We win! Azteca finished! Ding 90!

TADA!

(insert screenshot of final battle between the Undying Malistaire and his minions and me, uber wife, and two random strangers that were pretty cool)

Why do I not have this screenshot readily available? BECAUSE SILLIES, I WAS ON THE LAPTOP AND NOW I'M ON THE MAIN COMPUTER!

Ok, I'll see if I can dig up a really cool screenshot on our computer. here you go:



Woot! Bailey and I are looking hawt caught there between a fire bridge and a volcano!

So, here's the deal with Azteca, it was pretty epic. Plenty of people have completed it before us, and plenty of people will complete it after us. I really have nothing much to add (strategy-wise) beyond what the amazing community has done with strategy guides and advice already:

Xibalba info from Mercenaries for Hire.
Belloq in Azteca.
Cipactli info.
Ponce de Gibbon strats a plenty.

Mercenaries is always a great place to visit for strats. Yup. What I can tell you is that--it was "uber" fun! What made it most fun of course was that I was playing side-by-side with the "uber wife" Bailey the whole way . . . sure she ditched me with her Storm Wizard and caught up to me AGAIN with her Fire Wizard mid-way through the whole thing, but that's too be expected when I was busy leveling a couple pirates up to 50, right? The important thing here is that we FINISHED! TOGETHER! AND LIKE I SAID . . . it was fun!!

There was a point in time about three-fourths of the way through when I started to go a little nuts on Bailey and started talking in baby talk for a couple hours straight while we were playing, but other than that my sanity is still in check. There was also a moment where everything became centered around yolo:



And during Xibalba we were happily watching Star Wars I and II since it was May the fourth (be with you), so lots of jokes about Yoda and the force were to be had.



Hmmm, what else . . . OH YEAH . . . Gotta say once of my favorite moments was pretending my mount was saying "ow ow ow ow hot hot hot hot ow ow ow ow" as we were running up the lava steps to Xibalba.

. . . and before we knew it it was all Malistaire hates us poof the end!

To be honest, I feel a bit out of the loop as to what to do next with Thomas. I imagine at this point is when I would try to find some gear to replace my Waterworks gear and farm and/or craft the heck out of the top instances in Wizard101, hunting for exactly the right piece of class specific gear.

Suggestions?

I know Bailey is going to craft the Azteca gear for her Fire wizard and will be working on her pets a bit more (as well as working in her new gardening farmhouse), but that's about it for now . . .

Thanks for reading!

Happy dueling!

Ding 83! Crazy Monquistans Invade Azteca!

Uber Wife and I had some more time over the holidays here to finally play a bit more of Azteca, enough that we're now level 83! WOOT!

I've been back to Central's wiki this morning reading a bit to try to catch myself up on the storyline because we've been going a bit fast, and I feel like I might have missed some parts of the story. To add to the confusion, right as we logged off a couple days ago, we somehow got disconnected and distracted in the main quest line by a ton of side quests. Thank you wiki admins! You've helped keep us on track. :) They do a great job, don't they?

Anyway, the Aztecasaurs have been keeping us incredibly busy delivering war challenges, delving pyramids, and trying to decipher exactly who's a traitor and who isn't. Most of that investigation has to do with roughing up the locals and rustling some feathers. But after all of that, three things have become apparent from Azteca:

1- The locals love calling me a magician. *presents a spray of flowers from up my sleeve* MAGIC!

2- The locals love to tell me I fight like a cold-blooded carnivore. *shows fangs*

3- Monquistans are nuts no matter what game you're playing.

Best thing about that ship in Saltmeadow Swamp is that you can go inside it!

There are definitely plenty of cool things about this expansion so far. Besides seeing the interior of a monquistan ship (something you don't get to do in Pirate101), this snake bridge you create is really a nice touch.

That's just awesome. And the free hour-long Shadow Weaver transmute was a nice bennie!

I had to make a trip or two to the bazaar and the commons just to float around in my transformation to freak with people's minds. :)

Also, THE PHILOSORAPTOR!

HAHAHA! I think the Philosoraptor might just be my new favorite NPC. :)

Anyway, we're pretty much to a very pivotal point in the story (yes, I read ahead), but I'll leave a discussion of that for my next blog post. Things are about to get verrrrrry interesting here soon. Until then I just have two words to say . . .

Happy Dueling! ;)

Friendly Lunchbreak Azteca Adventures!

That's right . . . we're getting this new Azteca world done one lunchbreak at a time!

So, here's my thoughts so far . . . Morganthe has been in Azteca causing all kinds of evil mischief. MISCHIEF MAKER! It seems as though Morganthe's subtle ways of causing grief the past few expansions are no more as the Aztecasaurs know exactly who's trolling them! Tsk tsk Morganthe. She's seems to be a bolder and more sinister Morganthe to me. Anyone else with me on that? In fact, the story seems to have taken more of a darker Dragonspyre-esque turn in my mind, and it now feels more like Morganthe is truly an equal to Malistaire's bad self. I like how I'm one step behind Morganthe, and in heavy pursuit!

Anyway, Morganthe's plot so far has been to raid the Pyramid of the Black Sun. Yup, Morganthe got all grungy and Soundgarden Black Hole Sun on us. Why? I think I know why . . . but let's just say there are a lot of undead running around in Azteca!

But it hasn't been all darkness, doom and dispair. The world itself is very lush and we also ran into this trickster, who totally made us take a bath to wash off the grunge we've had on us since Firecat Alley.

PRETTY!

OH! And I ran into another bug . . . that I'm sure is fixed on the test realm . . . so I'll be completing that quest to defeat Skurkis Screaming Moon all over again probably this afternoon. Not a big deal as the conversations I have with Uber Wife while we play are top notch! Example:

OF OTHER NEWS! Yes, the 12 Days of The Spiral are again in full swing, and I hope everyone is enjoying all the coolness around that! :)

What did you guys think about the Yuletide Pack? I ended up with a couple cool pets (not the lump of coal pet mind you) and some great holiday housing decorations. Anybody get the Treant mount? I'm hungry for that. :)

That's all the time I've got for today!

Happy dueling!

Metzi Burning Water vs The Friendlies

Remember that whole, A PLAN! post back a couple posts? Yeah, SO . . . uber wife and I finally get some time to play together over my lunch break last week, and a lunch break apparently equals like four fights and two quests. :)

As we were playing she says to me, "want me to take screenshots?" I'm thinking, "YES, DEFINITELY!" I mean, I gotta talk about the awesome Azteca while I'm playing through it, right?

Come to find out, she took a total of two screenshots.

1- My damage

2- Her damage

LOL! Uber wife's super crit gear spec'd Storm Wizzie is a thing of beauty. I think I've figured out my job here . . . buff her character and ride the wave of Tempest every few rounds. ;)

We again played yesterday during my lunch break at work and this time we did a short little instance where you run up against Metzi Burning Water, which is a Rank 12 Storm Boss with a good amount of health. We again had no difficulty downing this boss, but we ran into a bug that makes it so only one player gets credit for completing the instance. I hadn't heard of this, and I turned to my co-worker Professor Greyrose and was like, "ugh, bug." She looked back at me and said, "um, it's fixed on Test Realm!" LOL. That seems to be the standard answer for those Community Manager types. ;) Definitely karma.

So, I'll be completing this instance again. No worries, with Bailey by my side, things are defeated quickly and the company is great!

Storm wizzies ftw!

Happy Dueling!

A plan!

So uber wife and I have been on a hiatus from Wizard101 play for a while. I've been playing a lot of Diablo III and Pirate101 (even made a quick pitstop over at Dinostorm now that it's opened its doors), and Uber Wife has been being an uber wife. Nanamancer is staying with us here in Texas over the holidays, and let's just say that's kind of prohibitive to playing Wizard101.

Anyway! We now have . . . A PLAN! Plans are good. The plan was to get started in Azteca together, so this morning I spent a little time playing and catching up to where her character is, which isn't very far in, but it was still a bit farther than where I had left off.

She let me in on a little secret that you have to finish the first quest against these three-horned crazies before the Zeke quest opened up for you. So, that's what I did this morning.

I have my PvP deck loaded, and I'm noticing that it's not a bad deck for Azteca. These mobs don't seem like easy farming whatsoever. The first rounds are spent much like you would in a PvP match, i.e., defensively.

I'm used to playing this way anyway since Angus has forced me into that mode from day one. But these Crazed Thunder Horns are casting as many as four damage spells in a row out of the gate. Without some good resists, I could see how soloing Azteca could be a bit painful if you're not ready for it. There's at least one thread that debates it. From reading that thread it sounds like Alto Alto is going to be a blast! I'm not one to look away from a challenge. and with Uber Wife by my side, it's sure to be an awesome time!

Looks like Zeke will be having us hunting down UFO's this time. Perhaps this comet is just Too Hot to Handle, so they've shown up.



(Yeesh . . . I don't know about hot, but he certainly looks too sweaty to handle.)

Happy Dueling

Woo! Check-a this out! It's Azteca!

Give a shout!

There I am . . . running in my new weirdness over to talk to Cyrus Drake! HAHA! I'm all decked out and ready to hit the dueling circles with a crazy eyecarumba pet and the new Keeper's Lore Pack outfit and staff. If I'm hitting Azteca, I'm going with style. I'm so tired of wearing my Waterworks gear, stitched or not. I don't even care if the stats on the new gear don't have *exactly* what I need. I'm going in pure crazy!

Besides, that outfit looks really color coordinated with my flying carpet mount, no? yes!

Style points.

And with that short trip to Marleybone and a visit to Edward Halley's house to play bug exterminator . . .

. . . I'm in Azteca on the live realm! WOO HOO!

Caroline wanted to do a little bit of Azteca together (random strangers ftw), but I gotta be honest. My heart right now is over in Mooshu in Pirate101. I'm not quite done going through Pirate101 with my first character, so that's really where my focus is right now. Don't worry though, I'll be sure to report my Azteca journey here and see what insights I can provide where I can.

I just wanted to make sure you knew Azteca was live and that I will definitely be talking about it here on TFN!

Thanks all!

Happy dueling!