Newest Issue of Beckett's Fun Online Games - Crafed Pets for the Future?!? -YES!

Today I just received my newest issue of Beckett's Fun Online Games magazine(Sept./Oct. 2010, Issue 6.) In it was a really great interview with KingsIsle Staff: Senior Writer Jason Durall and Senior Designer Justin Wingard.

I am not going to list the article here but I urge you to go out and buy this magazine, if you are not already subscribed to it. The staff members discuss the Advanced Pets System and Celestia, they even hint at things to come.

One part that really caught my eye was the actual mention of crafted pets, as opposed to hatched....like they actually said you would have to have a recipe to get these pets! I definitely don't regret, especially now, making nearly all my wizards Master Artisans...meanwhile so many others dismissed crafting as boring and tedious, but now all those people have been scrambling because they have just realized how cool it really is to be a MA...heh!

In this issue of Beckett FOG there was a code for a 7-day rental on a Starlight Pony. Yeah, I wish it would have been something we could keep, but as the saying goes; Don't look a Gift Horse in the Mouth....or in this case Pony ;-)

There were also some cool pics in the article, including the awesome Shark guy here:

Also the little mini-intro telling about the summoning of wizards to Professor Balestrom's to begin the prequest for Celestia. There was also mention of many more worlds to come and that Celestia is only the beginning of a new story arc, after wizards finish the Malistaire story arc.

This issue is not yet available on book stands, but if you subscribe you might be able to get your hands on it in time. If not, I am sure it will be available on order from their magazine shop here in the future.

See ya in the Spiral!

WOOT WOOT!!!! Emeraldflame Team Beats Warehouse!

Hey Guys! What a day it's been with the Emeraldflame family of wizards! First of all I want to say that our girl, Taryn, got her new Frog pet...he's so cute too! Here's a couple pics:

His name was after changed to just "Joey"...heh...

So, then later tonight I got Alric and Kaitlyn together, after having them both complete the pre-quests. I decided to do something a little crazy and run all of us through the Warehouse, and without EVER having a 4th wizard!

It was actually a lot of fun, though I had to tell a couple friends I couldn't talk right then that were whispering to me...sorry about that guys, but I know you understand too!

I won't go into too many details here, but for the most it was pretty easy as long as you pay attention to things and have a good crew.

It all went pretty smooth, though that second puzzle room tried to give problems(due only to the fact that there were 3, not 4 wizards,) but we got through there.

So we got to the top floor. I did take a Storm Elixir myself, added damage and accuracy there are not a bad thing to have, though not completely necessary...just thought it would help to speed things up a little. I had Alric take accuracy...yes, life has the best accuracy, but when you really need a heal you don't even want that tiny bit of fizzle to be possible.

Everything was going real good until the world messed up.

We were down to the last boss and all got disconnected...I was like "no freakin' way!" So instead of closing down I waited it out...a moment later all were back in, but the UI was missing; couldn't see cards or health, or anything....so I flew blind for a moment and then was able to do a control-G for everyone...cards came back, though things were kinda weird looking. Like we were all just standing there like we were anywhere, not in a battle stance...and we couldn't see the health circles around us or the boss. It wasn't a big deal, just not as cool looking as we would have liked. At least we could see our spell cards again!

I finished off the last boss with a Triton. Here are some pics of the battle as we killed the enemies off:

One Down:

Two Down:

Three Down:

Victory!:

After the battle we were all stuck in place due to the disconnect that had happened during it, so we all ported out to Regent's Square. A few moments later we all got disconnected again while getting our mana back. I hope these disconnects get fixed soon...I know I wasn't the only one that was frustrated with that tonight. I am just glad we didn't get completely knocked out of the tower when we were so close. It was a lot of fun though, definitely want to do that again...maybe with friends if anyone asks next time :)

One last thing, and I am wondering if anyone has seen or noticed this; one of the card decks seems to have either taken on a very odd new name or there is some bug with the name. I *believe* this was Deck of the Sage, now calling itself CL Deck 001...CL?...as in Celestia?...that really makes no sense, but I am thinking this is a bug...

I noticed the deck, first, while in the Warehouse. And then even after doing a total reboot of the computer and logging back in, it still showed that way. I went to check the Bazaar...they had 100 on hand....



Have fun out there & See ya in the Spiral!

Celestia Pre-quest, GH Recipes + More LIVE!

Hey, all! I took Keira with me to do the pre-quests to Celestia. It still *seems* like you have to go through the tower in order to obtain the key. But according to notes the Tower at the end of the quest will not be a requirement.


A few pics of my quick tour through the quests:

Killing off Typhon, his minion met a Wild Bolt at the beginning.

Zarichi meets his end.

Killing off the Shadow Weavers

I had to go buy the new Golem pets too, of course. Sandwalker and Kaitlyn got ones for themselves at well as the new Cat Thug pet.

Here's a picture of me with my little Golem Army:

There are a couple items in the Crown Shop that were not offered in the Test Realm; the Celestian Sword(+1 power pips and ONE 95 Fire Damage card ...yes, sadly, it's only that,) and the Dream Filly, which is a Unicorn mount. I really don't care much for the Unicorn Mount...can't even think of one wizard, even a Life, that I would want it for. The sword doesn't seem very Fiery...almost seems more like a Storm Sword, some of the colors seem almost pinkish-purple to me. Gabriel Heart(AKA Ronan Dawn )says it looks like a crab claw. I did get the sword just because I like to collect these things....I think it sorta looks like a giant wrench....(which would be very Storm/Steam-punk, really)...

I bet there are going to be a lot of people who wanted 110 damage fire swords that are not going to be happy with this thing, especially when you also add in the fact that it only has ONE CARD. And I hope it doesn't mean that all new wands that come out any time soon will only be 95 damage.


Another thing I notice is that our little ninja pig buddies that we got off gift cards are all back in their red and black gear. I guess they didn't like being the color of insects and opted to go back to their regular colors. I am guess that the Death Ninjas may have also been upset that their brethren copied them.
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Winterbane reporting in!
I got to craft my new Watchtower Hall House this morning! Not sure when I will get time to furnish it - hopefully soon! But at least I have it made and it's soooo MINE!

Maybe more later on!....

See ya in the Spiral!

Celestia Pre-quest Test Realm

This couldn't have hit on a much worse day for me, been doing things with family, etc. So I did as much as I could and found a few things that I'm not sure everyone picked up on since most were doing the quest that started with Balestrom.

Mostly I will lay this out like my "quick-notes: version, only cleaned up some and with pics.

The new pet vendor in Marleybone is where the secret spell trainer is, down the stairs that are behind the mayor at Digmoore Station.

All the pets this vendor sells are Balance pets. Here is a pic of each:

Wood Golem:

Cat Thug:

Brass Golem:

-Old Smokey is now located in the factory in the Ironworks....he is just standing there:

In my opinion; it would have been a lot cooler to put him behind the other locked door in back of the factory. It would have given that place a purpose(other than random wooden chests and reagents that you might find.


-Death minions cast plague and Doom & Gloom. I'm not sure this is totally new, but even with the twins I hadn't seen this happen before. In the live realm I had seen Balance's mander minion cast Power Play once, so it makes me wonder how new this is with death. Minions(at least death) are not attacking with in-class spells as much....but they are still casting blades for themselves, as well as their master. Traps are cast as well, as has always been. Skeleton Minion cast tower shield on ME...also cast Taunt...and suffered a quick death for it...lol. It seems that you might want a 4 pip and up minion for death...not real convenient for lower level death wizards with less power pips to go around at the beginning of battle

-Snorri Oysterbloom's quest in Grizzleheim is nice, but extremely short. I was really hoping for a lot more with this quest. Basically 2-3 battles and you are done.

-New Grizzleheim crafting is so AWESOME! These are the kind of crafting challenges I was hoping for! You actually get to craft a Grizzleheim-style house if you so wish to! You can even preview the house! I will show you later exactly how to access that, as well as give you a little tour of this gorgeous house and all it's surrounding beauty!


I really want to show you all the new items you can craft from GH, so here they are(and none are terribly easy, which makes them all a bit of a challenge and will make every item very special indeed:

I really adore that little aquarium...I think it "may" be one of the first of these I craft! I have been wanting that ever since I saw it in the Pet Pavilion...and I was hoping, too, that it would be something to craft!

A lot of this furniture really makes me think of that old tavern I was talking about a few posts ago . The name of the place in those Dragonlance books was The Inn of the Last Home. It was an Inn/tavern that was built into the tops of a giant tree. The way it was described in the books you could almost feel the warmth of the fire heating your face up as you read through those books...and it always seemed like such a wonderful, cozy place that was always filled with interesting people, travelers from afar.

The floor plan to this Inn, for the few of us who might know about these books, was like this:

I could just see using some of that GH furniture in, say, the Life House...if not in one of the GH homes, and setting it up similar to this plan. But I am thinking the Life school house, as it IS in a giant tree...so it would be perfect to recreate The Inn of the Last Home within those walls. I can almost see Tika serving drinks in my Life House, Raistlin sipping his tea by the fire, Caromon acting like a goof tipping himself backwards in one of these chairs, root beer casks stacked up in the corner, patrons drinking from tankards, sitting at these tables on these wooden chairs that we can now craft.....absolutely perfect!


Anyhow....

-New Crown purchasable GH house is cute, but very small for the price. Don't miss the secret room under the rainbow bridge!

-I did all of the Celestia Prequests up to the tower. Really didn't have anyone available to go in with at the time since I got home late...seemed like anyone else was already in it. I am wondering why there are no sigils to the battles leading up to the tower, after the battle with Typhoon, that is? You can have people port in, but you can't enter at the same time.

Here are a few pics from the prequests:

After that last shot you are sent to talk to a guy at the Royal Museum in Marleybone, and he sends you on to the tower. Apparently KI never did learn that most people HATE towers. Sounds like this one is giving a lot of people a whole lot of trouble too. Personally, I play this game to relax, not to gain new headaches; I have plenty of real life ones without the addition of virtual headaches. In my thinking: if you need stress online then apparently you haven't lived through enough yet, but when you do you will soon learn that relaxation is a good thing! This is why I am looking forward more to the crafting...it allows me to relax. I just hope that some friends will accompany me through this new tower, since I pretty much "have to" do it.


John Lifeglen was showing me the drops available from this tower....definitely different looking stuff! Very Where's Waldo meets Indiana Jones looking. I am not at all impressed with the stats on the stuff, even though much of it has higher health and some global resistance, it has nothing else that really impressed me. One thing I did notice I found somewhat funny: the name of the gear that drops is "Wayfinders." Wayfinder is the guy that sells recipes in Grizzleheim. This really means little, I just thought that was interesting.

-New Beastmaster gear CAN NOT be combined with other stats from clothes and you would have to wait the normal amount of time to fill up your pet energy globe to 66(if you are a GM) OR you would have to purchase Pet Energy Elixer in order to fill up...BUT AFTER putting the Beastmaster clothes on! The clothes would have been a good idea IF they could have the stats combined with your normal fighting stats. Some schools can't really take losing ANY of the health their gear gives them(*cough cough STORM cough cough*) There may be uses to this gear, more-so for those that can't get on for long periods of time and need to save up more pet energy to use.

What I am hoping for, though, is that when we get to the point of needing/being able to use and farm level 60 gear, that maybe the gear we can get at that point may include extra energy as well as the usuall attack stats for our specific schools.

-Pets cast their own innate cards now(check out Taz in the video when I cast his blue card)! Stormzilla spell has been altered. More, brighter lightning has been added, more electricity, part of airplane graphic has been cut out...it now only starts to appear after zilla is grown and attacking...you can see it from behind, Zilla's claws are a different color now.


-Hall of the Ice Forge, which is located to the east across the river, over the stepping stones and near where the ghost raven is standing is where you will find the Grizzleheim Crafting Anvil for crafting all those awesome new items!

This is a beautiful place! Take a look at these pics...the snow sparkles like sugar in there!

Well, that is it for now. When I can I will post a video of the crafted house Youtube is slower than a snail stuck in molasses sometimes....so who knows when I will be able to share it...hoping for a little later today. I really wish xFire worked in the Test Realm...so much faster!


See ya in the Spiral!