Where do you get the amulet for Insane Bolt?

Got a question from Hunter a couple days ago:

I have a question. Where do you get the amulet for insane bolt??? please post a vid to show meh......

Ok! Here's a quick video for you of where to pick up the recipe for the insane bolt necklace.



Ahh Insane bolt. I've yet to use it, but I love that you can cast a spell that does moon damage. I've heard it called the "last resort bolt" by some who are on their way to losing a match.

How do you all use Insane bolt? Any recommendations?

Hope that helps!

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!

Wintertusk Day 4 (Plus Level 58 pets!)

When we left off on Day 3, there was a small matter of gathering a pick and a shovel from Harek the Lean and Ormund the Surly, a couple of Rank 9 bosses.

All of that effort was apparently for crashing through an ice wall between you and Thyra Brightspell.


Thyra Brightspell you say? She's totally the Tyra Banks of Wizard101.


No? Ok, maybe that's a stretch even for my standards.

Thyra sic'ed us on the less popular raven models and had us gather some hemlock.


What'd this buy us? Oh, we totally got to put on a fashion show for Thyra and her friends.


*Work! Work it Ravens! Do your thing, on the RUNWAY! Work!*

Sorry about that, I can't help myself.

Anyway, this lead to a red carpet occasion with Sudri of Sudriland, who immediately started demanding golden apples from us. We were all "you're a jerk!" and he was all, I know, but my words have weight, go weigh them in this jug. We're all WHAT? He's all WHAT? They're all WHAT? . . . and then somehow he just gives us his Golden Seal to get us to go away. That's cool, whatev's Sudri! OUT!

At the end of our game play we were sucked into solving a couple riddles for Stengar Wordwise, but immediately lost interest in that when we realized we were far enough along to do our Level 58 pet quests, WOOTS!

Bailey had an epic battle with Iceclaw, a nasty Rank 10 Draconian Fire wizard.


As you can see, Bailey had her strat down with the prisms, and before you knew it, she had her Phoenix.


Gratz Bailey!

Me? Oh yeah, I fell asleep . . . *grin* But I woke up this morning and finished up my quest, and now I'm the proud owner of a baby harvest lord egg. I captured the last few minutes on X-fire.


A prism'd wraith and a fire elemental polymorph with a fully charged heckhound and some minion support did the trick for me. :)

See you in Day 5!

Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk Day 3 (and puppymancer!)

Before I start into Day 3 of Wintertusk, let me start with two things:

1- My new Beckett's mag came in the mail. WOOT! This is the one with my "summation of Grizzleheim/get ready for Wintertusk" article. Hope you all like that. The special in-game item this time around is the Grizzleheim Drinking Horn housing decoration. That'll go perfectly in your Grizzleheim kitchen in your Grizzleheim house! :)

2- We got a new puppymancer!


Oh he's super cute . . . his cuteness is beyond the cute of a cute cuteness. Look at that guy with his humongofrog chew toy! THE SUPA CUTES!

~~~~~~~~~

SO, Wintertusk Day 3. Yes, there was a day of inactivity between Day 2 and Day 3, but last night nanamancer took the kids to see Rio, and we stayed home with the new puppymancer and the diapermancer and the computermancer and the laptopmancer.

Although my play time was a bit distracted, we managed to work our way through the main storyline of Vestrilund. I kept getting distracted by puppymancer and then by the end of our play I became extremely sleepy. Have you ever been only half-awake while playing Wizard101? That was me last night.

So, yes, DAY THREE OF WINTERTUSK!

It all began with a fight with a Yeti.


Holy snap it's a yeti! I shall call mythbusters! Yetis are real, my best friends are unicorns, and you are a wizard!

Yeti man was no match for the powa team of Bailey and Thomas. Rawr! Afterwards, we galloped back to Grandmother Raven to let her know we got the golden seal of approval from Vestri, which happened to actually be a golden "seal." Go figure. I hope we get a golden seal housing item. That would rock!


Grandmother Raven was psyched to see us and told us to go visit Henrek, a bumpkin of a bear who just needs to help out his clan. That basically means doing chores and defeating a few ruffians out in the fields.


Eventually we got the key to go visit Vestri, and he was all for giving us the golden seal . . . but his evil coven friend wasn't!!


No biggie. As you can see, we took care of Stryker Scofflaw! NO MORE SHALL YOU SCOFF AT THE LAW SCOFFLAW!

After doing a series of quests from Freyda Warsong (a female bear -- the female bears in Wintertusk are awesome btw) to get the key to Sundriland, BOOM, we were all up in Sundriland's business, crashin' their party, and farming their lootz.


AND after bringing new depths of humility to Sudri's right hand crow there in Sundriland, we called it a night. I was beat from real-life and half asleep in the computer chair.

All-in-all it was a good session of play though, and I'm liking Wintertusk so far. I've noticed that it would be an excellent alternative leveling spot instead of Celestia as the quest experience rewards seem really nice. I was even noticing quite a few people dinging levels around me. GRATZ PEOPLES!

Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk Day 2

Bailey and I continued our adventures through Wintertusk yesterday right where we left off the day before . . . and that was with gathering some Yummy Great Harvest Bread. Oh wait, it was Regin's Harvest Bread, not Great Harvest Bread. Oh well, I figure I owe them a link since I used to live in an apartment right above a Great Harvest Bread back when I was going to College. Breakfast would consist of a free piece of bread and some chocolate milk. LIFE WAS AWESOME! Yummy bread smells every day . . . only bad thing was the amount of flies this yummy smell also seemed to attract into our apartment. I digress . . .

Where was I? Oh yeah, THE BREAD!


We gathered up some bread, warmed it in an oven, and even got some honey from a beehive, which all somehow tied into a task of learning how to play a game of Thane's Table.


You know, I was genuinely disappointed I didn't actually get to play a mini-game here called Thane's Table. Stunned actually. Why in the WORLD wouldn't you do that? It boggles my mind. I genuinely hope we see something like that in the future.

After experiencing a REALLY (and I mean really REALLY) bad joke of a quest from a boar named Grond, Austri was well pleased with our progress and therefore sent us off to be killed at the hands of Gorm's boars or Sulkri the orcish thingy.


Our adventuring ended with hunting down a couple of key pieces for the ghost of Grimaldi the Keymaker.

yada yada yada Nick Jonas wizard wants to kiss you.


You get the idea. ;p

Happy dueling!

Wintertusk Day 1

Bailey Skystaff and I got a chance to sit down and play through a bit of Wintertusk last night! WOOT! Of course, I was stuck on the crappy laptop with missing keys and horrible lag, but STILL, togetherness!

Here we are together with grandmother raven in her true form:


(I look so stretchy when it's Bailey taking the pictures! :p)

I was blown away when I finally heard "the voice" of Grandmother Raven and had a HUGE HUGE "AHA!" moment. That was such a nice touch by KI. Really well done. In fact that whole scene with Grandmother Raven was really well done. I do believe this particular "cut scene" mechanic we get there (i.e., with camera panning) is the third time we've had one of those in the whole game . . . the first time being the tutorial (thanks Tracy!), the second time being when Selena Gomez was still in the spiral, and finally, now, this Grandmother Raven cut scene, which is special and covered in awesomesauce.

Last night was all about besting Hrundle Fjord's beginning quests and wandering around in this nice little compact world.


Eventually we made our way over to see Austri in Austriland and accepted the quest to begin proving our worthiness for the jolly green giant.


By this time kids had stopped distracting themselves and began crawling over us needing some computer time of their own, so we called it a night . . . well, I did at least.

Bailey logged on later and got Kyle his Kraken pet. Apparently storm wizards can get their level 58 pet early in Wintertusk as long as they have a friend they can port to who can "get across the bridge."


Nice!

I picked up a cool pair of shoes for the evening and got my Dark Pact spell, which was awesome for helping blade up Bailey's attacks. I'm digging that spell.


I was hearing reports that people (and by people, I mean Alric Ravensinger) had finished up Wintertusk as early as 10 am yesterday. HAHAHA! Awesome.

How'd the rest of you fare?

OH, and btw . . . NICK JONAS WIZARD APPROVES OF THIS MESSAGE! You may now kiss his lips on your monitor while no one is looking:


I SAW THAT!

Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk is LIVE!

Go start up those patchers my friends, Wintertusk is LIVE! It even says so in the patcher that I'm patching with much patchitude.


WOOT! Can't wait.

Kevin Battleblood has his Wintertusk Checklist all neatly lined up. Do I? Heck ya I do!

Step 1: Play through Wintertusk.
Step 2: Write about it.

YES! XD

Actually the game gave me four things to do as soon as I logged on:

1- See Baldur Goldenpaws (who tells me to go talk to Erik Wyrdrune for a new spell, yo).
2- Talk to Merle (who tells me alllll about the Ravens and their new tricks and tells me to go chat with my old buddy Bjorn Ironclaws).
3- Sohomer Sunblade asks me to go visit him at the Storm Mill on Triton Avenue for a bit of Waterworks fun (Looks like Good ol' Blad Raveneye also wants me to go check out Crab Alley for him).
4- Get my new level 58 pet, which is waiting for me, but Mr. Lincoln is telling me I need to head to Wintertusk first and then see my professor . . . or some such nonsense.

Woot! So much to do! I can't wait to go through Wintertusk with Bailey. :)

See you in the Spiral,

Happy Dueling

Mysterious Composer hits the Test Realm

The illustrious Sir Deathshard has posted a really cool YouTube video over on Central. The Mysterious Composer can now be found outside Merle Ambrose's Shack and then out in the large circle of Grizzleheim off to the left of the Spiral Door.

. . . but don't take my word for it, check out the video!



I like how you can click on the Silver Trumpet vines to play the new Wintertusk music. They need to make regular Silver Trumpet Vine do that in your housing! :)

Don't forget to keep checking the clues!

Hint #1 - "I’ve performed on Saturday Night Live and my initials are not J.B.!"
Hint #2 - "My natural hair color is brown."
Hint #3 - "My gender is Male."
Hint #4 - "My eyes are not blue."
Hint #5 - "I’ve been on the Tonight Show, the Late Show and Late Night."
Hint #6 - "Some of the songs I’m currently listening to on my iPod are ADELE – Set Fire To The Rain, Fleetwood Mac – As Long As You Follow and Elisa Doolittle - Rollerblades"
Hint #7 - "I’ve been nominated for several awards"
Hint #8 - "You may also know me from TV or the big screen."
Hint #9 - "I’ve done a voice in a video game before."
Hint #10 - "I have siblings."
Hint #11 - ???
Hint #12 - ???
Hint #13 - ???
Hint #14 - ???
Hint #15 - ??? and more...


Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk is on the Test Realm

The news broke quite quickly over Twitter yesterday as all the fansites raced online to let everyone know that Wintertusk was upon us. Earlier in the day J Todd Coleman had announced on his Facebook page that Wintertusk was coming soon, but none of us had any idea how soon!

You can read all about Wintertusk in the most recent update notes. You'll want to go through those notes carefully because I think you'll find a lot of interesting stuff in there as well, like, oh, I don't know . . . Death wizards can now use enhancement spells like Gargantuan on their life drain spells . . . little stuff like that. (*insert small freak out*)

OH! And I owe KI something . . . here . . .


Thank you for listening!

Go find those bugs!

Happy Dueling!

Wintertusk Will Be the Newest World on the Spiral

If you search the term "Wintertusk Wizard101" early this morning while I type this blog post, you're going to find nothing. After eight o'clock eastern time, however, the information embargo gloves are off from KingsIsle, and you'll start to find that Google search becoming a little more populated as the news from PAX East filters in . . . because that *is* the news from PAX as far as KingsIsle is concerned.

Central and Twitter are going to explode today. It's going to be fun to watch. :)

Check out this awesome concept art!


HAHA! I just knew Grandmother Raven would make an appearance someday soon in the spiral. YES! Do you guys remember my podcast interview with J Todd Coleman and Josef Hall? When I brought up Grandmother Raven they said she'd definitely be making an appearance. Here it is. We finally get to meet her in the world of Wintertusk. Awesome.

I think it may be time to revisit Grizzleheim my friends because Wintertusk is a continuation of that story in the spiral with some surprises thrown in. Similiar to Grizzleheim (we don't know how similar yet), Wintertusk is going to offer new areas for both high-level and lower-level students of Ravenwood, but it really feels like the level 50+ crew is getting more storyline and the lower crowd is getting more of a continuation of where Crab Alley left off. As KingsIsle put it, "A revamped underwater introduction zone for lower level characters. This area will continue the story of the Crab King."

We're also getting new spells and level 58 class pets! SQUEE! Care to place any guesses to what those class pets will be? No one knows yet, but information will definitely be forthcoming over "the coming weeks." (So, no, we aren't busting into the new content just yet . . . we have "weeks" ahead of us still.)

KingsIsle isn't giving away all their surprises! They're going to slowly let us find out "the best details" of this new expansion over time.

As always, as I find out more information, you will find out more information!

Happy Dueling!