Harvest Festival Wrap Up

I think I can safely wrap it up in one word: pandemonium



Or maybe panda-monium. Everybody came dressed as pandas. What the heck? Why didn't anyone tell me to bring my panda costume?

Well, regardless, it was a lot of fun to reconnect and meet everyone. I'm sorry that Kingsisle has only given me a limited friend list!

Oh! And I did a little game of pick a number between 1 and 100 while I was there. Gratz to Charles Raven who was the closest guesser. I gifted him a couple packs of cards. Good times.


Diary of a Wizard put on a fun event. The blogosphere is bursting with news about it, so take a minute to click through my MMO Blogger's club and check out what people are saying! There's even rumor of a youtube video. LOL.

Happy Dueling!

How does blade and trap stacking work?

A question from the Awesome Pyromancer, Ms. Jessica:

Most of my attacks don't take all the blades and traps I use.

For example: I cast 3 blades on myself, and a trap. The sunbird only uses one blade and the trap.

Why is that? (I could have finished that boss! Hrmph.)

Great question! I know this confuses a lot of people. Let's talk a bit about how blades and traps really work.

1- Think backward. When you stack traps, they will always come off backwards. In other other words, the first trap you cast will be the last trap removed. So when stacking traps you need to think backwards. This is also the reason why if a prism comes after a regular variety shield is played, it will skip past the shield.

2- No two may be alike. You can't cast two death blades and have your spell use it twice. However a death blade and a treasure card death blade may be stacked . . . because they are different from each other (the treasure card usually does a little bit more damage than the regular card). Another example: a death trap from a necklace (blue card) is slightly different than a death trap and a death trap treasure card; therefore, all three may be used in one spell.

3- Don't be fooled by spirit traps. For the longest time I thought that if I cast a spirit trap, convert, and another spirit trap that I would catch the death trap from one and the life trap from the other after the convert. How wrong I was!

I made a video here for you all to watch that illustrates the power of trap stacking. Now, I'm no super death wizard . . . he did a skeletal pirate for 3 million damage, but this is my first attempt at a "big hit" using the treasure cards that have been hanging out in my backpack for quite some time now. It was time to at least give it a shot.

*grabs popcorn*



hehe, that was fun.

You'll notice that each one of those cards played were slightly different, and therefore, I was able to stack them up and pat Malistaire on the back for putting in some good effort.

Hope that helps!

Happy Dueling!

Crimson Book Stand *2 = Master Artisan! Housing Item of the Day = Pavillion!

Whew . . . I spent a good portion of yesterday and this morning farming red mandrake/blood moss and black lotus/black pearls. Oh . . . my . . . goodness. Here's how it rolled out:

After a couple hours of farming this morning, Amber Deathsong manages to hit a goldmine in the Bazaar and buys up around 20+ red mandrake. YES!

Here comes the combine!

One!


Two!


YES!

Amber scoots over to Dragonspyre for the turn in, Balthazar is once again all kinds of impressed.


MONEY!


Oh yeah, check out that new badge!


Ok, master artisan, let's cut our teeth on something a little more awesome! How about this little number, looks like I've got the ingredients. BOOYAH!


*insert crafting sounds* WHOA!


Oh I'm digging on that! You can go up inside it and put stuff around the edges, ok that's cool. PAVILLION IS THE ITEM OF THE DAY!



I feel like I need to log off and recover now. Seriously, crafting is not for those without an eye on the goal and a ton of determination. That's just some serious mind numbing path running. I feel like a mouse that ran the maze for cheese 100 times over. My head hurts.

Happy Dueling!

Where can I get a mooshu sword? (and get oyotomi to spawn)

Ms. Silverheart sends me a query thusly:

Hi friendly it's me silverheart I want a moo shu sword and I know otomi has one but what I don't know is how to bring him up I know you can jump around realms but I tried that this morning and after 17 diffret realm jumps I only got 1 otomi is there some easyer way to bring him up?

So you want a mooshu sword? Nice! I think you've got the right choice of sword there. It's probably the easiest to get out of them all.

The elemental blades are as follows:

Jade Oni’s Amethyst Blade = lightning sword
Plague Oni’s Sapphire Blade = ice sword
Ruby Blade of the Forest (from Oakheart) = fire sword

The balance blade is this:

Kagemoosha’s Citrine Blade = balance sword

And the spirit blades are as follows:

Tomugawa’s Onyx Blade = death sword
Oyotomi’s Jade Blade = life sword
Death Oni’s Peridot Blade = myth sword

All of those are 90 damage with a power pip and put you out in the circle for the attack.

I was fighting Oyotomi this morning and didn't experience the problem you mention, silverheart. /shrug I was grabbing a black lotus, realm jumping, grabbing another black lotus, and fighting oyotomi, and he kept respawning. I guess the best advice I can give is to run outside of the area, count to ten, and run back into the middle of the area even though he hasn't materialized yet. He should just reappear. Maybe try realm jumping from deep in the circle?

/boggle

Happy Dueling!

How can you adjust the quality of screen captures in Wizard101?

Question from our through the spiral gate friend:

It's great that KI made it so screencaps are automatically saved in a special folder on the player's computer. My question is, is there any way to adjust what directory the caps are saved in and the format/quality of the images? As it is, the default is JPEG format which makes the quality terrible. Any help would be much appreciated!

Right! I know. For people who really get into their graphics, the ability to adjust screen captures would be really awesome, unfortunately, it's a little limited as of now.

The only way to adjust your quality as of now is to adjust your game's entire settings. Let me give some examples.

These are the lowest graphic settings possible in the game:


They result in a screen capture that looks like this. (click on all the following examples to view them more accurately)


These are the highest graphic settings possible in the game:


They result in a screen capture that looks like this. (once again, click it)


There is no easy way to adjust where your screenshots are saved unfortunately. HOWEVER, there is another solution. You can always go download Fraps! Fraps is probably the solution you're looking for. Here's Fraps's screenshot capture interface. Notice that you can select between 4 different file types and adjust where those screencaps are to be saved. It's a perfect little screenshot (and video) companion for the artistic gamer.


Just to illustrate a bit on the quality differences between a loss-less (and non-Internet friendly) .bmp file and the highest quality .jpg, I've zoomed in on the health and mana indicators of my screenshot and stretched them.

Here's the stretched .bmp from Fraps:


Here's the stretched .jpg from the highest quality setting in Wizard101:


You can see the color warping around the edges in the .jpg whereas the .bmp stays relatively smooth (considering it has been stretched). If you can't tell the difference, well . . . you really have no need to worry about it then. LOL.

Hope that helps (and helps illustrate what you're asking about for those that may not be in the know).

Happy Dueling!

2 of 2 flamesoul cloaks!

Wow, ok so 12 Nature's Wrath treasure cards, 28 rubies, 6 crystal vials, 24 ectoplasm, 30 frost flower, 16 black pearls, 40 stone blocks, and a partridge in a pear tree later . . . TADA!




Amber was excited about those. I told her they'd sell for some good money, so we ran to the bazaar, and yup . . . nice!



But of course, we couldn't sell them just yet! No no no, we needed to go talk to our buddy, Balthazar. He was all kinds of impressed.



And now that that's over with, looky here . . . it's yet another quest!


Well, what this means is that although this is hot:


This is totally the new pink:



It also means I'll be talking more crafting in about 6 fire elf cards, 6 shadow oils, 2 glass vials, 72 cattails, 24 nightshades, 20 blood mosses, 12 black pearls, and a partridge in a pear tree later.

whew. KI sure knows how to work a crafter to the bone.

Happy Dueling!

And the winners are . . .

Last week I wondered who would be the first to get out of Krokotopia.

And the winners are . . .

*drumroll*

BAILEY AND MOLLY!

Bailey and Molly passed the gatekeeper's tests yesterday.


They completely destroyed ms. Krokopatra (awesome shot there, Bailey).


And, they ended up in the dreaded Marleybone, land of a million side quests.


Seriously, I don't think there is another land with as many side quests as Marley, is there? We left a lot unfinished in krokotopia though . . . we need to go back and finish our beetle quest now before we get too deep into Marleybone.

Anyway . . . gratz to my wife's character! I can't believe she's played this far into the game now! AWESOME! GO WIFE!

Happy Dueling!