been reduced to 2
4. Melt spell Rank has been reduced to 2
5. Dissipate spell Rank has been reduced to 2
6. Rebirth’s spell accuracy has been reduced

Krokotopia
1. Djeserit Dwellers will turn to dust when they are defeated in a duel.
This is a really cool effect — like when vampires get dusted in Buffy.
2. Oka looks much more like his portrait.
3. Players can no longer interact with the Frozen Forge multiple times.
4. Zan’ne may ask you to do the Tome of the Fang quest again.
5. Desert Golems give credit for both Elemental and Golem badges.
6. Completing the quest “A Fang in Hand” is no longer be required for “Master of the Oasis” Badge.
7. Shackled Slaves will no longer have the word ‘Shackled Slave’ over them.

Moo Shu
1. The Myth Wand available in Moo Shu is now available for all schools of Wizards to use.
2. Players can no longer use “Teleport To Friend” when another player is inside Fushiko’s dojo in Village of Sorrow, since it is now a single-player instance zone. You are meant to complete this on your own as a test of your ability.
3. The floating book pedestal in Crimson Fields appears to have been fixed.

Misc
1. Cyrus has been busy with his red corrective pen again, this time he’s been correcting grammar and spelling.
2. Many treasure cards have new cinematics when they are cast.
Oh, cool :) Treasure cards are always so much fun to use.
3. At the Wizard Creation screen, buttons have been added to rotate your character during character creation. You can still use the mouse to do this as well.
4. The names of all the mini games can now be said in Text Chat.

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