First Thoughts on Things I have Seen in the Test Realm

Ok, so contrary to what some might believe who have followed me on Twitter; I am excited about some of the stuff I have seen in the Test Realm. I have seen a few negatives, though, as well....and I am going to be bluntly honest, as usual, about it.

I will start with what I saw that is good:

- The new pets I have seen so far are all pretty awesome, though I think the Gobbler pet is UGLY...lol.

-I love what has happened to level 48 pet stats. I mean to give a Storm person increased health and accuracy through their pet - TOO SWEET! And what I have seen happen to other level 48 pets is great too(for the most, there is one slight downside I saw, but will get to that.)

-The Pet Pavilion is awesome! There is so much one can do in there!

-Even though I have a severe dislike for PvP I think I might even have some fun in the Derby. And, yes, I do consider that a type of PvP...just with our pets.

-I LOVE the maze game, and the Cannon game is not too, too far behind on my enjoyment of it.

-I love having my pets out at my house. And doing this lets you leave them at home and not clog up your backpack; so now you can go out on those long hours of quests and farming and have a little more room in your backpack because your 20 or so Unicorns could stay home and play instead of being stuffed into your backpack....suffocating...

-I absolutely LOVE the new black Swiftshadow Wing Mount!!!...Ok, how many times have I ever said I wanted black wings?!?!....this is soooo great!...Now I have double-wings that match!

-I Love the new Crown staff, Celestian Trident, with the Ice attack. That thing is so awesome looking!

-I like seeing my pets stats increase as I play games, train them.


What I don't like that I see:

#1: My most major gripe: That we will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO TRADE CHARMED CARDS WE HAVE MADE! This is the most awful thing they could have done in the updates. This seriously hurts Storm, Balance, and Life people(who actually do more than heal or support.)
For the longest time I have made Steal Wards and Pierce cards for my Life and Storm people. Life, Balance, and Storm are the only schools that have no way to get rid of shields other than to completely destroy their entire set-up. We have no DoTs, and we have no shield breaking spells, or steal ward spells. I can not include Storm Hound as a reliable DoT, and it is not a learned spell, nor is Lightning Elf...which the pet that gives this card seems to only be for ranked pvp players to equip. This really hurts anyone who is trying to make a high hit. It makes you absolutely have to depend on having others do your work for you in a battle and I am VERY against that. Storm Hound only gives one card anyhow...and what if I am in the Labyrinth fighting all those Myth dudes? How am I going to be able to take care of that now? I would have to have someone else in there to break all those shields so I don't have to bust my own blades doing it.
For Life people this is especially awful. They don't even have the power behind their spells to work much past a 50% shield that a Balance mob might throw up. At least with Storm I can power past that and still kill!, though not past the 80% shields that even low rank mobs use.

I think the reason this no trade thing is coming is because of all the selfish people who made Warlord in PvP by making tons of Bolts and other spells to basically cheat their way to being Warlord. So now, by them doing that it is hurting the rest of us who don't even care to participate in that.
Just because you buy your way to a rank in PvP does not make you a good PvP player; that much I do know. How about you guys try using what you have actually learned(for spells) and your brains, and not your coins, etc.?

KI, if any of you happen to read this:
This whole problem could have been solved with banning most treasures from the arena, maybe except for a few exceptions...like let them have some healing cards but limit the number of treasures they have of this type of thing.

If anyone out there agrees and can see the problem this causes for many of us, please write in and urge KI not to let this happen. Or at least request they come up with a different way to even out the PvP playing field without it effecting the rest of us.

Ok...on with other problems...

-The commercial made it look like the pets could be called to you at your house, but pretty much all they do is run in circles and stay in the same general area. It would be nice if they followed you, came to you when called :)

-I know this is a bug but the pet games are crashing quite often, as is the Hatchery. It's so bad that you actually get stuck in them and have to shut down the game and log back in to fix it.
Also many games are acting like you already played before you even started. Like I hit "play" and the next thing I get is an "end" screen, as if I had just finished the game.

- Level 48 pets have lost at least one power pip! There goes 80% + for all who worked for that!

-The energy drain from training pets is too much.

1. It also costs way too much, with real money for kids to be able to enjoy this. A kid is gonna want to play these games as much as possible, maybe it might even be the one thing they want to do on here. So they play a game a few times and their pet's energy goes down to zero, or low enough not to be able to do any more games. So the only options one has is either wait....an extremely long time....like, "hey, kids maybe go to sleep and come back tomorrow and try again," OR you shell out 250 Crowns to refill your pets energy so you can continue to train and play with them...which costs real money, and WILL eventually lead to even more spam in the commons areas with kids begging for coin gifts from passer-bys.
   
2. The coin cost of the pet foods is a bit high when you want to buy a bunch of it to train your pet up even more. And is there even a inventory in your spellbook to see what foods you have on hand without having to play a game?...Having an inventory list of snacks would help when shopping.
   
3. The coin costs for the Hatchery are completely outrageous. Most kids or any normal players are lucky if they even have 50k, let alone 80k or more! It takes hours of farming to get that kind of money, usually...and that farming can only be done in higher level areas.
   

-You can no longer buy or sell pets at the Bazaar. Meh...really I don't care much about this one, save for if it wasn't for the kindness of Mr. Edward Icespear and the fact that he was able to sell an extra pet to the bazaar for me; I may never have got one single Sprite pet.

There also needs to be more explanation as to what all the numbers mean under a pet's characteristics/stats.

I will add to this in later posts as I see fit.

For now, here are a couple pics of Emeraldflame with those awesome wings and staff:


And as a random comment...I saw my evil twin today. I was on another wizard of mine so she probably wondered why I and my mom's wizard were starring at her...take a look:
She was a Ice wizard, but tell me she doesn't look, here, like Emeraldflame's twin, save for the pet name...though one of my others do have a ninja pig with that pet name, which I could have dug up if I really wanted(lol)...see Emeraldflame below:

FOG W101 Pet Hatchery Ad Found in Newest Issue!

I just received the latest Issue of Fun Online Games(FOG,) and on the back cover there this ad for the Wizard 101 Pet Hatchery. This is the July/August Issue, which also talks all about different mounts in an article inside.

Make sure you read the ad too. This pretty much confirms that the Pet Hatchery will not only be opening, but probably already will have been running by then, don't you think?

Now, if only the Test Realm would open up...

Three Wizard Raid on Kensington + Mystery Pic

I sent three of my wizards into Kensington this past day. It was the first time I did it with three since my third account is so new. I had been taking most of my wizards through it in pairs up until now. And, yes it sure can be done with two wizards. Most of the time it was Storm and Life that went through...and YES, STORM...with having to use all those prisms. I will say that the Life minion comes in especially handy on a two-man run. They are too busy healing to break Feints or anything with wimpy Imps. Fire and Life was also a good combo for Kensington. I was happy to add the third account so I could start bringing in some of the more "odd schools," and always have a healer there since I now have one on all accounts.

I took in Alric Dreamhaven, as most of you know who have been reading that he is my newest Life Grandmaster,. Also Savannah Icewraith, who usually runs with Mom's Ice wizard, Gabrielle Iceweaver...Gabrielle has been smoking Savannah on XP since Mom likes to farm for housing items so much...and it's her only wizard she can do that with, so this was a good opportunity for Savannah to do a little catching up. Alric even had to buy the area for his account since I hadn't even taken him there just to get the Aeronaut Badge yet. Lastly I brought in Kaitlyn Dunerider, making this the first time I have brought a Balance wizard into the mix. I figured having a Balance wizard there would really help out Ice and make things move a little faster, plus I could now easily take in my Balance wizards without having to rely on them to heal too much.

We had no luck getting the really rare items there, but we did get this somewhat different Brick Fireplace(though not horribly exciting looking:
Right after the above picture was taken, Kaitlyn gave the fireplace over to my Ice Grand for her vacation home, which looks like a log cabin inside. Figured it went well near the year-round Christmas Tree.

I did take a few screen shots and a couple videos during the run.
The first one here is the crew repairing and talking to Gyro before he sends them into the factory. The factory, as anyone who has run it knows, is actually the easy part. Though by the time you get there it has already seemed like forever in the place...at least to some. Personally, I am always happy to get to the factory as you no longer have to dodge metal men after you get through the ground floor that is covered in mechanical spiders...and those are easy to get past.


The team beat Stoker, the main boss, the first time in the dungeon...yes, you have to fight him twice if you want to complete the entire dungeon(not to receive the badge,) but that also gives you two chances at the very rare Spider Golem pet,
Then the team made their way through the next few floors, just as easily. Then finally reached Stoker for round 2:


They then proceeded to demolish Stoker and the gang there, for the final time in the dungeon.

And here is the crew all lined up with their nice, shiny, new Machine Master Badges, after finishing that last battle:

Savannah never did level to 45 in the dungeon but it brought her up to just over 1000 XP to go, so later in the day when Mom came on we went and finished up Mirkholm Keep and are ready to go to fight Jotun. Grizzleheim just doesn't give enough XP to make any kind of real difference. Savannah was just a hair away at that point and she really wanted to get her level 45 gear on. I was too tired of having to do the big battles for the day...Kensington can take a lot out of you(especially when you are running three wizards by yourself(though it's so much easier to run three than to come in with other real people and tell them to wait to port, especially if they are impatient),) so we will save Jotun for another time. I am thinking about a way I can get her Ice and mine to only fight Jotun and his minion, without having to have Mom run her wizard through those other dungeons. I already got her Gabrielle the book in Winterdeep Warren the other day (and she has been finished with the yardbirds for a while now,) but that was by way of porting her in, she didn't actually run the dungeon and fight the boss.

Oh, yes; I am assuming that most of you know that if you fight the bosses in Winterdeep Warren and Helgrind Warren, that you don't have to fight two of the really BIG bosses in the Hall of Valor with Jotun. It takes longer to do it this way, but you will never have to worry about Jotun's brothers again as long as you come in with people who have done the same thing. It's worth it in my view, not only because it makes that Jotun battle so much easier, but because it gives you more opportunity to get some loot!

I really don't want mom to have to stress with those two extra dungeons in there just to get rid of the bosses for the final battle...so I think I will take care of all that for her one of these nights. Then she and Savannah can fight Jotun, probably with a little help to give that extra firepower, which Ice lacks. You can tell I am a true Storm person who is running an Ice wizard...I still like to kill it all at once when I can ;-)

Anyhow, to level up we went and checked in at the Tower Archives. We really haven't even started there in Dragonspyre yet.
Just talking to Zarathax was enough to level up Savannah and gave me the opportunity to stop and relax for the rest of the day and do more mindless things...lol.

Here is Savannah in her nice, fresh level 45 gear...stitched of course:

Now for the Mystery pic.
Any guesses as to what these two characters might be or why they are here? It's not too hard to guess, but just wondering if anyone can figure it out completely ;-)
It might be a while before any more is mentioned about them...
...all I can say is that you don't want to run into them in a dark alley...you may wake up with an interesting pair of scars...if you do wake up, that is...

Latest GM Life , Alric, Gets his GM Ring! - Video!

As I said in my last post; I decided to take in three wizards this time, instead of just two, so I could try to mix things up a bit as far as what position they all took in the circle. I was hoping this would give Alric a better chance to get his Grandmaster ring, as it seemed that the first spot was giving him no luck at all.

Well, it took two hours of "quick farming" and a couple remixes of the group line-up, but he finally got it...and best of all it's on video! Take a look:



In other news, this past evening, Luis got the Yellow Ghost Drop while doing the Karanahn Palace. This makes his third pet drop in the last few days! He is now level 26 and almost out of Krokotopia. I always hate leaving KT, I really do like the way the place looks and the characters there...even after all this time. Marleybone is so dark and the real fun parts of it are not even until the end of it. At least the music is all good though, I never seem to tire of the music in KT or MB.

Nice Ending to a Slow Few Days :)

The last few days I haven't had as much time to do things, like blog here. I think it's mainly I am lacking a LOT of sleep. I have been waking up to the sounds of "construction" going on in the apartment next to mine. Waking up to the sounds of hammers and sawzalls is not a good thing. I had such a huge headache after I woke this past day. I sure hope they get done gutting the place next door soon.

In game I have been playing mostly with getting Alric his Grand gear. He now has his Athame and his robe. I also did find that the Headdress of the Heavens drops from the Ice Gurtok. It's not something I even care about having, but I got it there and I am always happy to have got Crowns gear/items on a drop(except that silly Ruined Painting.) You can see the drop listed in Danielle's log here and then a picture of the stats on it below that. Sorry I don't have a screen shot of actually being in there and getting it, but I think you can tell from what is in the log that it came from there. I always do Fire Gurtoks first, then Ice, and as you can see it was before Malistaire and Cyrus' dialogue began. I just didn't even pay attention to it when it dropped, else I would have screened it right there and then. Hard to watch EVERYTHING that drops when you are running more than one wizard and more concerned with what the other gets.


I think Alric's ring will take a very long time and may require adding in another wizard and rearranging the order during that ONE FIGHT. Alric is usually in the first position with Danielle in second. After every battle with the Fire Gurtok crew he either gets junk or...*gasp*: NOTHING! Danielle keeps getting more and more rings she doesn't need for ANYONE on that account. It would be nice if Alric could at least be getting some rings so I know he is really getting a chance. The only Grand ring he has gotten at all was the Death ring.

I think when I try again later I am going to do a quick farm session. I will take Sandwalker, Danielle, and Alric. Alric can go last. Maybe it will give him some luck. Since he has his robe now there really is no need to run the entire dungeon. I will just take them in and do that fight, then exit, then go back and do it again. As I have said many times; the Fire Gurtok Second-chance chest never gives the Grand rings, it only gives junk.

For right now Alric is using Malistaire Drake's Ruby Signet. It's not near as good as his school ring but at least it gives the same pip percentage.

I still like the rings from the Gurtoks much better than the ones from Briskbreeze.

Kevin Battleblood and another friend of his, Cheryl Fire, and myself did Briskbreeze the other night. I used two wizards. See picture below:


Emeraldflame actually got her ring, which I am happy to have it, BUT I have decided against using it. It would only give me 8 more health, of course it gives no mana(unlike the Gurtok one,) and I would actually LOSE 5% power pip chance by wearing it! Even with the added Tough, to me, this is not worth all you lose. I think, maybe the only schools who don't suffer such a loss on their rings(from one to another) might be Myth and Life. Life gets the same power pips on both, and Myth gets the most of any on those Briskbreeze rings, they get 15%! My normal Gurtok Storm ring is 15%. Being that Storm is supposed to be a fast hitting powerhouse I do not see why I would want to lose power pip chances?!?! Actually most of my wizards kind of run on that whole mindset of quick power and all have pretty high percentages because of it. I have seen some people with higher but only by maybe 3 points, tops. And usually if it's like that they did sacrifice a lot of something else I would never give up.

I think if I ever tried to do some kind of high hit that I might use the Briskbreeze ring, but if I was to use it with wanting to get a high Tempest hit I would be running the chance of not getting as many power pips as I should...which would be a real problem with Tempest being pip-based damage. There are ways around getting rid of the single pips and hoping for more power, but it sure is not guaranteed. Why on earth would the Storm ring be so low on pips? We are supposed to be THE POWERhouse. Is it not bad enough we have the lowest health? They needed to take pip percentage away from us too on these rings?

I also notice that these rings look like they should have been dropped in Grizzleheim. Is this yet another mistake that was made when GH was released? I mean in that they seemed to have rushed getting GH out there to us. There is so much in GH that seems to remain unfinished or a mystery. So many NPCs(for one thing) that seem to have no purpose. I wonder if these rings were not originally meant to be dropped by the Coven? It would make some sense; getting Grand gear from the Coven. Seems to me that the best things the Coven drop are only good for resale. All those swords they drop that are not so exciting to look at, but great for someone who needs a sword and just turned level 45.

Other than thinking on things like that and working on Alric's gear, I have had Savannah working with Gabrielle. Also I have been working on Luis a bit. Really did a marathon with Luis the other day with a lot of leveling. He is just starting the Tomb of Storms now. Luis got a couple lucky pet drops, he got the Fire Salamander from the Throne Room of Fire, and then he got a regular Ghoul(crown item) from the Emperor's Retreat.

Savannah and Gabrielle finished up the Village of Sorrow today, in Mooshu. Next stop is the Tree of Life. Poor Mom will soon be in Dragonspyre; I know she isn't looking forward to that, and I don't blame her...it's such a hideous place.

This past evening was lots of fun with Ravenwood Radio's Live show and chat. I met some more "new" people and befriended them. Thanks to those who added me this past evening, it was a pleasure to meet you all :)
Everyone seemed to show up for the party in Nightside. Mr. Friendly Necromancer(aka Thomas Lionblood, etc., etc.,) Stephen Spiritcaller, Leesha Darkheart, Fallon Shadowblade:The Death Kids foursome were all there, as were many other great people and bloggers.

Friendly played dress up for us as Chief Friendly and as Nolan Stormgate. He also brought in Kyle Skystaff with his very extremely rare and special Sheep pet. Here are some little pics of things and people seen at the party:
I can't wait until the next RR broadcast!
I hope all that were at the party had fun and I will see you guys in the Spiral!

Alric Finished Dragonspyre, Defeated Malistaire - NEXT?!

There wasn't a lot left for Alric today in Drqagonspyre. He and Emeraldflame did the Father Drake tower to get the scales for the armor for the baby drake. Then it was off to talk to the dragon mommies once more., then to Ashley for her last words of encouragement. Emeraldflame let her Storm sister, Danielle Thunderblade, step in for most of Malistaire's. I brought in Fireslinger to do Tumok Gravelbeard(the two times we made the run.) I've done it plenty of times with my Storm girls but it's is really heavy on the need to use Pierce there(those myth guys with their 80% Storm Shields are kind of a nuisance and you really need to do them fast so as not to let them use earthquake on you.)

Danielle stayed to watch until Fireslinger and Alric were done, then Fireslinger left, and the original pair finished it up. I really didn't feel like messing with the pierce over and over today...then making poor Taryn make even more of them.

Alric & Malistaire(I think they are going to become really "good friends," at least for a while)




I have here a couple ending videos of the first two runs. Alric, unfortunately, had no luck on getting his gear today. But he did get LOTS for Luis to use in the future...plus some for a future Necromancer ;)
The reason you see the Storm minion in the first is that I often like to bring them out to take the flack off the Life person. It gives the Life person a chance to gain some more pips and heal some more if needed. It also keeps the enemies from wanting to put weakness on my Storm wizard when she has Dragonblade or any other balance-school blades that might get used. Also, this was the second minion and she had just called him up this time, really to get rid of one regular pip so she could have full power on that hit.


Second run. No minion used here...I didn't care about the one regular pip that time, I guess...lol...



So, what IS next? Well, it's Kaitlyn's turn now to do Dragonspyre. I will also be farming Mailstaire's at least one time a day, until Alric gets his robe, athame and ring. (It's always the first wizard on an account that has to do all this farming, any others will probably have all their gear by the time they reach 50.) I will probably be using a mix of wizards with Kaitlyn. Ice and Balance work very well together so Winterbane may be helping quite a bit, and sometimes Danielle might help, as well as Fireslinger is always good to have in certain situations.

Savannah and Gabrielle did meet up yesterday. They completed all but Frosthelm in the Vigrid Roughland. They might be doing Frosthelm today...hopefully. Then they will probably go back to Mooshu and continue on there with starting in the Village of Sorrow.

Also, there is always Luis to work on. He is still, basically, just starting in Krokotopia in the Pyramid of the Sun. Well, actually he has done quite a bit of that area and doesn't have a lot left of it...but it's still the beginning of Krok ;)

Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!

Alric Hits 49, Finishes Crystal Grove...

My third Life wizard is well on his way to being my third Life Grandmaster. He is only about 3 bars away from hitting it now, in fact. Yay, Alric!

This past day was spent doing most of the Obsidian Chest quest; from Krokotopia on up. He had started it the other day and done the two in WC.
He then whizzed through the Crystal Grove....I would swear that place seems shorter every time I do it. I remember when that place seemed to take forever.
The key to the Grove: Storm Spiders....you have to LOVE Storm spiders ;-) And, yes; Emeraldflame did go with Alric to fight them...she loves them too!

Alric did allow me a break to go watch Merlin, though....he didn't want me to have to miss my favorite program :)

During all this time Alric also managed to finish up his first DS crafting quest and is also now half done with his second crafting quest there. He just needs a few Black Pearls. That will be no problem. Kiera, his sister Life wizard, was kind enough to craft some Nature's Wrath cards for him to use on his robes he has to craft. I know they can be bought at the bazaar but at 300 coin, or so, a pop...I'd rather craft them, it's much cheaper, especially since she already had the recipe.

After all that he headed over to talk to Ashley, the Fire Tree at the DS Academy. She sent him on to the second half of the Drake Hatchery Quests, where he was told to go to the Safe House. This is when he decided to let me quit the serious questing for the night and we will continue later on in the day.

I decided to make myself a profile at Gamer DNA here. I honestly wish it could find all the hours I already have spent on W101 and list it. I think some would be amazed at that if they could actually see how many hours I have put into this game.

While working in the Grove, Emeraldflame got the Great Spiral housing item. Her sister Diviner, Danielle, had got this item way back when she was questing, but got her's from Orin Grimcaster. Seems the Diviners have luck when it comes to this sweet housing item :)






Alric also had some luck with a couple of the "cheaper" swords in the Labyrinth when we did that again so he could get his last Obsidian Chest, Dragonrider Staff piece. He got Steelweilder's and The Gallium Paladin's swords. He really is doing good with sword drops, even if these two were not "GM" swords. I mean those are like his 4th and 5th sword drops. He already had bought the Paladin's as I figured earlier he might need one with fighting along Storm so much, but he can pass that extra on to his brother, Luis, when he gets up to that level...probably eventually sell it too.

I still say that Life people have the best luck on drops(probably cause the Leprechauns love them so much,) and will say that Balance has second best luck. For the most Storm has the WORST. I am always shocked when either of my Storm people get anything good. I wonder if other Diviners have the same experience...if they have played more than one type wizard. I mean you can't really say unless you have had first-hand experience with more than one type. And really, really can't say unless you have done multiples of most of the types.

So, later when I am awake I will get Alric going on the rest of DS. There REALLY isn't that much left to it now. Savannah and Gabrielle might rendezvous later on too...we will see.
They got done with Ancient Burial Grounds the other day and will be working in The Village of Sorrow next.

Oh, an update on what I did with the extra coin that Emeraldflame had:
I burned about 45k on buying the pets that could be coin-bought. I bought one dragon for each of my original wizards and one for Savannah too. The dragons are all color-coordinated with each wizard's main colors. Then I went and bought a whole LOT of housing stuff for my Death wizard's Death house, and a couple items that I was lucky enough to snipe for her big MS house too. Emeraldflame bought herself a few little things for the house too, but not a lot. She really is about out of room to fit items in her place. It's very crowded there but we love the way it looks. The house sort of seems to tell a story of her adventures when I look at all the items that are sitting in it.

So she was down below 100k by the end of that little spree, but that won't last too long...probably. But I think when I run Kaitlyn through DS that I may use my second account with either Danielle or Heather Winterbane as the quest partners. I think the second account might need some more coin than the first...with all those original, rich wizards(lol.)

Kaitlyn hasn't been doing much lately. She is just chilling, waiting for Alric to finish and taking a relaxing vacation in Grizzleheim with a little battling here and there.

Hope you all have a great weekend!