Infusion Illusion Profusion Confusion -- Real Life Update 10/15/25

Hey Team Tom!

It's been a few weeks, so it's time for another update.

~~

Uno: My CT scan from last week showed continued improvement -- more tumor shrinkage and less inflammation! I've actually managed to go off of hydrocodone. I can finally sleep on my side again. It's so nice. You don't know the value of your favorite sleeping position until you've lost it.

When last we left me, I had rounded out four carboplatin and pemetrexed chemo infusions, and apparently . . . that's it for me. I asked the doctor for more chemo and he said no. The most infusions they'll ever run is six, and the survival stats past four aren't good? It's confusing, but I trust the oncologist. Now I'm simply running immunotherapy every three weeks.

That all said, man, it was so nice not to be poisoned this past Friday. This chemo does some really wild stuff to me mentally. After the fourth dose, I wrote this note down when I was in the throes of it, "There's a weird side effect to this chemo -- it's like having a quasi-hallucination, but more like a kind of a vivid, strange imagination. Just now I was able to clearly picture a girl with fiercely intense blue eyes that looked almost bird like. It's like a vividness to my dreams while I'm awake (or half awake). There's a tingle to the world as you sit here slowly dying. Shutting down. Not caring. Hard to explain. Listlessness. That's what this chemo does to you."

Now that I'm on immunotherapy only, it feels super easy in comparison. Sure, I was a little tired right afterwards, and my arms and scalp are dry and itchy, but that's nothing in comparison to how dark life got on days three-through-six after a carboplatin and pemetrexed infusion.

Apparently if my next CT scan shows even MORE improvement, then they might even consider moving me to a "stable disease" status, which is where they would cut down the amount of office visits and scans. I have to say that feels very weird, and I'm not sure I like it. While the doctor would be happy with "stable," I want "cured." I guess when you have Stage 4 cancer, you get what you get and just be happy you're not dead, dummy.

I'm hoping I'm lucky and immunotherapy doesn't turn on me, and it does the trick. As ChatGPT put it to me, chemo was running a bulldozer through my body, and now immunotherapy is like putting the guard dogs out to attack cancer.

Everyone please keep sending those vibes my way. I don't care if they're prayers, meditations, or even spoken to the universe in your goofiest Count Chocula voice. You send it -- I'll take it. I VaNt YoU tO vE cUrEd, ViStEr PURDOOOO.

Me and Kyle hanging out with Nanamancer

Dos: As you are well aware, the government has shut down. I am a contractor for the Air Force along with a good chunk of our crew at the company I work for. Unfortunately, that means I am furloughed without pay or even the promise of back pay. Government contractors get the worst of deals when this stuff happens.

Currently I'm burning my own PTO (and someone's generous gift of PTO hours -- THANK YOU) to get me through the past two weeks. It's a forced vacation. The biggest problem with that is that I'm a stupid cancer patient as well. If a CT scan comes up on a random day of the week when we all go back to work, I can't just, uh, not go because I don't have the PTO hours.

By the end of this all, things will be tight for a bit unless I can get some more gifted PTO. The people I work with are amazing, so my chances are pretty good! I also hear unemployment pay is an option if I run out of PTO, and thankfully I have family to fall back onto if it gets really rough.

FIGURE IT OUT, GOVERNMENT PEOPLE!

~~

Tres: I've been writing some music here and there on my forced vacation. I actually wrote the title track for Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck. It's sounding great! A little weird, but that's my style anyway. It's like Muse meets Arctic Monkeys meets Dave Matthew's Band meets my style? I don't know. It's my cancer story in a nutshell though.

. . . also worked on some weird, experimental sound stuff that mixes an MRI with the sounds of the ocean since that's what I chose to listen to while I had my brain scan.

. . .also worked on an acoustic cover of an old song of mine from 1993 with my music therapist. She's pretty cool. I like what she did with the song structure to change it from my xylophone and muted distant trumpets thing to a folksy blues song.

. . . also playing a lot of Dune Awakening with Dylan. My friend Dylan is great by the way. He took me to lunch the other day, and I took him to see Tron Ares -- fun show! I liked it!

FREE MAZE! I'll have to do a blog post about that

Quatro: I've been living the single dad life over here with the Uber Wife training in Vegas . . . only Nana is here as well. So what would that be like? Single dad life but I also get to live with my mother-in-law at the same time? There's a sitcom in there somewhere. Nana has cleaned our kitchen, our fridge, our sink, our dishes, our kitchen floors, and done a bunch of other busy work . . . um, the laundry. If you're one of her friends from around here, she'd probably love to hear from you. I imagine hanging out with old friends would be WAY more fun than cleaning our house. She's great though! Happy to be here.

Uber Wife has been having a lot of fun in Vegas on the weekends! She's been sending along fantastic pictures. We'll get out there together one of these days soon. (So jealous she's been to the Sphere and to Omega Mart -- glad she got to have some fun over her birthday.)

We're Meow Wolf fans around here.

Diapermancer (now 16) is still rocking the mellophone in marching band. They've got a pretty cool show this year, and he's doing a great job. I'm proud of that dude. The whole band has put in a crazy number of hours practicing this year.

Amber Deathsong is consumed with work and school. They miss their spouse horribly.

Kyle Skystaff twisted his ankle and hasn't been working much. He's on the mend though. I'm sure he'll be working again soon.

So, there you have it. I'm on forced vacation from Government Shutdown. I'm no longer chemo poisoned. CT scans are doing pretty good. I'm writing some music and doing my thing. Everybody is busy with real life but me and Kyle!

Thanks for reading and keep being awesome, Team Tom!

Happy Dueling!

Catching up with Althea and Company

I don't know if you caught my small blog post fest last year about Dungeons and Dragons, but I tried to start up a new blog about it, and it kinda died: Althea and Company.

Writing out our adventures to that level of detail and trying to remember everything that happened (and finding the time and passion to do it), was a bit ambitious.  Anyway, we continue to run through our adventures, and I actually started hosting my own game with the same "Althea and Company" crew -- only this time Jeff Toney is the player, and I'm the DM . . . AND . . . Uber wife is also playing with us. yay!

Instead of working through an official Wizards of the Coast production like the Lost Mine of Phandelver, I'm using a lot of one-shot dungeons strung together with narrative. The first two we've run were Giantslayer and King of the Cats by MT Black. Both were excellent, and I think everyone had a great time . . . they slayed the giant and they rescued the King of the Cats. yay!

So next I have my group set to do one of two things. Either they will take on another MT Black one-shot, Wizard in a Bottle, or they will head down an adventure of my very own make. I'm interested in seeing which they take on and how they do. I definitely don't want to kill my friends and family in a dungeon, and I know I typically build things too difficult, but this is a party of five I'm dealing with here, and they actually have the potential to really dish out the damage . . . or really have a bad day with bad dice rolls . . . or, as we found out last week, get completely distracted and not hear that the bad guy just cast the shield spell and start using magic missile.

The Giant adventure was fun, but the only thing that gave them any real challenge were giant crabs. Oh man they struggled on that one.

The King of Cats final battle was pretty fun, and I think I scared 'em a bit when they discovered their weapons were pretty ineffective vs. a wererat, which you need silver weapons or spells to fight.  They were never really intended to fight the wererat anyway. I may have to bring her back at sometime to torment the party, so they can finish her off (especially if they spend the 100 gold it takes to silver their weapons).

Anyway, instead of scribbled notes for my dungeon, I've been typing it out like it's a one-shot, and if all goes well with the group, and they survive the adventure and have fun with it, I may actually try to publish it on a site like Dungeon Masters Guild and see what happens!

I'm not going to type much about my adventure I have planned for them just yet in case one of 'em stumbles upon this blog post, but . . . it's got a couple nasty surprises waiting for them.

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust Day 18 -- Free scary demons vs. MOBA noobs

I'm a sucker for free stuff, especially when it's free nerdy stuff. I'm the type of person that used to go to conventions with my mom and run around with a bag collecting all the free pencils, pens, erasers, key chains, and "convention swag" as they call it. This carried over into real life . . . anytime I go to a convention, the real goal is to get as much loot as possible.

. . . perhaps that's why the very mention of "free" is enough to get me to try something out. I like to think it's a weakness I share with many people. SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE POOR PEEPS WHO WANT FREE STUFF!

And that's why the announcement about getting a free Lord of Terror, Diablo Hero, in Heroes of the Storm has convinced me to at least download the game.  . . . and I usually avoid MOBAs like the plague!

I'm possibly the worst MOBA player in all of history, but free is FREE!

So here's the deal . . . the Uber Wife plays a lot of DOTA 2 (follow that link to DOTA 2 and tell me you aren't blown away by the $18 million prize pool for the International Championships). She has an online buddy that convinced her to download it a long time ago . . . she also claims to be the worst MOBA player of all history, but she actually LIKES that kind of punishment. (Truth be known she plays a pretty mean Jakiro.)

Shhhh, so my plan!

I'm gonna throw down the gauntlet and see if my wife will join me in a few matches of Heroes of the Storm!! Maybe our powers of Noobness will combine and create the perfect noob storm in Heroes of the Storm! Amirite?

Happy Dueling!

~~

This post is part of the Blaugust challenge -- Thanks to Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut for hosting. 

Soloing Belloq in Zafaria as a Fire Wizard?

Colin asks, "What's the best way to solo Beloq Zafaria as a fire?"

Well, I decided to try it out for you tonight using Uber Wife's character.  Granted she's Level 90ish, but this was the deck I used, which was full of many non-90ish level spells.  In fact, the whole thing was link, sun magic enchants, tower shield, heckhound, fire minion, satyr, pixie, and fire elf spamming.

She's also wearing a pet that casts fire blades and uses Spritely and I think is still sporting Waterworks gear.

I took out Belloq first . . .

. . . and then his minion.

. . . ze readers may have some additional insights in the comments below!

Happy Dueling

Doing the Aquila -- RAFFLE!

Doing the wah wah Aquila. Doing the wah wah Aquila.

Seeing that my quest arrow was pointing me toward's Zeus's demise, I snagged one Bailey Skystaff to come help me out. Neither of us had played through Aquila, and it was HIGH TIME, my friends, to conquer Aquila . . . and we did!

ZEUS!

POSEIDON!

Yeah, the first two dungeons didn't provide much of a challenge for us, but I imagine conquering those at the level they are designed for would be quite an accomplishment!

Loved this statue for sure though, right?!

I was going to post more here about my thoughts, but, again, I'm behind the curve on Wizard101 blogging, so I had an idea.

I've created a raffle.

First rule, Only enter once per household -- I will delete entries that are duplicate IP addresses.

Second rule, do not enter this raffle if you're under 13--let mom and dad enter for you.

Third rule, you must use the Rafflecopter app below to enter, and you must leave me a comment in this blog post with a hint, tip, or link to some helpful Aquila information.

Prizes? I don't know, not everyone will win, but I have some spare stuff here that I've never given away, and I may have a surprise gift or two, plus I have a number of Galvanic Hammers to give away!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Thanks! I can't wait to see all the advice you have to share.

Happy Dueling!

Nosferabbit . . . it's spookies!

Hallowe'en is a big deal in Wizard101. It was their first and only really big holiday content season. Sure, there's vendors and fun stuff for the other holidays, but when Halloween hits, there's towers, and quests, and decorations a plenty! It's fun, but after the hour or two of fun is finished, you were kind of like . . . yeah, I've done this before. yawn. next! However, that feeling coupled with all the in game legends about "what's behind the door next to the storm drain tower", and there's just a lot of awesomeness about this new holiday update for Wizard101!

Mmm hmm! It's a simple quest (at least for level 90 characters) that's cute and short, but it's awesome and a lot of fun too.

Sorry Professor Diapermancer, it took a few years, but now your answer to Bailey Firesword's question is incorrect.



It was Bailey's Skystaff's birthday yesterday, and (for a little bit of fun) we decided to give this new content a run through.

Dworgyn gave us the skinny.

Eek! Sure enough there was a sigil right there in front of the doorway that had been abandoned for so long.

Who knew it would be fortune seeking moles to break in there first and awaken the thirst of Nosferabbit and his undead veggies. After we entered, I ran ahead to check things out.

Bailey calmed my fears *cough* and in the end, we were just a couple meteor strikes and a Deer Knight away from Defeating Nosferabbit and getting to the real prize of this instance! Cheep Bird transformations and a Frankenbunny pet!

I think the Wizard101 team did a great job on this quest, and it was a lot of fun to play through with Uber Wife on her birthday.

We tried to run through Aquila as well, but we ran out of time before we needed to pick up "Professor Diapermancer" from school. :) I'll just save any discussion of Aquila for later.

Happy dueling!

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

Happy Dueling Hour 3 is Live!

Heya all! Uber Wife and I have once again produced a podcast of our own designs. :) Happy Dueling Hour 3 is now up and available for your consumption. You can go check that out by clicking here.

Also note that we are giving away a free Shen Long Dragon pet as a part of that podcast. Be sure to read through the show notes to see how to enter for a chance to win a free dragon buddy of your own. :)

If you've got an hour and a half during your day sometime where you wouldn't mind having us ramble away about gaming in the background, please check it out, and I hope that you enjoy it. We certainly have a lot of fun putting it together. :)

Happy dueling!

PvP Scoreboards!

I can't take credit for this idea at all, but I have to say, I wish I could. So the other day Uber Wife was hanging out in the pvp ring and she leans over to me and says, "I wish they had a scoreboard so I could see the health of the people fighting." OH MY GOSH YES!

After that she kind of started to flesh out how this thing would work. Basically this wouldn't be anything that the pvp'ers in the thick of the battle would need to see. What this would be is . . . kind of like a jumbo tron when you go to a basketball game, right?


Or perhaps something like a laser tag scoreboard near the pvp ring for all those sitting outside the ring.


It would show the name of the person in the ring and their health, and that's it. You don't need to show off a person's class or any other stats (you know, to avoid people yelling out what classes people are) . . . name and health alone would be just fine.

It's incredibly hard to look down at the ring and try to guage what's happening as it is currently. A quick look at the names and the health would be a huge boost to viewing pvp matches as a bystander. And maybe to make a little money for KI, throw it into the crown shop and allow us to buy them for our houses to put by our PvP rings. /shrug

What do you think?

Happy dueling!

Molly Gets Her Gnome On!

Uber Wife and I have been trying to take a second and third set of wizards through Zafaria. It's always a bit difficult coordinating our schedules.

I got to hand it to Bailey though, she's done the "lionblood's share" of the work preparing her storm wizard and Molly (a mutually claimed life wizard -- it's a long story involving my wife swiping my life character and claiming her as her own hehe) by getting them through both Celestia and Wintertusk.

Last night though, I played Molly and Bailey played Bailey (her storm wizard named Bailey that is) in the big Z! Zafaria! By the end of the night we were finished with the Savannah. Man that's a lot of fire lion people defeating. whew.

We were both psyched when Molly earned her Gnomes spell and was treated to the Gnome visitation in MooShu.


It's too bad these new spell appearances don't stick around longer like the old ones, right? I love to hold my visitations open for as long as possible. :)


So, we now have a gnome caster in the Team Friendly family!

If we could inspire Amber to play her character more, we'd have two gnome casters! ;)

Happy Dueling!

Bailey, Thomas, Kyle, and Iridian finish Zafaria

I was actually going to bring this up on the last Check This Out post, but I forgot to mention it. WHOOPS!

Yup, mark four transcended wizards down for Team Friendly as we finished up Zafaria last Sunday.


There we all are sitting in front of the weird box thingy at the end of Zafaria. Wierd box thingy is awesome.

It took us a while to make our way through the world, simply because Bailey and I wanted to experience Zafaria together. Coordinating our schedules while juggling the three kids and their needs and own wishes to play on the computer can be a tricky thing, but we were lucky enough to get some nice stretches of game time over a few weekends, and the rest is history.

Here's the obligatory Morganthe screenshot. :)


Here's the other obligatory screenshot of team friendly in elephant illusion. :) :)


There were a lot of great moments in Zafaria (like visiting the zoo), but more than that, it was fun chatting with our friends lists while playing through Zafaria and spending some time playing together. That was fun, and thank you all for making it an easy ride for us with all the support.

Next up for us would probably be taking another team through . . . I'll let you know when we plan it all out. It'd be great to play my ice wizard again, and I think Bailey has a Myth wizard burning in her pocket. The lure of the basilisk is strong. :)

In the meantime, Thomas is busy crafting his Spiritcaller Drums. Just one more Conga Drum and a few black pearls, and I'm ready to finish that crafting quest up!

Happy Dueling

Tower of the Helephant: Two Floors of Awesome!

The Tower of the Helephant (ToH) is an interesting place. I had my first experience going there just the other day. Good times! (Mostly because I had good company.) In the end, I'd say ToH is "interesting" because I’m not really sure why the floors between the first floor and the top floor even exist. They're totally filler. Sure, there’s a puzzle in the middle, but it’s not really even difficult . . . you just run to the teleporter that has the cheese next to it. That’s cool, no biggie. Even if by some random chance you don't follow the cheese trail and you fail the maze, the resulting fight isn’t too bad. Six floors isn't going to run you out of mana, so those floors are . . . useless.

All you really need to know to beat The Tower of the Helephant is the right cards to play and the right strat, which has all been provided for you over on Wizard101 Central. That guide was super handy! OH yeah, one more thing . . . time . . . lots of time.

Anyway, in case you can’t or don’t want to follow that link, let me break down the needed cards for you.

1- Accuracy treasure cards. These are a dime a dozen now. Easy to get at the bazaar but you probably already have a backpack full of them . . . it’s not really a “needed” card on this fight, but you might as well throw a couple in your sideboard if you have a bunch just hanging out and use them on your damage spells. Better safe than sorry.

2- Quench. This one is needed. Every three rounds, Taurus the minotaur casts a smoke screen in addition to his regular spells. Keep plenty of Quench debuffs on him, and you’ll never have to worry about what happens if you don’t.

But Friendly, you cry with your choir of angelic blog-reader voices, what happens if we don’t keep said minotaur debuffed? Fine! I'll tell ya. :) Every time you fizzle a spell, this cues our good buddy Ervin the Boar to cast a skeletal dragon on the person that fizzled. Oh yeah, speaking of that . . .

3- Keep Strangle and Dissipate debuffs on Ervin . . . also Storm Shield on your healer (or whoever has agro).

But Friendly, why use a lightning debuff and Storm Shields against a Death mob? OH, well, k, once Taurus the minotaur dies, Ervin the boar casts Leviathan every other round. Have fun with that! (I like saying "the minotaur" and "the boar" after their names btw, could ya tell?).

Anyway, the final floor is even more awesome than the first. It involves a pesky Draconian named Lyon. Lyon the Draconian is almost completely resistant to Storm attacks and doesn't allow you to Prism (or trap) him. Sorry Storm wizards, but guess what? It's ok because Storm wizards are super effective against the minions that Lyon summons out at the speed of one per round. The thing is, you don't want to let Lyon summon all three minions or else BAM! You eat a supercharged Blizzard spell each round while he has those three minions on his team. I guess this means these would come in handy:

4- Ice Shields and Melt Debuffs.

But Friendly! BUT FRIENDLY! Earthquakes from minions!! I know I know . . . just do your best. :)

Here's a video I made of our trip in the Tower of the Helephant.



It was pretty great to play with my wife again (and Ms. Mistshard as well). We've been kind of playing separately lately for some reason. I think it has to do something with me getting up early, her getting to bed late, and the kids taking up all the time in between. ;)

If you have any additional tips or just want to say hi, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

**Update** I fixed a couple incorrect things in this post thanks to Cody in the comments. He adds that Melt would be a good idea to have in your arsenel to block Ervin's 95% tower shield and that arming a death wizard with Steal Ward could be a nice trick! **Update**

Happy Dueling!

Bailey wand strikes Malistaire Dead . . . 35 times over

Yesterday I came home from work and this screenshot was up on our screen:


"Oh nice!" I said, "who did the big hit?"

"It's a wand strike I did from Amber's character with the help of Joshua Lionbane," replied one uber wife.

"whoa, wand strike?" I queried with as much query as a query could query.

"Yup!" Bailey said with a smile in her voice, "I recorded it too!" SQUEE!



Nice hit! Imagine if she would have crit on that wand! It's too bad they capped damage at 1,000,000 . . . I'd shudder to think what people could hit for these days. Tracking the big hits was fun for a while. :)

Great hit Joshua and Bailey!

Happy dueling!

Wysteria up on the Test Realm! (Birthday Present!)

Twitter was fun to watch yesterday. :)

The news came down over Twitter yesterday that the door to Wysteria was open on the Test Realm.


There was also a scoop from IGN on the patcher. Ahh, KingsIsle, that's some good media coverage. The IGN crowd was like "people play this game?"


laugh. Keep it up, KingsIsle! IGN is right there with Kotaku, 1Up, Gamespot, and all the other premium game reporting sites. That's some awesome candy for the marketing team.

On a few mini-breaks at work, I'd tune in to my own Twitter stream and watched as Uber Wife and Amber took over and started posting a ton of pictures from the test realm. Quite awesome to actually see Wysteria since all I had seen before this were words.

Yeah, I've been under embargo about Wysteria since the next Beckett's article talks about it. :) That's also why the day before yesterday I couldn't participate in any theorycrafting about what the new content might be . . . since, well, I already knew what it was. BUT had I not known, I wouldn't have been able to guess what it was. A new door on the spiral like this is a complete surprise, right? I would have guessed they would be doing something with that fifth floating island in Krokotopia.

Yup! I had a great time playing through the first area or so with Myrna last night.


This whole world just feels like Easter to me for some strange reason . . . perhaps the bunnies and pastels? Nah! Must be some other reason. I wonder if there could be an Easter event in Wysteria next year? could be fun!

Amber went on yesterday to complete the main storyline in Wysteria and earned her spiral cup!


Nicely done, daughter. You rock! Didn't seem to take her too long with all the power of level 60 behind her, but Uber Wife made the comment that perhaps it would be a difficult challenge for someone in their 20's (especially the fight against Kisai Shugenja where he keeps putting up a 90% tower shield)? I'm not sure. I don't know if I have a character currently in that level range. hmm!

So is it just me or do the new areas that KingsIsle is releasing seem to be getting smaller and smaller? I wonder if that means that eventually they'll unleash a huge monster of a world so we can finally fight Morganthe?

My main question when I saw the name Wysteria was, "Why does KingsIsle keep naming worlds after My little pony characters?"


. . . word to the bronies. :p I'm just kidding by the way . . . I think they are a completely separate phenomenon, kind of like crop circles and aliens. O.o

Anyway, as it so happens, today is my birthday! Thanks for the gift of Wysteria KingsIsle. ;) And thanks to my old pal Cassandra over at Witchwarrior for this cool birthday gift portrait.



WINKS AND PEACE!

We're totally winks and peace on my birthday!

Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk Day 5 (Everwinter no more!)

I guess there should really be a post in between Day 4 and 5 called day 4.5 because after we got our level 58 pets we took some time to level them up and hatch a couple hybrids. What do you get when you cross a King Holly and a Tucker?


You get a Mister Luna!


So yesterday we decided it was time to pick up where we left off and finish Wintertusk! YARR! . . . only problem was that we were somehow a little lost on where we actually left off and ended up finishing a few side quests until we got back on track. This did lead to a couple of fantastic screenshots though. ;-)

A MIGHTY STRIKE TO GOTHRIC HONORBOUND! (Gothric, now there's a name!)


SOME MIGHTY DEBUFFS ON KORMAK SHADOWCLAW!


After some help from the Central Wiki and Timothy LightTalon, we were back on the right track of trying to extract a tooth from Nithogg, aka World Tree Parasite. This process involved gathering some hemlock and some ice bark and then getting Regin Wildleaf to mix up a magical toothache potion. Tada!



After handing over the tooth (that's gonna be one nice paycheck from the tooth fairy I'm sure), Nordri was impressed, and he handed us our fourth and final golden seal!


All that was left at this point was to go place the seals in front of the Ice Titan to ensure he stays fast asleep. This meant we needed to go to NASTROND! dun dun dun!


Nostrond is the final instance of Wintertusk where all your efforts culminate and you face off against a couple sets of four bosses. The first you face off against are some "ensorceled" heroes of Wintertusk (Dulin's War-band). Njal Silversong, Agnetta Broadblade, Thorfin Treetamer, and Ulfang Greathorn are all under the spell of a particularly tricksy raven named Eitri Shadowmirk.


It just takes a good defeat at your hands to snap them out of said ensorceled state, and MY OH MY LOOK AT THE LOOT FLY!


YOU KNOW I LIKE THE LOOK OF THAT CASHFLOW!! :)

Then all was left was to pit our goofy band of four (Thomas Lionblood, Bailey Skystaff, Timothy Lighttalon, and Alex Deathshade) against the coven's goofy band of four (Nordri, Austri, Vestri, and Sudri) in the epic battle of Jotengaard! WOOT!


Timothy let us in on Vestri and the gang's way of cheating, and the rest was history. As Timothy explained it, you basically play "tag" with the bosses. Each round one of the bosses is "it," and he is the only one you can attack that round UNLESS YOU USE AOE's. I guess because you tag the giant brother who is "it" in the process of using an AOE spell, it bypasses their cheat . . . something like that. AOEs FTW!

Bailey did most of the work killing the bosses, but I did manage to get that final hit on Nordri to "seal" the deal.


. . . and with the final seal in place . . .


Everwinter was thwarted yet again! WOOT!

Wintertusk was definitely fun and profitable, and there are still more side quests I need to go back and finish. There is still more fun to be discovered, and by the looks of some of the crafted items, I may want to look into crafting a ring or anthame or two. :)

Thanks KI for a great expansion. I'm really happy I was able to play through it with Bailey. She's definitely the better half. :)

So, what did you all think about Wintertusk? Also, what do you see as the main reason to go back after you've finished it? Loot? Reagents? Great Scenery? Make a comment below!

Happy Dueling!