CR 325 and Holding in DCUO's Long Live the Legion

Long Live the Legion released just 20 days ago, and since that time I've been hitting up the futuristic roads of this 31st century version of Metropolis and helping out a "unique" legion of superheroes, which I know nothing about. Um, I totally missed the boat here on this group of DC heroes. I had no idea there was a comic book series and even a 2006 animated series about a legion of future heroes.

I may have to watch a few episodes now!

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To describe what it's been like to run this new DCUO content for the past 20 days, it's all about running the morning MMO treadmill:

1- Fly around the hub gathering all the exclamation point quests that refresh daily.  Usually there's just a free "talk to me" quest to get a free source mark and a free solar credit and four other quests.

There's a lot of hub bub going down in the town hub!

2- The first dialy has you hunting down "sources of magic."  These typically take the shape of enchanted weapons floating around in a purple circle.

There's a  sword trying to stick itself in my back.

3- The next daily has you destroying / deactivating rogue robots that are possessed by magic.

No one's quite sure why the probteks are attack futuristic garbage cans, but *shrug*

4- The next daily has you helping students of the Legion while magic demons try to harass them (they ALWAYS try to harass them).

Crazy kids from all over the galaxy come here to learn superhero moves!

5- And then the final daily has you just go around hunting down big groups of magic demons.

Down with demons!

6- At the start of the week you also get a quest to repair signs and antennas around town that's worth a hefty 8 solar credits and source marks.

7- At the start of the week you also get a quest to defeat the open world bosses of the expansion, which are also worth another hefty 8 credits.

Validus is a big boy. A very big mean boy.

If anything has changed in my time of playing DCUO, it's this.  Hanging out and killing world bosses over and over is the new pink in DCUO. You do this over and over and earn a secondary currency to the content you're in while killing time in game. If you're lucky, other things will drop for you as well . . . like rare furniture or cool trinkets.

Gotta Love a Loot Shot! Yay for Time Beacons, Might Mods, and Housing Furniture!

8- There is a new, short (2 bosses) 4-player instance you can play every day.  There's three versions of this instance: easy "event" mode, basic mode, and elite.  If you do the easy mode you only get solar credits. If you do the basic mode, you get solar credits and source marks.  If you do the elite? I don't know . . . it's above my skill level. 

9- There's also a new 8-player raid (3 bosses) you can play once a week with the same three difficulty levels.  It's pretty epic. You basically get to help the legion take down Mordru and trap him in Amber. 

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And that's it. That's the expansion! You'll be doing this content over and over and over for a few months while the DCUO team puts together something new for you to play. 

I've got just enough upgrades now to reach my first big wall while playing since my return to DCUO. It's going to take a lot to move the needle into higher CR ratings while waiting for the next update.  That's fine.  

The good news for me this week is that it's double source marks from 26 November to 2 December. I need so many source marks, it's not even funny. I guess it's not a problem for people that haven't just returned to the game like me.  I'm just happy it's a thing.

Happy Dueling!

The Sweet Satisfaction of Karamelle in Wizard101

 Oh this world, my friends. Can you believe this world?

It's like Disneyland and Willy Wonka got together with Swiss Miss and held a party.

First, a little backstory. It all started back in 2009 when (as I foggily remember it being recounted to me) Kiersten Samwell wandered into the Wizard101 writers and after a little quick brainstorming, Professor Greyrose had a new bit of lore to share with the fans of Wizard101 through answering a question on an interview I was doing with her for this blog.  From that time, players of Wizard101 were always listing "Candy World" as a possible world of the Spiral they would someday visit.

Fast forward to 2012, after getting hired at KingsIsle as Pirate101's community manager, I came up with an idea to make these really cool "Rogue's Gallery" spotlights. To get them done, I worked with Sam Johnson of the writing team and Damon Brown, our video production guru. Sam would get me the text, I would grab the video footage, and Damon would put them all together with some voice over. We ended up making 29 of these videos.  It was a huge effort to put these together every month.

Eventually, we hired on Leala Ulrich and she took up the mantle to make professor spotlight videos for all the Wizard101 professors in kind of a "Rogue's Gallery" style production called the "Ravenwood Roll Call." The hardest of these to make seemed to be the spotlight for Professor Greyrose. In 2015 Leala went to all kinds of lengths to get the video and assets she needed to make this video. In addition Leala worked with the writers for the lore and story in the video, and this is really when the rough lore idea for "Candy World" then solidified into the world of The Spiral known as "Karamelle."

And here we are now in 2020, and the amazing Wizard101 team has unleashed a cheerful bunch of joyful content known as Karamelle, Wizard101's latest world of the Spiral . . . and I'm playing through it with my wife in its fully realized state. The Wizard101 team has really outdone itself!

Riding around in our cookie cars is the sweetest way to experience Karamelle together.

We're only a few hours in at this point, and it's been super fun.  We've fought marshmallows, gummy worms, gobblers, witches, gummy bears, and even cotton candy rams with candy cane horns. "Candy World" is everything I dreamed it would be and more.

The actually growl like a Tiger. Hilarious.

I really love this world so far and can't wait to play through it over this week with my wife.  If you see us in game, please say hello! 

Hope you all are enjoying "Candy World" as much as I am.

Happy dueling!