How does the cannon game keep score?

Question here from Gorman Swiftmancer of The Necromancer's Doctrine:

How does the cannon game keep score to give you your points at the end?

Hmm, I looked around and I couldn't see if anybody had answered this question yet, so I ran a few test runs:

3 black = 0
2 black, 1 blue = 1 point
1 black, 2 blue = 1 point
1 black, 2 red = 1 point
3 blue = 1 point
2 blue, 1 yellow =2 points
1 black, 1 blue, 1 yellow = 2 points
1 black, 1 red, 1 yellow = 2 points
1 blue, 1 red, 1 yellow = 2 points
1 blue, 2 red = 2 points
3 red = 2 points
1 blue, 2 yellow = 3 points
2 red, 1 yellow = 3 points
1 red, 2 yellow = 4 points
3 yellow = 4 points

As far as I can tell (I ain't the best at the maths), the points seem to be calculated like this:

Yellow = 1.2 points
Red = .7 points
Blue = .4 points
Black = .1 points

And then all numbers are rounded.

Something like that. That may not be 100 percent correct, but it's the best I can do at 6:00 am in the morning. :-)

Happy Dueling!

Bloggers Club Alive with Pre-Quest Information!

I was just scrolling through the bloggers club on the right hand side over there, and I must say . . . GOOD FREAKING WORK GUYS! seriously, I'm counting over 30 posts about the test realm opening and all the pre-quest stuff, including insights to new gear, the warehouse, etc.

Some highlights for me were Chillanthropist talking about beating the warehouse on round 1. Nice work, my friend!

Valerian's School for Wayward Wizards had some great insights on where the advertised patch fell short.

Heather Emeraldflame gives us a nice look at the Grizzleheim housing.

Tipa at West Karana gives us a good recap of her warehouse experience, and I lol'd at her insight to the Eric Bloom designed quest: "It’s a nice enough quest, but from the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, I’d expected a little more."

Kestrel fills in the gaps by talking about the stuff that other people failed to mention . . . like the location of the new pet vendor, the get-out-of-my-house-noob button, and the pet energy clothes.

Wizard101 info even provides us with a "Documentary" of Dustin's experience working his way through all the test realm stuff.

. . . And on and on and on (y'all rock, seriously. Sorry if I didn't mention your blog specifically, um, I just don't want to be typing all night.)

So go take a look there on the right-hand side and check 'em out! Lots of great info there!

Happy Dueling!

Ravenwood Radio is Tonight! (Not Wednesday!)

That's right! Episode 19 goes down TONIGHT! NOT WEDNESDAY!

Check out all the details at the Ravenwood Radio site.

I do in fact have a segment for the podcast this week! I bust out my singing voice even. It should be exceptionally horrible.

See you all in the chat room!

Happy Dueling!

How do interruptions work?

Question from Thomas Goldshade:

"Hey friendly. This is Thomas Goldshade and I'm not sure if this is how to do this but might as well give a shot. I have a question about interruptions. I remember when they first told players about it but I took a break from playing for school so can you please recap about interruptions and how they work? Thanks!"

Hey! Cool question! We're seeing a lot of interruptions in combat lately. It kind of all started with when they put in the harder boss fights, and then they took them back out again. Then Kingsisle reintroduced interruptions to combat with the Briskbreeze bosses. Now, it appears we see interruptions again with the Marleybone warehouse/watchtower that a lot of people were moaning about last night in the test realm. (/giggle . . . just enjoy the new challenge, my friends!)

Basically, interruptions are either timed interruptions or random interruptions. KI can script interruptions to occur at certain points during a battle or can give the boss a chance to "proc," which causes an interruption to combat.

With the release of the Advanced Pets Expansion we have now seen our characters given the chance to "proc" or "interrupt" through skills manifested on our pets.

For instance, my daughter' Fog Unicorn will randomly proc/interrupt combat at any stage of a round and cast a little lesser sprite. The battle circle selector will spin to her position, the spell will cast from her unicorn, and then the battle circle selector will spin back to where it left off.

Now some of these chances to proc (or interrupt) seem to be lower than my daughter's spritely proc. As I theorized in that earlier post about "procs," perhaps someday we'll see more procs added to the game and more +%chance to proc added to future gear. /shrug I'm not sure.

Hope that helps you understand interruptions a little better!

Happy Dueling!

The Power of Math Reveals The Release Date?

Lail Ghostshade sent in the following comment and even a couple pictures to go along with it!

Ok, so I did the math, as we were halfway through the characters, and somewhere I read that they were releasing the chars counting down to the release date. I attached 2 pics for you to put on your blog (if you want). The date is on the pictures.

Hey! Thanks for doing the maths, Lail! There's just a couple things I want to say about that.

1- I think you're right that it will be released more towards the end of August. People were kind of freaking out with the release of the Celestia Pre-quest on the test realm last night, and they all were smooshed against Halston Balestrom and the spiral door, and some even kept saying, "Someone please take me to Celestia!"


Silly rabbits! Let's refer back to the patch notes.

"An urgent message has come from a faraway world!. For those of you who have completed the Final Countdown quest in Dragonspyre, visit me, Halston Balestrom, in Ravenwood. I urgently need your assistance!

These are the Preview Quests to Celestia. You will need to complete these quests before you can enter the world of Celestia, which will be available later this year."

ahem, let's quote that last part one more time for emphasis:

". . . before you can enter the world of Celestia, which will be available later this year."

2- ". . . before you can enter the world of Celestia, which will be available later this year." So that kind of concerns me now that I read it again. Before they were saying that Celestia will be available by the end of summer. Now they are saying by "later this year." Hmmmmmmmmm.

I hope you're right, Lail. I'd rather see this fully released by 14 August than by sometime in the last quarter of the year, which would be October - December.

Let's hope!

Maybe you'll have to revisit your math if they start adding in more characters to the poster. I haven't seen any Shadow Weaver outlines in the poster yet. They have added in new characters in the past. They added in shark boy and robot kid, which weren't in the original poster . . . will we see a new outline for the Umbra Queen added in?

Let's hope for an early release date!

Happy Dueling!

Message Translation from Resonating Omni Audio-Graph

Here you go! Cross-posted this over on Central.



"Mayday Mayday This is Thurston Plunkett representing the Spiral Geographic Society Seeking Assistance. Our survey expedition is stranded on Celestia. We are under attack! Send help immediately, The Umbra Queen has returned. It is the work of Mor . . ."

Uber wife sent this to me and asked me to translate it . . . I haven't even logged in the test realm yet. LOL!

Uber wife believes they are talking about Moira Drake, her Necromancer character. ;-)

/hugs!

Happy Dueling!

FW: Wizard101 Test Realm is Online!

Just came across the wire!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

June Update Notes are available! Test Realm will be coming up in the next few minutes.

https://www.wizard101.com/game/community/updatenotes/june2010

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Dueling!

Three Questions About High Pet Pedigrees and Talents

I have three pet questions that kind of relate to each other, so I'm going to try and answer all three in one swoop.

1- The first comes from Sloan Shadowstaff a.k.a. The Active Necromancer: "I was wondering if it is possible to have a pet with a pedigree of 80. If possibly you could mix pets so much that eventually you would have a pet with all epic abilities. Is there enough epic abilities or could you possibly have two of the same abilities? I know sometimes you may not want a higher pedigree if you are searching for certain abilities for battle or derby (thanks Kevin Battleblood) but it would still be pretty awesome to have all epic abilities for that one pet."

Theoretically, yes, and I agree it would be pretty awesome to have a pet with a big shiny 80 on it next to you. Realistically, I just don't know if we'll ever see it.

And, yeah, I don't know how epic skills that are the same transfer over during breeding. For those who don't understand what we're talking about here, let's give you an example: The friendly dragon's 3rd skill slot for derby is stone wall (adds a barrier to all lanes). The frozen cat's 4th skill slot for derby is also stone wall. Can both carry over into a hybrid pet, so that (if both manifest) I could have a pet with two stone wall talents?

I'm just not sure how that works. Can duplicate talents carry over?

I'm with you, Sloan, I wish I knew. Maybe one of my readers will have some insight to this, or maybe one of them has seen where this has happened?

Personally, I'd love a pet with 4 supercharge skills! But, am, I willing to pay 500,000+ gold to get that pet. Sigh. No. I just have different priorities.

The real issue is cost.

2- The second comes from Danny: "I just leveled up my life wizard to level forty-eight and got the pet satyr. And when it hatched it didn't give me five power pip chance like all the other level forty-eight pets so i leveled it up to teen and it gave crafty instead of the five power pip chance. Is this a glitch or will i just get crafty not the five power pip chance?"

KI addressed this over on Central. Check out Answer 7 on the list.

Answer 7:
The 5% pip talent is a temporary talent given to the lvl 48 pets who existed before the Pet Pavilion was introduced. We decided to give them this flat rate improvement because using the standard pip boost would have necessitated us starting them at a very high level in order to confer the correct bonuses. This talent is being filtered out of the system and will not exist on any new pets.
However, with this in mind, we recognize that earning your lvl 48 pet is a big accomplishment and it needs to be suitably awesome in the game. We’re going to be making changes to the game soon that guarantees that all new level 48 pets will manifest the regular Power Pip talent at some point in their life cycle. The regular Power Pip talent starts with a 1% bonus, but can grow to upwards of 8% as your pet levels and progresses through training games.
As for pets that fall within those two updates, we’ll work out a way to address their shortcomings before we make the update in the coming weeks.

This is both awesome and scary. I have no idea how this will really be implemented. BUT, there's your answer!

3- The third comes from Dragon Girl: "With the new Pet Hatching system, I thought people would be often hatching pets after farming for gold.
Really what this hatching system is all about is getting the best pet pedigree- but I have barely seen one person actually do hatching for that.
I know its neither much of a disappointment or a accomplishment- but I just wanted to point that out. Do you find this weird at all? Have you noticed it?"

Yeah, it seems like hatching right now is all about getting a rare looking hybrid. SPEAKING OF WHICH! Last night Amber Deathsong and Blaze Mistshard combined their Colossus and Satyr pets and Amber got the FROSTCALLER! WOOT!


YAY! We've spent around 400,000 gold already between our characters trying for one of these and this is our first. (Sorry you didn't get yours, Blaze! Maybe next time! /comfort)

But, in the end, I'm not sure it's all about getting the best pet pedigree, or if it's more about getting the skills you want to manifest. You know? Just as is the case with the answer KI gives above . . . the pip boost skill that everyone wants with their level 48 pets is only classified as "ultra rare" yet everyone wants it.

So at the end of the day, I don't think everyone is sold on 100% epic.

Opinions?

Happy Dueling!

Tips for Raven Farming?

Question from Christopher Hexshard:

You mentioned you farmed the ravens for gold. I am yet to beat more than one in a battle so could you give me a few tips for raven farming? Thanks!

Heya Christopher,

Yeah, this is a farm you HAVE to do with friends. Otherwise it's too hard and too lengthy of a fight to make it a valuable farm. It's probably possible to solo, just not as profitable (I tried to solo Ravens and almost did it, but they have amazing dps. Thermic Shield seems to be almost a necessity . . . I digress.)

If you're soloing, go after bosses like these in Dragonspyre. Or take a few of my other gold building suggestions.

I have to say something else here, dang, farming for pets can be some serious bank. You will farm up a ton of trash loot on your quest to farm up all the new pets you want. Bailey has been doing this and she's got some money. Right now it's a great time to farm since everyone is interested in a few key pets like the crabling or the ianthine spectre. Plaza of Conquests is alive with activity the past few weeks. It's a great time to be farming for gold. TONS of willing participants.

NOW, as far as the ravens go, bring a level 48 healer and an elemental wizard or two (really any setup will work, but I like the AOEs and damage output of storm wizards). Have the healer stick to healing and you'll be just fine. Storm wizards will need to prism the storm boss and should be wielding myth swords/hammer in case a myth shield is played, but one or two fully charged, bladed up tempests or storm lords will clear the Ravens out quickly. Likewise, a bladed up Fire Dragon or two will also work (prism on the fire boss of course). Likewise, a bladed up Frost Giant or two will also work . . . you get the picture.

And as always, my readers may have a few more insights. :-)

Happy Dueling!

Will the new bosses be harder than Malistaire?

Question from Dakota Silverbane over at dakotasilverbane.blogspot.com:

if malistaire is defeated, then are those bug people sort of like the new malistaire? if so, they are going to probably going to be 10 times harder than him since the lvl cap is higher plus the new schools!

I have no idea.

BUT

I will say that it makes sense. There will have to be a greater challenge since we will have ten more levels, granting us more talent points, more hitpoints, more mana, and more spells (whether those be astral spells or regular school spells). The challenge we come up against will just naturally have to be harder.

As we've seen with Briskbreeze, there are already two bosses with more strategy involved than with Malistaire.

I like this direction that KI has gone with the last two bosses. There's more challenge involved. The problem with designing challenges like these, however, is that it probably becomes harder and harder to not exclude menu-chatters while designing boss fights that require more coordination and strategy. These are the types of things that KI probably comes up against all the time. They need to consider their entire player-base because their game appeals to so many.

To me it seems to make sense to build "tiers" of fights. Like easy, intermediate, and advanced boss fights. You could still get all the loot from the easy fight that you could get from the advanced fight, it's just the advance fight would have the rare drops be at a much higher percentage chance than in the easy fight. This way people could still complete quests at all levels of play, but advanced players could have more advanced challenges with better chances for payouts.

I'm sure we will continue to see more and more challenges either way!

Happy Dueling!

What about that petnome project?

Question here from anon:

Where can we view the results for the petnome project?

Well, from what I can gather from Twitter spying, this is the new home of the petnome project: PETNOME PROJECT!

I e-mailed Kevin about this earlier, and he let me know that it's still a work in progress but he does have a team helping him out with updating information.

The official hashtag to follow over on Twitter is #petnome.

It appears that Sierra Starsong has once again pulled through for the community and offered up some space on their server for this project.

KUDOS ALL AROUND!

Happy Dueling!

LOLZ TFN, the coloring page!

LOLZ kids . . .



In the spirit of the real coloring pages of course: LINK!

Happy Dueling!

Blood Moss and Reagent Maps?

Two Questions here from Taji:

1- Do you know of a good place to find blood moss?
2- What ever happened to the Detailed Map of Regeant's Spawn points project? There are no wizard city spawn points and it is very un-complete. The last update was January 1st of this year. I would love to help but I am afraid it will not be updated.

1- I do have some recommendations for Blood Moss! Check this post I made back in January.

2- Yeah, I just think the people involved either became busy with other things or lost interest. It's probably time to move forward with the project with someone who's committed to it. (Kind of like how Kevin Battleblood and the petnome team have become committed to the pet project.)

You know, I should probably make a page here at the Friendly Necromancer that tells everything you'd ever want to know about crafting. I might just do that at some point. I already have a lot of data on it, I just haven't put it all into one place and made it awesome yet.

On maps . . . you know, a lot of MMO games like these that have "nodes" and "areas of interest" on a map also have a fan site dedicated to cartography of some sort. For instance, EQ Atlas was awesome for Everquest. This site looks pretty freaking awesome for The Game Which Shall Not Be Named. The Dynamic Map site for LOTRO looks extremely handy.

Sooooo . . . where's our Wizard101 Cartographer website? Well, we have maps scattered all over the place, really. We have the general maps that are available to anyone by pressing M in game. We have wikia's maps for offline. We have the maps of the reagents both here and on central. We have the maps to teleporters on my site (I think a partial list over at central).

. . . so where's the cool map site that has everything in one for us like those other games? Hmmm? I want maps with reagent nodes, npcs, teleporters, chest locations, bosses, etc., and I want it all in one . . . AND I want them to be selectable to where I can build my own customized map. It'd be awesome!

So, consider this another challenge to the community, we need someone to step up and make this their baby and make it awesome! Not for the weak of heart or those that aren't prepared to get hassled about spawn locations and things like that. We need someone that's committed. /shrug

If anyone does plan on doing this, let me give you the most important hint I learned from my time gathering node data for maps. The test realm is your best friend. When they open the test realm for us to test the prequest or Celestia, don't spend your time doing those things. Spend your time hunting down node information at a time when most people aren't doing those things on the test realm.

Hope that helps!

Happy Dueling!

Pictures from the trail of celestia post on Central

Question from triple D (D. Derek Dressendorfer):

I cannot access the pictures on the Central page regarding the ON THE TRAIL TO CELESTIA link. I was wondering if someone can post them for us not as an attachment but as actual pic's to be seen? I have difficulty opening JPG's for some reason.

Ok!




Well that was easy.

I can't wait to crush me some bug exoskeleton!

Happy Dueling!

Which is better? Mega Snack Pack or Pet Energy Elixer?

Not really a question, but more of an observation from triple D (check it out):

I'm not sure if anyone other than me has done the number crunching, but here's what I've discovered, IF my math is right.

(MSP) Mega Snack Pack = 2500 Crowns
(PEE) Pet Energy Elixir = 250 Crowns
10 Pet Energy Elixirs = 2500 Crowns

The MSP grants 7 items with a total of (39 AGIL, 46 INT, 101 PWR, 36 WILL, & 23 STR) = 245 points. Since it takes 7 games to use them up, that means 7x4= 28 points. So using the MSP means netting 245+28= 273 points for an Ancient on his way to Epic, presuming maxed out stats on all categories, this means all game and pet food points go directly towards levelling towards the 1000 points to attain Epic.

Ten PEE's grants 48x10=480 points. For an Ancient on his way to Epic, this means 480 points divided by 8 points per game to play = 60 games. 60x4=240 plus 6 points per game if using pet food called Ambros Cereal (for those who craft) = 360 points. Adding that up, we get 360+240= 600 points. I think that 600 points could shoot up to as high as 660 points, because there are pet foods that grant an extra point if the pet likes it, for an extra 60 points.

Clearly, for the Crowns Conservative, spending one's crowns on 10 PEE's nets you 600 points (if you craft your own Ambros Cereal food and assuming you get the full 4 points per game for being really good at the cannon game). Yet for the same crowns investment you only get 273 points with one purchase of the MSP.

Yup, looks pretty straight forward.

This reminds me of something I was reading on MMORPG about Free to Play games and how the business model works juxtapose the people that play them. Let me quote a bit here:

•Type 1: A player with more time than money;
•Type 2: A player with more money than time;
•Type 3: A player with lots of money and lots of time.

Type-1 players don’t usually pay anything. They just play. These players are really useful because they fill up the game world and make it feel full and fun. They know that they won’t be spending any money, so they play just to have fun, or until another more-interesting F2P game catches their eye.

Type-2 players are a game’s bread and butter. They want to take part in the game, but feel like everyone else is going too fast and they want to catch up. They are prepared to pay (some) money to speed things up a bit.

Type-3 players are much less common. Imagine if Bruce Wayne wasn’t Batman but really loved playing MMOs – that’s type 3. These players are extremely valuable (and will spend a lot of money), and, like my Dad likes to say, “they’re as rare as rocking-horse [poop] (edit by friendly, you're welcome)”.

Now, Wizard101 isn't 100% free to play, but we do have a crowns shop, and what we're talking about here are crowns shop items. So let me answer the question that isn't really asked here: which is better for you? Mega Snack Pack or Pet Energy Elixir? Here's how I see it:

Type-1 players are going to either not invest in any crowns boosts or invest in the pet energy elixirs.

Type-2 players are going to invest in Mega Snack Pack.

Type-3 players are going to invest in Mega Snack Pack and Pet Energy Elixirs. (or PEE's as you call them LOL)

I think you're totally right on PEE's giving you more bank for your buck (especially if you're using some decent food). Nice observation!

I do have to say that I like the power stat boosts on Mega Snack Packs, but, meh, I could Fairy Cake my power stat if I really wanted. (word, fairy cake)

At least that's how I see it at 6:43 am on 25 June, 2010.

Right?

Happy Dueling!

KI is now in the question answering business!

haha! I love it!

A longtime reader smvb (aka Grace Icehammer) and 122ninjas told me about this new question and answer forum over on Central. I even see a few of my buddies already posting and talking there:


And guess who moderates this awesome spot on the net . . . dun dun dun . . . MECATZ!

Here's how Mecatz is running the show:

Each week the top 10 questions from Wizard101 Central will be answered directly by KingsIsle staff and posted in here for discussion. One thing to remember is KI is very, very busy and we should allow them some time to answer them.

How they are picked is through searching the entire central forum for questions only KI could answer. Please continue to use the areas that are for your questions, such as PvP, wizard101 questions,crafting, housing and so on, as central Mods/Admin or members might be able to answer them, as well.

Not all questions will be serious in nature, as there are some questions that people wonder about that aren't the most pressing but the majority of players would like to know.

Keep asking your questions around the fanscape! Eventually, somewhere somehow, someone will answer one of your questions! Me loves me some kweshuns!

Happy Dueling!

What if my friend abandons me?

Question from anon:

Hey Friendly! I'm looking for some advice here. I had one amazing friend in which we did EVERYTHING together. We leveled our wizards, beat marleybone in one day, used to always farm, pvp, etc. And then suddenly he deletes me. I ask, "why?". Then deletes me once more. Then my friend logged on, said, "hey :D", and he proceeded to delete him as well. For no reason! I'm looking for advice due to the fact that I lost a good friend for practically no reason. I see you've been playing this game a while, so you may have more experience in these things than me.

Around my house we have a name for these things when they happen. You sir, just got hit with a jerkstorm. (except sometimes a jerkstorm here also implies people haven't been picking up after themselves . . . I digress)

No, it has nothing to do with this.

It has everything to do with people getting all plankton on ya.



Heh. I guess at least he didn't insult you like that. :-) We'll call it a silent jerkstorm. The surprise jerkstorm. He just poofed out of your life, but sometimes that's almost worse, isn't it? Our imaginations can say more mean words than the evil abandoner ever did. EVIL! ABANDONER! JERKSTORM!

I don't know why people are jerks, but I do know that the Internet allows for a lot of them. It has the power to turn normal people stupid.

I'm not sure what happened, but perhaps they just wanted to experience the game without you always there. On your end of the screen life was wonderful, but on their end of the screen you were always bugging them and they were just being polite, just letting the jerkstorm build until it finally hit. BAM! DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!

Um, or perhaps they wanted to make new friends and had no good way of telling you get lost so they could, so they forced the situation? /shrug

I can try to throw out scenarios like this all day, but really I don't have the full story and neither do you it sounds like (since they didn't clue you in).

Life sucks sometimes, doesn't it? I'm thinking in the end because they didn't offer you an explanation, they never were really emotionally invested in the friendship. Thus, the Internet allows them to do something they wouldn't really do in real life. The best we can hope for is a twinge of guilt.

You got hit with a jerkstorm.


Over time you'll know who your real friends are, anon. Hang in there and try not to take it personally. This is the Internet after all. (He could have been hacked and the hacker deleted you just to be mean while he was hacked? A hacker jerkstorm? /shrug)

Thanks for the question. Hope I didn't leave you with more questions than answers.

Happy Dueling!

oops!

I've gone back and corrected that last post about Enchanted Treasure Cards. Sorry if I caused any confusion.

It would take too long and be too convoluted a discussion to even begin to explain why I thought you couldn't make treasure cards with tough and keen eyes anymore. Basically it had to do with the juxtaposition of a sassy stranger on Unicorn Way, an old mouse that was fond of double clicking, and me forgetting you can't apply tough cards to life draining spells.

*SNAFU = 1, Thomas = 0*

Happy Dueling!

How do you make a wizard101 spell card?

Question here from Bryan:

hi FN
i was wondering:
how can you make a wizard101 spell card?

If you're talking about the cards I did for my happy dueling game, I used the big huge labs site. If you're talking about enchanted treasure cards, there are two ways, Bryan . . . one is easy, and one involves extreme pains.

The first method, I talk about here. Just note that you can't trade these cards anymore. You can make them, you just can't trade them. You can read the reason why from this beautifully written explanation from J. Todd Coleman in the latest Ravenwood Newsletter.

The second way you make a Wizard101 Spell Card is by picking up the crafting skill and visiting your class tree to obtain a recipe. These recipes are much more expensive than the 50 gold you spend on a tough or keen eyes treasure card.

For instance, here is the horrible recipe to craft a simple Centaur card.


The initial cost of the recipe is 1,200 gold and you must also craft (or find) 2 seraph cards. Here is your horrible recipe for Seraph cards:


The initial cost of the recipe is 550 gold and you must also craft (or find) 1 Nature's Wrath card. Here is your horrible recipe for Nature's Wrath cards:


The initial cost of the recipe is 400 gold and you must also craft (or find) 1 leprechaun card. Here is your horrible recipe for Leprechaun cards:


The initial cost of the recipe is 150 gold and yo must also craft (or find) 1 imp card. Here is your not so bad recipe for imp cards:


Whew, only 50 gold plus the cost of 4 components. yay. Hope you enjoyed your painstaking journey of crafting a single Centaur card. wee!

As you can see . . . making your own treasure cards through crafting isn't cheap. (hint, these cards are really only made as a part of crafting awesome furniture items like the carousel . . . darn those earthquake cards.)

Thanks for the question!

Happy Dueling!

About Asking Questions on The Friendly Necromancer

Lessee, question from last month from Noob on the Tube:

"Hi, where would i submit questions? is there like, a throne room or cryss=tal ball somewhere?"

Answer: yes. here are the secret items and locations you ask for.

1) The throne of painful necessity:


(photo credit: you don't even want to know where I found this on the net)

To ask me a question, you must first prove you've got the toughness to take my honest answer while at the same time relieving yourself of the burdens that come from these questions.

2) The crystal ball of Karl:


(Photo credit: Karl Merton Ferron, Sun photographer)

The answer will always bring some sort of enlightenment, but beware the guardian of the crystal ball! The moustached man's bite is definitely worse than his bark . . . (before you ask, no, that is not me, that is Karl. No, I do not know Karl.)

. . .

Yeah just send me an e-mail, yo! The address is over on the right hand side of the blog.

over that way ---~~--> and kind of up near the top ^^

The problem with me answering questions I've discovered is that there are more of you than me, and I tend to start to feel all picked on and stuff when I have 26 questions in my inbox from the past week that I haven't even touched.

Sooooo, I may not get to your question for a month or whatever . . . persistence my friends! If you do not make it through the throne of painful necessity or the crystal ball of Karl the first time, then please try again!

Happy Dueling!

The Party's On!

HI! Bailey here! Friendly wanted me and Amber to snap a pic of all the party supplies you recieve in the partypack promo. So here you go!

Party hat, cake, ballons, and banner (awesome grandmaster and FOG unicorn not included).

Thanks Kingsisle!



10,000,000 wizards ... That's a lot of happy dueling!

10 Million Strong!

This just came across the wire from Kingsisle!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

PLANO, TEXAS (June 22, 2010) – KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. today announced that since its launch in September 2008, more than 10 million Wizards have registered to play Wizard101. Today, the Wizard101 player base continues to grow at an accelerating rate and KingsIsle expects rapid growth to continue for the foreseeable future.

 

“Over the last twenty months our domestic launch has taken us from an unheard of company with an unknown product to running one of the most successful properties in the family entertainment space,” said Elie Akilian, chairman and CEO of KingsIsle Entertainment. “I am profoundly grateful to the millions of extraordinary people who call Wizard City home and the  talented writers, artists, designers, producers and engineers who have come together to create this magical world.”

 

While the technical and creative design requirements to create a virtual, safe and compelling online universe such as Wizard101 are enormous, it is the active and enthusiastic community of players that truly makes Wizard101 come alive.

 

“We are overwhelmed and honored by this huge achievement,” said J. Todd Coleman, VP and Creative Director of KingsIsle Entertainment. “We will continue our work to add exciting new content and features to Wizard101 through the launch of our next world, Celestia, and well beyond.”

As a small gesture of thanks to the wonderful denizens of Wizard City, KingsIsle Entertainment is offering every Wizard a complementary “Party Pack” and encouraging them to throw a grand celebration welcoming Wizard #10,000,001 to the Ravenwood School of Magical Arts. Each Party Pack will contain a decorative banner, balloons, a festive party hat and a celebratory cake.

 

To receive this FREE item set, simply go to www.wizard101.com/promo and enter the word PARTYPACK. 

 

In Wizard101, kids and families enter the magical world of Wizard City as student Wizards setting out to hone their Wizard skills, cast spells and summon powerful creatures to fight evil forces. The characters and worlds of Wizard101 are influenced by literature, history and pop culture, giving the game a depth and quality appreciated by families and players of all ages.

 

Wizard101 can be downloaded at www.Wizard101.com. Players seeking access to premium areas and items may purchase pre-paid cards in participating stores or purchase a subscription or Crowns online. New worlds, activities, pets and Wizard clothing are periodically added to the game, creating an ever-changing world with new things to see and do.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GRATZ Kingsisle!

 

I have uber wife in claiming her party pack.  Pictures incoming to you all in a few. J

Is 39 too low for Dragonspyre?

I have a question from Destiny Dragonrider

Dear Friendly,
I am leveling my first wizard - a pyromancer. I am in Dragonspyre, and have completed all other worlds before, but am only level thirty-nine. Some people have told me that I'm too low-level to be in Dragonspyre. I'm worried that I won't have enough health or levels to get spells and do things at the same time as other players. Should I go back to the other worlds and do side quests or re-do things to get experience, should I keep going, or do something else?

Dear Destiny Dragonrider,
You're awesome, don't worry about it. Seriously, I mean it. You're not the first to be in Dragonspyre at such a low level and you certainly won't be the last. Can you hold your own there? Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can hold your own. It does get tougher though. The towers get out of control, the mobs all cast weakness, and most of them shield. Heck I've even had appropriate level Pyromancers asking me for advice when leveling through towers.

But, here's something else for you to think about . . . you're probably going to get stuck on a few things.

1- The obsidian chest quest in the final world has you revisiting all the worlds to gather your obsidian chests. You will probably have to complete a few of these side quests to get in to a couple of these. (Mossback quest is one of these side quests . . . of course, you could always have one of your friends that's done these allow you to port into them so you can get the chest.)

2- You want to be level 50 for when Celestia comes out, so you might as well start thinking about leveling up to that now by doing all your side quests. Otherwise, you might end the game in your low 40's and then have to do a lot of backtracking. (which isn't so bad, since when you backtrack your quests you're more powerful and they're easier to do then.)

3- I always am looking forward to my level 48 spells when I level a character. Attaining my last spell always feels more like my real goal than defeating Malistaire for some reason. I think this is why I have a couple characters at level 48 now instead of grandmaster. (I NEED TO LEVEL THEM!) I hadn't really thought about this before leveling with Bailey, but she really wanted her level 48 spell before fighting the final things in Dragonspyre so she could experience the game while casting the big spells, you know? (Uber wife is awesome like that.)

Now, with that all in mind, I can't stress enough that you should just play the game how you want to play, and if you're playing it with friends by your side, then you have no worries at all. (unless they're hassling you.) Just have fun doing what you're doing, and as long as you aren't doing weird stuff like blowing people's traps with fire elf and getting yourself killed, then you're perfectly fine.

Now, socially, I think people are under the impression that you have to have your level 42 spell to survive. I don't know about that. A bladed up scald back to back with a choke and a good heal can be as impressive to watch as a helephant. Phoenix ain't such a bad spell either. Your biggest problem will probably be when you run into fire school baddies as a few rounds of laying down converts can sometimes be a painful experience.

Basically, have a good strategy.

Of course, my readers may be of a different opinion. Let Destiny know what you think!

Best of luck!

Happy Dueling!

Robot Boy revealed!

Check it out!  Robot boy has been revealed! J

 

We just keep getting closer and closer to the complete picture! This is WOOT worthy indeed!

 

Happy Dueling!

What's the new gear going to be like?

Question from Sloan Shadowstaff:

Hi Friendly,
I was wondering if you could get some insider blogger information from Professor Greyrose again. I was wondering with the new level 60 level cap if there would be level 60 clothes. By that i mean if there would be new Grand Master clothes except for level 60 players. Ever since KI announced the new level cap I got a little excited and a little wary of farming for the possibly new "Grand" clothes. I think it would be very awesome and give players once they reached level 60 another exciting thing to do to make there character even better.

Heya Sloan! I tried to get some insider info on this and rolled snake eyes. I don't think KI is ready to leak some gear information to me yet, but at some point they will be ready and it will be awesome. I'm predicting some of our new gear will blow the Grandmaster gear out of the water.

It's happened to me before, but especially in the Game that Shall Not Be Named. There I was, a raider wearing Tier II Purple's and the moment their Burning Crusade expansion came out that raised the level limit 10 levels, all that work I went through to get the uber gear was for nothing. The first standard magic drop I got was more amazing than what I was wearing and had these new things called "slots" where I could upgrade my own armor! All that work I put into raiding . . . All those DKP points spent on great gear . . . all for naught.

Wow, I just had a scary flashback . . . /shiver

When KI released Dragonspyre, it went down a little differently. I was wearing old school crown gear clothes on Thomas, and they were fantastic. I pretty much wore them all the way through Dragonspyre and didn't slip out of them until I got my level 50 Grandmaster gear. You know, it would be debatable to say that old school crown gear is better than level 50 gear, but the resistances on old school crown gear is so awesome, that . . . well . . . if it weren't for the pluses to damage, I'd probably still be wearing my old school crowns gear clothes (and would still probably put them on for pvp).

SO, what's this long ramble getting at?

My prediction for new gear in the game when the new level cap goes live is this:

1- We're going to be happy because our gear will improve, but the stuff we find in the first areas of the new world will not be any better than the loot we find from the pre-quest because . . .

2- I predict the pre-quest clothes are going to be an improvement over our level 50 gear. And I predict that we will be spending a lot of time excitedly farming our prequest clothes while we wait for Celestia.

3- Our gear will start to improve over pre-quest clothes somewhere in the 5th or 6th zone of the new world. (these are all guesses of course)

4- Finally at the end of Celestia, your level 60 gear will be a far cry better than your level 50 gear, but it will make improvements in ways that none of us have thought of. Currently the stats you receive are, +accuracy, +damage, +damage%, +resist school%, +resist all%, +health, +mana, +power pip, cards, etc. I think that there will be a new stat influenced all together.

You see, with the pets expansion we've seen a new mechanic with our pet talents, and that's the "proc."

What's proc?

Well, this site seems to handle the question ok. Here's a quote:

"Proc" and "proccing" is used to describe whenever a random gaming item activates, or a random gaming event occurs. Particularly common for massive multiplayer online games, procs are random events where special armor or weapons provide the user with temporary extra powers, or whenever the opposing monster suddenly becomes more powerful in some way."

In the pets expansion, if our pets manifest something like "spritely" or a talent where they manifest a ward, our pet now has a chance to "proc." They will cast a pixie, or a ward, or a blade, or something else. Right?

What we haven't seen is a +%chance to proc statistic happen yet. Imagine a piece of gear that makes your pet have a chance to cast its blade spell more often? Nice eh? (Especially since I hear some of those ward proc rates seem almost non-existent.)

Also, what if your pieces of gear now have a chance to cast procs all on their own? What if your sword now comes with the spritely talent as well as 5 cards? I predict it is these kinds of improvements that will surprise you on the new gear. Stuff that we didn't see coming.

So, in summary and conclusion with much doom of the ending of this post approaching . . .

I got nothing but hope for the new gear. I really have no idea what it will look like, but when we do eventually see it, we're going to love it! We might hate that we spent hours farming our level 50 gear, but somehow we're going to just have to get over it, and I think "fun" is going to be the answer.

Hopefully KI makes the new gear more fun. :-)

Happy Dueling!

Less Talkee, More Playee

The first time I heard someone say, "Less Talkee, More Playee" to me was back when I was playing Everquest. I was in a cool mega-guild called Vanguards of Excellence. I was a pretty heavy contributor to the message boards and did a lot of writing there because, hey, that's kind of what I do. I'm a chatty Kathy, y'all. word.

Anyway, a new expansion hit the game and raised the level cap by ten levels or so, and I was the slow one of the bunch because, well, I did more chatting/posting on the message boards than I did playing because, hey, that's kind of what I do. Again, chatty Kathy. Listen for once would ya? I'm trying to tell you something here. sheesh.

Anyway, one guy in the guild called me out and said, "HEY STING!"

And I'm all, "what?"

And he's all, "Less Talkee, More Playee."

and I'm all, "What?"

And he's all, "Dude, you'd be level 70 right now if you weren't posting on the messageboards all the time. I learned that a long time ago. LOL!"

And I'm all, "LOL!" But really I was thinking, "Dude, 1) that's like asking me to not breathe or something, and 2) who are you? I haven't ever seen you post on the message boards before . . . dot dot dot . . . ."

He had a good point though, and I took a while to stop writing on the messageboards so much and just concentrated on leveling my toon. Level 70 happened, and it was all good again. The raid group embraced me once again and stopped giving me that blank look. Then again, we are talking Everquest here, and we all pretty much had that blank expression regardless.


So, sometimes you've got to just adopt the "Less Talkee, More Playee" attitude and, for the lack of a better phrase, Shut up. OH wait! There is a better phrase than Shut up. It's "less talkee, more playee!"

Anyway, this is one of those times. I'm leveling Myrna and playing the game more than talking about it. (If that's possible.)

Hopefully our accounts will now have the following seven Grandmasters ready to play through the Celestia content when it hits the shelves: Thomas, Bailey, Kyle, Amber, Molly, Myrna, and Iridian. That should be enough.

*zips*

Happy Dueling!

Celestia Pre-Quest Hints/Revealed

Ok, this is way too good not to share with you all. Samantha Drake let uber wife know about this post over on Central. It's awesome. It's awesome sauce. It's awesomesauceness!

If you can get over to Wizard101 Central, please do yourself a favor and go read this post by Willowdreamer. Ms. Willowdreamer just purchased issue 127 of the Beckett Pokemon magazine, and within those pages there is pretty much the entire plot to the prequest laid out.

Here's a snippet of what Willowdreamer reveals from the article:

"It's up to you to travel across the Spiral and defeat a cadre of villains to get the pieces Balestrom requires. Gradually, you learn more about these mysterious enemies, discovering that they are the Shadow Weavers, a secret order of Wizards with sinister plans.

Upon successfully decoding Balestrom's mysterious message, you learn that it originates from a long-lost Marleybonian survey team from the Spiral Geographic Society, a league of explorers who set out long ago to find the lost world of Celestia. According to the message, the explorers believe they have stumbled upon an important discovery, but they are trapped and in great danger!"

The Shadow Weavers appear to me an amazing race of insectoids.

Here's one of the pictures from the article:


I'm not going to repost the entire thing from Central, but you should definitely head over there and give Willowdreamer a thanks for the info!

Happy Dueling!

Podcasts! (Ravenwood Radio 18 tonight and Wandcast 6 up!)

RR18 is on tonight! Be sure to check it out! The chat room will be jumping like always!

Here's the info from their site:

We will be recording our next episode live right here on our website on Wednesday, June 16 at 8:30PM Central Time. Join us and chat it up while we record by clicking the "Listen Live!" link above.

I don't know if I'm going to finish my segment for the show or not.

Why Friendly? WHY?

Well, have you ever had one of those things where you start to do something thinking it will be really funny and by the end you just want to destroy it and yourself into little pieces? That's kind of what happened to me on my segment this week.

yeah, you'll like me better for not inflicting that on you.

~~~~~~~~~

And while we're talking podcasts . . . The new Wandcast is up! Be sure to check out Episode 6! AND GUESS WHAT?! AMBER WON A GREEN CAT THUG!!! WOOT GO DAUGHTER!!!

She won the contest with her entry of "Stray Cat Strut" for finding a song that relates to the Green Cat Thug in some way. Why was it awesome? 1) The Stray Cats are the Zeke quest in Marleybone. (and for those of you who don't know, all of the zeke quests involve European Band Names, hint.) 2) The Green Cat Thug has cat class and he's got cat style!

Check out the song if you're unfamiliar with it.

Happy Dueling!

Changes from the Patch Last Night

Ok, so there wasn't a Celestia quest put into the game like many of us were thinking, but there were a couple of great updates that happened!

1- Stat Cap from pet xp was modified.

Let me quote Professor Greyrose since you're already here:

"Previously players were seeing that their Ancient pets are only receiving 1 experience point per game after their stats are at maximum.

Now players will receive full experience from the pet mini-games even after the stat max is reached. In other words if the player gains a +4 to a stat, then they will gain +4 experience if that stat is at max.

Snacks will also provide full experience from eating the snack, even if their stats are at max. If the player feeds their pet say... a Fancy Yogurt and gains +15 Strength, +15 Will, and +20 Power and is at the stat cap. The pet will still gain 50 Exp from eating the snack.

Full XP will be granted for stat overflows. For example, let's say my Will is 249/250 and I ace the cannon game and then eat a Golden Biscuit ( 4 Game + 4 Snack ) = 8 Will. That would normally give me 1 Will and 1 Exp. Instead, it will now give me 1 Will and 8 Exp.

This should make getting your pet to Ancient must less painful"

. . .

It definitely will!

You know, I was talking to my good buddy Mecatz this morning, and we both were a little concerned that perhaps the stats you earn might be still be a little confusing because the numbers from the right hand side, don't match up with the experience gained on the left hand side.

Mecatz sent me this picture to illustrate:


Left side says 10, right side says 5. Both are green numbers. Perhaps if the experience only points were noted in maybe blue? or some other color on the right? Or maybe if "(exp only)" was noted after a plus number on a maxed stat on the right hand side? something?

It works though, and I'm happy enough with that! It's just, perhaps it will be a touch confusing for some players. Opinions?

~~~~~~~~~

2- spiffy pop is no longer spiffy cheat.

Greyrose quote:

We've listened and thanks to you it's been determined that Spiffy-Pop was not working as intended. Players were getting frozen, then popped to the finish line a lap ahead.

After the next maintenance, Spiffy-Pop will move the pet behind to the next pet ahead, as was intended.

. . . have to say, still an incredible derby skill. I wonder if that'll be nerfed any more in the future or not. Opinions?

I fell victim to the spiffy pop cheat at least twice on my way to pet warlord, but I never used it myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that's all the news that's fit to print!

Happy Dueling!

Silverback Wildclaw Zoos (pet of the day!)

A question from Paul sprung up this afternoon:

Hey friendly, um today I found a new pet discovery, I think. I got a silverback wildclaw form the coven. The final bosses in GH. When I told my friends they said it was impossible. Is this a glitch, or is it a discovery?

Heya! Well, as much as I want to tell you yes . . . Nope. Not a new discovery, but very cool nonetheless because it is one of the new pets!

It's got a really high pedigree doesn't it? so fun!

Check it out, my daughter's character has 5 of them! LOL!


I have three.


Uber wife has one.


Kyle has a pair of them.


I'm guessing that pretty much everybody that farms the Raven$ for money has a couple by now. I predict by the end of this advanced pets madness that everyone will have a personal zoo full of silverback wildclaws.

Let's just make it the pet of the day and get it over with now. ;-)

Thanks for the question and gratz on the new pet!

Happy Dueling!

Briskbreeze Quest and Drake Rider Badge?

Question here from anon:

Hi friendly I have a question. I have a balance grand who just finished the game and I wanted to know how to get the quest for briskbreeze tower? Also how do you get the drake rider badge?

Thanks for the questions! One, go read this old post of mine about it. (Summary: attain level 50 and talk to the guards in Olde Town)

Two, Drake Rider Badge, eh? I think you mean Dragonrider Badge? What you do is complete all Academy Quests in Dragonspyre! And I know this because I've gone to the Warcry site, which has been my source for badge information from the day I became aware of it. Love that site.

Happy Dueling!

Do you have to pay to do ranked pet derby?

I have an interesting question from Frazel here:

I have a question too Friendly! My sub is running out and I was wondering, if I switched to Crowns would I have to pay eatch time I use the pet derb like with pvp?

Heya Frazel, i haven't heard anything about a pay-to-play system for the derby. I'm a subscription player myself, so I can't really answer this question, but I'm hoping one of my fine readers can help.

Does it cost crowns to play a ranked match in derby like it does in pay-to-duel pvp?

Happy Dueling!

Weekend Catch up

Wow, I didn't post at all this weekend.

Less talkee, more playee:

1- Just as a refresher, the end date for the petnome contest is approaching! Keeping plunking in those entries! Remember you have until midnight 15 June Pacific time to make an entry!

2- Stop decorating your houses and start decorating your dorm room! Paige (my good buddy MeCatz) is holding a contest where you need to decorate your dorm room with 5 specific items. You need to get screenshots or video submitted by June 28, 2010 at 9:00 PM Central US time.

3- The new Xbox will be called not Project Natal but Kinect apparently. Not that you care, oh uncaring ones. Not that I care either. /shrug How do I know this? It seems to have been an early leak from E3. I picked it up from people gabbing amongst themselves in Twitter.

4- Yes, E3 is just a day away. If you're looking for E3 Twitter for information, I think most people are going to be following @E3Expo (or #E32010 ?). I highly doubt Wizard101 will reveal anything at E3 or be a big part of the expo. From what I've noticed, they don't do many expos or industry shows outside of AGDC. BUT, if you remember they did promise us a cool new quest would be coming out. I think that data loss last week really knocked the wind out of them and took pretty much all their efforts to overcome.

5- Molly made level 48! WOOTS!



I took a good chunk of Friday and leveled her up on sidequests including the infamous Mossback quest chain. That's just a ton of EXP there. I got an idea to make a Mossback quest video that could be strange funny. Strange funny can be good. Either way, I got a question from an anonymous poster that asked, "Hey Friendly. I have a question. I had a quest leading up to the Crazed Forest Spirit guy, but now it's missing! And I haven't beaten it yet! I will never get a Crab!!!!! Why did this happen!?!?!?!?" Just go back to my thread and try to follow it. Know that once you complete one of the quests for mossback in a particular zone, he doesn't give you a follow on quest to meet him in a different zone for the remainder of the quests. You have to hunt him down and find his yellow exclamation point.

6- Ravenwood Radio is coming up on Wednesday. I don't have a segment yet. Suggestions?

7- I'm starting to want to get Final Fantasy 13 for Father's Day. I kind of got sucked in by this film of these Japanese peeps getting all excited about it. I want to be this excited about it too. (Side note, I own Final Fantasy 2 for the super Nintendo /giggle)



8- Myrna had a good bout of Derby Racing with a teenage bloodbat (or you call it mythbat if you're cool ;)) that won her pet veteran status.


It was hilarious (or frustrating) to watch my mythbat smoking teenage level 48 pets. Myrna then scored a striped boar with her tickets, and I decided to race that as well. The boar did, hmmm, ok, so I earned enough tickets to buy another one. I think I'll level that one and see if one of the ultra-rare derby talents manifests. Then I'll have two for combines. Wee!

9- You may have noticed the pet and housing lists have reappeared at the top of the screen. If not, hey! LOOK AT THAT!

10- HYBRID SIGHTING! I do believe this is the archfiend?



11- It looks like the second chance chests are giving out money instead of second chances. Anybody else notice this?



12- I gotta go to work! Catch you all on the flip side!

13- Happy Dueling!

Wizard101 Item Reimbursement Message

Here it is! News from the top, folks! It looks like anyone that went through the agony of lost information will now be shown some customer care.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for your patience. We have researched last weekend’s operational issues and gone to great lengths to resolve them.

We have identified all characters that were affected and will soon be initiating a reimbursement process for all lost items. We believe this will resolve all outstanding character issues, and in the case that we are not able to exactly match any data that was lost, we will err on the side of caution and offer Crowns as compensation to both paying customers and to our Free to Play users who were affected.

We hope and trust you will find this to be a satisfactory resolution, and will continue to play and enjoy Wizard101.

On behalf of KingsIsle, please accept our sincere apology for this service interruption and know that we are doing everything we can to ensure that it never happens again. We value your time and continued support of our game, and hope that you and your family will continue to be a part of the growing Wizard101 community.

Thank you,

J. Todd Coleman
Director, Wizard101
KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update! The reimbursement process is complete!
All those compensated also received an email with more details. If you did not sign up with a valid email address, you cannot receive communications from Wizard101.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As y'all get reimbursed, I'd be happy to know how it turns out for you!

Happy Dueling!

Oh man, the floodgate on questions has been opened . . . help?

OKIES, WE'VE GOT MORE QUESTIONS!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter asks this:

Hey there Friendly,
Um, I tried farming for the crabling pet 100 times (literally) and I still haven't even gotten it. So Is there a Pet drop ratio something like that? When I was farming for the Myth sprite I got two of them.(For the third time and the fourth time) Also when I was farming for the banshee pet, on my first try I got it. Lets see if you can answer this.

Well, loot tables are funny things. Places like wikia attempt to gather as much data as they can about what certain bosses drop. When there's a lot of data, they can even do their best to tie percentages to the drops (you can see here that they have percentages tied to the Kraken's loot). Most loot tables in MMORPGs are based on varying percentages that certain items will drop . . . and most people will never know the true percentage of the drop because it would take farming the same thing 1,000's of times, not just 100 times.

Think of it like this . . . here's The Crazed Forest Spirit's loot table:

Cowl of Soul-Searching
Cowl of Rhyming
Crazed Forest Spirit's Hat
Cloak of Deliberation
Garments of Unrest
Warbled Cloak
Footwraps of Generations
Shoes of Deliberation
Slippers of the Lotus
Dagger of Detachment
Spirit's Ring of Deep Thought
Band of Sandcastles
Crazed Deck of Realization
Flower Petals
Potted Purple Pansy
Wild Bamboo
Woodwalker Treasure Card

and finally what you want: the Crabling

That's 18 items. Now imagine that each time you kill the Crazed Forest Spirit you randomly roll between 1-100.


In other words, out of 100 tries, you just haven't rolled your 100 yet. It could take you many more than 100 rolls to roll a 100. Does that make sense? Go try it now over at Random.org. Pick a number between 1 and 100 and count how many times it takes until you get your number by pressing the Generate button. (It took me 220 tries until I got the number I was thinking of over at Random.org . . . yes, I pressed that button 220 times . . . ).

Now this isn't exactly how our loot tables work, and those numbers above are just an example (Since I have no idea what Kingsisle's real loot tables look like), but hopefully that helps you realize why it might not have dropped for you yet.

Best of luck! And I truly mean it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a question from Blaze Duskblade:

eh friendly mon i have another question for you what is the coolest thing that has ever happened to you on wizards101 on any of your wizards any of yo accounts just wondering mon

Coolest thing, eh? Well, let's see. There's been a lot of great moments. At first I was going to say making my big hit on Malistaire, but my wife reminded me of the night we tailed Jordan Skybane around. That was probably one of my favorite moments, but as far as "cool" hmm. I guess that earning the Pet Warlord badge was pretty cool. Meeting Samantha was pretty cool. Deathbreeze was cool. Being in Beckett's was hot.

OH, you know, I have to say that I was in Walmart the other day and I walked past the current copy of Beckett's, and I just smiled to myself knowing that a picture of my character was in that magazine right there on the shelf. So, I guess my coolest moment was out of game in the real world just a couple days ago. Hopefully there'll be many more to come. :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEXT, question from Chater:

Hey Friendly,
I am a long time play like you. I remember when there were no mounts and the old crown gears (The Best). I also remember when they didn't have pay to go paln or the PvP system we have now. So here is my question (A lot of my real life friends ask). Should I buy Pet Elixir when the Pet Energy is at zero? and In your interview section, did Professor Greyrose say anything more about Candy Land or any hint if it is a world? I would love it if you could answer my questions. I am a big fan!

Pet Elixir - is it worth it . . . interesting. For a lot of these pets, we don't know right now if it's worth it or not. So I guess my question back to you would be, what pet are you leveling and what traits have they already manifested? If you're leveling a pet that has traits that you're not interested in growing or if your pet will only manifest junk traits that you don't want then, no, don't waste your money. But if you have a pet you love that has awesome traits and you have a good chance at getting even more awesome traits, then why not? Keep the fun going!

The real question is, which is more bang for your buck: 10 pet elixirs or 1 mega-snack pack? At that point I think it boils down to 1) how much time do you have vs. how much money do you have, 2) if you're leveling a baby pet vs. if you're leveling an ancient pet, and 3) if you've maxed your stats vs. if you still have stats to improve. Yeah, that question is totally not as easy as it seems.

uh

Happy Dueling?

And now to the part of your question that involves Candyland--Here's a cut and paste from the interview in case people don't know what you're talking about:

"As for Lydia Greyrose, she is actually from Candy World, a land of cookie roads, chocolate rivers and candy cane trees. She is one of three sisters (the youngest of the three, she is actually only a half sister to them, which is why she has faerie wings and they do not). The other two sisters are evil -- they live in gingerbread houses, and have cooked up a legion of gingerbread minions to continue the long, proud tradition of children-cooking evilness. It is probably her half-faery blood that made her "the good one." She learned ice magic as a way of putting out the fires underneath the cook pot, so that she could help the children get away."

Kiersen is so awesome.

Well, one thing I can tell you for sure. They have not begun production on Candyland whatsoever. So for now, it just exists as an idea. Will it ever exist? I'm not sure outside of this awesome boardgame:


:-)

I'm sure Kingsisle has LOTS of ideas. Who knows how many and which ideas will ever become a reality? No one. They probably don't even know what's next, but I can tell you they are listening to their fans. So if you all want a candyland, then promote it like crazy. Just look what this thread on pets did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEXT, It's Travis Emeraldspear with a question:

hey friendly, this is travis emeraldspear, i would like to tell you why i cant log on my grand chars, it just exits the game when i go to the commons, is this a bug or something? and do you have an idea when it will fix?

I asked Greyrose, and she said she'd ask about it, but it sounded isolated at this point. She did add this though, "The best thing people can do is actually fill out the crash report when they see it." wise words my friends. If you fill out the crash report dialog box when it pops up, you'll start the process to working out the bug.

It may be a computer issue too, Travis. It's a good idea to ensure all your drivers on your computer are up to date. Make sure you check those out. You know, I once had a friend who would crash out if he ever entered Triton Avenue. He had to get another friend of his to move his character out of the zone. Now, this is against the rules mind you. I would never promote password sharing. Ever. All I'm saying is, that's what he did to get his character unlocked from an unfriendly zone. Perhaps Kingsisle Customer Support would work with you to get your character out of the non-cooperating zone? Worth a shot!

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NEXT! Question from "P":

Hi, Friendly, I don't know how you post a question and I would like to know, so I guess that is my question.

Well, seems like leaving me a comment somewhere within the near 1,000 posts on this blog is working pretty good lately. I used to have a little box off to the side with my e-mail address, but I took it down because I wanted to take a break from answering questions. LOL. So much for that. I might put up a link again here soon.

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NEXT! Dakota Silverbane has una questiona:

i also have a question that is kind of weird, why would a forest spirit give crabs? isn't that kind of weird? and did uber wife have to mix two pets to get the storm cats, or are they farmed by herkir?

yeah, I guess that is weird. /shrug.

Nope, no mixing involved on those storm cats. She just got them from hirkir. Lucky, eh?

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NEXT! William has two questions:

1. I was wondering on the new update coming at the end of the month, if the new schools would take training points, or free. Example: Sun is related to fire, and life. Would these be free?

2. On the pet update, i am a ancient now and maxed almost every skill, i will not have enough to complete 1000 xp, but i was wondering if you maxed every skill, you would turn epic

1- Ok, first, that new update at the end of the month . . . you know, I wouldn't expect there to be anything more than just maybe an intro quest and a new tower. /shrug . . . that's all I'm expecting and I think some people are going to be disappointed, thinking that all of Celestia is going to be released here in June. From what I understood at the beginning of this whole process, they made it sound like it would be more like August or September for the full update to be released.

I like your idea about how astral magic would be free . . . that's some cool thinking, but what about Balance wizards? That's the only class that it wouldn't work with, right?

Death, Storm, and Moon
Ice, Myth, and Stars
Fire, Life, and Sun

Balance?

Not sure, but good thinking nonetheless.

2- Ok, I'm pretty sure KI is working on some kind of fix for the current system, but as it is now, when you max your pets stats, all you can do is play mini-games for experience, and all you get is one point of experience for each mini-game you play when your stats are maxed. So, it'll take forever to get to epic. My impression is that you should stay tuned for some kind of a fix. /shrug That's just way too many mini-games.

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NEXT, Travis is asking another question:

hey friendly, its me travis emeraldspear, i would like to ask you if all pets have combinations? thanks

As far as I know, Trav, I think the only crazy hybrids we get are from mixing level 48 pets with each other and from mixing unique pets together. That's it.

And even then it's just a *chance* that you'll get one. It's not a sure thing. As evidenced by what I mention in the question below . . .

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NEXT! Queenofsparks has a question:

what 2 level 48 pets did you hatch?

I attempted to hatch kyle's Stormzilla with Thomas's Wraith!

I failed to get a cool hybrid, but both of my pets' potentials improved a bit . . . and I'm 98,000 gold poorer on both Thomas and Kyle. (man that was a lot of Raven$$ farming . . . I have a feeling I'm going to end up with a lot of Shiverback Wildclaw pets by the end of this whole thing.)

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AND FINALLY THE LAST QUESTION OF THE NIGHT COMES FROM LAIL DEATHSPEAR:

have seen people post questions here, so I figured I could too.
A year ago, December 20 2009, you had a question asking if on one of the commercials there was a Grizzleheim house. You asked Professor Greyrose and she said, ' I can confirm that the house shown in the commercial is a house from Grizzleheim, but you'll have to wait until the new year for details.'
I've been wondering if you have gotten any updates on the Grizzleheim house(s).

Ok, so I don't have a direct quote from Kingsisle about this for you, but I can tell you this: the Grizzleheim houses have not been forgotten. From those that I've talked to about the Grizzleheim houses, they are well aware that the Grizzleheim houses were never released, and they are still thinking about them.

How's that for cryptic? It's all I got.

If I can get you an official quote from Greyrose herself, I will. For now, that'll have to suffice. Sorry!

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And that's that.

whew.

You guys are trying to kill me with questions. Well guess what? I'M STILL ALIVE!! MUHAHAHAHAHA! NICE TRY!

But seriously, that was a lot of questions, yo. I think I'm going to pass out now.

Happy Dueling!