Test Realm: The Magic of Celestia, Weekend 1

Now that my speech class presentation is over and done with, time to catch up on blogging!

I'm sitting at work on Friday, occasionally checking my cell phone after it vibrates, keeping up with a few Twizards (Wizards who are active on Twitter) and following the gaming convention hype vicariously through Friendly and Leesha.  As soon as word drops from Tom that the Test Realm is out and Celestia is featured, my concentration levels drop, my body becomes jittery, and my eyes dart towards the computer clock profusely.  "How much longer until I'm getting out of here!!?!"  

Nothing could have ruined my day though, as soon as I was out of there.  No, not even the long line I had to wait in at the end of the day to renew my parking pass, and especially not the clerk who refused to validate my entrance pass.  Heck, I just had to talk to Maureen the ticket window lady about my issue, and she took real great care of me, and signed me out at my own fee rate.  And certainly, not even Lady Gaga's annoying "Telephone" song, played simultaneously on two of my favorite radio stations, could annoy me; I drove down that highway with it blasting, windows rolled down, and possibly drawing looks of disapproval and rolled eyes from those I passed.  Celestia was out for rolling around in, and that was all that mattered.

During my ticket pass re-registration, Fallon Deathslinger was more than generous enough to relay to me the Update Notes over the phone.  So, my mind was constantly reeling over what "Critical Hits/Blocks" were, and I tried to imagine the Astral magic spells based on what I learned from Deathywiz.  That kept me so busy that I didn't notice I was already off the highway and back in my residential area (and luckily not in a ditch).  

After finishing the Test Realm patches, I hopped into the Spiral, and was instantly greeted by notifications from Merle Ambrose and Dueling Diego while in the Bazaar.  Ronan Dawn began relaying to me through chat  his observations and amazement at the new content.  

Me being me, I took the odd, slow road, and instead of blasting through the door into the Headmaster's office, I began scanning around my current surroundings, and talked to the Master Merchant for any new items.

First, I want to point out how amazed I was when I saw how my Test Realm screenshots turned out.  Currently on the Live Realm and previously in past Test Realms, taking in-game pictures included a portion of my desktop because I play in windowed mode.  Thus, I was always finding myself manually cropping the image down to just the game window before displaying them.  But, this picture is unmodified!  I wonder why this user-friendly update wasn't included in the notes?

Anyway, as you can see here, a new column was added in the Treasure Card category: Astral treasures!  However, at the time of this snapshot, there weren't any cards for sale.  Oh well!

I later made my way over to Dueling Diego to see what news he had for me.  Neela Mythslinger, aka Miguel Wildthorn, teleported to me to also check out the information on Critical Hits and Blocks.  While we didn't find out in detail how the values were determined based on the boosts on armor, we got a neat Spartan helmet giving us some Critical Rating.  From just some observations of Criticals in battle, it looks like players are given a chance to double their damage, after Charm and Wards have been calculated.  I'll definitely be testing further into this over this next coming weekend.

I zoomed and hovered over to Ambrose, who gave me a new mission: check out a new world called Celestia.  I went above and beyond that task.

Whenever new content of anything is presented to me, I will dissect and explore as much of it as I can; I love and yearn for the aspects of "how" and "why", not just "what."  As soon as I entered the underwater realm, I hugged the wall from left to right to check out NPCs and vendors to get a better understanding of each character's role.  Through this, it allows me to establish a primitive mental map, so I'm not as lost as someone diving straight into quests without direction or a point of reference.  

As soon as I saw the Pet Vendor, I went straight into "work mode" for the Petnome Project.  Yeah, that's me being me, again, I know, I know.  

Check these two cards out:  

The Jewel of the Feint is sold directly from the Amulet Vendor.  The Test Realm happened to copy my character after he bought back Training Points around two weeks ago, so including this wonderful trap to my deck as an equipment card made me very happy, since I didn't have to spend 7 TPs!  You can see that this will stack up with the regular, Bartleby, and crafted Feints!  (I'll put up a post on another day to show how you can eventually stack up to five).

The Iceblade Vial is actually a crafted item, but is way too useful to pass up the Grandmaster Crafter badge; this spell will stack with the Iceblade given from Ice Bird and the one from my own school!  That's Ice damage amplified by 2.744 times from those three buffs.  While Feint may give me a whopping boost of 70%, that's only on one monster.  As Ice, I would want to pack in some some decent damage to either knock out the smaller minions in a boss fight, or gain their attention while my Storm and Fire allies lock and load with their blades and traps.

Speaking of which, here's my planned Astral build, which I'll write more about in another post:

I've noticed a lot of people exclaiming their concern about replenishing their mana and how they're lost on where to do so.  I don't recall seeing any mana wisps in Celestia; I've mainly resorted to teleporting back to the Celestian Base Camp (CL's "Commons") to play the minigames available there.

As  you can see, the sigils are hidden just by Prospector Zeke; a little frustrating to find for those who like to speed through ;)

I'll end with my favorite boss to fight:

DAGROLOTH; I was in Gobbler Polymorph (notice my health orb)

"Purple Hulk" was initially frustrating to fight against, given that he had 5,000 hitpoints, uses a Satyr that heals for five thousand, and towers every time a Charm (negative or positive) or Ward (negative or positive) was used by a Wizard.  He does drop some really cool Double Power Pip weapons, though....yep, Double Power Pip...meaning you can start out with 5 or 6 equivalent Pips.  We do have to wait until Level 55 before using them, but it's worth it!  I'll create yet another separate post on how to beat this gargantuan.

He's located in the Grotto, in the dead middle of the map where my shining green arrow is:

Oh yeah, make sure you have a Tank in the Sun Spot, because he has a chance to do this on the very first turn:

Holy mackerel, and I had 26-30% Universal Resist!

Thanks for reading!

The Arena: Prologue

 

I ran into a thread a few days ago on Wizard101 Central where someone (I can't remember their name; it seems the thread has either been moved to somewhere discrete, or been deleted) asked where they could find PVP guides written by me.  Just to clear up the rumors, I actually don't have any type of articles purely on that matter...until now.   Most of my guidance was given through the game, so I'm assuming the requester overheard me at a post-match discussion or in the Hatchery the other night.  Heck, with all the buzz on Twitter awhile ago, I've been unofficially labeled as the go-to person for the arena.

But that got me thinking.  Why exactly haven't I started up on sharing some tactics just yet? (rhetorical question)  Someone guessed it was because letting strategies surface would backfire on me someday.  That's a possible consequence, but remember that we are playing a game that involves probabilities, and thus there are no "absolute" or "invincible" deck builds or playstyles.  So, while tips and tricks may help reduce game-changing mistakes, they never guarantee victories.  Guides are just guides.

In my case, I'll be introducing and exploring some basic and advanced concepts for PVP over the next few weeks.  And because they're just concepts, it's really up to the player's critical thinking and decision-making that determines the outcome.  No negative repercussions for me there; only more competitors and competent players!

WHY do PVP?  For one, it allows you to explore your strategies, playstyle, and leadership skills in a new dimension.  Cassandra Dragonheart, who's just started in the last few weeks, wrote:

Playing against HUMAN players and not mobs brings a whole new side of Wizard101 to light.  Human players can think ;) and not just blade, trap, attack.  PvP is a whole 'nother thing.

Against another human, gameplay is not as repetitive as farming the Coven; arguably, the game is different every match, even when against the same Wizard.  When your target is putting up enough shields to thwart that common strategy of a one-hit kill, you are then playing in a "world" that is much more difficult and demanding than Dragonspyre.  In contrast to altering your playstyle away from "trap-stacking," you will also be experimenting defensively, finding yourself using more shields than before, to prevent an opponent's "trap-stacking."

Through learning to innovate by planning your deck against the unknown and unexpected, you're halfway there to being fully prepared against future Cheater bosses.  As mentioned before in my Warehouse Guide, I pointed out that my group and I had very little knowledge of how the instance bosses behaved, other than that they used Rank 7 spells, including Rebirth.  Heck, I was the only one who PVPed regularly between the four of us, but by applying a strategy I had learned from the Arena, we beat Estrakir, without guides, on the Test Realm, on our very first attempt.  Thus, PVP also provides mental and tactical tools to use, no matter what your skill level or rank is.  Whether you win or lose a match, there is something always to be gained from the experience (given that your mind is open, and that you do not give up).  Beguile puts the target on your team for a few rounds.  Minions can break shields.  Life Dispel can prevent Life-based healing spells from going off.  Such information is vital to know, should we find "trap-stacking" too simplistic in the future.  Who knows what PVP will teach us about the coming Astral Magics and new Main School spells?

Before I throw down the playbook, I'd like to use the next few days (and posts) to discuss the perspectives on PVP a little more in depth, to clear up some general perceptions on it.  In other words, this Prologue will be extensive, and expanded over a few days.  Hopefully I can broaden the interest of those who have not yet tried PVP (but heard many "bad" things about the arena), or bring redemption for the sport in the eyes of those who tried and quit.

Petnome Q&A: Mini-games and Stats

Searching through my Marleybonian mailbox, I found this letter from Calamity Grove, regarding her pets:

I have a large family playing on W101.   Three of us have Defender Pigs that were purchased on the same date. They all three developed different talents during training. Two made it to 9% spell proof and one to 8% spell[ proof]. Boy was my sister mad about that. We think it might be the games and snacks we feed our pets,especially after re-reading w101 release that said talents are developed based on training. My thought is for example if agility is maxed at adult it would manifest a certain trait but if intelligence is maxed at adult it would manifest another. At this point this is just theory we need the test realm to open again so we can relevel the same pets. We spent a lot of time leveling pets in test and recording the talents to compare when it opens again.

Just thought I would share this with you.  Love your 4G Defender Pig [Lord Hunter]!
Calamity Grove

Let's explore two topics, and hopefully this answers or helps you, Calamity! -  (1) training, and (2) why the Defender Pigs have differing benefits.


Training

From what Team has found and researched, it turns out that pets are almost parallel on the Live and Test realms.  In other words, the abilities that they develop in their lifetime, including the order that these Talents and D-Skills are revealed, are the same on both servers (99.9% of the time).  I use the Test Realm as an opportunity to "see" into my pets' future, and quickly uncover what they are meant to unlock.  Keyword: "meant."

By that, I mean that Pet Abilities are predetermined.  When and where the process happens, we can only guess that it's right when you click the "Hatch" button after agreeing to breed; or this also happens when you redeem a code from a Gift Card, or redeem an in-game gift.  Once the egg is created and waiting to break open, we assume the Talents and Derby Skills are already chosen.

I trained up yet another Defender Pig (I literally have my own Dojo with these, in addition to the litter of Death Ninjas I got from hatching with Missy), this time a 5G, up to Ancient on the Live Realm, and he received Spell-Defying, Health Gift, and Pip O'Plenty.  I asked myself, is it really worth blindly putting in 1000 XP worth of food into this pet?  What if he gets Durable, or Tenacious, instead of Spell-Proof (which was what I was after; a pet with stacking universal resist)?

So, I decided to wait for the Test Realm before training and feeding, and he did in fact learn Spell-Proof at Epic.  Oh, keep this in mind: even though Spell-Proof is an Epic Talent, it doesn't mean that he had a higher chance of receiving it when he became Epic; there is no relationship between an ability rarity (Uncommon, Rare, Ultra-Rare, Epic) and a pet's age (Baby, Teen, Adult, Ancient, Epic).  The method I used for raising a pet on the Test Realm is failing the Dance Game on purpose, just so I can get to the Feed Pet screen and dump Mega Snack XP right into it.  Thus, the stats raised were at random (based on the snack chosen).

On the Live Realm, Baby Callie did indeed learn Spell-Proof at Epic, after a lot of Cereal (+2 STR, +2 INT, +2 POW, and another +2 POW from "Loved") was fed:

Thus, the mini-games that are played do not affect manifestation; nor do the Stats that are trained.

In other words, I could play Cannon Game for +4 WILL and feed WILL-only snacks repeatedly until I reach 1875 XP (total experience needed to reach Epic), have a max WILL of 240 on Baby Callie, with 0 STR, 0 AGI, 0 INT, and 0 POW, and I will still find the above Talents and Derby Skills manifested/unlocked.

Of course, the actual values (4% resist, 9% resist, 108 HP, 5% power pip chance) will be different than what you see in the picture, because Resist is based on STR+AGI+POW.  Since I have only 0 in each of those stats in this theoretical example, I would have only 1% from Spell-Defying and 1% from Spell-Proof.



Why Your Defender Pigs Have Differing Benefits

The bit from the above paragraph ties with what you wrote in your email:

"...w101 release that said talents are developed based on training."

Let's clear up the ambiguity. What KingsIsle means is that your Talents' strengths (the amount of your %-damage, %-accuracy, %-resist, mana, or health) are based on the points of the Stats that affect them.  In the example in the previous explanation, I stated that with 0 STR, 0 AGI, and 0 POW, I will have 1% resist from Spell-Defying and Spell-Proof each.

How do I know Resist is based on STR, AGI, and POW?  If you mouse-over either the Strength, Agility, or Power "experience bars" on your Pet Page (hotkey I), the tooltip bubbles state that these are what affects Resistances.  The description for Power doesn't say so; it says "most," but your %-resist will raise if Power is increased alone.

Thus, the higher total between STR, AGI, and POW, the higher %-resist will be.  My guess for why your Defender Pigs are showing different Resists is because the last one has a lower combined total of those Stats.  For example, Pig #1 and Pig #2 may have 25 STR, 25 AGI, and 25 POW maxed, but Pig #3 has 24 STR, 24 AGI, 24 POW.  To be honest though, that's a bad example, since 1G (first generation) pets should be identical in Stats.  Therefore, we move onto another explanation.

Perhaps Pigs #1 and #2 have a Passive Boost (+MAX STR and/or +MAX AGI and/or +MAX POW), while the #3 didn't get extra Stat points.  Just as an example, Pig #1 may have 50 STR, 25 AGI, 25 POW; Pig #2 may have 25 STR, 50 AGI, 25 POW; and Pig #3 has 25 STR, 25 AGI, 25 POW.  The first two have a combined total of 100, while the third has only 75.

There's also another explanation that I won't go too far into detail here, until the Team can establish some numbers, but it turns out that POW does not weigh the same in points as the other four stats.  That means, it may be possible that your pet did get a Passive Boost, but its Stat maxes turned out to be a theoretical 25 STR, 25 AGI, 50 POW, so it still receives only 8%, even when you have 100 points combined.  1 STR has the same weight as 1 AGI, but is heavier than 1 POW.

What that means is, if it requires just 10 more points of STR to get to the next percentage, you can instead train 10 points into AGI and hit the 9% Resist mark.  But, this doesn't apply to POW; we'll need 13, 14, or 15 points into POW before 8% becomes 9%.  Of course, these numbers are all theoretical, but the idea I want to get across is that POW has less weight than STR, AGI, INT, or WILL.  Pig #1 and #2 may have gotten +50 STR or +50 AGI, while Pig #3 got +50 POW.

~

Phew, I hope that helped explain some things!  Please leave a comment below if anyone has questions or needs clarity; I'll be sure to get to them shortly, either through a direct reply or another blog post.  Thanks for writing in, Calamity!  I would suggest breeding your sister's Pig against another Pig (or even another pet) that has higher STR, AGI, and POW maxes than hers for a chance at 9% resist, maybe even 10%, depending on the new pet's Stats.  Here is a picture of my 1G Defender Pig, Bubba, with 10% resist (due to contributions of Stats from Durable and Tireless:

BUN: Underneath the Sheets of Forms

Hey all!

The past two weeks have been such a blast with many ups and downs, and I was busy, busy, busy; just in case you haven't kept up on Twitter:

Last Wednesday was my birthday, and I just want to personally thank everyone for the birthday gifts, whether they were vocal shoutouts, a blog birthday card (Heather Raven), in-game gifts (Isaac Mistheart, Paige Moonshade, Fallon Deathslinger, Heather Raven, Ronan Dawn), or a broadcasted song (Christina Icedreamer and Stormywiz).  You guys and girls all made that day for me!

On the same day, KingsIsle announced their cross-promotion with Selena Gomez's recording agency, and that there was going to be a small contest involving the Disney star.  All I could think of was the release of the Test Realm; with this, we'd have CROWNS, CROWNS, CROWNS!!  250,000 of them, all for our own personal disposal.

In Battleblood lingo, that's pretty much Petnome Project Heaven.  So, that's where I've been the past week;  I couldn't help but take advantage of speed leveling through Crowns.  With Mega Snacks donations coming in from friends and strangers, we've managed to complete at least EIGHT pets as of today:  Silverback Wildclaw, Pixie Queen, Pale Maiden, Blue Cyclops, Red Gobbler, Green Cat Thug, Myth Sprite, and Wood Golem.  This is a list of non-Petnome Team members who helped us out with some donations:

Aaron Stronghand

Scarlet Deathblood

Blake Legend

Courtney Emeralddust

Jonathan Storm

Allan Spiritrider

Matthew Skullrider

Austin Thunderheart

Cassandra Griffindreamer

Fallon Deathwiz

@AmberHartz

Alric Ravensinger

Cassandra Dragonheart

Leesha Darkheart

Scarlet Moonflower

Thanks a ton everyone!  We'll have you listed on the Petnome Page soon!

This week, our Test Crowns were reset, but there was also a good amount of patching going on.  Along with Fallon Deathslinger and Ronan Dawn, we trekked over to the Coven to test and see if prices did indeed halve due to the drop in Dye prices (thanks for the tip, Missy!).  Sadly, they are affected, in the Test Realm at least.      So, here is my tip regarding Live Realm while Test is still active:

Currently, with word from Missy that Coven Drop sell prices being halved on Test Realm, we should strive to farm and hatch as much as possible, without training our pets right away.  With "Crab Alley" being a temporary location made solely for Selena Gomez's promotion, I can only guess that there will be frequent spurts of the Test Realm in the near future, slowly introducing "paying" players into Celestia.

Thus, with a large family of hatched Baby pets to raise on Test after our research for the Petnome Project has been exhausted and we run out of new pets to study, we can then evaluate which pet would be best to invest resources and time in.  Instead of dumping around 125 + 250 + 500 + 1000 = 1875 XP of food onto a pet that we have no assurance in (regarding its usefulness), we should conserve that "energy" until we are certain that a pet will develop into something we want.  Pets that turn out to be "just expensive furniture" should not be composed of lost Snacks.

Let's see...lowered dye prices OT (on Test) means lowered sell values for equipment OT?  Proportionally, that means Hatching prices have indirectly raised.  I wonder if there will be compensation or some kind of tweak to either Hatchery fees or the way hatching/raising works.  For example, if mixing prices do not lower, perhaps KingsIsle will allow players to see what abilities a pet will have in just the Teen and Adult stages (not in Ancient and Epic, to at least conserve the mystery and "risk" factors of pet growth)?  Time will tell, but while that's passing, let's try to make our voices (and reasoning) heard--that is, if we're hurt by this economical transition.  In the mean time, let's stock up on some Krazy Fried Coven.

So, in short, build your army of pets up while gold is still high, and save up your snacks until another Test Realm hits (unless you don't have a super pet to use for the time being).

Have a good one guys!  Feel free to send in any questions here, I'd be happy to answer them!

BUN: Pets and Parties

Another week gone by since the last post, eh?  Phenomenally, the week seems to roll downhill as soon as you hit the middle of the week, while the days prior feel like a steady, slow climb.  Many of the events that happen on Thursday through to Sunday seem to blow by, but I've been keeping nifty Notepad up to take notes as time passes.

Let's start off with some discoveries and questions about Pet Talent mechanics!

Crazy, unexpected situation the other week:  our Warehouse group entered with one person holding onto a pet with the talent Spritely.  For those that don't know, Spritely is a Pet Talent that triggers by chance, like an Interrupt, and is casted by the pet!  Based on every event that I've witnessed with this ability, the Sprite that's created will target only the pet owner.  It will use any Heal-related charms (Guiding Light, Infection, Entangle).  For PVP, that's definitely going to help against opponents who use the negative charms on you!  Anyway, from our Pre-Celestia dungeon run, we witnessed another great thing about Spritely:  it doesn't trigger Knuckles's heal!  So, go ahead, bring a full team of Wizards with pets that manifested Spritely; some recovery over time is better than zero recovery at all!

Another Talent issue to consider is that two Epic abilities, Spell-Proof and Pain-Giver, are no longer obtainable through current gift card pet purchases.  If you were aiming to mix pets for the sake of Wizard boosts, these would be nice to stack on/collect on a single pet.  Ronan Dawn, Fallon Deathslinger, and I are in fact in the process of developing a dream PVP pet that can be used freely in PVE:  one with Spell-Proof, Spell-Defying, and Spritely.  The fourth Talent is variable, depending on our own personal goals (Ronan and I would go for Health to complement Arena use).  But considering how hard it was to manifest Spell-Proof along with Spell-Defying on one pet, it's going to take a lot of Lady Luck's work to deliver all three of us what we want! 

As promised, here is Lord Hunter the Defender Pig (4G) at Epic....too bad I don't have a slot for a Pyromancer though, sigh:

5% Fire Accuracy, 13% Resist All, 120+ HP

He's on Titanblood, who obtained full arena gear, so now he's sporting 53% Resist!  Woot!  

Over at the Petnome Project, we managed to complete THREE more pets! Ianthine Spectre 58, Danger Hound 37, and Minotaur 54!  Check them out!  That's the power of our community; props to everyone!


Also, I've been working on a giant chessboard that's hovering right outside of my Watchtower Hall, any suggestions for what type of Life-based pets you want to see as the pieces?  I have the Defender Pig as Rooks, Unicorns as Knights, Imps as Pawns, and the Pixie Queen as, well, the Queen.  Please let me know what you guys would like to see for the Bishops and King, and I'll choose the most creative.


There was the Haunted Back-to-School Bash last week; tons of people were there early, worried that they wouldn't be able to port into Nightside, and it did eventually reach that point.  Ravenwood Radio, half of the Petnome Team (Ms. Starsong and Ms. Raven and me), the leader (John Lifeglen) and members of the Bloggers' Club, Fallon Shadowblade, and Friendly got out our party gear and popped in.  It was awesome getting to meet a lot of readers and Petnome enthusiasts!  I eventually hopped on my Death alt to do a few new adds; Battleblood is just full up to the brim, and I don't believe I'll be doing anymore Deletes for awhile, unless someone becomes entirely inactive.  Until then, I'll have to use my brothers to add; sorry!

And who would have ever thought that a Flash Mob was possible in Wizard?  Well, the amazing Heather Raven pulls it off the initiative nicely!  Check out this video by Benjamin Fairydust of our first rehearsal.  Now, I'm normally not a dance-type of person, and I admit I would hesitate in doing a real life flash mob.  While I like watching it, participating with choreography was never my thing.  That is, until this :)  Though there are limited actions and dance styles in Wizard, I think with some organization and great leadership, we can pull off something eye-catching and mind-blowing.  Imagine walking through the Commons, and all of a sudden, everyone is bursting out into synchronized moves.  Totally cool in my book!  So, see Heather if you'd like some info on our next meet up!

And, on September 2nd, both Christina Icedreamer and Wizard101 (and another Wizard...I apologize for forgetting who) celebrated their birthdays! 

It's been a pretty darn busy week!

Happy hunting!