Power Leveling? AoEs?

Sierra asked a question a few posts back:

"Power leveling? Could you define that some time? And you mentioned AOE spells a few times on Ravenwood Radio, what's that?"

Yup. My wife chastised me for using those "gamer" terms and not explaining them. SORRY!

*Insert non-offensive picture of public flogging* (I couldn't find one)

Yes, so power leveling is when you take a low level character and do higher level instances while they stand at the door and/or you take your character and finish quests at an advanced speed by using a second, more powerful character to do all the work.

Let me give you an example with that noob character from the other day, Aedan. Wave hi, Aedan!


Aedan here has never set foot in Unicorn Way. He's level 1.

The easiest Dragonspyre dungeon has got to be The Grand Chasm Past. It's short, it's easy, and your low level character levels quickly here.


Ugg, Aedan is so bossy, but we love him.

Kyle goes around fixing bridges and locking doors. Aedan soaks up the experience. Kyle destroys General Firetusk. Aedan soaks up the experience. wash, rinse, repeat (since you can do instances twice for experience). Badabing Badaboom, Aedan is just under level 9 in under an hour (with 216 gold to boot).



The second way to powerlevel involves AOEs. AOEs? AOE stands for Area of Effect. The term comes from many many other games. The easiest way to describe AoE is through the gun/grenade metaphor. Whereas most spells in our inventory strike one target, like a gun, there are many spells that strike all targets, like a grenade. The AoE's of Wizard101 are as follows:

Storm: Storm Lord, Tempest (AoE Trap: Windstorm)
Ice: Frost Giant, Blizzard (AoE Taunt: Taunt)
Fire: Fire Dragon, Meteor Strike, Scald (AoE Stun: Choke, AoE debuff: Smoke Screen)
Balance: Power Nova, Sandstorm (AoE buff: Bladestorm)
Death: Scarecrow (AoE debuff: Plague)
Myth: Humongofrog and Earthquake (AoE stun: Blinding Light)
Life: no damage AoE's (AoE healing: Unicorn and Rebirth) (AoE buff: Guidance)

. . . Wizard101 usually calls these spells "multi-strike" spells, but AoE is pretty standard lingo in the gaming world. /shrug

Anyway, the SECOND way to powerlevel a character in Wizard101 is to use AoE spells to destroy everything in the battle circle. For instance, one of my characters, Isaiah Taleslinger, is currently hanging out in Krokotopia. He's just starting the Grand Arena. His current quest is to kill a number of Ice Spiders. These Ice Spiders have 395 hitpoints each. Now, for Isaiah to kill these Ice Spiders by himself, he would have to buff himself with a blade and trap the other spider, then cast cyclops . . . twice . . . possibly more times if they were using tower shield . . . and he would probably heal himself somewhere in the process as well. By the end of this combat, he's gone through at least 6 rounds if everything went perfectly. It could be many more rounds if the monsters were full of surprises.

With Kyle in the mix, he enters the first round of combat with 2 power pips and a set of grandmaster gear. He casts Tempest. All of the spiders die in the first round. Easy. Even though Kyle isn't getting much experience in the way of combat-earned experience. Quest-completion experience by far outshines the lack of combat-earned experience.

And that's power leveling in Wizard101!

Happy Dueling!