Wizard101 -- Weekend Fishing Overload!

It's been a couple days and my fish collection continues to grow. Last time I posted, I was at 13 fish just starting out, and now I'm up to 68 fish.  YEAH! FISH COLLECTION!

Space is filling up fast!

I filled up the bottom level of the entrance after the second day and then today I started filling up the top tier (as pictured above).

Fishies!

What I really wanted to do was use the advanced housing placement feature, but I found a bug. You can only move and adjust the position of one fish. The moment you try to adjust the placement of a second fish with advanced placement, the position of the first fish resets. :(  I guess they're all bottom feeders for now.

Although all these fish fit in this house without fishtanks, it's very "underwater dim" in this house, so . . . I dunno. It's not an ideal presentation. Ah well.

I can tell already that there are two fish in particular that are going to give me fits. I gave up on the Pompeiino fish in Aquila and the Goldfin-ger fish in Mooshu. Each of those took a full batch of energy trying to summon/winnow the fish and I still didn't find them.

Along the way I've discovered that I didn't complete the fishing quests in Mooshu.  Finishing those will be super helpful since you can get a winnow rank 2 fish spell from completing the quest.

I keep thinking in the back of my mind . . . if I was a designer given the task of improving fishing in Wizard101, what would I do?  Speeding it up and adjusting the resulting gold you receive per fish would probably be the first thing on the agenda. Unfortunately these fish don't have run, attack, jump, and swim animations, so although turning them into in-game pets seems to be a win, it's not, It's a huge lose.  Anything you do with fish has to involve idle animations and that's it.

I'd probably then focus on the collector aspect of fish and make a checklist of fish more forward facing for the player. 

Making pet snacks out of fish seems to be a win, but these fish have such personalities that it almost seems morbid to do so. That said, it is very easy to end up with several duplicates of fish when you're participating in a fishing tournament or fishing for an epic rarity fish. Fusing duplicate fish or trading duplicate fish as currency could be pretty great -- then it's just a matter of the result from fusing or trading.  What could you get in exchange? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that fishing is probably one of the least used side systems in the game. If I could trade fish in exchange for potion buffs, I might do that; for example, I'd trade 12 charred decoy for a minor fire damage boost potion. Using Alchemy as a side system that ties in to fishing could be pretty interesting. Minecraft ties fish into alchemy doesn't it?

As it is now, fishing is more just a chill activity that gets you a lot of gold in game. There are the fishing tournaments and the fish of the day, but that's pretty much it. I mean, you get a fishing experience bar and fishing badges, but that's to be expected.

Back in the day, I remember pitching a fishing app for Pirate101, but that pitch didn't go anywhere.  In my mind it was where you would come to a fishing node in your ship, and then the game would sync to your mobile app where you'd play a mini-game and get the resulting fish in Pirate101. I always felt fishing should have been in Pirate101 before Wizard101. It just made sense.

Anyway, none of these interesting questions are mine to tackle. I'm just here to collect as many fish as I can and write blog posts about it. ;)

Happy Dueling

Something Fishy in Wizard101

It's funny. The very last KI Live I did before passing the mantle of Community Manager to Mr. Manderson featured 20 or so boring minutes of me trying to catch a fish in Azteca, but the pure elation when that stupid Chupacarpe finally showed up was pretty funny.

"This is my campaign slogan for 2018: speed up my nibbles!"

. . . and then . . . I never finished the rest of the quest . . . until today! Yes, my friends, I finally caught the elusive Pirahptor fish from Mangrove Marsh, like 3 years later.  34.6 inches long and full of spitfire.

"pure water-based nightmare fuel"  I love it.

The past couple days Fishing in Wizard101 has been a super chill experience for me. I'm loving this game more for fishing than anything else right now. In fact, it's kind of making me want to catch all the fish and make one of my castles all about fish keeping. I haven't personally used fishing to scratch that collector itch inside me. I've only used it for making money, and I have PLENTY of gold -- I probably just need to do a whole bunch of hatches to spend more, but I'm already overflowing with pets to the extreme. How you like them 1st world Wizard101 problems?

 To those ends, I've purchased a twelfth castle for 100,000 gold. The Sunken Palace!  What's great about this is that you can place fish directly in the "sunken" part of this palace without a fishtank.

It's so small and cute!

There we go . . . the humble beginnings of my new collection.  Gotta catch 'em all! Only 193 more to go!  Anybody have a link to a good checklist for fishing? Catching all those seasonal fish is gonna be tough.

Have y'all seen my fishtank I got this past year in real life?  I've been doing tik toks of it.

@friendlynecro

techno tribal fish tank!

♬ Healing Nature - Sonic Mystery

@friendlynecro

fishtank life 1 *hugs*

♬ Steven Universe - L.Dre

@friendlynecro

aquarium life 2 *hugs*

♬ Peaceful - Arnaud Gauthier

@friendlynecro

the fish cookie is mine! mmm yum! FISH COOKIE

♬ 115 - Treyarch Sound & Brian Tuey & James McCawley & Kevin Sherwood

I'm such a nerd for fish right now!  I love it!

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust Day 16 -- Mega Fans Make the day Mega Awesome!

Hello, friends! I have a story wrapped within a story and a conclusion to a story for you today! If it sounds exciting, it is! If it sounds complex, well, lemme unravel that for you. :)

Back on Day 10 of Blaugust I reported a trip through Darkmoor that netted a Khrulhu spell for one Thomas Lionblood. Today I finished up that trip, with no deaths to report, and a big KO to Malistaire the Undying.

And it was all thanks to the amazing team of Alura, Lucas, and Boris . . . my new favorite Russian Wizard101 fan and husband and wife team. 

Yay long list of loot!

I learned a lot and would definitely like to run that a few more times.

For the Yevgeny fight I was on blade duty for Boris. Not much to worry about there! Alura (who has two max level wizards of every class . . . in standard mega-fan fashion) was quick to hand over a few conviction Treasure Cards, and the blades flowed like honey.

For the Shane Von Shane fight I was on low-pip damage spell duty and just plunked away on him with dark pixie, vampire, wand strikes, and banshees while the two storm wizards did that thing they do so well!

Then came Malistaire the Undying. Here I played backup heals for Alura and some shielding duty with a little Shadow Sentinel, and it really did work well . . . Sentinel saved Boris at the end!  Great team work all around for sure.

Good to see that Malistaire is finally a mega fan . . . although he probably still has issues, I wish him nothing but the best in his retirement.

Anyway, back to the real star of the show . . . Boris! Boris is awesome!  He has a full fish collection in his myth house . . . one of every fish to be found.

How did I meet this magnificent wizard? Well, funny story . . . I had left myself afk after the last KI Live, and he waited along with a group of 10 or so who wanted to say hello when I came back. Usually, I'm pretty quick to unplug since overtime is pretty much a guarantee on KI Live days, and I'm in a rush to get home. Anyway, I got him on my friends list there (haha, he was pretty persistent)! 

It's nice to meet people who are mega fans of Wizard101, and in his own words, that's him! (Probably fits the description of many people who visit my blog, right?)

Speaking of Mega fans . . . our lady Sophia was kind enough to help me out this morning with some bazaar sniping of a few Agave Nectar and Turquoise so I could finish up those left over Crafting quests from Azteca and Khyrsalis.

. . . and finally, my other Comrade besides Boris became a new mega fan of my fishing skills when I finished up Dragonspyre fishing.

Yuri's pretty awesome for a ghost fisherman . . . then again, I can't say I know many ghost fishermen outside of Yuri.

All in all, the mega fans made it a great day in Wizard101 for Thomas Lionblood.

Thanks all and Happy Dueling!

~~

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

#Blaugust Day 8 -- Fishing Vines for a Fishing Story

I've been a bit busy in Wizard101 catching all kinds of fish in Dragonspyre. I'm behind a world as Dragonspyre fishing hit the pavement back in April and the latest fishing craze (and levels) can be found in Celestia.

That said, if you're looking for a full fish guide, there's plenty around between Swordroll, Stars of the Spiral, Duelist101, Wizard101 Central's Wiki, Mercenaries for Hire, and Adventures of the Spiral Fishing Database.

What about me? Where's my guide? Pffttttt, all I've got is fancy Vines and a story about me fishing in Dragonspyre to share today! ;p

So I remember I left off in Dragonspyre after Lucky Hookline sent me there, and today after doing a round of gardening I saw I had some energy left. Knowing I needed to do a Blaugust post today, I thought to myself, HEY, MAYBE FISHING! YEAH!

I didn't read any of the above guides to refresh myself (the mercs guide would have been particularly helpful to read in advance) and just started casting out my old rank 1 lures and caught a lot of this . . .

(Old vine video deleted)

and this . . .

(Old vine video deleted)

and even one or two of these! (Which ain't that shabby)

(Old vine video deleted)

Somehow I muddled through the quest and managed to catch a Dragonfly Fish and a Hard Albacore, but it took me a bit to catch this freaking thing:

(Old vine video deleted)

YES! YELLOW GRUNION, BABY! YES!

The next quest old Yuri Smokesnare had for me was to catch a . . . dun dun dun . . . Sentinel Fish!  This one I remember reading you had to slap that spacebar as soon as a sentinel fish nibbled your lure, and it wasn't too much pain to fish up the guardian of Dragonspyre's lava lakes!

(Old vine video deleted)

HA!

. . . and then the streams went dead with the quest to catch an Ember Parrot Fish . . . I did a quick search on the Ember Parrot fish and found this thread where I soon found I was not alone, but it also put out that missing piece of information for me "Rank 2."

*slaps head*

Therein lies the problem of picking up on a quest from several months ago, you forget things, like there being a Rank 2 version of a spell.  HA! I went and snatched up my missing spells back in Grizzleheim and ran back to The Tower Archives fishing spot I was at, so when my energy was back, I could give it another shot.

I had a lot of fun, and I'll be seeing you in Celestia's ponds soon!

Happy Dueling!

~~

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

Bear Acuda and a Todd Pole *check*

Hey all!

Just a quick update.  I finished up the fishing quests earlier today in Grizzleheim.

At first I was kind of miffed at Haarek Silverscale for giving me his backside when we were talkin'.

But then I realized that a fisherman never breaks his gaze from the water.  You might miss that spacebar moment when you see your magic orb pop underneath the water! Although, to be honest I had already had my fill of bear snout in my face. Eek!

Them there be some teeth on that thing!  I can't believe I'm swimming in the same water that thing is in! Looks bitey.

I think for me personally (I know everyone has their own horror story about an extremely hard fish to catch) the hardest fish was that fish sandwich back in Cyclops Lane.

Someone somewhere said that the Fish Sandwich fish was making them crave an actual fish sandwich.  I agree.  Nom.

Probably the surprise catch for me was this pet egg in a treasure chest!

Now what kind of person puts an egg in a chest along with 1450 gold and some mistwood and throws it into the water? eh? (Actually, I can see putting the mistwood in a box and chucking it away.) In the past, I'd blame aliens, but . . . Ha! You know, it would be a funny quest to have Pirates in Pirate101 put things into treasure chests and throw them into the rivers of Grizzleheim.  Aliens? No . . . Pirates are the only explanation for crazy stuff like this sometimes! *nods*

I think the big takeaway lesson I learned from my fishing experience is how to target those little guys in the water.

What I do is imagine I have a big X on the back of my head. (Being a Community Manager, that's usually the case anyway . . . .) 

That's about the spot where the lure will end up every time I cast it out.  If the fish will be near that spot in 2 seconds, I cast out my line.

Word.

Anyway, fishing was a fun distraction, but I think it's time to get back to my adventures in Khyrsalis.

Happy Dueling!

Fishing Arrives in Wizard101!

That's right . . . the servers came back online around 5:00am US Central, and the joys of fishing in Wizard101 were opened to the world today. I took a quick look this morning, and it was pretty awesome to see a strange shift in the Commons! Instead of everyone standing or sitting around on their mounts, there was a frenzy of activity around and in the lake--catchin' up whoppers! How awesome is that?

I joined in the fun and caught my first icecuda fish. :)

. . . and promptly put him in my house.

Awwww! First fish cuteness! He'll love hanging out by my Krokotopian sacrifice table and sarcophagus collection!

Anyway, I'm glad to have been a very small part in the process of bringing you fishing, and I really hope you enjoy it. I've been tuning in to Twitter, Facebook, Central, and our own message boards, and I'm excited to hear more of your feedback now that fishing has gone live. :)

Happy Dueling!

Fishing! Wizard101's Test Realm is LIVE!

The official announcements have been made on Facebook and Twitter!

Click for Facebook Post
Click for Twitter Post

And here's the official Test Realm update notes!

I'm on a lunch break here at KingsIsle, and I'm hanging out in the Test Realm for a moment (oh man, I should have loaded the Test Realm for Wizard101 earlier . . . now I'm just waiting for game assets to finish downloading).  Just thought I'd give a shout out to the Wizard101 team and give them a big congratulations on beginning this new season of sport in Wizard101!

Now the real question . . . do I wish Pirate101 would have gotten a Fishing system before Wizard101?

No response. ;)

Looks to be a lot of fun from everything I've seen and heard!

Happy Dueling (and happy fish collecting)