(Guest Blogger) What Kind of Crown Gear Do You Think I Am Anyway?

Sierra is doing a great job of helping me out this week, don't you think?

Here's her answer to another question:
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Friendly recently got a question from blogger Luke Darkblood:

"I was checking the crown shop just to see what they had, and I saw this robe. I know there was old crown gear with triton card, but I wasn't playing when they still had it, so I'm not 100% sure. Could you clear this up? It's "Robe Of The Deep" on the left. Thanks."

When they released the Crown Shop, Zeke's crown gear got split up among the other vendors throughout the Spiral. The Robe of the Deep you spotted is designed for Level 45+, so I headed up to Dragonspyre to look for it.


None of the other robe vendors had it either. One thing I noticed, Andrei's robes both say "Crowns Only" while your Shop robe doesn't. That means you should be able to buy it with either gold or Crowns, just like the mounts and School houses.

Next I asked Professor Greyrose if this Robe of the Deep might be a retired item that somehow found its way into the shop, and got this response:

"In March of 2009, old Zeke moved from Olde Town to his current location in the Commons. At that time, he retired most of his clothing items, in search of new suppliers.

https://www.wizard101.com/game/community/updatenotes/march2009

Since then, the items he used to sell are considered ‘retired’ Crowns items."

(A side note, apparently I started playing just before Zeke's move.)

I asked Friendly to dig through the back of his closets and he found three of Zeke's old the retired Storm robes, including one with a Triton called Master's Garment of the Triton:


So this Triton robe isn't quite the same as the retired version, but where did this one come from?

Next I headed over to Wizard 101 Central, searched for "Robe of the Deep", and found a thread discussing the history of Crown gear. They mention three generations of gear:

Gen. 1: Ultra-powerful gear retired when Dragonspyre came out, no longer sold or dropped anywhere.

Gen. 2: Basic Crown gear available through the regular vendors' shops. These once had gold equivalents but now are Crowns only.

Gen. 3: Crown gear currently sold through the Crowns shop on a rotating basis, also listed as available for gold.

Finally, Professor Greyrose confirmed some of the theories:

"The SHOP regularly pulls items from a long list of Crowns Only items and displays them in the ‘On Sale’ section. These items will differ from character to character, and even differ between characters on the same account. An item may be ‘On Sale’ for a day, or a week."

Whoa! It sounds like the Crown shop works like a giant flea market. They have a big pile of stuff they can put on sale, and they don't always show the same stuff to everybody. So if you get lucky like Luke did and spot something you like, grab it if you can, 'cause you never know what you're going to find.

Great question, Luke!

See ya 'round the Spiral,
Sierra Starsong

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It's good to know where all those mystery shop items are coming from!

Happy Dueling!