"Next World" Leveling Preparation

Ever reach the level cap and feel like you've accomplished everything, and end up ignoring the side quests hiding around the Spiral?  Or, if you are a hardcore "completionist," ever feel the need to clean out your Quest Book?  Here are some tips on how changing those impulses may be beneficial for the long run:

Vlogs #8-12: Wintertusk Adventures

Wintertusk Checklist and Analysis

Wintertusk is coming out today!  Too bad for me, I'm stuck with studying for a final for Thursday... -_-  I'll try to manage my time best to maybe even squeeze in some time for Ravenwood Radio 40 tonight, but no promises!  We'll just have to see if I can plow through or avoid some unnecessary chapters...

BUT, nevertheless, I've created a personal checklist while playing the Test Realm to remind me of some in-game obligations and duties for the Live Realm (once I'm free from academic burden).  This list is made public to help some of you PvPers manage your time, decisions, and resources to efficient use:

Concept to Grasp

A new generation of PVP has arrived, with 15 new spells.  Eight are completely new utility spells, and seven are upgraded versions of existing spells.  Various mechanical changes have been implemented, such as Earthquake no longer removing Stun Blocks, but stunning spells providing just one Stun Block of protection, opposed to four.  To balance this, Stun Resist gear has been added to Dueling Diego's supplies.  Also, the gear that's dropped within the Waterworks dungeon is for Legendary Wizards (Lv. 60), and provides Universal Resistance regardless of school.  New Crafted Gear is also available, allowing for an expansion of many new strategies (which I'll extensively be exploring and developing over the next few months).  Level 58 pets will also take us into a new dimension of PVP with new abilities and unique Innate Cards.  An additional Training Point will be provided through a new Zeke's quest.

The following checklist will be completed before my Ice Wizard returns to the Arena:

• New Spells
• Obtain Level 35 spell (Legion Shield)
• Great counter against Area of Effect (AOE)-Damage over Time (DoT) spells, allowing me to protect allies for an addition 30% resistance to next incoming damage.  Also helps me reduce damage for all allies if I can't make up my mind on who to protect.  A must have.
• Learn an additional spell from Zeke's Trogg Finder quest.
  
  
  
• New Items/Gear
• Purchase Stun Resist Amulet from Dueling Diego
• Replacing my Life Mastery Amulet, since Perfect Catch has vigorously trained and adapted to a Pip-building style before the Amulets were released; it shouldn't be unfamiliar territory.  I'll then have a 15% reduced chance of getting stunned.  Because stunning spells will provide just one Stun Block, the number of Chain-Stunners can be expected to increase.  Thus, having an innate chance of resisting a Stun can be advantageous against a team expecting to win by pure immobilization.  I would rather keep my Stellar Signet and Cosmic Kris for massive Incoming/Outgoing boosts to complement Spritely, so I will choose to stay at just 15% max Stun Resist (as opposed to 30%).
• Stitch Wands
• Personally craft one of the new weapons with help from someone who has access (going to port to them; thanks to Aiden for helping with clarification) to the wand recipes, stitch the Hammer of the Stone Sky to my "Banhammer" (a promo wand called the "Galvanic Hammer" from Beckett's).
• This wand allows for a variety of AOE support spells such as Bladestorm (increase team's damage), Brilliant Light (increase team's recovery rate via casted spell/Spritely), Legion Shield (increase team's resistance), Unicorn (increase team's damage recovery), and Guidance (increase team's accuracy).  All these spells have 100% accuracy, so the chance to fizzle will be very low (given that there is a Smokescreen or Black Mantle upon us).
• Will stitch my Lifeforce Sword to another model
• Just for aesthetics
• Repeat Waterworks with Perfect Catch until all members have their complete Legendary Gear before questing in Wintertusk.
• Gear boosts will allow for faster questing (higher critical rating without sacrificing survival via resist)
• Ronan's boots, hat, robe
• Fallon's boots, hat, robe
• Cassandra's boots, hat, robe
• My boots, hat, robe
• Create a new generation Perfect Catch Defender Pig, and research the Weakness talent more.  (Spell Proof, Spritely, Snow Shield/Weakness, Sharp-Shot)

Official Word From Greyrose - Floating and Harvesting

**Thanks to our very own Jacob Legendheart for pointing this out:




About the Exploit that Caused the Downtime

I want to take this opportunity to clarify what occurred to cause us to close all the Wizard Dorms and Castles & Lands for a day. Players found a way of exploiting a gardening bug in their houses which allowed for infinite harvesting of elder plants.

Players who obviously exploited this bug have been banned, and we will continue to investigate others who may have also taken advantage of something that was clearly not intended.

I obviously won't go in to the details of how the infinite harvest worked, but part of this exploit involved another bug that our community affectionately calls 'stacking'.

This 'stacking' bug allows you to stack rugs, tables and other furniture pieces in your home to create new levels and interesting structures. This has been a long standing bug, and every time we bring up whether or not to 'fix' it, we realize that this stacking bug is a harmless bug that in fact allows our community to be very creative. We're always delighted to see just how much our players enjoy being creative and we feel that removing the functionality to stack housing items would stifle that creativity, and we obviously don't want to do that!

While we have fixed the gardening exploit that relied on this 'stacking' bug, at this time we do not plan to remove the ability for players to stack their housing items. However, should other exploits be discovered that use this 'stacking' bug, we will have to reassess whether the harm outweighs the creative freedom.

-Lydia Greyrose

November 8 Updates

Major and minor updates to talk about! The following updates have been made to the game:

Pets

All pet hatching prices have been reduced by 25%

Pets with Talents that cast Blades or Traps will now cast those Blades and Traps.

Celestia

The Lunar Chest will no longer disappear if a friend Teleports to you in the Moon Room.

Teleports have been added to the Crustacean Empire area.

Combat

Boys should sound like boys when they take damage, and girls should once again sound like girls.

Earthquake will no longer remove Stun Shields.

Quests

Players will no longer be required to complete a series of side quests to enter the Dojo for the Obsidian Chest Quest called Wizard Tours.

Other

We have decreased the side to side movement of the shark mount.

BUN: Adventures in Celestia (Tales and Tips)

The past few days have been such a blast with all the new spells, equipment, monsters, quests, income rate, challenges, pets, and strategies that have flooded into the Spiral on the Live Realm.  As with our characters, we were submerged into a whole new world called Celestia, and my PVP team "Perfect Catch" and I were ready and anticipated surprises or twists along the way.  True, some of us were able to touch on the new features in Test Realm (TR), but a few changes, such as the removal of the spells Simplify and Elucidate and the adjustments made to Level 55 weapons, meant our experience was going to be much different.  Similar to how we explored the new world in TR, we split up and played "individually" instead of as a group.  Different schedules called for varying progression rates.

Normally, I am a solo-type gamer, meaning I usually dislike playing with others.  However, the aspects of Wizard101 have undeniably shown that this game was developed with a lot of hindsight to the negative factors of multiplayer interaction.  Instead of a "Greed or Need" system, everyone has the same chance for the same loot, regardless of party size or damage dealt.  Without competition amongst companions, more focus can be placed on similar (if not the same) goals.  If one of the ingredients is a great friendship, then you've got a recipe for success as a team.  With the amazing people I often play with, there was not an excuse for me to jump back into being a hermit.  So, I took on Celestia with mainly Missy, and tripled up with Ronan Dawn towards the end.

Armed with some experience from the TR, Missy and I set straight off to picking up some core, utility spells:  Conviction (Star) for PVP which increases the chance to avoid Critical Hits and Stuns, Fortify (Star) for increased resistance, and Strong (Sun) for increased damage on applicable cards.  I took on the Damage Tier of Sun School since I could rely on a Pet for Accuracy if necessary.  +100 damage to a Blizzard is adding nearly half its minimum value to the spell.  At the highest rank, Gargantuan does +225, which is a 90% boost to my Rank 4 AOE's minimum.  I think farming as a group in Kensington by killing on the first turn is more than possible now!  Seraph, here I come!

On my first day and first fight against Cuthalla in the Grotto, this dropped for me:

I still haven't trained it, surprisingly, but it's most likely because I'm currently working on a new PVP/PVE-based pet.  Surprise, surprise.

I love the new Spritely animation, by the way.  It's somewhat comical, because I don't think any of the other healing spells create this visual:

Looks like a cool effect to use for a new Mistblood logo, huh?  Hmmm...anyway...

What was notably different about the Base Camp Astral trainers on the Live realm was that some spells were relocated to "secret trainers," while others were discontinued/removed.  (On TR, you could see the entire "Tier" or "skill tree" of the Sun enchantments, all of the "basic" Polymorphs, and all Star auras that weren't PVP-based.  Empowerment, Vengeance, and accuracy/damage boosts above Keen Eyes/Strong were viewable in Celestia's "Commons" trainers.)  Also, the Pip Reduction spells of the Sun School (Simplify and Elucidate) were removed.

Thus, my Astral build changed slightly, leaving me with 3 free Training Points after picking up all the new spells that I needed.  I've maxed out on Sun School's Damage tier (Gargantuan), picked up the Fortify and Empowerment auras from Star, and naturally adopted the Gobbler Polymorph from Moon.  Through these combined powers, I became Captain Tank-It!  With Empowerment, I'm getting a faster Pip generation; whenever a Rank 4 (or above) spell is casted on me, be it damage or a heal, I get 1 Pip!  The only catch to this spell is that X-based cards do not trigger the special effect; if Judge, Dryad, Heckhound, or some Boss's natural attack that uses all of its pips is targeted at me, my aura does nothing.  Neat balance!

Before I forget, if you're wondering where you can find additional Astral spells, keep in mind that two trainers are inside their respective instances:  Stellarium from the District of Stars has the Star Trainer, while Lunarium (entered from "Using the Moon Portal") has the Moon Trainer.  There are multiple posts in each of these instances to pick up the spells from; you just need to do a little exploration!  As for the Sun Trainer, you have to go outside for a little tan on the beach to find that kind of magic.  What better place to do that at than the Floating Island?  Just walk up the ramp next to Pierce and past the Teleporter posts to find it.

Speaking of the Floating Island and Pierce...

Mmm, I love Kelp!

With a higher rank in Crafting, I managed to keep my promise of obtaining this:

With the Iceblade Vial, I can stack two Rank 0 blades for +40% and +45%, more than doubling my damage!  Adding Gargantuan onto that, and I'm more effective than a chill pill.  

On the subject of Amulets, Jewel of the Feint dropped for me after fighting Ptolemos, the Moon Boss of the Trial of Spheres.  I think there are some other places where it drops, too (Solar instance, according to new friend Lauren Ironbane), so keep an eye out and cross your fingers!

So, with the mention of making it to the Trial of Spheres and doing every side quest along the way, Ronan, Missy, and I became Spiral Geographers and Legendary Sorcerer, Diviner, and Thaumaturge together, on Friday.  In my next post, I'll elaborate on our reasons for advancing through the world so quickly, but keep in mind, we're not yet through with this new world!  The content is still fresh and fascinating; beating Celestia once or twice or seven times still would not be enough to quench my curiosity on every story on the game (well done, KingsIsle!)  It may be purely coincidence, but I still can't get over the similarities between the nature of Astral Magic and the general nature of magic in my fan fiction comic Mistblood:

"Mind, body, and soul" used in Astral Magic and Mistblood

But that will be another post for another day...

Before we part from this transaction of communication, here are a few helpful Tweets I've made that just can't be elaborated on further:

Star Auras

Every Turn Counts

New Snacks Are Better

In Regards to the Crafting Quest

Critical on a Hydra/Orthrus vs. Block *confirmed*

Repetition is Sometimes Good

False Experience Displayed

Why Celestian Fashion Fails

How to Gain Training Points (part 1) *must read*

How to Gain Training Points (part 2) *must read*

New Endgame Badge *unconfirmed*

Two Sets of Level 58 Armor

Post a comment if you have any questions or thoughts....thanks for reading!

The Sea Cucumber

@DragonBrightWiz made this for me :)

If you haven't seen it yet, check Friendly's post here.

That's why.

Plus, Celestia's coming up on Wednesday of this week.  I think I'm ready....

Grandmaster Crafter Preparation on Live Realm

Good news!  The latest Test Realm update reduced the difficulty to advance to Grandmaster Crafter!  Check out this table I've made showing how you can prepare in the Live Realm before Celestia is released (click to enlarge):

Of course, these numbers are for the dedicated Artisans who want to obtain that badge within the first hour of Celestia's Live release.  I'd rather farm mobs and nodes for most of those Pearls and Stones...

In case you didn't know, you can transfer reagents from one Wizard to another in this update.  So, if you've been doing lifelong collecting sprees on your main or alternates, you're well on your way to the next badge.  Good luck, happy hunting!

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:

Game Update: On-Going Game Maintenance (8/12/10)

Taken from the login page:


Wizard101 Maintenance
As part of our ongoing effort to improve Wizard101, we are performing ongoing maintenance on the game.
Today only, Paying Players* will be able to log in to the game, and Free to Play players will have intermittent access. All players may experience a delay the first time they log a character in to the world today. This is expected and there's no need to submit a bug about this delay.

Thank you for your patience while we diligently continue to improve Wizard101 for all our players.

*paying players include those who are currently subscribed, or have purchased $10 in Crowns or more in the last 30 days.

Into the Spiral: Butterfly Effect

Over the weekend, many players have exploited a housing bug in which items could be transferred to or taken from other people’s houses.  If you were offline at the time, or never entered your dorm or house, you were safe from robbery as long as no one else had access to it.

While it may have started off as an accident somewhere, it eventually led to an illegitimate exchange system where people made deals on “trading” pets.  This was possible since pets, as furniture items, could be placed in another’s house due to the bug.  But because this “bartering” system was underground and against the rules and Terms of Use, there was no control in place, and items gained and/or lost during the transition most likely were not recorded on an activity log.  Therefore, without security assurances, scams became even more rampant.

Ronan Dawn did some research over the weekend, and followed a pair of people to see the bug in action.  This type of show-and-tell is what malicious players did to prove that the exploit did exist, and further draw the “victim” in agreeing to a trade.  But as soon as that person gives their end of the deal, the scammer takes the pet and leaves.

Alright, so KingsIsle can remedy this very easily!  Just punish whoever sent in a complaint form (the “victim”) and the house guest (the “scammer”) via the activity logs and ban them for use of an exploit to gain an unfair advantage; they both agreed to break the rules!  But what happens when the victim is actually innocent?

It turns out that the opposite (retrieval of items) worked as well.  People were able to use the method and abuse the new function of picking up ALL items.  That means, instead of items being placed, they were taken.  So, anyone on your Friends List could potentially steal your furniture items (including gear on the mannequins and pets) if you ever stepped foot inside your dorm or house.  This includes Friends of friends.  Thus, the victim here did not even have to consent to anything, nor did they know anything was missing unless they looked.

I would rather not explain how the bug works or how it is performed, specifically, but I have a strong feeling that the steps involved do not write anything to the activity logs.

Let’s say that that’s true.  Without any record or way of tracing items back to people when they are given, received, or stolen, the Company will be left in a fog of emails and complaints, where some are true and some are questionable.  The issue is verifying which is which.  Put yourself in KI’s shoes.  How would you effectively replace the items your customers worked so hard to farm for (furniture, pets) or craft (Carousel, Mannequins, Portraits of Greyrose/Ambrose) if you do not have any verification that the item is missing?  If there are tens of thousands of these arbitrary reports (keep in mind, that’s a small number compared to ten million, but nevertheless tens of thousands more than necessary), will you actually go to each person’s residence, communicate with them, and return the specific items back?  Oh, keep in mind, your inbox is full of other unsolved anomalies, with just as much priority as this.  From what I’ve last heard from Ian, she and the Support crew are still managing individual accounts that are believed to be missing Crown items (relation to the Firebat/Crowns compensation).  Now they have this on their hands too…

So, what’s the first move you’re going to make, as KI?  Well, to put a stop to the growing inbox, let’s cut off the access to recreating this bug.  Hence the [temporary block on housing, earlier today].  Next, we’re going to terminate it.  Now that people are temporarily evicted, we can start fixing the codes and prevent future occurances.  We’re pretty sure Witches and Wizards want to grab their pets or gear that they left in their homes today, so we’ve gotta open access again.  Great, the future of the Spiral has been saved.  Now for the past…

Many people have had their wallpapers and tiling stolen and sold to the auction.  Some of them may be detail-specific or skilled interior designers who happened to have rare patterns, but now everything is missing.  How do we account for every single person?  How do we know that our players did not use other loopholes, such as creating a new account, transferring items to that fake Wizard, and transferring it to their actual alternative, and are now claiming that someone stole their items?  Or perhaps send No Trade items through the mannequin, such as arena gear, to a Level 1, 5, or 10 character?

Let’s turn back time to before all this happened.

I haven’t heard anything from KingsIsle, but this is a global consequence that I fear the most:  Character reset.  This would definitely make the victims happy to have their pets back, with the same name, same abilities, and same stats; there’s no need to train up a replacement FOG Unicorn for the one you had placed in your Home Collection of Epic pets.  Plus, some Mega Snacks that went into that thing long, long ago, way before this bug was discovered, are not wasted money.  But how do you find the individual thieves?  People redecorated their house over the weekend, so we can’t look at just the logs for usage of “Pick All Items Up.”  What about someone who managed to make it off with only a few items due to a full backpack, bank, and attic?  Looking at large quantities of inventory movement may find a lot of violators, but it doesn’t fix them all.

Keep in mind, this is just my logical guess; it doesn’t mean that KingsIsle will necessarily do that.  Still, I can’t help but grimace at the fact that all our hours of reagent sniping and farming over the 3-day weekend may disappear off the records.  That’s not even counting the Pet Training or farming.  But, alas, that’s the smoothest way to fix what naughty students have done.  When we do one little thing that benefits us that goes beyond the game’s intentions, it always has the potential to affect the entire Spiral.  So, before you even think about using any bug to your advantage, consider that this may be a double-edged sword; it’s much better off reporting it before everyone gets hurt.

To the (bullet)Point: Advanced Pets Debut, Night #2, and Plans

These are a few notes of what I noticed or did on the debut of the Advanced Pets System; pardon my laziness, but it is overdue by lengths (and now, for a Behind-the-scenes-look at how I draft posts):

• Surprise!  PVP Ranks were not reset like I speculated!
• I regretted in not preparing in the following ways:
• Max out gold on every single character by transferring Coven loot to everyone; just my grandmasters got the jackpot(s)
• I wish I used some overflow of gold to buy more pets!
• Should have hunted for pets more...!
• But, the night before, I managed to get some last minute prepping in by splitting all my pets amongst my 6 characters
• I looked at all of my pets' skills, wrote down what I wanted to pass onto future generations, and gave the "useful" or high pedigree pets to my Grandmasters, while the Teens and Babies went to alternates
• Then I proceeded to place all my characters into the Pet Pavilion (even young Mistblood; no pet scenes yet ;) )
• Then I Danced away each toon's energy, given that that was the fastest depletion method
• I farmed up the Coven with Heather Emeraldflame [LINK], Reed Giantpetal [LINK], and Fallon Shadowslinger [LINK]; managed to score two (2) Silverback Wildclaw [PICTURE]
• turned in Gobblers' codes
• Pet train station setup: Defender Pig, Magma Colossus, Pixie, Krokotillian, 2nd Generation Guardian Dragon (from Def Pig + Guard Dragon), Evil Snowman.
• Going for ranking-to-Ancient, Barrier (derby), Morale Boost (derby), Hexster (gives card), manifestation experiment, Ice Giver (damage boost, ice); respectively)
• Farmed Briskbreeze
• Rank 5 food drops moderately here [PICTURES]...free food and loot to sell and Gold per battle?  Delicious indeed!
• Found out (too late, in relativity to my experiments with Ice) Steal Ward works on Orrick (final Boss).
 

Night #2

• Raised Wildclaw to Teen [PICTURE]; looks like a Derby and Myth PVP monster
• Farmed Jotun with Heather; she wins Death Troll!!!  Pay him or you get the Death TOLL!!! [PICTURE].  I am very corny.
• Updated Training Lineup (all pets are First Generation unless denoted otherwise; i.e. 2G, 3G, etc.):
• Battleblood: Teen Pixie (speed racer!) / Teen Silverback Wildclaw (he is AWESOME to watch in Gobbler Drop)
• Ironblood: Teen Krokotillian / Adult Magma Colossus
• Titanblood:  2G Baby Guardian Dragon
• Boomblood:  Baby Red Gobbler #1
• Wildblood: Baby Orange Mander
• Mistblood:  Teen Evil Snowman
• Pet Rank of Veteran achieved (I believe); only First or Second place for Pixie Missy!

And we have a 3-Day weekend coming up!  Plans for the weekend (due to real-life circumstances, blah):

• Prepping for Ravenwood Ball (tomorrow)
• Mistblood pages 18, 19, 20 (at least)
• BMC #2
• Poster
• Location set-up
• Lots of gold farm for this..
• Now that I think about it, it really does take awhile to get 100k back for mating, but takes WAY longer before you raise a pet to Adult....so while farming for food and gold, pets should not be ready to mate just yet...meaning more time to spend with friends, w00t!
• Finding assistance, have them reserve June 12 for W101
• Floating bug tricks, tips, and explanations [Video and blog post]
• Courting Yeva Logo
• Raising Pixie to Adult after obtaining Pet Rank: Knight; Baby Red Gobbler to Teen
• Helping a friend (Hint: Heather E.) with something not necessarily having to do with Wizard101 inside the game and may provide some employers some info.  Oh, the clarity of this note!
• Smile.
• Repeat above step.
• Remind readers to smile.

Have you smiled today?  Share about when and why!

Advanced Pets Tips: Setting Up Your "Train" Stations

Disclaimer:  Please read this guide THOROUGHLY before using any advice.  Many parts are connected as a whole, so be sure to absorb everything before carrying through.

With limited resources and time, you DO NOT want to end up moving your pets around too often, or training many different pets on a single character!  Putting yourself into either of these situations will only slow you down from carrying out your plans, especially if you do not have unlimited money to buy mountains of Crowns with.  So what do you do to create the most efficient "setup" for reaching your breeding goals?

Note:  Before making any pet transfers to other characters, remember to deplete all Pet Energy on the toons who are removing pets from the Shared Bank.  There is no penalty for placing them in Shared Bank, fortunately.


Each character has their own Pet Energy (PE); the capacity varies based on the character's level.  If you are planning on not using Crowns as often as you did in the Test Realm, you must realize your pets will not level as fast as they did with your free Test Snacks or Pet Elixirs.  Thus, it will take daily training and feeding for roughly half a week before you manage to take them to Adult.  So, there will be somewhat of a limit before you stop training on one character, and much more work before that Pet levels.  Therefore, I stress that you split six of your "target" pets among each of your alternates and main.  If you do not have 6 characters on your account yet, make some new disposable ones as placeholders.   

Note:  You do NOT need to be level 7 OR kill Rattlebones to be able to train your pets!   

Those requirements seem to apply only to accessing the Pet Pavilion, or mating.  So, all you need is a helpful friend to stand in the Pavilion for you to port over.  Once you enter Pet Park, MARK it.  That way, when you finally have created an Adult that's going to mate, you can teleport Home, deposit/withdraw a pet, make your way to the Minigame Fairegrounds to stock up on Mana, port back to the Pet Park, and MARK it again.

By "target" pets, I mean the ones with abilities that interest you, whether it be the Talents or Derby Skills.  There isn't an effective point with spending PE on a pet that doesn't even have a skill that you want to see in later generations.    I want to reiterate what Miguel Wildthorn posted on Friendly's blog:  starting out, you want to mate your favored Adults to combine their potential Talents/Derby Skills.  It seems that Gift Card Pets with Variable Boosts* start out as Adults in order to provide the correct bonuses as they did before Pet Updates.

*Variable boosts are Talents in which value changes as your pet's stats increase.  For example, the Gift Card Pet Defender Pig gives Spell-Proof, which is a Variable universal Resist, of 6%.  Had it started out as a Baby, it would provide you with only 1%, due to low Strength, Agility, and Power combined.  But, as a default, the Pig started out as an Adult, with 150 Strength, Agility, and Power each (all of which affect Resist), providing me the 6% it normally gave before the Pet Updates!

Note:  It's best to leave the pet that will take the longest to reach its goal on your "Farmers."  Pets requiring more experience will need Snacks just to keep pace with your younger pets, and we want to avoid making more transfers than we have to.


The point here is to take the standard pace you're allowed for training onto many pets at a time, especially if they are First Generation. That way, you can begin mating as soon as possible and discover if you managed to get the skills you want manifested.

In summary:

• Look at all of your pets' Talents/Skills
• Pick out which skills you would like to have in the next generation
• Give each of your characters a pet with each skill you favor; if it takes a long time for the pet to level, give it to a character that will farm for Hatchery gold
• Train each pet everyday.  It takes 10 minutes to refill one PE, so in one hour, you will have 6 PE, and in 8 hours you will have 48 (max).

Happy Hunting!

Advanced Pets: Dawn of a New Age

It is currently about ten minutes before the anticipated release of Advanced Pets.  Of course, KingsIsle was kind enough to remind players that perhaps there was to be extended maintenance, so I won't be too disappointed if we aren't able to log in soon.  I'm sure a lot of players are sitting at their screens, constantly trying to log in to be the "first" inside...Time to explore while we wait!

So, thanks to Miguel Wildthorn and some personal research of my own yesterday in the Test Realm, I feel much more confident about what to do as soon as I jump in.  Yesterday was yet another reset, so it was nice to work with a clean slate and experiment with mating.  However, with just a single day of work before the Live Realm debut, I feel like walking through the fog with future generations of pets, such as the question of how traits are distributed when a later generation mates with a predecessor of the same type, and which Talents tend to get overridden.  But because of our very own "Mendel", I was able to recreate yet another Derby beast (the first one was made between me and Ronan Dawn by accident, on the second day of Test Realm), with this one helping out greatly in Resist AND Pips too!

So, as I explore, plan, and experiment, I will be making frequent posts and archiving them right away in my new Advanced Pets guide collection, under the Chillanthropologist logo.