Summer-time Blues...New Adventures(for now)...

Hi guys! I just wanted to blog real quick here and let you all know I am around and trying to at least pay attention to anything that might be going on ITS...though it seems that news is very slow right now. I had a feeling getting the CL update was going to take a while. I just can't find much to do when I do log in right now. I am really, really, really tired of farming, even tired of questing...I mean when you have run as many wizards as I have you have pretty much seen/ and heard it all to the point of ridiculous memorization. Also the pet pavilion....well, it's also very repetitive. I wish I could say I could get more into it as I know some have.

I have still been playing the other game, which I won't mention the name of...partly due to the fact that it's not exactly a kid-friendly game....not much of a language filter there. The game reminds me of a lot of games I use to play all combined into one as a MMO. And other than the weak language filter, I think KI could take notes from these guys on a LOT of things. There is so much to do on there. You never have to do the same thing one day to the next because of all the skills you can work on.

My favorite part of this game, though, has been the dungeons. It's so Star Wars meets D&D. And while in dungeons you can also work on various skills(with or without others around,) especially the ones that are harder to work on outside the dungeon because you are in a smaller, contained space and things are provided very close by.....when you are either lucky or make some good money to buy the materials in there to "practice" things.

Another thing is the music is awesome there. I mean I LOVE Wizard101's music, other than in DS, but the guys that made this game have so many different pieces of music...it's amazing. And you get to collect the music as you travel to and find new places. It keeps a list of all your discovered music in a mini-iTunes-type thing and you can even make a playlist of your favorite tracks....how cool is that?!?!

It's also nice to note that the game makers are not so greedy. They don't charge as much for membership....they really don't need to(will explain.) A good portion of the game is even free! I haven't become a member there yet....not sure if I will. I would kinda like to but I wanted to take advantage of the f2p system a bit before I might ever do that. They also don't have a Crowns-like system where you can buy items that give extra advantage, etc. They have "mini-games" that you can earn various kinds of funds to buy special items. And the mini-games are not like Wizard's at all. Your character is always involved in doing something that will actually help his/her skills outside the mini, as well as can help you earn gold outside, etc.

Anyway, the makers of this game are not so greedy due to the facts that the graphics on the game are not THE BEST. It's not all pretty and shiny and fantastic looking there like Wizard or Free Realms, etc. Plus they have such a world-wide following that they really don't need more. I mean it's not at all unusual to be walking through the different lands in that game and see people speaking other languages. It's kinda neat like that, really.

Well, it seems a lot of other bloggers out there are also a bit at a loss for news right now....some others have even taken breaks or are on a bit of a hiatus too. It would be very good if KI could get the ball rolling soon before too many people lose interest or what-not. But I also know that it would be awful if CL comes out and there are tons of bugs and people lose items, data, etc. So in a way we hate to rush them TOO much. We want CL to not cause too many problems when it does come out. Bugs are to be expected to a degree, but when people start losing items and things they worked hard for or paid real money for...well, no one likes that.

So, I wanted to mention again that, while there is little else going on, if anyone has any questions you can still feel free to write and ask me. My email is linked on the front page here under the "Questions" section. Who knows; your question may even help me get my head back in-game a little more...lol.


Until later...

Like the new Banner?...

I just wanted to give you all a shout and let you know I am here and not dead or anything. I spent a while on that banner the other day. It was a lot of fun, also a great distraction.

I took quite a bit of computer graphics while I was in college, but I have to say that doing it for a job would be horrible for me...and that is only because I would hate for it to ever be something "I have to" do. I like to be able to enjoy it when I want to do it. That was one of the "bigger" graphics I have worked with in a little bit. I guess I am kinda weird on how I do graphics; I start with little in mind, usually, and go with the flow...and what comes out sometimes even surprises myself...lol.

Anyway, I have been playing on another game site a bit. I am not going to name it, and it's pretty much nothing like Wizard101. I just needed a change of pace here and there, also an escape from some of the in-game tension/expectations as well as boredom lately. I hope I am wrong in the feeling that Celestia coming out will be a while still.

It's sorta sad; they gave us that pre-quest to the Warehouse, plus there was the Pet Pavilion, but once you have done those so much it gets to be as old feeling as the rest.

I have a newb running right now and I am not going to name him because I have no intention on keeping him as a permanent wizard. He is pretty much just something to work on, in the spiral, when I don't feel like the same old farming, etc. I will run him to GM, delete him, keep his pet, use it for breeding, then start another....most likely.

It's nice to have alternative games to turn to, though, when your others are in a bit of a lull. I know Mr. Thomas Lionblood(The Friendly Necromancer) would completely understand that. I thought it was awesome to hear he was playing Free Realms! Unfortunately I have done that game to the point where I really have little to nothing else I can do with it. I am still hoping SoE might get their act together on that and expand the lands, maybe get some new quests to go with those. It was something that had been talked about long ago and anyone that was there at the beginning knows; it's way past due by now.

At the same time, I am letting you know I am doing other games, I don't want anyone thinking I have quit Wizard101 or anything, I haven't. I'm just not ITS as much as I have been. But I do get on and check in. Alric got Luis his hat a few days ago, plus Alric and Dani collected 3 Skeletal Warrior pets while farming Snowcrusher...plus Luis will have an extra hat due to that farming.

One of two of the hats dropped to Alric for Luis.

This really makes Dani's third Skeletal Warrior drop, as she has got one before. All Skeleton pets have been given to young Esmee.

Score 1 for the boys as Alric got this Skeletal Warrior Pet to give to Val.

Also, I am still working on the Vampire Twins, who are in Hametsu Village right now. They also, recently, did Sunken City, which though it wasn't hard, it was tedious with having no AoE. Yes, I am playing these guys without "cheating." I never made any scarecrows for them before the enhanced cards were taken away...so they really are using what they have for their level. Part of their purpose was really to show people that two single-attack wizards could handle the major challenges of the game.

So, while letting you know all that, I also wanted to provide the Vampire Twins' battle against Grubb in Sunken City on video here:






So, with that all said; I hope you are all having a great week and a beautiful August!...

And I WILL see you in the Spiral!

Luis Finishes Dragonspyre, Twins to Mooshu, Projects, Drops!

Hey guys! I just finished up Dragonspyre with Jade and Gabi tagging along for the ride through Malistaire's!

I am just about set up with all my GM gear too! I am only missing my hat and boots, but I'm going to be hard at work on those in the next few days. I got my sword last night from the Homonculus...yeah, gotta have that ice sword with the 100 hit! Getting it only took four tries, and it looks really sweet too! Check out some pics here from my journey and getting the sword on drop too:

Here I am after finishing up the Father Drake Tower; basically the last fights before being sent to Malistaire's.

Longblade of the Homonculus Sword Drop.

Me in some Wayfinder Gear that my bro, Alric, gave to me for doing such an awesome job in DS. And this is also at my, still, new house I bought not too long ago. Wasn't sure I would like the Fire House cause it seemed so dark, but I made sure to fix that problems, and it really is awesome now! Sometime I will get a video on it.

Me with my little crew after beating Malistaire.

A couple things that were cool to see, after beating Mali, were Cyrus was standing in Merle's office. I know my older sisters had told me that was a new thing and he didn't use to stand in there when you came back from Mali's Lair. Also I got the summons from Balestrom to go talk to him, after I finished talking to Merle and Cyrus. I think Balestrom is going to have to wait....I plan on taking a slight vacation before any new action. I don't want to lose the XP I would gain, on the new quest, once our level caps are raised. So for now it's all about farming and just having fun :-)
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Yes! We made it to Mooshu, as some of you already know from a previous post. We are just getting started there but we were hoping to level to 35 and get some new gear before we head into the countryside to battle ninja pigs, Samoorai, and other fearsome creatures.

So we did all the beginning quests at the jade Palace, found good old Zeke again, got another quest for some missing scrolls, battled our first Samoorai....so the Mooddha would know we are worthy, and talked to the Jade Champion inside the Jade palace.

After all that we leveled up and went to search for our new gear, and I gotta say that we look pretty awesome! Not sure we want to wear Mooshu clothes forever, but it's a nice change!
We also got new mounts, the Swiftshadow Wings, they look perfect on us....and it will be so nice not to have to ride around on brooms all the time now! :-)

Take a look here at some pics from our first few minutes in Mooshu:

Our Arrival.

Wings.

New Gear.

You can see our gear a little better here and also a couple of the pets we may start training next.

So, we are off on our Mooshu adventure! We will let you know more as soon as we can.

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Wow, those kids have really been busy, huh?!?! Well, the rest of the family hasn't been slacking either, and I'm here to show you what else has been happening...

First off, recent Pet Grads:

Since Luis hit 48 and his new pet hatched he has been working on training it.

Luis' Helephant reaches adult and gets Fireblade and may cast the fire charm in battle. Let's just hope that the randomness of this event is brought up so sometime we might actually see it happen.

Luis' Fire Serpent has been his favorite pal to tag along on adventures lately. This serpent has the opposite ability of the helephant and may cast fire traps, but so far we have seen nothing from this serpent other than it's awesome card, it's added Fire Damage boost and now Fire resistance....which is one good resistance to have, it really will pump up Luis' Fire Resist and Damage so much more when Luis' gets his boots and hat!

Elie found a little time on his short adventures and trained his Krokotillian up to Adult.

I decided to train up my Ianthine Spectre to see about a little experiment.

Esmee's Ghoul Leveled to Ancient. Though he may be trained further he will be giving up his top training slot to Esmee's newest trainee. He's been a great companion through the Spiral, but the Twins know they need to ween themselves off these health and mana giving pets.

Val's Ghoul here.

Jadeblade's soon-to-be Seraph, which I had been borrowing for the time being.

Both above pics are of Alric's Brown Spider. Now that Fluffy is an adult Alric now has use of the spell that gives him a Life attack boosting bubble!

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Gabi & I have been continuing our work on some crafting and these are our latest projects we have completed:

Sandwich Station.

Gold Place Settings.

Tea Set. "Care for a spot of tea?"

Made by Gabi: Bamboo Fountain. Tiny, but soothing to listen to and watch :)

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Other Happenings...

Alric Dreamhaven is now the newest and probably the last Master Artisan in the family! (Unless I get extremely bored and reagents become easier to get, since EVERYONE wants to be a Master Artisan now....haha!) The original idea was to have at least once MA on each account, but somehow that went all crazy on the second and most all of them became MA, with the exceptions of Esmee and Taryn. Taryn only went as Adept for the sole purpose of crafting Earthquake treasure cards, since they were needed for the Secret Carnival.

Alric showing off his new Badge.

Alric and Dani, very randomly, decided to farm Kraysys for his level 50 gear, figuring some of it could be passed on. One of the drops that Alric got was the Regal Dragon Statue....very cool!

Regal Dragon Statue at Alric's house.

More Pets...

Though Dani and I both have these pets Alric thought it might be fun to have one on his account too. So he went and farmed one up. That was not a fun task for a Life guy, as it really stinks when you have no AoE and you are farming.

Again, there are already maybe 2 of these in the family, but since Alric was in the Tree of life hunting down some reagents, he decided to invite Jade and Dani in to run the dungeon while he ran around hunting. Jade got this Red Banshee drop.

Dani got this Deathbat drop during the same time as Jade's Red banshee. This will now be Esmee's new pet(as soon as Dani remembers to send it to her...haha.)

After a lot of email going back and forth with KI about not receiving my Lightning Bat code from the promotion, this past day KI finally gave me my code! I am so happy about this as I have wanted this pet for so long and have tried countless times to try to get a bat from Wavebringer:



When Luis had to go through the Labyrinth for the second run, to get the last piece of the Dragon Rider Staff, Jade went with him and dipped into the Second Chance Chest and pulled out a Boss Banshee! This pet will be going to Nightshade, but I am holding onto it for now, just for show.

This is one very cool pet, as I haven't seen many around :)

Here is Queen Gracie, our Boss Banshee, next to my adorable Teddy...don't they make a cute couple?...lol

If you noticed in that above picture, as with this one, Gracie's name and info are not showing up. It seems to be a bug with this pet as no one else could see it either. I have submitted a bug report to KI about it. Hopefully that gets fixed sometime :)

I hope you all have a great weekend and have lots of fun out there!

See ya in the Spiral!

How Do I Get the Tomb of the Beguiler Quest?(Quest from Jenna JadeBlossom)

Hi again everyone! I had a question come in to me today from Jenna JadeBlossom, and I thought I would answer it here so anyone else that is wondering about it can also find out the answer. Here is her question:

HI, I'm Jenna JadeBlossom in the game and was wondering if you could tell me how I can gain access to the tomb of the beguiler besides tagging along with a friend. I can't seem to figure out where to go to get that quest going... Thanks for taking the time to help and good luck in the game!

 

Well, Jenna, to answer this I will tell you, mainly from experience, that it is a quest that you can pick up once you gain access to the Tomb of Storms and the Well of Spirits in Krokotopia. I'm not sure what level you are but I always like to do every quest I can as I progress forward in the game. Because even those side quests can become important later on as many will allow you to access areas and bosses you would otherwise not be able to get to on your own.

I knew I had at least a couple wizards who had not yet done Tomb of the Beguiler, but they do have the quest. I haven't done it on them yet because I want to do it when they are able to earn experience off them. These wizards I have are Grandmasters, so completing the quest would do little for them at this point other than give them access to this dungeon, and the majority of my wizards already have access. 

So, anyhow, I took my Myth Grandmaster, Taryn, over to the Tomb of the Beguiler entrance. The quest comes from Mah'rek, who stands guard outside the entrance to Tomb of the Beguiler, in the Well of Spirits. Taryn has the quest in her book, as you can see here:

The quest is called "Danger, Beware!"

I was curious when this quest might show up, so I got my lowest level wizard, Elie, he is level 7, and unfortunately has no Krokotopia access yet, but he doesn't see the quest at all, as you can see here:

 So, I then asked my friend Kaitlyn, who is a level 15 Diviner, to port to me in the Well of Spirits and take a look and she can't see the quest either, but she does have Krokotopia access. She just hasn't made it to the Tomb of Storms yet. See pictures below:

From Kaitlyn's view: As you can see she has no quest marker she can see above Mah'Rek's head

From Taryn's view: You can see Kaitlyn is level 15, which is high enough for access to Krokotopia with quests completed. She is currently working in the Pyramid of the Sun.

I also have heard that if you already completed Krokotopia and didn't take this quest that it *may* disappear if you try to go back and get it later. I don't know if it's still that way or if it was at all for sure, I always took the quest myself. So, if you are higher level than KT this might be the problem you are having now. BUT, if you are lower level and have not yet been sent to the Tomb of Storms then that would be why you can't get the quest yet. You would just have to keep questing until you gain access to the place, then go see Mah'rek there in the Well of Spirits and get his quest to go into the dungeon.

If you are a Grandmaster and as far as you know you have completed all quests in the game and can not get in here, then I would suggest contacting KI and filing a bug report. If you need help with that I gave instructions on how to here.

**Remember that Tomb of the Beguiler is like Sunken City in Wizard City, and Kensington Park in Marleybone. These dungeons, along with their side quests stand alone and are not required for advancement in the game.**

I hope that helps! :-)

See ya in the Spiral!

Awesome Achievements!

As promised; another post! And still there is more than I can show here!

I wanted to share with you guys some really awesome things that have happened recently. There has been a lot of progress being made with the family as well as one thing I wanted to share that a friend did.

First off; Elie had his first spell quest and will now be taking his break until further notice(hopefully not too, too long...he is psyched to go ASAP *wink*.) So he met Lady Judgement in the commons and was then granted Precision. Not the most fantastic spell, in my opinion, but it's still a cool summons, and Elie had a lot of fun running around that evening too:

Next thing I had for you is a little report on the Vampire Twins. If you are new to reading here you can can find more information and first sightings of them here  and here as well. There have been other mentions of them since, but they had to take a break for a while due to technical difficulties, but they are back in action now!

Last night they finally got to run Big Ben and are on their way to Mooshu. After their run through Big Ben they were pretty tired last night so they didn't step foot in MS yet, but they left a video for me to share of them beating up the final bosses in the tower, as well as a fantastic picture of Esmee winning a White Rat magician pet from Spike, The Crusher:

In the video, here, you can see Val was taking quite a beating after taking on aggro from what had been three opponents, but you see he takes care of business and gets healed up well enough again with a little protective help from his sister, who was then able to finally take that aggro off of him and let them finish the battle. It's a big battle for a pair of level 34 wizards...and yes, a pair, not a full TEAM, and no none of the other family members came in to help. The twins did this all on their own because they are just awesome like that!



...and as shown toward the end of the video, here they are at the Big Ben "bug":

Next up I have for you a super-serious awesome achievement! Our guy, Luis Roseheart has finally reached Grandmaster. He is the 13th wizard in the Emeraldflame family(not including mom, who has her own GM and working on getting to her second now.)

Here is a little picture journey of his latest progress and his reaching level 50:

Luis reaches level 48 by working on a side quest leftover in the Plaza of Conquests, before he had to go into the Labyrinth the first time.

Luis reports in to Falmea, who send him on to his Level 48 spell quest.

Luis finishes up his spell quest and receives the awesome Fire Dragon spell, and an egg with some ugly critter in it...lol (no offense to helephant lovers out there *smiles*)

With lots more work Luis becomes Grandmaster, after finishing up the Crystal Grove in one day and then working on the last stretch at the Drake Hatchery. He already has his GM robe too, now he just needs the rest of his gear!

Congrats to lucky number 13, Luis! Now he just needs to finish up Dragonspyre, which won't take too long from there. I'm sure you will hear about it when he finishes.

Now on to some awesome big numbers fun and achievement...

First off, I know this is no record and really never intended it to try to be. No treasure cards were used, and cards like Hex and Curse were not available at the moment. It was a sort of spur of the moment thought: "Let's see how hard I can hit Tumok Gravelbeard with what I have as well as what John Lifeglen has available in his deck"(the deck he had equipped did not include hex.) We had help from one of John's friends, a Myth Grand, who helped keep the shields off with her Pierce spell(love that spell....really wishes Storm had a spell like that VERY badly, it would come in so useful in these situations when Ice or Myth wizards are not available. Also great for Storm wizards who actually do solo a lot instead of work in a team all the time...one can not always count on Wild Bolt as a shield breaker...and who really likes to lose their blades(and traps) because of a  80% shield? I'm not worried on the 50%'s, but the amount of work you have to do to bypass a 80% shield is ridiculous and defeats the purpose of Storm: Speed(and high damage). And, sorry, but those pets that give Storm damage spells and then place a trap are a bit of a joke; as a grand I want my power pips, not a wimpy spell and single trap to go with it. Not to mention; good luck finding that ONE card when you need it.)

This is my Tempest hit on Mr. Ugly here:

...Not too bad for not having all we could have. And I am thinking you Myth wizards out there who want to hit a really high number with Orthrus; this is the guy you want! That's some nice boost there for your prism(s) ;-)

Now, I want to show you an awesome Judgement high hit by John Lifeglen. He recently got his Briskbreeze ring during one of our runs and that extra boost combined with his awesome pet piggle, Zues, boost, and the fact that his pet is even more awesome by the fact that it gives Dragonblade....

*takes breath*

...Well, check out this serious Judge hit he made using Hex, Curse(provided by our own sister; Heather Nightshade,) Feint, Bladestorm, Balance Blade, and Dragonblade:

...Yes, this awesome sorcerer can now easily one-hit Malistaire! How sweet is that?!?!

Well, that is it for today. I will be posting more very soon, again.

See ya in the Spiral!