February 2025 Zone of the Month -- Gumdrop Forest

Keeping the tradition alive!  Randomness has returned us once again to Karamelle. Truly the universe is telling me I need to move along.

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Name: Gumdrop Forest

Location: Karamelle -- Just run through the main tunnel in Karmelle City and hang a right. You'll see a sign guiding your way to the sweetest tourist spot in Karmelle -- welcome to Gumdrop Forest!

Sweet sights are ahead!

Description: Karamelle's famous gumdrop trees await you and, even more so, the beautiful sights drawing all the tourists to this wonderful land. This area is a smaller hub beyond the main hub of Karamelle City. From here you can head to Sweetzburg, Nibbleheim, and Gobblerton. 
 

A resident of Mooshu takes in the beautiful sights of the Gumdrop Forest and beyond

Cost: 2295 Crowns -- For this price you'll also get Sweetzburg.

Zeke Item: You gotta find those Lemonheads! This one hides in a far corner of the zone just beyond a soda lake.

Sticking out like a sore thumb in this darkened corner of the Gumdrop Forest

Chests: Yes there are, in fact, BOTH wooden chests and silver chests in the Gumdrop Forest! Chests seemed to drop just under 1000 gold each! Enjoy!

A silver chest peaking out from the side of a cave

Secrets:  There are no major secrets for you to find in the Gumdrop Forest, but one of the most charming scenes can be found here: tourists from Polaris and Mooshu enjoying the sights and skipping along. If you don't stop to smell the flowers in Gumdrop Forest, you may just miss it!

Happy Penguins visiting Karamelle.

Reagents: Unfortunately, for being a world so rich in flora, there are no reagents to be found in the Gumdrop Forest. You'll have to go a bit deeper into Sweetzburg if you're looking for Pretzel Sticks and Parchment.

Fishing: No fish can be found in Gumdrop Forest just yet. Maybe someday, though! Just imagine fishing up some Swedish Fish, Caram-eels, or a Tetra-misu. Lots to hope for the future!

A simply delicious world!

Teleporters: There are no teleporters in Gumdrop Forest, but none are really needed. Travel is fairly straightforward here with no major twists and turns.

What's the 4-1-1? When the Grand Nana finds out you are the Scion of Bartleby, she sends you on a quest into the Gumdrop Forest to find the cause of the Sour Gummies. She believes there you will be able to cure a witch's curse that's causing the gummies to sour. 

Once in the Gumdrop Forest, the Gnome Ranger will ask you to help fend off the hungry stomachs of the gobblers invading from Gobblerton and then send you on to Sweetzburg to talk with the factory workers there about the sour gummy situation.

Just look at those candy cane six-shooters!

Who's that Boss? While the Hangriest Gobbler is a great boss for farming spellements, this zone's most interesting boss has to go to the Tree Mugger. He's got a really interesting cheat that uses the Impede spell. For some tips and tricks on how to handle him, be sure to check out the guide at Wizard101 Central.

It's all about the mustache.

Don't Miss this Sidequest! After dealing with the hungry gobblers, don't miss the Gnome Ranger's follow on quest to hunt down an angry gnome who likes to punch trees. When you beat the Tree Mugger, you'll be rewarded with a legendary socket wrench, which unlocks sockets on items from levels 135 to 170.

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Thanks for reading! I hope you take a chance to visit an old favorite again this new year.

Happy Dueling!

Tea Times Two with Thomas Lionblood

Man, I've been wanting to post a thing or two on my blog for a week now, and I just haven't had the time or motivation. I've either been busy with holiday stuff or sick, but as long as I'm here typing, let's just see what I can do to dump out all my thoughts RIGHT NOW! 

Let's start with the Wizard Tea. Bazaar Sniping, a thing that's been in the game since the beginning, is now (from what I hear) a thing of the past. I haven't tried bazaar sniping since I was actively working on crafting.  We always used it to transfer metal scraps and random reagents back and forth between me and Bailey.

I remember asking Professor Greyrose about it once waaaaay back and she noted that it wasn't an intended thing for players to do, but because everyone liked it, they just kept it in the game.

Fast forward to today, players several years ago realized that Empower treasure cards were a stable drop in the game economy that could be traded back and forth in exchange for other things. Think of it like a player invented monetizing system.  In Everquest, they have Krono (which happens to be company controlled and monetized btw -- KingsIsle, if you're reading, look into it . . . I'm pretty sure you could monetize trading with something similar -- players would hate it and call you money-grubbing, but they do that anyway). In Wizard101, they have Empower Treasure Cards.

Anyway, they finally fixed the sniping bug and as expected, people went nuts.

At first I didn't even remember the Empower Treasure Card facet of Bazaar sniping, but @Karlicai broke it down for me.

WHEW! Man, everything KingsIsle was trying to avoid with allowing player trading in the first place was circumvented by players in a super ingenious way. By allowing this to exist for 16 years, players created a discord channel for trading and a whole sub-economy using Bazaar sniping as a method to trade valuable items and bank gold. People going to do people things I suppose.

One of the major problems to the above method is the presence of bots in the bazaar. It defeats the whole system. You want to trade something with someone and bam, a bot snipes before you can snipe. The new system they implemented was that after you deposit an item in the bazaar, there's now a time delay and you can't predictably snipe anymore. In fact, players are saying the new system favors bots now.  Whoops. Not the best fix.

A lot of players seem pretty upset by this, and I get it. KingsIsle will work it out somehow. I have faith. Ultimately, they're trying to avoid gold sellers and spammers in zone chat. If you've played any other MMO, you'll know what they are. They're annoying.

So there you go.  That's the T in Wizard101 lately.

We used to track time in Community Management by what the recent drama was. We seem to be in the Post-Hawkules/Sparck-tell-all and entering into the season of bazaar-sniping-fix. All in all, still not as glorious as the age of Glowing Mushroom Exploit. 

AAAANNNNYYWWWAAYYYY . . . I finished all my quests for the Selenopolis trees and got my new cool blade.

Woot!

Also spent a bunch of Crowns trying to get the full outfit from the new Christmas pack. It's not a bad pack, I might actually stitch this new robe on to my outfit.  The Krampus banner is pretty great as well.

I like that Krampus banner!

I didn't keep going to see if I could get the new mount. It's a little weird and I already have far too many mounts to even think about wanting a new one. Still debating about this new pet. I kinda like it.

Smelly Gracie seems neat, but nothing will ever top my precious Lady Dexter.

Anyway, hope you all are enjoying Wizard101 and the holidays. I need to find some time to log on and finish up a few more of the quests in Selenopolis and hopefully convince my wife to play again. I WILL FINISH KARAMELLE!

Happy Dueling!

December 2024 Zone of the Month -- Karamelle City

Hey all! I thought I'd try to bring back a time-honored tradition as I discussed in a post last month and do another Zone of the Month!  

To those ends, I made a list of the 256 zones in Wizard101 and used a random number generator to let randomness do what it does best to choose our zone.  The random zone of the month this month is none other than an idea that was first birthed from a flight of fancy from the old Professor Greyrose on this very blog.  Thus, the rumors of Candyland began back in 2009 and finally became a reality with the World of Karamelle in 2020.

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Name: Karamelle City

Location: Karamelle -- Karamelle City is the main hub of the world Karamelle and is the location all players will enter upon taking the spiral door to that world. You'll wander through Karamelle City often as you weave your way through this world's story.

A wonderful world of sweets and treats!

Description: As described on Wizard101's Karamelle World webpage: "Karamelle is a world of smiles, of Gumdrop Forests and Licorice Trees, of Chocolate Mines and Soda Lakes. Happy villages stretch from Karamelle City to Gutenstadt and everyone, everywhere, is always singing and whistling while they work." Of course, as you travel on, you begin to understand that happiness in Karamelle really is just skin deep.

Spilled Ice Cream in Karamelle City, complete with a trail of ants leading to it.

Cost: When you purchase Karamelle City, you'll also receive the zones of Von Trap Estate and Rock Candy Mountains for the price of 2295 Crowns.

Zeke Item: In Karamelle, Zeke has you hunting down Lemonheads. In Karamelle City, you can find the zone's Lemonhead right inside the gateway leading to Rock Candy Mountain. The Lemonhead is quite easy to see to the side of a bench there.

Someone dropped a lemonhead next to the bench here.

Chests: There are no chests or silver chests in this zone for players to collect, which is too bad since there are plenty of places to hide them. 

Secrets: The biggest secrets of Karamelle City come from Nana herself and her factory! You should go talk to the Grandnana in her office. While you're there, make sure to inspect her desk, you might just find a free Dinette Set housing item waiting for you there!

Is stealing dinnerware behind Nana's back a crime in Karamelle City?

Reagents: There are no reagents in this zone for players to collect. You'll have to head in a bit deeper in the world to find the Pretzel Sticks you may be hunting for.

Fishing: Despite having a wonderful, bubbling Soda Stream, no fish can be found in Karamelle City. I take it as a hope for things to come! Just imagine fishing up some Swedish Fish, Caram-eels, or a Tetra-misu. Lots to hope for the future!

Teleporters: While there aren't any teleporters to get you around within Karamelle City itself, there is a Nanavator to help you traverse the different worlds within Karamelle, like, Sweetzburg, Nibbleheim, Gutenstadt, Black Licorice Forest, Candy Corn Farm, and Gobblerton.

Just take the Nanavator to where you need to go!

What’s the 4-1-1? When you arrive in Karamelle City, you've been sent there by Ione as the Arcanum Liason. Maulworf Von Trap is your inside informant on Cabal activities and a summit happening there at the request of The Great Old One. 

Upon arriving in Karamelle City you quickly find the problem of Sweet things gone sour and must dispose of evil gummy bears. It's a plot to be more fully explored later in Karamelle City.

Not the Xtra Limes bear!

At the summit of The Great Old One, you are asked to join the cabal by the Great Old One himself. As you're about to shake his hand, the great old one falls into a giant hole, or rather, a cavity. Sour candy is causing all kinds of problems! Perhaps Nana herself will have answers about what's going on with the candy gone wild?

Who’s that Boss?  There are a few Bosses in Karamelle City, but the most notable one is the one you fight at the end of Karamelle. If you follow the world's story line to the end, you'll find yourself facing off against The Aberrant Paradox, which just happens to be . . . YOU. Looking for a strategy on how to fight the big bad, The Final Bastion has all the info you need.

Don’t miss this Side Quest! After you've completed the main quest titled "Candy Crushing," make sure you talk to the Good Will Ambassador to take the Quest "Good Will Stunting" and the follow-on quest "My Stars and Gobblers!"  It's worth it just to get a look at Professor Plump in the Nana Corporation Lobby.

Professor Plump I presume!

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If only I had the power to discount this zone for you all!  Hope you enjoyed reading about this month's zone of the month.

Happy Dueling!

Tea Time with Thomas Lionblood

I had a Wizard101 dream a couple nights ago. Actually, scratch that, it was a KingsIsle dream. 

So in this dream, I was back at KingsIsle and had just returned and got a new job there. For some reason it was very somber and someone told me just to go grab a laptop and sitdown somewhere. I grabbed one and chose a pit desk that was empty with no desk partners around it, and a guy behind me smiled and said "Hello, Tom." Sadly I didn't recognize the person, but they recognized me. 

In my dream, I then started walking around, and the Marketing section took up two full rows of desks in the pit and they were at a 45-degree angle to the rest of the office. It was super glitzy and suddenly looked like the best department in the office. I went over to Mythdust's office and she had a couple people in there. She came out and had gigantic 80's hair and looked like she had a mega-makeover. She said we should go to lunch to talk. Even with all the glitz, in the dream it felt more nonplussed to me. Which is weird, I mean Mythdust with giant hair and wearing an acid-washed levi jacket should be hilarious.

Anyway, while dreamwalking through the office I eventually passed Leah Ruben's old office, and it was shut tight. Other offices along the way had new unrecognizable faces in them that I didn't know.  Gone was the old guard, and I couldn't even see my old buddies there. Where's Jeff Toney? And then I woke up . . .

It left me feeling very weird. Like home but not home and very humbled for some reason. Dream Interpreter AI thinks I'm trying to gain either some familiarity or realize some personal growth. /shrug

Anyway, because of that dream, of course, I had to actually log on Wizard101 in real life. But before I talk about that, YO, Wizard101 has a lot going on lately. It's kind of a weird vibe. Are y'all up on the Tea?

Firstly, there was a whole Hawkules/Sparck controversy that rocked its way through the community.  I woke up a couple weeks ago wondering why my notifications were going off with people telling me they missed me, so I crafted up a quick response telling people it was good to be missed and how hard the job is, kinda giving props to those still working there. Then that tweet started getting a lot of likes and I knew something must be up.  And wow, yeah, The now ex-Pirate101 Community Manager (who goes by Hawkules) did a tell-all / burning bridges thread. 

*turns off computer, walks away and waits for dust to settle a bit*

Oh yeah, and GET THIS, Pirate101 did an update with some super unfortunate timing. Pirate101 update you say?! yeah, I know . . . crazy they're still getting updates, but BAM. The new update is a promotion quest for none other than the Hawkules companion. Timing for the win. Hawkules the CM gets canned and Hawkules the companion in game gets a promotion. You can't make this stuff up.

It's the worst. When stuff like this happened when I was a CM, it always felt like a kick to the gut, so I feel for my old co-worker buddies who are still at KingsIsle. Raises Diet Coke in solidarity. Hang in there, KingsIsle peeps! I trust your judgment!

Ok now that we're done with Tea time, there's a whole new thing going on where Krokotopia got a revamp and there's this new Selenopolis zone.  I don't fully know what's going on there yet, but it really seems to be all about this new Magic Weaving feature and throwing down a tutorial on how the whole Gambit system works for these new spell cards.

I took it to Twitter to get reactions on how people liked the new feature and got a range of responses. I loved the responses.

Jose kind of nailed the feeling I had after I had been through about 2/3rds of the tutorial.  I mean, it made sense, but when they started to try and break down the Roshambo, I was cringing a bit. 

Next comment I loved came from Timid.

Yup . . . probably not worth it just yet for a high-level player, but for someone who might have just finished Dragonspyre, I don't know . . . could be kind of cool to have these new spells at that level. The new spells do seem more PVP-focused or perhaps situational to a boss fight.

Xander hit the nail on the head for me on this one.

And that's where I ended up after a couple hours of play with the new update.  I spent a lot of time going from tree to tree to tree trying to decide what I want my new magic weaving class to be and when I finally arrived at what I wanted to do (Balance for the extra blade), it gave me a new quest to complete a ton of badges.  

I mean, overall, I love making badges more important, but turning them into quest requirements is a little weird though. 

It was hard choosing my new magic weaving class. The original plan with Thomas Lionblood was that he would be a Death/Myth caster, and as much fun as it would have been casting the Bleh the Impaler spell, I just didn't really feel going down that path would net me much in the long run.

More like Meh the Impaler . . .

The Death/Fire spells also looked super amazing as did the Death/Storm spells, but in the end, I don't know . . . kind of just felt like Balance would be better for me, which is fine, I already went down the Balance line a long time ago after having a glut of spell points. PLUS, the poet-tree spouting poetry was by far the best choice for me eventually. 

She's my soul mate

So, there you have it. I spent some more time in Wizard101/Pirate101 and worked a little on the new content.

Always interested in hearing your thoughts! Feel free to share with me.

Happy Dueling!  

Of Content Mills and Zones of the Month in Wizard101

I've been waxing a bit reminiscent lately about all my time and energy spent working on Wizard101. There are a few good stories in me from those days, and I'll have to write them out someday. Today, however, I'm thinking a lot about the Zone of the Month feature I instituted. 

I'm really fond of list projects like this that choose a random "thing" and expound on it a bit. It feels like there's a natural sense of surprise and collection to them that all feels good to me.

A couple examples of this here on my blog are how I used to do a pet of the day feature for Wizard101 or how I made a collection of wizard101 player mini-interviews and turned it into a card game. I LOVE IT! It's such an easy content mill for blogging.

Ahh, the Death Cyclops pet!

At Kingsisle I instituted (and it's still going on) the Puppet Pirates "of the month" comics with Jeff Toney where every month you have a new comic that fans caption. I instituted the Rogue's Gallery spotlights "of the month" that highlighted NPCs in Pirate101. Again, it's just a great content mill format that fans track and appreciate so much. 

When I was knee-deep in Wizard101 community management, I set my sights on bringing that content mill to the newsletter with something that seemed endless to me: all the freaking zones in Wizard101. There's a bajillion of them. You'll never run out of them! Even better, we still had access to the original zone-level designers, and I felt like it would be great to partner with them and pick their brains. 

When I was concepting the article, I asked my old coworker Natalie Akilian about how we handle zone pricing, and when I found out we could sneak in price changes with weekly maintenance, I sold our Marketing Manager on it and we were golden. I got approval to discount that zone to go along with the article and with the help of Natalie, we made it happen.

So there it was and my randomness led me to close my eyes and point to a list of zones and BAM, in the December 2017 Wizard101 Newsletter, I was gathering info on the Celestia Science Center, talking with the writers and designers, using the flycam to take screenshots, reading quest text, coordinating zone pricing, and working with the marketing web designer to make it happen.

The flycam let me get great shots like this one!

It went over surprisingly . . . quiet . . . at first. I think people were a bit confused, but eventually, the masses seemed to approve and the discount was actually what made people appreciate it the most. There typically weren't any discounts on zones for Crowns-only non-subscribers, so picking up a random zone on a discount was actually pretty welcome and unique. 

I kept that feature going strong each month up until my transition out of Marketing into Design in August 2018. So in the end I helped coordinate these:

• July 2018--Zone of the Month: Zanadu Sewers 
• June 2018--Zone of the Month: Pegasus Place 
• May 2018--Zone of the Month: The Wild 
• April 2018--Zone of the Month: The Crystal Grove 
• March 2018--Zone of the Month: Crescent Beach 
• February 2018--Zone of the Month: Savarstaad Pass 
• January 2018--Zone of the Month: Chamber of Fire 
• December 2017--Zone of the Month: Celestia Science Center

What's pretty great to see is that the Community Manager and Marketing Team kept that going well beyond what I started, which is impressive. 

• February 2020--Zone of the Month: Chronoverge
• January 2020--none 
• December 2019--none 
• November 2019--Zone of the Month: Aggrobah 
• October 2019--none 
• September 2019--Zone of the Month: Throne Room of Fire 
• August 2019--Zone of the Month: Jade Palace 
• July 2019--Zone of the Month: Regent's Square 
• June 2019--Zone of the Month: Sunken City 
• May 2019--Zone of the Month: Firecat Alley 
• April 2019--Zone of the Month: Pigswick Academy 
• March 2019--Zone of the Month: The Oasis 
• February 2019--Zone of the Month: Urville Station 
• January 2019--none 
• December 2018--Zone of the Month: Northeast Aero Plains 
• November 2018--Zone of the Month: Aeriel Shores 
• October 2018--Zone of the Month: Pet Pavillion (again) 
• September 2018--Zone of the Month: Pet Pavillion 
• August 2018--Zone of the Month: Wizard City Commons  

Good on 'em! I'm glad they kept it going as long as they did.

Seeing all this is making me wonder now, hmm. I wonder what it would be like if I brought this back on my personal blog? Obviously I couldn't direct zone discounts anymore, but it might be fun to let randomness once again direct a zone of the month. It certainly would get me back in the game and playing around more often!

I don't know ... I guess, don't be surprised if you see it pop up again here on TFN!

Happy Dueling!

Wizard101 in 2024 . . . back to the sewers!

This past week my mind started returning to the game that changed my life, Wizard101. Oh, man! I haven't logged on to Wizard101 for a long time . . . in fact the last time I played it was back in January.  I'm going to be completely honest about some of the motivations last time for logging on: I was trying to get a job back at KingsIsle as a part of the Design team.  It would have solved so many problems for me at the time. I wouldn't have had to move. I could have stayed in the industry. I could have been working with old friends. I could have been working on a game that I love! Unfortunately, I just wasn't what they were looking for in that particular role and thus . . . it wasn't meant to be.

Anyway, I logged on X and shot out a very simple message to see what I'd get for a response. "Tell me about what Wizard101 is like now here in 2024. I want to know your thoughts on reaching endgame. Also, how many hours a day are you playing and what are you mostly doing?" The response I got back was surprisingly awesome. I had no idea I still had reach like this with the fanbase. It got 10,000+ views and garnered a ton of responses.

While you can go read through that yourself, I thought I'd take a second to summarize what I got back:

• Side Activities -- The endgame can be found in events and side activities, specifically Beastmoon, PvP, leveling pets, gardening, fishing, monstrology, and hunting for badges. There's tons of side activities now that I think about it.
• The gear grind endgame remains -- You will spend a lot of time farming bosses to equip your character. It's just kind of what everyone does . . . or you buy hoard packs and skip all that nonsense.
• Just being with people -- Helping friends quest and grouping up with randoms through the team-up kiosk continues to be popular at endgame.
• Guilds -- Completing your Guild museum and participating in Guild Raids will give you hours of fun (and the guild raids are apparently extremely difficult and unforgiving)

Outside of these, I got a few outlying comments

• The good -- As to be expected -- there are just people that continue happily playing the game no matter what they're doing, leveling a fifth character . . . hanging out . . . whatever. They're just happy to be playing.
• The bad -- As to be expected -- some people are burnt out and unhappy with a variety of things. The direction of PvP, the pay-to-win monetization, the decrease in production value, being stuck in difficult content, etc.  Those are all valid.  I respect those honest responses. *hugs the downtrodden* I hope stuff gets better!
• The broken -- These folks lack a computer to play, but love the game . . . they're also looking forward to a console release of Wizard101.
• The pirate -- God bless 'em. I'm a Pirate101 fan too. The upcoming update can't come fast enough.  

It made me log back into Wizard101, and I found myself exploring the side world that is the sewers under Wizard City, and unfortunately, where I left off was at a particularly difficult fight and one that was impossible to solo.

Not the best screenshot, but there's the Greggors . . . old and young.

This Sir Greggor fight took way too long to win, but after a couple attempts and not having friends to turn to, I realized that using blades and renting some crown shop companions were going to be my key to winning this.  I realized that what makes this game really difficult is not its difficulty, but rather its time commitment because of its turn-based nature. Thankfully not all fights are as time-consuming as the Sir Greggor fight. (I'm bracing for someone to tell me . . . just wait until you fight X random boss)

Thankfully the writers of the story were pretty great about summing up why the heck I'm fighting old Dragonspyre ghosts in the sewers of Wizard City. As it turns out the sewers of Wizard City are actually old tombs and there are some Dragonspyre ghosts here thanks to a time when a power-hungry prince from Dragonspyre tried to wage war on Wizard City. Got it.

Looks like I'm back to playing some Wizard101 and hunting down old ghosts . . . sounds surprisingly apropos.

Happy Dueling!

Quest to Cantrip Completion in Wizard101

I decided to log back into Wizard101 and see if I could recreate some of the magic that's there for me, and quickly discovered that, yes, indeed, there is magic! Specifically cantrips!

I love "fun" magic! Teach me your ways Abner!

Yes, Wizard101 friends, that's how behind the times I am with Wizard101. I'm over here giving the breaking news on stuff that happened in Spring of 2022. I mean, if I really want to come clean here I'm still playing in Fall 2020 content, which means that Abner has all kinds of things he wants to talk to me about!

Abner looks to be Wizard101's Town Crier like Mickey Dugan was for Pirate101. Got it.

I haven't even played a round of Beastmoon . . . I'm a little intimidated by it to be honest. Anyway, Abner pointed me over to good ol' Pigswick Academy to learn more about Cantrips and before you could say Alla-ka-piggle, I was doing magic flips in the air in front of Hampshire Buttersfield with my "fun" magic.

Flipping out over Cantrips

. . . and then I just sat there doing backflips, making rainclouds, floating my spell book, and casting invisibility over and over while I listened to the Ruff Talk VR Podcast. From the looks of it, the "purchasable" Cantrips kind of max out at level six where you can get a second mark and recall, which is pretty great!

These dudes are really making me do a lot of backflips for a Second Mark . . .

After that it was a 1-2-3 punch KO on cantrip research:

1. First up was a fantastic read-- the cantrip leveling guide over on Final Bastion. It looks like Jennifer Soulstone mathed it all out and has multiple paths for leveling all written out. Man, I love invested people like this. Good on you, Jennifer!
2. The next stop in my cantrip googling adventure was to go look at the cantrip lists over at Wizard101 Central. 
3. And then finally, the last piece of the puzzle seems to be Crafted Cantrip Treasure Cards, which Wizard101 Central also had the deets on.

Ok, GOT IT. I'm all caught up on cantrip information, now to just put it to good use by downloading Moonlight for my phone and Sunshine for my PC and viola, I'm burning energy by casting Roll Dice over and over on my phone that's streaming from my PC while I'm watching TV with the wife.

Wizard on the phone.  Man, I need a steam deck . . . it'd be so much easier than this.

Welcome to Cantrip Energy Grind 2024 y'all!

Happy Dueling!

Back to School to Multiclass in Wizard101?

Over on Syp's blog today he talks about making multiclass just a natural part of your character's journey in MMOs. It's a great read and I totally understand where he's coming from. I too have a twisting life path that I don't think is entirely finished myself! If I was to look at my personal journey it would twist and turn as I transitioned from Drummer to Songwriter to Dishwasher to Delivery Driver to Poet to Technical Editor to Columnist to Blogger to Community Manager to Game Designer to who knows what comes next . . . all the while, each step along my journey has added a new skill set to who I am.

Syp mentions three great games (DDO, FFXIV, and Realm of the Mad God) as examples. For myself, I've often envisioned Wizard101 as having a sort of going back to school quest line where you can play the game again as a different class of wizard, and indeed, the game already allows you to dip into other school's cards from their trainers, but nothing as drastic as taking my Death Wizard and going back through the quest line again as a Fire Wizard.

It could work. Wizard101 even has a time traveler in it ala the Five BOXES quest, so . . . it might not be entirely out of the question if you work some lore into it so that you could "correct" a few unknown-to-you-but-accidentally-critical errors you made along your journey the first time. And those moments could then award you with special cross-class spells that aren't available anywhere else.

Imagine if you will that because I time traveled and went back to school as a Fire Wizard that now I have access to certain Death/Fire crossover spells, like a hybrid meteor storm spell where the impact also causes skeletal hands to sprout underneath your opponents and now they're also taking damage over time for the next 3 rounds, or a Skeletal Dragon that breathes fire. It sounds super cool on paper! It might even make that crafted multi-class armor you can make just that much better!

Wizard101 has the concept of cross-over spells but they are cross-over spells from the same class, not multiclass.

Some example cross-over spells currently in Wizard101

It's also part of what I'm loving about Runes of Magic right now. I'm a 63 Mage / 61 Rogue / 30 Knight. I can only play as two of those at one time, but the different combinations give me different abilities.  The Mage/Rogue crossover gives me Vampire abilities.  The Rogue/Mage crossover gives me Telekinetic abilities.  The Knight/Mage crossover gives me Wizard Knight abilities.  The Rogue/Knight crossover gives me Bodyguard abilities. The Knight/Rogue crossover gives me Lion Guard abilities. It's just such a cool way of envisioning a multiclass system.

Again, great post from Syp. If you've got some fun Wizard101 multiclass ideas or examples of other games where this is done well, would love to hear from you.

Happy Dueling!

MMO Brain Dump 5/25/2021

Just wanted to get a few things out of my brain that have been rolling around inside it, and for some reason I'm feeling the drive to write more, so I might as well go for it. You know?

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1- SOLO -- I've been hearing a lot about Swords of Legends Online . . . FROM MY WIFE of all people.  One of her friends was streaming game play from the Beta and she seemed super interested. Honestly, I'm a bit nervous when I look at the graphics that I'd probably need an upgrade to my computer to really play it well.

My gut wants to label it as Guild Wars 2 that's deeply based in Chinese mythology, but you never know with a game like this until you play it. It's due out some time this summer, so I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.

~~

2- WoW -- I've jumped in and started a new character Horde side because guess who else also got interested in the game lately . . . Beau and Leala! My old partners in crime from the Overwatch Potato League. Thus Gobbolicious was born!

trike mount ftw

So there you go. I've got someone new to hang out with in WoW for a bit. Should be fun exploring the game with them. I'm all about replacing those old bad memories with some good ones.

~~

3- Wizard101 -- There's a new pack that features a itty bitty streetcar mount, a blimp pet, and all the various clothes you'd find on The Art of Warlord's OC (as I teased them about yesterday).

My boi Blaze Lifehammer did a great video pack opening and seemed less than pleased. I'm always entertained by watching pack openings like this.

The three items that appeal to me here are the tiny streetcar, the blimp, and the hairstyle. 

~~

4- DCUO -- Y'all . . . I'm right on the cusp of getting that chroma pack . . . 99/100 seed pods.  Thank goodness I still have tomorrow morning to finish this up.

I cri everytime . . .

~~

5- Project Gorgon -- whoa whoa whoa . . . they're adding a subscription to Project Gorgon?! To be honest, adding VIP is something they've batted around for a while now. It's kind of cool to see it finally come to fruition.  Good for them!

The extra bag space sounds so nice. I'm such a hoarder when it comes to MMOs that, honestly I'd probably do it just for the bag space alone.  Although the neat .csv exports of data is pretty cool and the ability to level skills while not being logged in sounds fantastic right about now.  I haven't logged in to the game in forever, so building up the hammer skill without all the grinding sounds fantastic.

~~

That's it. Just a few thoughts I wanted to brain dump out there into the void. Lemme know what you've been thinking about in the MMO world!  I'd love to hear from you.

Happy Dueling!

Ding 135 -- Nana is Watching . . . Chezz's Videos

 Uber Wife and I returned from a months long break from the main quest line last night to put in a couple hours of Wizard101. What we discovered was the sad truth about Nana.

Nana! How could you?!

Nana was pretty upset that we were going around with Greta shutting down factories and causing problems for her. So much so that we had to give her the Baily Bull treatment.

Two fiercer creatures have never faced off against each other

It was a great time fighting everything from Chocolate moose to Peach Gobblers. Our favorite moment was when we had to collect "sugar dandruff" from a heard of sour patch goats because of course it's not powdered sugar, it's sugar dandruff!

Tempest-casting sour patch goats, who would have guessed.

I think what spurred us on was the knowledge that there's another quest for the next world already out there available to play. (Thanks to Blaze Lifehammer for sharing that quest walk through the other day.) It was a big realization about exactly how out of the loop I am on Wizard101 information lately.

Speaking of Wizard101 Information, Chezz is BACK AT IT?!?! Last week was fun to watch unfold when he started dropping songs about each of the starting worlds. It's a huge comeback from when he dropped that Avalon song back in 2013.  That was peak Wizard101, yo. 

If you haven't checked out his videos, give 'em a shot: 

Then . . . later today he'll be premiering the Mooshu song at 1pm central.  You know I'll be there watching! 

I love the positive vibes going on in Wizard101 lately.

Happy Dueling!

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!

Delving those MMO Pool Labyrinths

There was a viral Twitter post I saw yesterday that kind of sparked something inside me late last night.

Looks awesome, doesn't it?

So I did some digging and looked up a couple of magical places like this.  There's something called the Y-40, which is located inside a Hotel swimming pool in Italy? I found more details at poolinsider.com.

"The Y-40 is really a labyrinth of spaces designed for different underwater swimming, diving and viewing activities. The pool features various depths for divers of all levels and some cool interactive features. It has four artificial underwater caves that simulate what you might run into in the ocean, a cylindrical area with extreme depths for experiences divers looking to push their limits, various ledges, underwater glass viewing panels for spectators and even a 43 foot transparent tunnel for visitors who don't want to get wet."

There's also a deep dive pool called Nemo 33 in Belgium. It sounds like a scuba diver's playground! 

"Nemo 33 features numerous structures meant to simulate the experience of deep-sea diving, including intricate passageways and underwater caves submerged in 660,000 gallons (2.5 million liters) of water. Endowed with surreal vastness and astonishing architecture, visitors can participate in aquatic activities like swimming, scuba diving, and freediving."

Those places sound amazing but are way out of my budget. hehe. And that's why my mind naturally went to video games and particularly to a couple of weird MMO zones. 

~~

First, in Everquest on the continent of Velious, there's a little underwater dungeon called Siren's Grotto. Gimme a shout if you remember this spot! 

I actually downloaded Everquest, logged in, and went to Siren's Grotto last night.  It took me a few minutes to remember how handy some of the map tools were in the game and before I knew it, I had a glowing trail leading me to exactly where I needed to go to get there.

You just need to kill a few sirens and head on into the underwater cave in Cobalt Scar.

When I was spending a lot of time in this zone, oh . . . what 17 or 18 years ago? It was because I needed a quest item from a rare mob for my Beastlord epic weapon quest. I remember I spent quite a long time at the entrance of the zone killing the same mob over and over again. I think boredom eventually caused me to branch out and start hunting in other areas of the zone, but this place was a bit of a nightmare and it was easy to aggro multiple mobs and not even know it because, just like Dory, you just keep swimming.

Well Goo Goo G'Joob to you too, Mr. Walrus.

Before I knew it, I was killing mermaids. These old school mermaids man . . . they were the best!

Red tails and green hair . . . it's an unusual breed of mermaid . . .

I remember one time I came to this zone with an actual group and we were killing things for experience and loot, which was odd because it wasn't a popular spot to go because of it's maze like nature and because the risk vs. reward just wasn't there, but yeah . . . it's all a distant memory now.

This place definitely feels like a virtual crazy pool maze, and those swimming pool pictures got me thinking about this place hard.

Apparently that lady in the middle is a boss for an Enchanter epic quest?

~~

Second, in Wizard101 there's a zone called "The Grotto" in Celestia.  While this place isn't as much as a maze as Siren's Grotto in Everquest, it really does have some of those same watery corridors that feel like a maze.

How exactly does an underwater pool work inside an underwater dome work? Magic!

It's too bad you don't stay in this zone for too long. I really like it.

Swimming underwater in the grotto in Wizard101! Yes!

Everything in this zone has a nice muted sound to it and you really feel underwater. It even features a fun giant shark/eel/monster head tunnel that you can swim through and a castle made out of coral.

An Icy crab man named Governor Nereus lives inside

Going inside the giant eel's mouth was always one of my favorite moments in Celestia.

If there's a great questing spot in Celestia, this is definitely on the top of the list for me.

~~

. . . and of course there are other areas in other MMOs that are underwater. Most recently I've visited Atlantis in DCUO where you can even transform into a seahorse and race through the seaweed. That race would qualify as a maze for sure! 

Project Gorgon also recently added a few underwater caves to Sun Vale. From what I remember it was a seaweed crafting reagent paradise.

As for other MMOs, I've read about them, but I can't really remember running the underwater Aquatic Ruins fractal in GW2, I don't think I've ever seen Vashj'r in World of Warcraft, and I've never found the secret underwater cave in Sea of Thieves. but those are all underwater "mazes" I wouldn't mind visiting in the future.

What do you think? You got any good underwater game spots? Lemme know in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!