Thursday, August 5, 2010

Crown Gear and Power Play Questions

About three weeks ago I got a really cool set of e-mails from a guy named Josh. Within his excellent e-mails to me he had three questions. Here's his first:
. . . am I missing out on good gear that I could buy? I have no idea where I can buy crown gear in each area? I'm only level 20, and I've found crown gear in Wizard City and a little bit in Krokotopia. But I'm mostly still rocking stuff I could wear at level 5 or 10. Can this be right? I have searched and searched and searched, on wikia, on central, everywhere. To me, finding and acquiring the best gear-- even if it's only purchased-- is fun. And it's frustrating that I can't figure out, fairly easily, where this stuff is in Wizard 101.

Am I missing something? Is there a list of gear anywhere?

Or, mainlly... is there a list of places to buy crown gear anywhere? And gold gear? I want the best stuff I can afford. Part of the reason to pay for gear is to save yourself time and frustration. But now I'm finding the process of searching for and finding gear almost as lame as grinding for it.

Yeah, this is a little interesting. Crown gear in Wizard101 has had an interesting history. A guest blogger, Sierra Starsong, helped me a long time ago with a question similiar to this. You can read this article here.

In that post you will discover there are things called generations of crown gear. Another thing you'll discover is that (as you noted) we all typically end up pointing our browsers to Wizard101 Central or Wikia. I totally hear your lament over polished, dedicated websites about really specific topics (like gear) like you might find for other games. Those mega-sites are the best we've got so far.

So, let me link you to a few threads:

List of Second Generation Crown Gear
List of Third Generation Crown Gear

and this one is good too . . .

List of All Crown Items with their Locations in Regular Shops

Unfortunately those threads mostly just list names of items, so that ends up requiring cross-research with Wikia. A really good targeted website would marry the two and make it easy to search in some kind of database engine. And yes, like you're saying, it'd be great to get a list of the best items I can purchase with gold at the same time. (The best/easiest we have now is to simply go to the Bazaar and sort by level and price.)

meh.

Josh's next question was this:
I just got to level 22 and received my Power Play spell (I'm balance). I tried searching Wikia and wizard101.com and Central to answer my questions about it, but the information is seemingly old or inconsistent. :/ Does Power play just affect your team, or your opponents too? It seems like a terrible spell, if it increases your opponent's pip chance by 35% as well as your teams'.

Also, are there any differences in the affects between PvE and PvP?
Yup, Power Play affects everybody in the battle circle. It's more effective in PvE than PvP for this reason since in PvE a good portion of the trash mobs have a really low or non-existent power pip percentage. This is also the reason why you get conflicting information. There's no difference when you use it in PvE or PvP.

It's not my favorite spell either.

And Josh's final question
Boy, I am sorry to spam you. Please forgive me. I just forgot to ask in the below re: Power Play, whether the effect lasts for the entirety of the round, or just a few turns?

Power Play lasts until combat is resolved; there's no timer to it.

Thanks for the questions, Josh! Sorry it took me so long to get to you.

Happy Dueling!

8 comments:

Heather Emeraldflame said...

Most of the good Crown gear he wants is now only in shops in each world.(I know you know that Friendly, but didn't really see that spelled out, sorry.)

The Crown shop, where the icon is on the screen, will sometimes have sales on random items that usually pertain to your closest level that gear is available for. So that's a good place to check before buying from the shops, as the items in shops are never on sale.

(Continued)

Heather Emeraldflame said...

I think just about everyone who has ever played a sorcerer either dislikes Power Play, or just completely hates it. I am not a fan of it myself and I really wish the mander minions didn't, now, cast it once in a while. I imagine that in PvP this could really make the minion's owners irritated if they do use their minions.

One thing you didn't mention on Power Play, Friendly, and Josh *may* not know since he is a bit newer to the game, is that: Though when you put Power Play up and it CAN last the entire battle, it can also be canceled just as easily by another player casting their own aura spell...which would then end the effects of Power Play. People do this all the time in PvP, throwing up their different auras to cancel each other out.

But if you are in a PvE battle and want a few rounds of your team getting more power pip chances then you can throw that up, and then when the main attacker(if there is just one)is about ready to strike he/she can put up their own Aura to give the extra attack boost for their spells. Or if major healing is needed Life can always throw up their healing aura, Sanctuary, to help them get the job done. By the way, Life people can now get an awesome attack boosting aura spell if they get the Brown Spider pet in Mooshu and train it up to activate the card. The aura looks exactly like Sanctuary, so if you see someone in battle with a green "bubble" over their battle circle don't always assume it's for healing if you happen to join them. It could be their attack bubble(aura) if they have a spider pet equipped.

Anonymous said...

friendly,
when i was in the test realm yesterday, a loading sign appeared sayins "the phantom zone world-world data. what is the phantom zone?

Wolf D. said...

thats a cool outfit that your wearing on your header i would never recognize you friendly. Is that your way of escaping spammers? :)

Sierra Starsong said...

@Anonymous - If you watch carefully while the game's loading, you'll find the "Phantom Zone" holds all the minigames (the same 8 in every world) along with Shock-a-Lock for opening Silver Chests.

James Griffinflame said...

umm, friendly, on your second link, all the items their i have never seen before. Have you? and where? because those are some pretty cool items.

Anonymous said...

Hey Friendly and Josh,
I was lookign through some of the old threads on Central and found one on all crown drops and who to get them from. I was scrolling and reading and then I saw
"Robe of the Deep". It says it is dropped(or it was dropped)by: The Gurtok Piercer in the Great Spyre.

- Wolf Battlehsield; Level 48; Life wizard

Anonymous said...

Hi. A couple of comments on Power Play.

It is most often used defensively by Balance Wizards in PvP. That is they use it to replace the opposing team's bubble.

There is a deck build called the Power Mander based on.. well... the Mander and Power Play. Central has some threads on this.

Most interesting to me is that the Power Play is the Balance bubble. Bubbles are meant to give the caster a school based tactical advantage. this means that pips are considered by some KI designer as a Balance advantage. Why?

I think this must be primarily based on the major attack spell for many Sorcerers being Judgment, which is X-pip.

Power Play can also be used very creatively with Donate when on a team.

Naktl (from Central(