Game Report: Rowan and Isaiah Level 48 spell quest and GM Artisan on Thomas!

Uber wife and I decided last night to *finally* finish that lingering spell quest for Isaiah and Rowan.


So? Do you know the answer to Cyrus's question? Hmmm?

You Myth wizards do, right?

It's something to lure the Orthrus out to say hello, and that something happens to be the bone of a two-headed cat. Unfortunately you never get to see the two-headed cat though as Dworgyn just hands it over to you. I kind of wanted to fight a two-headed cat for that bone! :-) Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, and I was begging to get that quest DONE.

Anyway, since Rowan and I were simultaneously completing this quest, we got to see something even more rare than an Orthrus visitation. Behold the four-headed dog of awesomeness!


That's a lot of teeth to brush and noses to blow right there.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earlier in the night, Thomas finally decided to clear out that lingering GM Artisan quest from his quest log and crafted the seal of the seven seas.


You get a lot of gold for finishing that quest, but, um, well it wasn't nearly enough to cover the costs of sniping golden pearls in the bazaar. :)

I had missed that you could buy the Treant Polymorph cards from the Archivist, so I gotta give it up to Cassandra Griffindreamer for letting me know that you can buy them there. That saved a lot of time! No need to craft or even snipe those at all, just buy them from the Archivist. Yup!


WOOT, sporting the new GM Artisan badge with Cass, who looks strangly like an eagle wearing half of a wizard cap in this picture I might add.

Happy Dueling!

Did it!

WHEW!

Last night we took the myth/death team to Malistaire's Lair! WOOT!




We barely made it about an hour before the servers went down last night. We were there to see the end of the world as we know it:



Pretty soon we'll have 10 grandmasters (The myth/death team is only level 48 or 49 right now). Wait, scratch that. Pretty soon we'll have 10 legendaries!

p.s. The servers are still down right now for me, but you should go check to see if they're up though!

CELESTIAAAAa, YEAH! word.

I think I'll have some pizza while I'm waiting:



WHIPCREAM POURING LIKE WATERFALLS!

Happy Dueling!

Isaiah, Rowan, and Moira Enter Dragonspyre!

This is our latest team we've been pulling through the game:


Those darn meddling kids there foiled the Jade Oni, patched up old Emperor Yoshi, and smiled big for the camera. Hai.

The next big fight is Cyrus's throwdown, which is kind of like a Bobby Flay throwdown, only without as many calories and significantly less hair on the star of the show.

We all ran in to the Myth Tower at the same time and managed to get in the same fight together. YAY. IT WORKED! They each got a chance to toss a spell or two at old baldy as well. Rowan kicked us off with an attack from her fatezilla pet.


Next, Moira had a wraith up her sleeve.


In the last round, Rowan used a prismed baldy vs. baldy attack . . .


. . . and Isaiah threw down a prismed ninja pig treasure:


Needless to say, he didn't stand a chance with his paltry 5,000 hitpoints.

The kids all entered the spiral door either level 42 or 43, and we're all set for a final stroll through reddish brown world . . . I mean Dragonspyre.

I'm thinking we may actually finish this thing off before Celestia hits the live servers! WOOT!

Happy Dueling!

Awesome Weekend + Rowan, Isaiah, and Moira enter Moo Shu!

You know, there's a certain ritual that happens around the office after a long weekend like this one. People will come into my office and eventually they'll ask the famous question, "So what did you do over the weekend?" They're mostly asking, not because they're curious as to how your weekend went, but because what they really want to do is blabber on about how awesome THEIR weekend was when I return the question. *smirk* Nah, they're good peeps for the most part. *hugs coworkers*

Anyway, as a gamer working with a majority of non-gamers it would be so foreign for me to tell "the full" truth. Here's how that conversation will probably go down:

"Oh yeah, well I got the lawn mowed, which it really needed, and I watched the kids on Friday while my wife worked. mm hmmm. Went to church. Got some awesome Mexican food. Made some killer Fish Tacos. You know, just kind of a regular weekend. Played some games. et cetera."

When in reality to another gamer, I would probably say something more like this:

"OH, yeah I totally hit 20th level in Free Realms on my Brawler and got my epic weapon, THE RUMBLER! IT'S AWESOME! AND, I hit 19th level in the EQ2 Extended Beta with my supa sweet Sorcerer character. Saturday night I finished off a good chunk of Final Fantasy 13 . . . I'm in Chapter 11 so I think I'm getting closer to the end (it's taken HOURS upon HOURS to get to this point). Sunday night my static group WASTED the Cerulean Hills in Dungeons and Dragons Online. The best part was this whole time my son kept dragging me off to Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 to help him out, and he ended up beating SMG1 for a second time! That kid is INSANELY AWESOME! And last but not least, my wife and I took three characters out of Marleybone and into Mooshu in Wizard101! WOOTSHU!"

I don't know. Maybe I'll try the second version with the office people this week and see how it goes over. ;-)

So, YES, this is the real meat of my message here, not office talk.

WE MADE IT TO MOOSHU Y'ALL!



That there is the crew that took Meowiarty down last night. Destiny Mistshard came to help us out with the win (check out that hybrid she's sporting . . . that's a baby from Mister Brandy right there *tear*). It was a good time for sure!

Many of you may not be familiar with Moira in that picture. My wife decided to give the death school a shot and started leveling Moira on the side to catch up with Rowan and Isaiah, our myth wizards. She did it, and now we have three characters steadily moving toward end game in preparation of Celestia. I don't know if we'll get these characters to 50th by the time Celestia is released, but we're trying!

If we're successful that will make a "grand total" of 10 Grandmaster wizards between all of our accounts. WOOTS! (1 ice, fire, storm, and balance wizard. 2 life, 2 myth, and 2 death wizards.)

I love this game.

Anyway, I hope you're having an equally awesome weekend out there! So what did YOU do this weekend, my gamer buddy readers?!

Happy Dueling!

Where does the Friendly Necromancer hang out?

Adam Thunderstaff has a question!

In wizard101 where do you hang out? I would like to meet you.

Dear people of the earth and spiral (and Adam Thunderstaff): I do think you all are the greatest, but most of my time when I'm hanging out on my wizards, I'm trying to avoid spam. I know that may sound mean, but when I log on Thomas, it's not really a quiet experience. I like being able to quietly play side by side with my wife or kids and not get spammed with invitations, offers, demands, and questions. It's the price of fame as my friend Alric puts it. It can be really overwhelming.

There are lots of people that want to meet me and be put on my friend's list. This means that I have to remove someone else to put you on, and it's getting harder and harder to do that.

The best time to catch me is when you see a planned event like the Ravenwood Radio after parties. I've never held a party on my own, but one of these days I may have to do that so I can meet you all. I have hopes that they will extend my friends list someday so that the spam can completely wash over Thomas Lionblood by all that play Wizard101, but until that day . . . my apologies if you find yourself on my friend's list one day and gone the next. Stuff like that happens when you're Thomas Lionblood.

BUT, to answer your question: I like to hang out in the Raven$$ farming money in Grizzleheim probably most of all. Sometimes I'll just randomly port around to friends, barging in on them like no one's business. word. *Z-snap. Or I'll be in the pet pavilion working up a pet. Other than that, I'll be working on my recent alt's quests, WHICH I am proud to announce are now in Marleybone! WOOT!

That's right, last night the Rowan and Isaiah myth team put Krokopatra to rest.


And by doing so earned the Hero of Krokotopia badge:


So, keep your eyes peeled. You may see Rowan and Isaiah wandering the Digmoore Station zones here soon.

Happy Dueling!

What's going on in Friendy's World?

It's time for a quick catch up on what The Friendly Necromancer and family have been up to in game.

The big news for us is that Myrna and Iridian finished Dragonspyre!


You'll notice in that picture that Myrna is showing her Master of Ice badge instead of her GM badge, that's because she wasn't a GM . . . kind of makes sense doesn't it? And, wait, Iridian *is* a GM?! What the heck? Now my wife is uber times two-ber! That's right, she's got herself a second GM. BOOM!

What, Friendly? What are you doing? Your wife has two GM's and you only have one? Well fear not! Shortly after beating Malistaire, I cleaned up a few sidequests, and now I have my second GM!!! (You know, aside from Kyle and Amber who I basically leveled . . . but my wife maintains that those are the kids' characters and therefore she had two GM's before me . . . lol. Kids, a short lesson in the politics of marriage, the woman is always right.)


You better believe I'm saving up some training points for Celestia . . .

Anyway, Uber Wife also has been working a bit on her crafting with Iridian and Bailey. She has her sights set on that new Grizzleheim crafted house. Watch out world!


And she's been spelunking through Grizzleheim as well! Iridian has finished Grizzleheim (shout out to Blaze Mistshard), and Bailey is right behind her.


I think I have a picture of Thomas by that cool Grizzleheim monument as well. Definitely a photo moment in Grizzleheim.

And that's really all we've been up to aside from hanging out in the test realm doing the new stuff.

I think I need to finish leveling my other Life Wizard, Molly, so I can say I have three GMs. She's kind of stalled at level 48 right now. HA! Then I could say, TAKE THAT UBER WIFE!

So what's up for the husband and wife team now that we've beat Dragonspyre a couple of times? We're going to level a couple of Myth wizards that we have tucked away: Isaiah Taleslinger and Rowan Ravenshard!


They're both in their low 20's and hanging out in the second area of Krokotopia at the moment.

Here we go again!

Happy Dueling!

A whole lot of Krokotopia

As of this morning, I now have three sets of players playing in Krokotopia.

First up we have the forgotten duo of wonder, The Evil Twin and Isiah Taleslinger. (both my characters)


Next is the new duo of wonder, Molly Earthsong and Bailey Skystaff. (My character and my wife's character)


And finally are the newcomers on the scene, Myrna Lionblood and Iridian Legend. (My daughter's character and my wife's character)


hmmm, who will be the first to venture forth out of Krokotopia?

Happy Dueling!

Housing Item of the Day--Stack of Two Books

Ever wonder what furniture item you get for completing the library dues book quest? Yup, I wondered that too, so I took Isaiah and The Evil Twin on a journey back to Wizard City to find out.



After defeating the six or so bosses in Wizard City all over again, I discovered that I get a small stack. Not a small stack of pancakes as I was hoping for. (I need to stop writing these posts early in the morning before I've eaten.) But a stack of two books. Isaiah planted these on his desk in his dorm room.



Happy Dueling!

Housing Item of the Day--Scroll

As you hopefully know, Isaiah and The Evil Twin are working their way through krokotopia, which means more "side quests" that are quickly becoming known (in my mind at least) as "furniture quests."

Today's quest was to reveal the history of the manders by tracking down a book containing all those hidden pieces of history for people like Zan'ne here.



WHOA LOOK AT THOSE REWARDS FILLING THE SCREEN!



I never ever get tired of seeing that. :-) It's like dipping your hand into a co-worker's candyjar right after you give them some work to do. BOOM!

Isaiah dropped his scroll on the ground since he has no desk to place it on in his dorm room and it's true purpose was born.



GOOD BOY DUKE ANGEL! GOOD BOY! If only I had two of those, so there would be one for each head. hmmmm.

Happy Dueling!

Housing Item of the Day--Purple Painted Column

As The Evil Twin and Isiah Taleslinger progress through krokotopia, I'm getting to see more items that are rewarded from those quests and bosses.

This column dropped from the Nirini Champion in the Chamber of fire.



And, yes, I feel all the elegance of the King of France as it is displayed proudly in Isaiah's room.



MORE COLUMNS! Like this one and that one and this one.

Happy Dueling!

What's up this morning? and the crucial lore text!

Hi!

What's up? How's everyone doing? Are you all happy?

Go ahead, leave a note and let me know what's up.

me? me you ask?

Well, lessee here. This morning I cleared the royal hall with Isiah Taleslinger and The Evil Twin. That went fairly quickly. If I remember right there's a few things that will eventually lead me back there.

Biti Nirini fell quite quickly
the hammer crack made him tipsy
turned to sand and faded drippy
I write the poem 'cause I'm a hippy



OH! Man, before I forget . . . THEE single most important quest text for lore flashed across my screen this morning. Seriously. This ties together all the pieces here in the early game and is a huge link in the story. If you blink, you'll miss it. In fact, I missed it the other three times I've gone through here because I was clicking too fast.



This paragraph is NOT to be missed. It covers the Order of the Fang and the Kroknomicon in one breath. THIS IS HUGE! THIS IS AMAZING! One paragraph that tells SO MUCH! I'm going to now quote that entire line of text because I think it will answer a multitude of google searches . . . ahem . . . here we go:

"My Word! The Order of the Fang was a secret group of Krok Wizards who wrote a book of rituals called the Kroknomicon: The most powerful source of knowledge about Life and Death magic! The Kroknomicon cannot fall to Malistaire."

HUGE! GIANT! This is the story of Wizard 101 right here. This has everything in it in one fell swoop. This ties what was unfolding in Wizard City to both what happens in Krokotopia and what you pursue in Marleybone. This also sets you up for the end game story of Mooshu and Dragonspyre.

That's it, right there. DON'T BLINK!

Cripes.

Happy Dueling!

The Dream Team is on to Krokotopia! (and pet show)

Earlier this morning, The Evil Twin and Isiah Taleslinger brought Wizard City to a close and earned their Wizard City Protector badge by defeating Lord Nightshade. Merle was both overjoyed and deeply disturbed . . . as he was the two other times I finished this part of the game.



I was just as overjoyed as I always am to put this part of the game behind me. This time through it has just been fun. There's nothing like waiting for the seventh pip to cast an orthrus from a low level myth caster like Isiah to one hit Lord Nightshade.



OH, btw . . . speaking of pets, I don't think I've introduced you all to Kyle Skystaff's new friend. I traded in Kyle's Orthrus for this fine fella since orthrus is now a myth only pet. Kingsisle rocked the trade for me. THANKS PROFESSOR GREYROSE!



BAHHHHHHH! (Kyle says, "come on baby baxter, let's go nuke some stuff")

The New Dream Team is Getting Together!

I've talked about The Evil Twin and Isiah Taleslinger before, but I just wanted to update you on their progress. Wizard City happens so fast and with such ferocity that it's hard to keep a good pace when two-boxing until you hit Firecat alley where the kill 6 quests start to really manifest. At that point it becomes a huge benefit to be killing in a group of two or more to speed things up.



It also helps The Evil Twin out a lot since most of the boss mobs in Wizard City appear to have their resistances to death magic boosted from the last time I ventured through. But, on a little guy like Alicane Swiftarrow, death magic still rocks the house.



Isiah and The Evil Twin are just about ready to hit Lord Nightshade and progress on to Krokotopia. I think I may skip Colossus Boulevard this time around and come back to it later.

btw, side note, I am playing these two on the live realm, but I've noticed on the test realm that they've boosted the speed on the casting animation of a lot of spells. Anyone else noticed that? The life imp spell is definitely a lot faster.

Happy Dueling!

How ya' like me now?

. . . goin' on, feelin' strong . . .

(sorry, couldn't help myself from making a Beck reference)



So yeah, Isiah is looking pretty awesome right about now. Gone is the skittles look, and here is the look of him sporting a dragonspyre helm and the Amaranthine Staff (both of which I passed to him through the shared bank). Now that's some twinking! (you may have to use the gamer slang dictionary to understand that term if you don't know it)

Next up will be moving the evil twin through a few Wizard City quests so I can get both Isiah and the evil twin on the same page for krokotopia.

Happy Dueling

Isiah, tasting the rainbow

Isiah, the now 10th level myth wizard, is hitting the runway here in Firecat Alley with his brand new ensemble entitled "Taste the Rainbow."



Isiah swears he is not color blind, but instead, colorific. The subtle color tie-in for this attire is a dark blue undercoat; however, that is the extent of it. The yellow clashing against the purple and dashing against the orange wizard shoes with white knee length tube socks (or are those tights? /gasp!).



Isiah definitely captured the color essence of his name sake and, once again, making the old new again.

Ah! Love.

So I had Isiah Taleslinger out yesterday doing quests. I think my plan here is to get The Evil Twin and Isiah up to Krokotopia solo and then really start grouping them up. The second laptop has been getting a lot of use from my daughter lately. She's been frequenting a website known as Cartoon Doll Emporium. (Warning young males. Do not let your mothers and fathers see you on this website. Be careful. You don't want to give them a heartattack. Be kind.)

So I'm quite alarmed by one particular game over there.



You see, you basically laser boys with your eyes to get them to follow you around like a love ghost. My daughter is particularly fond of this game.

Anyway, I stop contemplating what this website is saying to my daughter about love and brush it off because I've got some solo questing to do! I start running Isiah around and find this great shot of Bartleby in the midst of a quest. Who knew the question mark was in his eye socket? crazy stuff. There's just one slight problem. (see arrow)



LOVE STRIKES AGAIN! Jeremy Dragonrider apparently has no date and needs one. MAN! I can't escape this love thing! Well, I'm not ready for that kind of commitment, and I don't think he's asking me on a date anyway.

So I run Isiah over to Triton Ave to clean up some quests. I get about five done when all of a sudden in the midst of slaying a banshee, this happens:



Poor Wolf. I feel bad for him. I felt like saying, well at least Wolf has a crush; Jeremy Dragonrider is still back on the dating circuit. Poor Wolf.

So, spring is in the air I think. I have a lot of words on love that would probably bore the pants off you . . . and since we want you to keep your pants on, I shall not bore you with my love theories. (Even though you haven't really lived until you've sat through me expounding on the color wheel of love. ahem.) We'll save it for a wintery day when it's too cold and you must keep your pants on or freeze to death. yes. That sounds good.

Happy Dueling!

What's next?

Well, it's time to reflect on what's been going on lately. I have a few insights and I feel like gabbing, so I hope this ends up coherent. I'm sure it will.

So Thomas Lionblood (version 1) is now wrapping up all those little lingering things that he didn't finish on the way to defeating Malistaire. There was a matter of killing 15 undead draconians--a little quest that he had left unfinished--and he still needs to find all his stone roses. These will go quickly. If I devoted some time to it today, it'd be all done for sure, leaving him with two last training points to spend. As far as secondary schools, Thomas (version 1) went all the way up the Myth tree and snagged earthquake. Then Thomas started working the balance side and ended up getting his blade and his trap and if I spend the last two points in balance, I will end up getting the sandstorm AOE, which is kind of what I wanted. I always thought it would be cool to end up with Earthquake, Humongofrog, and Sandstorm for AOEs, and that may end up happening. On the other hand, I'm tempted to buy the myth spell that trades your minion for 4 pips. To make it effective, I'd probably have to only use it when the pet was either in certain doom or when I had cast the lowest level dark sprite pet. It seems like a lot of positioning and bargaining to get that card played. /shrug

Now you may be wondering why I keep saying "version 1" after Thomas Lionblood. Yup, there's a version 2 . . . hereafter Thomas Lionblood version 2 will only be known as "The Evil Twin" or "the non-friendly necromancer." mUHAHAHAHAa! *ahem* sorry about that. Here's a great picture of the level 10 necromancer and (now introducing) Isiah Taleslinger . . . a level 7 or so myth caster who is actually sporting an Orthrus pet. AN ORTHRUS PET? What the? Yeah, I thought it would be ultra-cool to have one of these bad boys, so I actually went out of my comfort zone (it was pretty brazen of me to ask for this) and asked Kingsisle for one. haha! Guess what . . . they gave me two of them (one on my son's character and one on Isiah here) and said thanks for all the blogging, how cool is that? Thank you, Kingsisle. It's actually kind of embarrassing to have this pet out because I ALWAYS GET STOPPED and people comment on the pet. What did I expect, eh? It is a freaking cool pet. I think I will probably keep it stashed a lot until I hit the bosses of Krokotopia.



So you all may be seeing Isiah and Thomas (version 2) running around the spiral in the near future and hear me talking about them here.

Also, Amber Deathsong and Kyle Skystaff . . . what's up with them? Amber and Kyle are going to be making a comeback here soon. I've discovered that when my kids play the game they prefer to run around goofing off in Wizard City (making new characters to do the easy quests) more than they like to go do actual quests for progression. They probably are just a touch too young for this game to be honest. My kids have also been really into the game, Spore (I have to admit, it's a fun game) and it's the same there . . . they like playing with the ameoba state more than anything.

So I will most likely be taking up the reins again for Amber and Kyle and will be finishing moo shu, if not dragonspyre, with them so my kids can have unrestricted access with all the power that are level 50 characters. I still have a bunch of "video journals" that are just waiting to be filmed for these two kids. Kyle has been faithfully helping Thomas Lionblood (version 1) kill stuff in Dragonspyre. (It's so nice to have some DPS on that second account.)

So that's all the news that's fit to print on this end. I'm continuing to play Wizard 101, and there's plenty to do here. I'm still thinking about what I could do for event ideas for my more faithful readers. Stay tuned and . . .

Happy Dueling!