Zombie Pet?

Heya! I've got a question here from Nick:

"I've been farming a boss for 2 days now for a pet called Zombie it looks like Grubb but umm
Is it confirmed to be dropped?

Thanks for sending a message, Nick. Yes, the zombie pet is confirmed to be dropped by a boss named Grendel Madlings.

A good way to know something is verified as dropped is by checking out the player-made wiki for the item: Zombie Pet. Knowing KingsIsle as I do, there really would be no reason we'd ever remove this pet from a loot table . . . on purpose. And to be honest, I highly doubt anyone has modified or even thought about the Grendel Madlings boss in years, so I'd give it a 99% assurance that it still drops. Also, taking a look at that player-made wiki page, it also looks like it drops from the Purreau's Plentiful Pet Provisions Pack. That should make it quite a bit more available out in the wild.

To be honest, your best bet is probably signing up to a site like Wizard101 Central and asking if someone has one to hatch with you, like this person did back in 2014. Wizard101 Central has a super active pet hatching group and I'm also about 99% sure someone there would hatch with you if you post in the Pet Mixing Meetups forum. Or alternatively try using the #W101 hashtag on Twitter to see if anyone could help.

Hope that helps and best of luck with your pet hunt!

Happy Dueling!

Avalon Information Spilleth OVER! Wizard101 Central's amazing info dump to the rescue!

As to be expected whenever KingsIsle releases a new world on test, the fans over on Wizard101 Central start kicking some major booty and publish some of the most wicked information out on the net.

The splurge of information that happens right after a world hits the test realm always ALWAYS astounds me. It really shows the power of a mega community like Wizard101 Central and what a great job that community's members do.

The test realm forum is exploding with information, of course, but here are a few threads that really caught my eye.

Hot topics:

Is Guardian Spirit Overpowered? click

Omnipotent was changed to Archmage as the level 80 title. click

Fans seem to really like Avalon with few varying opinions. Overall difficulty level is appreciated. click

Guides:

Kathrine Light's guide to Young Morganthe fight. click.

Nicholas's guide to fighting Matkis Axethief. click

Guide to new spells in Avalon. click

Guide to the level 78 pets and hybrids. click

Guide to The Mysterious Well and Flevur Flave by Kathrine Light. click

Guide to Sword of Kings weapons and poll on which you like best. click

A plethora of guides including and above and beyond those above. click

Crafting:

Reagents needed to craft the Tag Game. click.

Level 70+ gear recipes. click

Gardening:

Blue Huckleberry plant. click

Disappointments expressed:

Disappointment over the Treasure Card shop expressed. click

Disappointment over bank restrictions. click

Disappointment over the lack of a fourth Balance utility spell. click

Disappointment over the skeletal dragon pet looks. click

Cool pet drop:

Pet Book. click

As you can see, in the short time that the test realm has been out, there's just been A LOT of information sharing going on. No one is really sure how long the test realm will remain up, but if you're a subscriber, you should take it for a test drive and see why the majority of the fans are calling this one of Wizard101's best expansions to date.

Happy dueling!

Test Realm Up! TAG YOU'RE IT!

KingsIsle opened up the Test Realm yesterday afternoon, and as to be expected, there has already been a lot of talk about it.

I don't have much more to add than what these fine bloggers have already said:

- Wizard101 Madness

- A Pyromancer Say

- Secrets of the Spiral

- The Unicornflower's Type - Great guide to Tag Stars here.

- Around the Spiral with Edward Lifegem

- Paige's Page

- Diana Wildheart: Guardian Theurgist's Journal - Talks about playing tag at Bailey's house yesterday.

- Valerian's School for Wayward Wizards - reminds us to train our pets while we're in the Test Realm.

The fine people at Central are also talking up a storm on the test realm forum: click. Seems like there's already talk of coordinating massive tag games here. :)

The Tag game is currently priced at 2000 crowns on the Test realm. That seems reasonable for the hours of fun people are reporting from this housing enhancement.


I can already imagine how this will redefine some people's decorating choices. hehe. BRING ON THE HOUSE MAZES! When derby was introduced into The Spiral, it seemed like a lot of people wanted to have derby races in their housing. I have to say this is BETTER than having a derby track for your house. Nicely done, KingsIsle!

Be sure to report those bugs and have a good time playing tag on the test realm. :)

Happy Dueling!

Just Give Me a Few Good Links (Fun Over at Central)

Heya all,

I just wanted to direct you over to a few links at Wizard101 Central that recently caught my eye:

~~~~~~~~~~~
1. (click) Jordan DeathShade (level 70 necromancer) soloed the Tower of the Helephant and tells how he did it so you can take the challenge too.

This is pretty amazing, y'all. Using the same idea as healing off of immolate, the man was able to raise his death resists to 101% and completely ignore the pains of Bone Dragon in there and simultaneously, vastly improve his sacrifices and empower spells.

I may take his gear advice for my regular set up!

Very cool work here from a talented player.

~~~~~~~~~~~
2. (click) The new Foo Dog pets come in every color (not just pink).

The Foo Dog pet looks to be a random pet from the new Kirin's Hoard pack that will soon be coming out. :) I can't wait to get a Death Foo! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~
3. (click) Removing your character for screenshots.

The only reason I'm linking to this is to say, Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to trick out the system to get a good shot of the game without our character in it? I would love if KI would add a 1st person perspective option into the game for when you're running around. That'd be awesome!

~~~~~~~~~~~
4. (click) Not only is Valentina back, but her wands are back on Boss Mob loot tables.

For those who are itching to stitch to something cute, you better go getcha some Valentine loot!

~~~~~~~~~~~
5. (click) Central's Frabjous February contest is giving away a TON of prizes with a Daily Raffle, Hide and Seek Contests, Wiki Scavenger Hunt, Header Contest, and Jester's Fruit Picker Raffle.

Central always runs some solid contests and these are no exception. It can be hard to win since the competition is so high, but you might just win if you give it a try. (I'm in a rhyming mood today. You know what I say?)

~~~~~~~~~~~
6. (click) I am now listed on their blogroll, which I had no idea was even there before. I need to get out more.

If you have a blog and aren't on their blogroll, go sign up! It was easy. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to all the people over at Central for being such an informative and active community!

Happy Dueling!

Zafaria Too Easy?

I've been seeing a couple of threads on central proclaiming that Zafaria is too easy: like this one (where at least 61 people agree) and this one (where a call is made to add 1000 health to all mobs and add more cheating bosses).

Personally I am sitting right below level 62. I kind of wanted to sit out for a bit and let the test realm die down from the madhouse that it was on day one. It's been really nice being able to find a battle circle and still group with people.

I can identify a little bit with the sentiment that the world is too easy, but then I also remember what Krokotopia was like. Do you remember playing through Krokotopia and encountering those 150 health manders after you had just been downing some rather difficult scarecrows (for your level) in the haunted cave? Eventually the difficulty of Krokotopia ramped up, but it never was horribly difficult.

Have I died in Zafaria? yeah, I took a defeat against Queen Tanei Ghostmane's 3 vs. 1 battle this morning in the Savannah right before posting this.


Will it stop me in my tracks over and over? Oh, not at all. I'll simply adjust my strategy a bit or bring an extra character with me. We have four accounts after all and people on our friends lists . . . the easiest way to beat something difficult is add another wizard, and perhaps that is why the difficulty seems meaningless to many?

Every fight in the test realm on the opening day (and day after) was most likely faced with 2-3 other wizards by your side. Then again, even with the Necromancer, who is designed to solo, I was feeling those first few mobs could have been a little tougher. Too be honest, you'd think KingsIsle would make things a little harder to upsell their hireling sales in the crownshop. ;)

I did keep thinking to myself, how in the world would Angus ever get through a world like this where mobs start with 3 power pips and cast right out of the gate . . . not giving many rounds to shield at all. I have no idea.

So, what do you all think after playing through Zafaria a bit . . . is it too easy? Should KingsIsle give us more of a challenge, even outside the boss fights?

And that's another question. How should KingsIsle make the fights more difficult if they do? I don't think it's as simple as adding 1,000 health to every mob. I think most of us would rather see a more interesting mechanic rather than just stacking health on the things we fight. Strange resists? Beserk on first round? More healing mobs? More but limited battle circle sizes? More difficult puzzles? What is it that could make this more interesting to the battle weary legendary wizards?

OR, does it not matter the difficulty? does it only matter that I play here with my friends and enjoy an "easy" (gotta put that in quotes because Angus is pooping his pants over how he'd survive without gear) challenge?

Let me know what you think!

Happy Dueling!

Zafaria Info from Test Realm EXPLODES! BOOM!

This is how Wizard101 fans operate . . . Less than 24 hours later after Zafaria has been released.

- All level 68 spells have been revealed (A couple Astrals too) (oh yeah, gardening spells too). (oh yeah even MORE astral spells)

- Leopard pet drop location confirmed and skink too. (as well as a confirmation that there is a lack of new school pets.)(also, petnomes for leopard and skink)(also, trying to discover all rewards for feeding pets your gear.)

- Level 70's title is not heroic, but "Transcended."

- There's an elephant transformation potion quest.

- How to beat Belloq's cheat.

- A video of all the new mounts in Zafaria.

- New wand with no level requirement in the crowns shop.

- There are a couple guides at work for Monkees locations: here's one.

WHEW. You all work very fast and furious.

Me? Well, there's no way I can keep up with all that. I'm content with watching from a distance and trying to throw out a joke or two. I did get some time playing with Uber Wife on the test realm last night though! We're finally on the same quest, but I'm pretty sure she's going to play some more today on the test realm without me while I'm at work. I'll catch up. :) Too be honest, it was extremely difficult to find an open slot in the battle circles on the test realm last night. Hopefully that will calm down over the next few days. I think we'll start to see even more information and hopefully more meaningful discussion about how our gameplay will change. Nathan Shadowblood is off to a good start.

Oh yeah, and all this talk this fast is aging me quickly:


I'm a lost student . . . with grey hair! :( KI! My hair is blue not grey! ;)

It's good to see everyone having fun with Zafaria. Remember though, it's not a race (well, anymore at least). We'll all be Transcended soon enough. :) How does it feel to you? Do you like the feel of the new world? Done any good bug reports?

Happy Dueling!

Celestia Housing Test Realm Redux

YO,

So there has been a lot of information sharing going on across the Wizard101 information super-highway, and I just want to point out a few of those and maybe discuss them a smidge.

First up is Kevin Battleblood's well written blog post. Kevin talks about the changes in the test realm that he finds pertinent: Floating pots and plants, petnomes, stun block, and gardening towers.

In particular I feel for Kevin (and all of us) in regards to the bugged petnome numbers. It's confusing enough to try and analyze pet abilities through a community site like Petnome, but a broken (or bugged) counting system really messes up trying to track these things . . . especially when already dealing with different generations of pets. I really hope that gets fixed.

Although I really liked the idea of gardening towers and getting more bang for your energy globe out of building your garden up instead of out, I personally never had a garden tower, so I won't miss this. *comfort* to those who will. :/

I liked Pyromancer Jonathon's review of the new Celestia crafted house. Although Jonathan mentions this is now the second house to have a dueling circle, he doesn't mention that this is the first house to have a dueling circle that doesn't require the purchase of crowns! Uber wife tells me that one of our characters already has everything she needs to craft one! Awesome.


If you're looking for a good list of ingredients that you'll need for this, I again refer you over to Battleblood's place. (Uber wife was all psyched that she could help Kevin out with a small error on the list. *giggle*)

For me, I just can't get over how much I really REALLY wanted an underwater house for Celestia ala Calypso's sunken ship. It's what I was hoping for. Dangit.

Of additional note: Stellarium got dumbed down. My video here, is no longer applicable, and I may take it down soon. Don't worry, all the other cheating bosses in the game are still there and cheating.

There have been a number of interesting posts over on Wizard101 Central about the new changes.

- Fierce Hounds have different appearances. (click!)
- Polar Cat gift card only gives one dragonblade now. (click!)
- Efreet is now a charm-class debuff instead of a damage-class debuff. (click!)
- Guide to the bosses in the Hand of Doom pack. (click!)
- Orthrus animation has changed. (click!)
- Can't use Gargantuan on Efreet. (click!)
- The let down on the new side quest in Grizzleheim. (click!)

For me, it's all about the Hand of Doom pack this time around. I love the new boss minions. It's just SUCH a cool new addition to be able to summon up one of these to help you out. I'm not all together thrilled that I get five or six junk cards with each pack I buy, but I do like where these minion cards are headed.

You know what I liked about casting the Lord Nightshade minion? He started with three power pips and crit on his vampire spell. A minion with a chance to crit is awesome.


Thumbs up KI for this addition! Just . . . PLEASE, I don't want any more junk cards. If you lowered the cost and gave me one minion card and no junk cards, I'd be happy. If you upped the cost and give me seven minion cards and no junk cards, I'd be happy. I just think this current method of giving me one or two good cards and junk that I have to sell off feels . . . old school . . . and if you're going old school, then I need a stick of gum with each purchase. ;-)

AND FINALLY, one last note before I let you go . . . the Indiana-Jones-esque Boulder rolling trick with the new small Celestia house? Epic! Just make the boulder roll more often or upon cue! (Like when I trip a switch or something) :-)


Happy Dueling!

Healing Off Immolate--Truely a Show of Awesomeness

I saw the most amazing video last week, and I neglected to share it with you all. You gotta check this out. As far as I know, this is the first time any player has cracked their resistances above 100 percent. In fact, Zachary (Wizardmaster2 on Central) raised his fire resist up to 101 percent.

Here's the thread that talks about this.

Here's the video from that thread:



Now THAT is the first time I've ever seen the "Immune" message float above someone's head, and since he has one percent over immunity, Immolate actually heals him.

This is a thing of beauty my friends because getting your fire resists up beyond 100 percent is no easy task. How he did it? As he states on that thread, "molten mantle, reckless runners, some 30% fire resist robe (bazaar), heartsteel, and a 24% fire resist burnzilla."

You gotta give it up to him for building a gear set specifically for use with the immolate spell, which usually damages you for 250 and hits your enemy for 600.

I don't know if this is even possible for other classes, but imagine a necromancer who healed himself twice over with a sacrifice or who could gain life through the empower spell. Now that would be pretty awesome. :-)

Happy Dueling!

Updated Test Realm Information for hybrids

With the full reset to the test server yesterday came some surprising news about pet evolution.

1- There have been mixed results now when combining level 48 pets.
Hydra and a Wraith made a brownish red wraith with some fancy trim on his robe. Colossus with a wraith made a kind of cool icy blue wraith. Unfortunately the helephant and hydra combo that Paige Moonshade and hanamana tried combining resulted in . . . a helephant and a hydra. There was also a report of mixing a helephant and a wraith and nothing unique happened. In both cases it's good to announce that neither of the level 48 combinations resulted in an unusable pet for either party. Interesting.

2- The rare and exclusive pets now form new pets when the same type are combined together. Everybody and their Dangerhound wants a Ghosthound now. :-) I actually do have a few of the exclusive pets, so this particular item was interesting me, which leads us now to the next item . . .

3- sheep + anything else = piggle It's funny to see that Olivia had the exact same idea I did. She got together with Dylan Emerald and tried to see what a danger hound and a sheep would create, and this resulted in a ghosthound for Dylan and a Piggle for Olivia.

After I got home from work yesterday, I frantically leveled my pioneer dragon and kyle's sheep to adult. Man that's a lot of dancing. Then came the combination . . .


What resulted was . . . *blush* . . . piggle power.



4- The rest of the story is that Olivia and I contacted each other over Central. Last night we both logged on and tried to get Sammy and Baby Baxter together.


The result of this effort was . . . *boot*. /shrug It wasn't working.


The current thinking is that maybe one of our hatching slots were full (from what I understand, you can only hatch two pets in one day . . . correct me if I'm wrong). We're going to try again tonight.

Happy Dueling!

Thread to Follow on Central

Hi hi!

I keep getting linked to this thread, so I thought I'd pass on the information.

THIS IS THE THREAD that you want to watch for where the new hybrid pets drop.

YES, I KNOW THERE IS NOW A SKELETAL PIRATE IN THE GAME NOW! Well, skeletal warrior, ;-).

YES, I KNOW THAT AMBER'S LEPRECHAUN IS BEING RELEASED INTO THE GAME! It was high time for that to happen, actually.

I have to say that the new pet spells that give a blade and do damage are so awesome it makes me want to spit at you like I'm a snake. One question though, shouldn't this really be a life snake instead of a storm snake?


It's all green and earthy looking?

Also, why does the ultimate damage class need help with blading their attacks?



I mean, life and death I can understand, but storm?

The new War Helephant must certainly have all Myth people screaming in joy! A single target one hit attack at 4 pips! woots! (Although, I imagine you'll all still be casting humongofrog at 4 pips . . . with good reason, but this could come in handy still :D)


And hey, isn't this interesting? An AOE team DOT heal?


It's not much, but still . . . WOW! Now THAT's interesting.

AND . . . all the icewizzies in the house say woot woot! Look at that blade!


I'm really liking what I see on this thread for sure. :-)

Happy Dueling!

Scavenger Hunt Today!

My good friend Mecatz caught me in game this morning and reminded me that today is the day of her scavenger hunt!

You really should go to this link and check it out!

There some great prizes for 1-3rd places! 20k, 10k, or 5k crown gift items! WOW!

This one doesn't look as tough as the other scavenger hunt that I've participated in on Central. Anyone remember this scavenger hunt? Yikes. I only got half way through that one! This scavenger hunt on the other hand looks to only have 5 questions. whew. That's something that even I could probably handle. ;-)

Best of luck with the scavenger hunt!

Thanks for the tip, Mecatz!

Happy Dueling!

Cyrus, er, Angus Drake at the Wizened Wizards Party!

I missed it! GAH! I'm always missing the cool stuff.


This screenshot was posted in the Wizened Wizards group by Katherine Winterheart. The event started right as I was getting off work. I should have left 40 minutes early so I could attend. hehe. (p.s. Angus Drake is really an alt of Professor Greyrose.)

Congrats on the successful party Wizened Wizards!

Wizened Wizards Event Tonight!

Attention all old people!


If you're a member of Wizened Wizards, tonight would be a great night to be playing the game around 5pm CST.

Mecatz has set up an event, so please go check the Wizened Wizard events on Wizard101 Central.

And I may even see you there!

Happy Dueling!

Battle of the Sexes! I mean . . . Admins!

Hey all,

I don't know if you've seen the battle between Jester and his wife Olivia, but you gotta watch this . . . at least for the ending. :-)


(if you don't have enough time to watch the whole fight, at least fast forward to the last minute . . . good stuff)

For those of you who are not familiar with the awesomeness of Jester and Olivia, they are the husband and wife team of creators/admins for the Wizard101 Central website.

They sound as good at dueling as I am. LOL. Go check out Olivia's blog and look at the graphic they created on the right hand side of this post. LOL they are hilarious! (In fact, Olivia's entire blog is worth a look!)

I'm they are dumb and dumber, I assure you I'm dumberest.

I can't wait to see the next round of . . .

happy dueling!

New poll on PvP--Rock the Vote!

Hello duelers!

There's a poll going on over at Central that the man, the myth, the legend . . . Mr. Quantize . . . asked me to post up here.

So, here's the poll: Click!

Right now there's only a handful of votes on this thread . . . let's see if we can't get that number up a little bit higher and give this thread some more attention. Quantize made the point in his e-mail to me that these threads have the potential to give KI some good information about how the players really feel about PvP in its current state. You can't really judge opinions on our HUGE player base with only the 37 votes that are up.

So if you have a moment, please drop by and ROCK THE VOTE!

Thanks for your time!

Happy Dueling!

Malistaire's Defeat, starring Elijah, Michael, Tara, and yours truly

Elijah Stormheart introduced himself to me over on Wizard 101 Central a few weeks ago. Since then I've come to know him as a kind of networking genius. Basically, he's introduced me to a lot of his friends and they all seem very awesome.

Elijah actually networked me with another cool cat that I've been chatting with over on youtube, Michael Firecatcher. This was a fortunate event!

Then Michael had us port to his sister, Tara, and Boom! Party of four!

We hatched a plan, or an egg, and decided to fly the dragon over to Malistaire's pad and film the whole event! Both Michael and Elijah needed to complete The Great Spyre instance to finish the game; therefore, it was a perfect excuse.

So, without further delay, I present you with Malistaire's Demise starring the four of us.



And per my usual style, there's a lot of goofiness in there as well. :p

Watch that video in High Quality mode if you can because it's so much nicer.

Happy Dueling!

Calamity Where are you Pants?

Well, we all showed up in Pixie Area 1 of Triton Avenue as requested.



ONE PROBLEM. No Calamity. Apparently we filled the realm full to the gills and even Calamity couldn't get in to the area. Some people even waited a full two hours or more to meet her. whoops. It was like trying to meet a band at a local CD shop and the business owners not knowing what they were in for.

I asked Professor Greyrose about the situation and she basically told me that this was a pilot test for Calamity. Basically she ran out of cards on a different area of triton avenue than the one advertised (Since she couldn't get in) and managed to break her friends list and trade function while she was at it.

So, patience. patience. I'm sure Calamity will show again.

It was rumored that the rare card was merely an Orthrus treasure card. /shrug

I shall never know, but what I do know is that I added a lot of cool people from Wizard101 Central to my friends list while I was hanging out there.

Thanks for the fun, all!

Happy Dueling!

PvP Tournaments

Wizard101 Central has been hosting pvp tournaments for a little bit now, and they have a solid system for keeping you hopping. Yesterday was my first shot at one of these tournaments. Or I guess I should say, yesterday was my first flop at one of these tournaments.



Donna Pixiesong, a fellow savior of the spiral, as the screenshot shows, soundly kicked my butt, which I also feature in the screenshot.

Also in the screenshot, I'm saying "can't wait to hear about it." What am I so excited to hear? I'm excited to hear about Donna's other fights! She had three of them lined up, all through tournaments from Wizard 101 Central apparently, and she was supposed to go on and face another reader of this blog, Outrageous Autumn! (You'll have to be logged in to see Autumn's profile)

Autumn has just been lurking here and not commenting yet. But I have high hopes she'll come say hi especially since this blog post is about her cup o' tea. She's one of the two PVP Tournament Masters at Wizard 101 Central. She contacted me personally back channel and invited me to join this tournament! That's OUTRAGOUS, Autumn! :-)

NO, seriously, you can tell Autumn and Alex Jaderider put a lot of work into making these fights happen and they do so with a lot of love. Love for kicking people's butts, and love for bringing people together for butt kickings. They are a bit like this guy:



Ok, they're not anything like that guy. These are FRIENDLY DUELS . . . with cards and cute monsters, well, except for that orthrus that chomped on me.

OH! So how was my fight *shakes head* I mean duel? Well, my duel with Donna kind of went down like this. Donna started off her rounds early by putting up shields, I responded with some poison to take them out. Then I got hit with a boosted orthrus. That hurt. More shields were played. I tried to respond again with poison, but it fizzled and the card got buried and the other 2 I had loaded never surfaced in time because another orthrus showed its two heads and took out my only myth shield I had up with the first head . . . and then the second head had lunch. I salted myself beforehand. DELICIOUS! Salty Necromancer on a stick.

So, you want to join these duels now so you can have Salty Necromancer on a Stick? Awesome! I'm gonna give you the way you get your foot in the door. Just click on the PvP tab at Wizard 101 Central and then just follow the links. All the information you want is right in that location.



Happy Dueling!

Where you been, Friendly?

Man, I haven't been logging into the game a lot the past couple of days.

Why? Why you ask?

sigh. I've been playing in the arcade over at Wizard 101 Central. FREAKING ADDICTING!

Speaking of the arcade . . . I've been wanting to smack this fella across his anime-blackjack-right-cheek for dealing me hand after hand of 15-17. srsly.



I mean, look at this guy. That smug little grin. I had the first place spot on this anime blackjack game, but then lost it. Also, unbeknownst to all, I had the first place by a long run but the Wizard 101 Central website timed out on me and I lost my high score. Yes. I was playing that long on that stupid game. NO, you aren't allowed to laugh at me.

Do not fear my friends, I am still here!

Happy Dueling!