Yes, A Unicorn *is* in your house.

Question from Max:

Hey Friendly. I was wondering what i saw in the game. So, i was a friend's house (in-game) and i saw a real unicorn apear. It wasn't a pet or mount it just apeared and the house owner was doing it. i attached a pic of it. The unicorn was moving and all that. What did i see?

Yup. The most recent patch brought with it a Unicorn for the Wizard City Small House. I went and purchased one yesterday just to have my own personal Unicorn Sighting.


As far as I can tell. The unicorn appears every two and a half to three minutes in the small grove of trees out in front of the house. (There are two or three threads on Central that talk about this btw.)


I was able to make the unicorn "glitch" once so the Unicorn stayed visible to me for a full two and a half to three minute cycle instead of the usual 5-10 seconds. It *seemed* like I caused the glitch by entering the interior of the house and then exiting right at the time the Unicorn was fading away. I'm unsure though


The glitch was kind of weird. Amber's fog unicorn disappeared during the glitch as well. It was definitely a Unicorn mystery. I LOVE UNICORN MYSTERIES!

Happy Dueling!

Who is the hardest boss, besides Malistare?

Jefferey asks:

Hey FN, I got a question- who is the hardest boss, besides Malistare?

Oo . . . I got this . . . how about we ask *THIS*: Guess which two bosses are HARDER than Malistaire?


I said Guess!?


Wrong. It's Angrus Hollowsoul and Orrick Nightglider from the Briskbreeze Tower.





You may see someone soloing Angrus Hollowsoul, but I highly doubt you'll see someone soloing Orrick Nightglider. These guys are the meanest, spitenest, rootin' tootin'est, gosh darn cheatenest bosses in all of Wizard101 right now. Both are sitting near the top of Briskbreeze Tower, which is meant to be an instance for four grandmasters.

Angrus is fond of summoning a minion who, if you don't kill said minion before he hits four pips, casts a big, old 10,000 hit point meteor strike that wipes you all out. I might be able to solo that, but it'd be touchy.

I took the Amber and Kyle combo in alone and beat Angrus but lost on Orrick yesterday. I think if I adjusted my strategy I could possibly duo Mr. Nightglider, but it's those 500 a tick heck hounds and buffed up Meteor showers that make shielding and healing very interesting . . . not to mention Orrick interrupts you and breaks every trap you try to cast on him . . . so forget stacking him up. He's mean, he's nasty, and he's harder than Malistaire.

Happy Dueling!

Where do you get the Ice Elf pet?

The Wandering Conjurer has a question today!

Hi there Friendly!

I like you're blog a lot and read it all the time.
I had a question for you, do you know where you can get an "Ice Elf" pet? I took a screen shot, you can find it here: http://thewanderingconjurer.blogspot.com/2010/01/oo.html
I really like it and would like to get one if possible.

Thanks,
Heather
aka
The Wandering Conjurer

Yes! I do know where you get the ice elf pet! Guess where?


I said guess?!


Wrong. It's from Gift Certificates that you buy from Wizard101.com!


So when you receive one of these gift certificates and you redeem it, it's just like getting a card from a store . . . only the gift certificates come packed with a card of ice elf.


You know, I kind of wish the pet used the new fire elf model. That would rock.

All the cool people give gift certificates to themselves for Christmas. :-)

Happy Dueling!

What defenses do I need for Malistaire?

I got a nice long letter from Christo Thundersinger. I really appreciated his kind words! Thank you! At the end of his letter, he had a question about defense against the dark arts for his storm/life and myth/life combo that he and his wife run:

I'm wondering about defenses: I've got Spirit Armor, which totally rocks, but can be a bit expensive, pip-wise (3); and Ether Shield (life/death) and Legend Shield (death/myth). In addition, my gear gives me one Elemental Shield (storm/fire/ice) and one Tower Shield, but they can come up pretty infrequently.

Do you think I've got the spells I need, defense-wise, to make it to and through Malistaire? I also have 3 training points to use. I'm wondering if there's a spell I should try to pick up from a different school? Or should I be investing heavily in treasure cards and/or gear?

Thanks again, and Happy New Year!

Well let's see.

You can skip the first two fights in Malistaire's Lair by 1- having yourself or your wife run into the battle and then 2- have the other person run around the side. 3- the person in the fight flees then teleports back once the other is safely past the fight.


You'll probably want to fight both of the Oni's since they drop fantastic loot. A couple tempests should take both of them down with no problems at all since one is a fire-based fight and the other is a cold-based fight. Have your wife's storm wizard load her deck with a bunch of Thermic Shield for those fights. I'd take a 0 pip Thermic shield over a 3 pip/power pip Spirit Armor any day. (You know, that thermic shield is only 3 deep in the storm line of spells if she doesn't want to do that.)

Inside the final part of Malistaire you'll need a lot of elemental defense for the first fight and a lot of death defense for Malistaire and his buddies.

Here's a tip. The fight right before Malistaire isn't too difficult for a storm wizard. It's really just a buffed tempest away from victory. So, have the myth/life person run into the fight first and grab the agro before running the storm/life toon into the fight for the second round. Shorten your deck for the fight and only load your ether shield, legend shield, and a few healing spells . . . I wouldn't even worry about loading an attack spell with the myth wizard . . . just let the storm wizard do her thing while you play offensive linebacker (or lifebacker if you're a wizard ;-)).

You know, after I typed that, I thought . . . I have a level 20 myth/life . . . I wonder . . .





hehe. Well that was fun.

As you can see for the final fight with Malistaire I'd take the same lifebacker approach. however, go ahead and load a couple orthrus or ninja pig just to help your wife do some damage on malistaire after getting the minions down.

In the end though, I'm sure you'll do fine even if you don't take my advice. The fights in Malistaire's Lair are difficult, but they aren't anything really more terrible than what you've faced before getting to that point.

Hope that answers your question in a round about way!

Happy Dueling!

What items can be gifted?

Hey! Sierra has an interesting question about gifting:

Happy new year! Thank you again for my Christmas gift. When you talked about those in your blog, you showed a pic of the Crown shop. I'd heard you could only give Crown items as gifts, but do they have to be new items bought as gifts from the Crown Shop? Can you gift Crown items from the regular vendors too? Could I give away my old outgrown Crown gear?

I've got a wall of Professor Falmea paintings I got while farming Kraysis for my Life wizard Olivia's Grandmaster hat. One of my friends collects the teachers and doesn't have Falmea yet. Is there any way I can gift her one of mine?

Happy New Year to you, and you're welcome . . . looky there! She even included a cool picture of her Falmea wall. Nice.


You are correct that only crown items can be given as gifts. Your other questions allude to another catch in the gifting process in that they also have to come from the Crowns Store to be gifted.

I asked Professor Greyrose about gifting and if they ever have plans to extend this feature, and her official response was this: "Any item that can be purchased with Crowns can be gifted. We will not be extending this feature to items purchased with Gold or Arena Tickets."

I like that statement because it's going to help keep the scammers at bay, BUT it's that "any" word that isn't necessarily true at this time. There are two tiny exceptions: elixers, which can only be purchased with crowns but cannot be gifted, and the crowns clothes that come from vendors instead of the crowns shop (However, I do believe you can gift crown clothes when they are a featured sale item in the sale tab). I made a little chart showing which tabs in the crowns shop allow you to gift and which don't.



In other words, gold, mounts, appearance clothes, and cards can be gifted.

So perhaps someday those two exceptions will be worked out, but for now there are your options.

/shrug

Happy Dueling!

How do I start the quest line to get into Ravenscar?

The Protective Pyromancer wants to know stuff about Grizzleheim!

Hey Friendly, its Protective here. I need help to get into RavenScar. I reached level 40 when I have on the keep so when I went to Ambrose to collect my quest to Raven it didn't work. I now have the quest to beat Jotun, and have finished all three places. Ambrose just wont cooperate and give me the quest. Please help!

Hey! Great timing with this question! The latest and greatest Ravenwood Bulletin hit the web today. This issue is devoted to "hints and tricks." Right up my alley! I love this issue!

So, on the Grizzleheim portion of the newsletter it says, "When you are Level 40 you will be able to begin the quest The King and I."

I went to wikia and checked the quest here. And it's looking like you don't need to go talk to Ambrose. Instead you need to go talk to Valgard, aka the king of Grizzleheim. (Um, but make sure you finish off all of Bjorn Ironclaw's quests so you can get in to the king to talk to him.)

Hope that helps!

Happy Dueling!

HAPPY 2010! Reflections and Projections?

Happy 2010!


I hope you all made it to midnight last night! I napped a bit between 10:00 and 11:00, but I woke up to ring in the new year with the family for the last hour! We did the traditional banging of the pots and pans at midnight. :-) I'm sure our quiet neighbors were ecstatic about it.

Amazingly enough, when I look back at Jan 1, 2009 I see that Amber had just finished up her level 30 spell quest and unlocked Regenerate. Spooky. Just last night Molly (the healer alt on the other account) unlocked regenerate.

2009 was full of Wizard101 win.

So as is tradition with the coming and going of the new year, it is time to reflect on all that 2009 was and all that 2010 (and beyond) could be. Here's my quick break down of some cool moments in 2009:

- On January 18th, KI threw the activate Dragonspyre Switch.
- On February 12th, KI made PVP rock, added silver chests, hit a million players, and started the Friendship Festival for Valentines day.
- On March 7th, I began my first attempt at answering questions about Wizard101.
- On March 25th, KI institutes voice overs and the shared bank.
- On April 12th, KI hits us with that yellow arrow we all love so much. We also FINALLY got our level 48 spells, training points buyback option, and eggbert (the magical dragon gifting vendor)
- On April 26th, I start my first housing item of the day from the test realm.
- On May 6th, Housing goes live.
- On June 19th, I kick off my (still unfinished) player trading cards project.
- On July 1st, Grizzleheim and crafting go live.
- On July 2nd, Diapermancer days begin!
- On July 4th, I propose that it would be nice to have maps of all the regeant nodes, which inspires this thread on Central on July 5th by Evil Theurgists.
- On July 25th, Heck freezes over and my wife starts playing Wizard101.
(July was a fantastic month for me!)
- On September 2nd, Wizard101 turns 1 year old!
- On September 16th, KI gives us a new fountain in Wizard City to celebrate 5 million players.
- On October 16th, Mounts and the crown shop go live.
- On October 29th, Ravenwood Radio hits the pavement running.
(November?)
- On December 14th, School housing and a few cosmetic updates are put in the game.

It was indeed a very cool year dear readers.

And now we turn our eyes to the future, and let me do so through a question from our friend Kestrel:

It's me, Kestrel. I was wondering what you think about something. How long will Wizard101 last? Will it still be around when I have kids? Will it be as played as it is now? Will they ever make it for macs? Thanks.

Wizard101 is going to be around for a long time I think. To lift a metaphor I read from one of the twitters from the Austin GDC . . . No one is playing Madden '99 anymore (football game from 1999), yet people are still playing Everquest, which was released the same year. Yes, other MMOs have come and gone in the same period of time that Everquest has survived in, but Everquest is a good example of the lasting power of MMO video games. If Kingsisle can keep growing this MMO, then I think you'll see it continue to thrive. Everquest has released 16 expansions to their game to keep players playing the game (some weren't the best of expansions, but hey . . . that's a lot of additional content to pour into a game).

If Wizard101 does manage to stick around until you have kids (I don't know how many years away that is), then it will most likely be a larger world that ends up having a weird look about it. What I mean is, when I look at Everquest, it's this weird mesh of new and old graphics throughout the world. Some parts look new and updated and some look . . . well . . . more pixalated with more seams, old school yo. Wizard101 is already starting to look like this and it's only 1 year old. Grizzleheim looks lush and has interesting world layouts . . . monsters have more awesome death animations. Mooshu is flat compared to the awesomeness of Grizzleheim.

I think you'll always have a sense of "card game" in Wizard101 with battle animations. I think you'll continue to see improvements in the GUI though. GUI? Oh yeah, that's geek speak for "Graphical User Interface." That's the buttons and compass and look of the "user interface" that you use to play the game. So, probably the way you interact with the game will evolve. Touch screens may change a lot of things in the computer world in the next 10 years. You can already see KI tweaking with the GUI with the look of the new crowns shop.

Will it ever be made for macs? I don't think so at this point. That's just me saying that though. I don't have any official word on it or anything like that. I just don't think it's a priority for them. From what I hear you *can* run Wizard101 on a Mac, but you basically have to install Windows on the Mac to do it. Meh. That kind of defeats the purpose of having a mac. There's more about that here. If I was a Mac fanatic, I'd be on that thread trying to raise more holy war. Maybe you'll get your wish!

I think 2010 will definitely bring us 5 more levels and a new world or two.

Leave your 2010 predictions for Wizard101 here! Let's see if they come true!

Happy dueling!