What's an ice robe that looks like the Jade Oni Vestment?

Got a plea for help from a reader:

Dear Friendly,

I am sending you this email to see if you and your magical blog powers can help me with something that's killing me.... I have had 3 encounters with a robe that Looks like the "Jade Oni Vestment" but it has ice symbols and is dark blue with hints of dark violet I believe.... everyone I see is stitched and doesn't show its original name and their owners are either afk, or forgot where they got it....I am asking for you to please ask your blog audience to help me.......I have attached photos of what the jade oni vestment looks like:

Sincerely,

Eric C.

Well, my mind immediately went to the crowns shop Whiteblind Attire:

You mention that it has hints of dark violet though, so I don't think that's what you're looking for. I've also looked through Swordroll's post on Central that shows a lot of the old crown's gear, but I don't think any of these are what you're looking for.

So, yes . . . READERS!! :) Anyone have some good suggestions for Eric?

Thanks in advance!

Happy Dueling

Amber!

No, silly! Not Amber Deathsong! I'm on a quest for Amber reagents! If you don't know what that is, it's a high high end crafting component in Wizard101 that (besides causing a fuss) is really only used (as of now) in crafting unique spells and the housing games, at least that's what the wiki is telling me. I've been lucky enough to pull a few of the leet spells from hoard packs, but the rest evade me.

Where does one get Amber? Two sources. One is gardening. The other is a thick transmute receipe involving 5 Merle's Whiskers, 5 Amber Dust, 15 Sunstone, and 10 Golden Pearl . . . to one Amber.

I choose Gardening!

To those ends I've been growing a lot of King Parsely. My buddy Gary at work is doing that too. He made a good point that King Parsely was a good route to go because it's a crown plant that reseeds plentifully. In fact, you can get a couple reseeds from one King Parsely plant over the course of its life.

Here I am standing in front of my elder Parsley Patch this morning.

YAY! I pulled four Amber out of that elder harvest, and from what I understand . . . I'm lucky!

How do you guys get your Amber?

You're totally one-in-a-million!

So, I realize this isn't new news by any means, but I still have a few readers on this blog that linger on here who just kind of want to keep up with what's going down with Wizard101. (Seriously, don't laugh)

I remember one night when I first arrived in Austin, I was hanging with . . . one of the KingsIsle employees. Um, he doesn't like me calling him out, so for now we'll call him Michael Weston. I still had a week before I was to officially start working at KingsIsle, and I was still not privvy to the finer workings of the company. Avalon was still in test, and he casually mentioned to me that he was shocked no one had discovered the new badge yet.

My jaw dropped, right?! I'm hungry for this kind of information!! So he told me about the new badge you could get for hitting a max hit in Wizard101 of 1,000,000--the one in a million badge. But, of course, I couldn't tell about the new badge because, well, I'm part of the keeping secrets crew now, not part of the digging for information crew. Plus Michael Weston swore me to secrecy. If there's anything I've learned from Michael Weston, it's that you follow his lead, right? You don't want to get burned--you'll end up in Miami where the Rhythm of the Night clause is in effect from 8:00 pm to 4:00 am and people are dancing in the streets and what not, not to mention all the millions of ex-spies.

Anyway, fast forward to last night! Bailey and I earned our one-in-a-million badges, woot!



Classical music . . . it's a head nod to my half a million hit video from 2009.



Of course, back then we didn't have access to the amazing amounts of traps and blades that are in our arsenal now. Necklace feint? Laugh. Sun magic and Frankenstein? chuckle. And yet, the record hit back at that time for Death was I believe a four million hit.

Then damage was capped at a million. (I used to have a blast trying to keep track of the big hits.)

Anyway, I had been saving a long sideboard of unique traps and blades just for this occasion, so it was nice to finally use them. :) I probably didn't need half of them to be honest. It was just that I had been saving them for this specific purpose, so I *had* to use them. Good times.

I even got to use some of my crown clothes to cast a backdraft spell for Bailey last night, it was awesome.

AND, the reason we even got thinking about all this? The reason was Bailey, Joshua Lionbane, and Logan Fireblood helped Ethan Icestone do a beetle hit for 1,000,000 . . . I think Bailey told me he might have already had the badge, he just wanted to hit with a beetle for that much. *grin*

Here's another picture of the team after the hit.

Looking good, looking good!

Definitely hitting for big numbers is STILL a cool thing to do in Wizard101 when you're just looking for random fun. :) Even better now that there's a badge, right?

Happy dueling

What's this yellow looking banshee?

I have a question for Friendly here:

Hello Friendly,

Do you still answer questions on your blog? Because I have one and I have searched everywhere for an answer but i couldn't find one. When I was at someone's house the other day I ran into this pet and I have no idea what it is. It looks like a banshee but with a different color skin and designs. I want one but I don't know how to get it or where it is from. I sent you a picture I was lucky to take :).

Thanks! :)

-Genevieve MoonCaller

Thanks for the email Genevive! No, I haven't been running the Question segment portion of this blog for a while, but I actually have an answer for you, so I thought . . . WHAT THE HEY, why not?

This is the Myth Banshee pet, which is only available through the Nightmare Hoard Pack, which is usually only for sale during Halloween.

You can read more about the Myth Banshee over on Central's wiki: click.

I also found a video of the Myth Banshee spell being cast over on Youtube:



Hope that helps clear things up for you!

Happy Dueling

Wizard101 awesomesaucish commercial part II

Don't you hate when you log on and all of a sudden you're surfing a story about chimpanzees loose in Las Vegas and a pet python escaping in Florida? And then you're like, pffft, those sound bad, but listen, I survived Zafaria! Me too.

Instead of reading that stuff, here's the new awesome commercial from Wizard101!



I love watching the two new Malistaire commercials back to back and at the same time even:





The stormlord's eyes really make me think "FUN! GET HIM!" at the end. ;)

Happy dueling!

State of The Friendly at KingsIsle (Episode 1)

Hello readers,

So I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now, and I just haven’t really had the time to do it yet. What I’d like to do is make a post every once in a while and help give you a glimpse of my life at KingsIsle. There’s no time like the present, so here we go!

I’ve now officially been working here for two months. It’s been a crazy two-months, and I still feel like I’m on training wheels. But at the same time I feel like I’m getting comfortable with my job enough that I’ve made a dent in the enormous amount of work that needs to be done while we prepare for Pirate101 to come out.

When I started working here, Professor Greyrose sent me a PowerPoint slideshow that clearly let me know all of my responsibilities that I would stumble upon. I love Professor Greyrose’s PowerPoints! Seriously, she has helped me a ton with the ins and outs of this job of Community Management. At some point when the flood gates open and Pirate101 launches, my job’s emphasis will spotlight a lot on the forums for Pirate101.com. Currently I’m only administering a small number of Alpha players on a subset of what those forums will become. I’m able to answer a good number of questions for people there on our Alpha forums, but in the future the "Number of Messages" to "Number of One-Eyed Jacks" ratio will amp about 1,000 to 1. O.O

A lot of what I’m doing now is getting our fan sites set up, working with Facebook/Twitter/Google+, attending meetings about Pirate101, actually playing Pirate101, and getting used to all the tools we have to help administrators and employees do their job. A lot of amazing work has gone into the back end of building these games. I’m still learning how to use some of these things. Some I’m getting a lot more familiar with. Others are still a mystery. I’ll get it and understand it all--it’s just a matter of time. I have amazing powers now though! I can take screenshots of the commons from 100 feet up. :)

I’ve also been getting to know a lot of the cool people that work for KingsIsle as well. Outside of the company you always hear about the big names that drive the information, but you never get to really see the 200 or so hardworking artists, designers, programmers, web gurus, customer service reps, QA hounds, Marketing dawgz (that’s the team I’m chillin’ with), production peeps, and everyone else that make this company work so well. It works and there’s another good team making sure that team works (fear the William Haskins my friends . . . I’ve crossed paths with him at McDonald’s and know the fury of his Big Mac).

Every once in a while when I’ve been staring at the screen for a few hours, I just have to force myself up and out to take a break. Break time is a good time to meet people. :) Lunch time is also a good time to hang with people: There’s always a few good games going on in the break room, and there’s actually a Minecraft server set up for just employees. These people love their games . . . even more than I do . . . and it’s great to just be around that vibe. 

From this end of the screen, I see a lot of people getting extremely excited to play Pirate101, and I don’t blame them. It’s going to be a fantastic game that you’re going to love. Eventually this ship will launch even though to the outsider it may feel like IT’S TAKING FOREVER, GAH! Truth be known, everyone is working overtime right now to get this closer to Beta and launch. It’ll happen, and when it does I hope you’ll have a huge smile on your face like I did when I played Pirate101 for the first time. :)

Thanks everyone for all you do and for the excitement in the air. It’s really cool working here and talking with the fans.

Happy dueling!

Thomas Lionblood says, "Avalon est fini!"

Ding level 80!

As you can see from the text on the right hand side of that screenshot, I had help from a knight who said nee! (actually that's Neela Lifegiver wearing her Knight of the Silver Rose badge . . . worked out perfectly for this screenshot LOL).

The final fights with the white and black dragons to save King Artorius, who--spoiler alert--was the Pendragon, seemed like nothing compared to the awesome battle with Young Morganthe.

Thanks to the Neelas and Mother Mistshard for the hand there with the final dungeon! To convey how that happened to all of you, it was like I just casually mentioned to Ms. Mistshard that I thought I was pretty close to the end of Avalon . . . and TADA she snagged the Neelas and from that point forward I was just there for good looks. WOOT!

BTW, speaking of good looks . . .

So if you follow this guide over on Central, you should be fine in the Young Morganthe fight. If it seems overly complex, here's what we did (I guess it'd be a mix between the Krag and the Nergel methods lol)

1- We all basically loaded our decks full of five pip strength (or less) damage attacks and sun school damage boost spells and had sideboards full of melt treasure cards . . . and that's it. No blades, no traps, no shields, no nothin' but attacks and melt (oh yeah, and I had some sacrifice too . . . it seemed to work well).

2- The first few rounds all we did was load her up on Melt debuffs. Ms. Morganthe loves to spam the Wooly Mammoth spell, and she'll spam that spell for no apparent reason at all. It just seems random. /shrug. I put myself on Melt duty the rest of the fight until I ran out of Melt treasure cards. she only managed to get one Wooly Mammoth off on us before she was defeated.

3- The main thing here is that you don't allow yourself to get above an eight pip count (as in four power pips) because she'll mana burn you.

4- Bring a pet that has a blade spell, those particular blade spells seem to not trigger any cheats.

~~~

Looking back now, Avalon was a very entertaining expansion to Wizard101. I loved the mix of high fantasy and high-fantasy humor from all the Monty Python and the Holy Grail jokes in the game, but what I liked even more was how near the Crystal Caves this humor was mostly side stepped in favor of pursuing the more serious side of the plot. It gave me the long-awaited story background with Morganthe that I've been longing for. (Thank you writers!)

Art and Design in Avalon was equally impressive. The amazing cast of characters that was developed for this expansion is awesome and the new gear looks that are available to us are impressive. I think some of my new favorite zones in the game are in Avalon! The winding paths of High Road, the lower and upper sections of Caer Lyon, Cassie the Ponycorn and the Mushroom Village of the Wild, The swirling fall leaves and druid cages of The Wyrd, The Silver Rose garden and Bone Dragon protector of Dun Dara, The Knights in their hall at Abbey Road, The evil crab house of Lakeshore, the open dueling circle of The Outer Yard . . . I think you get the picture.

There's just so much to love about Avalon. I also appreciated that there weren't too many collect quests and instead many more bosses to defeat. It was a good mix.

Speaking of defeating bosses, it seems my attention is going to turn to two things . . . acquisition of Amber and Deer Knight treasure cards. I want that Deer Knight spell, and that's going to put me in farm (and garden) mode for awhile.

Happy dueling!

Almost there!

Only one more level to go and I'll be 80!

That's right, I dinged 79 yesterday when I was hanging with the Lady of the Lake. We were busy reconstructing a teleporter arch. Of course the three pieces of the teleporter arch were guarded by various nasty bosses: an undead drowned knight, A Loch Spriggan named Kerr Knucklebones, and Tarn (an undead drowned giant).

After gaining all my various teleporter pieces, I was just an X click away from being transported into the catacombs beneath Avalon, what I found there were poisonous hobgoblins. Thankfully Sir Patrick was also there to help guide our way (he just needed a bit of saving himself since the Hobgoblin Blood Captain had captured him and all). He was full of excuses . . .

When I had finished my adventures for the day yesterday, I had taken a nice long drink from the Well of Annwn, which put me near enough to death that I was able to traverse the edge of the abyss--all in the pursuit of restoring the final shrine. The Shrine of Justice!

All I know is that I gotta finish this thing up! Why? Because the giant Easter egg told me I was the one!

The giant Easter egg knows all! :)

Mad props to Sierra Mist, Joshua Lionbane, Tara Darkgem, and all the other people I ran into yesterday. Good times were had in Avalon.

Happy Dueling!