Weird happenings during free WC and KT

Although I usually solo pretty much everything but a couple of long dungeons through Dragonspyre, I just had a couple of days left on the free WC/KT event after I finished taking Rowan through to Zafaria so I decided to use two of my non-member accounts to run a couple of new wizards as far as I could get them.

They wound up getting through all the main — and a few side — quests of WC and started KT. Main goal was to get both to level 12 so they could do a bit of dorm gardening. Managed that too.

But along the way a few things were pretty odd:

• Every time both wizards finished a tower/dungeon with one of the WC books for the quest, only one of them could click and get credit for the book. I’ve been running two accounts often for years and have only once before — quite recently — had this happen. Now one wizard has to go back and do all those instances again to get the credit for the quest. Haven’t experimented yet with collecting books in towers on other worlds with wizards from two accounts at once so not sure if it’s only WC where this has started happening.
• For the weekend WC and KT were free to all accounts. For one non-member account, every place she went she just went right in. For the other account she got the paywall with the extra “sample area” button every time she entered an area that’s normally not free to play– including if she’d just gone “home” or to the commons to get health or something and went right back. Paywall. And the sample button worked really poorly — almost every time it took 3 or more clicks to get rid of it.
• The paywall bit happened even when she was porting to the other wizard (porting being one of my fave parts of working with 2 accounts) and to make it even more irritating, after the paywall disappeared, instead of being with the other wizard, she’d be at the entrance to the area and I’d have to use the “go to location” button again. to get her to the destination.
• Oh the fizzles. Both of them fizzled and fizzled. Not so unusual for Fire but my Life wizard fizzled at least as much, possibly more. In my penchant for starting, taking through KT and deleting wizards, I’ve had LOTS of Life wizards and I’ve never seen anything like this amount of fizzling. It significantly contributed to the failure to get as far in KT as hoped by adding so many rounds and so much time to many battles.

By the end I kind of wished I’d managed to put in more time so they could have finished KT — and especially gotten some Pink Dandelion drops — but basically I’m pleased to have gotten two to level 12 and KT in four or five hours spread across the weekend. And given the time wasted on trying various things to be able to pick up the books and on fiddling with paywalls, I feel pretty accomplished.

5 Weeks to Zafaria

Rowan at Level 60

When KI offered the entire spiral for free use to all in December I started a new wizard on one of my non-member accounts. I moved her along pretty quickly and decided, when a discount on a one month membership was offered at the time the free event ended, to sign up for a month of membership to move her along some more.

I generally move through the spiral slowly and most of my wizards have done all the side quests in the first two worlds and the side worlds of Grizzleheim and Wysteria. I also always try for each account, including the 3 non-member ones, to have at least one wizard who’s leveled up enough to keep a decent garden and supply gold or things gold can buy to the rest of the account. So I decided to try to move Rowan Stardust quickly through the spiral, the goal being to get her far enough into Zafaria to be able to pick up the Pest Zapper gardening spell and hopefully to reach level 60.

In order to move that quickly through the worlds, I brought in Tatiana Fireblossom , Level 86, from a member account. She pretty much goes critical every time at this point so I could load the deck with Meteors and Gargantuan plus some blades and defeat everybody in the first or second round. This kind of focused deck and quick results is, I know, the preferred method for many. Personally I find it boring which left me with mixed feelings about this means of blasting through.

On the one hand it was pretty exciting to breeze through all those worlds so quickly, on the other I grew increasingly bored at using the same play (though by the end of Celestia and beginning of Zafaria, I threw in some Fire Dragons, which drew out the rounds as it takes so many more pips). I know many would have blasted on up to the highest level and the last world with 5 weeks of play, but I for the most part was only able to put in a couple of hours a day, sometimes 3 or 4, so I was quite pleased to make it that far in the time I could devote to the task.

Realized for the first time that it isn’t only reaching level 50 that triggers going critical, you have to do the Diego quest to kick it off. Because I was hurrying and Tatiana was really winning all the battles, it took me a bit to notice Rowan moving on up through levels and getting to 55 without ever having “gone critical”. I realized it must be Diego but still delayed in order to reach my goal. Once the month was up Rowan finally went through the Diego quest and then I moved her through a few other side quests in WC and she suddenly went critical every time she cast a damage spell.

Normally my wizards are more like level 70 by the time they’ve moved through some of Zafaria, so it was interesting to note what a difference it makes to do more side quests. My first couple of wizards did every quest in every world until about Celestia, so they’d really advanced. Since then I mostly just do every quest in the first two worlds and then randomly do some in the rest (mostly via picking up the side quests and having some double with main quest goals). Level 60 only became Rowan’s goal after she zoomed through enough that it became clear that was probably the highest level she could reach in the time.

Now that Rowan’s goal has been achieved I’m back a bit at loose ends. I have two wizards at level 100, for whom I’ve been dragging my feet about figuring out the Darkmoor dungeon so I can get those spells. Not sure how far I’m going to take them after the goal of getting the level 100 spells.

I’ve long since grown tired of the increasing difficulty, the ever more tricky dungeons and having new crap to learn. The two level 100’s are far enough into Khrysalis to have been introduced to shadow spells. Don’t really understand the little they’ve been given so far and not really interested in learning any more.

I have six wizards in various stages of Azteca, which seemed absolutely endless to me, so not that excited about going on and on through there with more of them. Have a couple in Celestia, which I’ve never particularly cared for; don’t like the underwater bit, the darkness, nor the fact it’s the first world that seems endless. Various lower level wizards are at various stages and since I don’t like the higher level stuff, I’m dragging about moving them through too quickly.

So we’ll see from here. Right now we’re still in some WC and KT free days, so I’m running some newer wizards from the non-member accounts through those. Then maybe back to my go-to, deleting a wizard I’ve not grown that fond of so I can start another new one and enjoy the early worlds…

Free WC and KT

Wizard City and Krokotopia are free to play for non-members through January 23, 2022. That’s a nice long time — plenty to play through all the quests for both. If you have a nonmember account or two, as I do, it’s a great opportunity to level a wizard or three up to Marleybone.

Discount on memberships and bundles

Banquet Room Holiday Dungeon

Use the code ‘THANKFULSAVINGS’ for 25% off of Crowns and Bundles in your shopping cart!
KI should be coming out with an announcement soon, but until then, not sure when this promo ends.

Free Wizard City Weekend

I think this is the first time I’ve seen this event:  through Sunday, July 7, 2019, non-members can access every area and dungeon of Wizard City for free.  It’s a great chance for those who are meting out crowns for access to complete a lot of quests without paying.

I have two non-member accounts for which I mostly just start wizards and run them through the first couple of worlds and delete.  While I’ve purchased access to a fair bit of WC for that, I’ve not purchased everything so definitely will take advantage of the chance to play through.

Thank you gifts

KI is offering some gifts to players and you don’t have to be a member.  Just log in on the Wizard101 web site, click “redeem code”, fill in the bot check and code to receive your free stuff.

The code is:  2018thanks

And the gifts:

10th Birthday Celebration

Thursday, August, 30 the 10th anniversary celebration for Wizard101 began.  This time it’s a month-long celebration instead of a week and, instead of running all the member benefits at once (as usual), they’re rotating through, beginning with Double Gardening.  Might be a good time to purchase a one month membership.

So many things are going on!  If you click on the picture above, you go to that page on the Wizard101 site and you can click all of those boxes to get information, get links to giveaways, etc.  You can also sign in, click on “Redeem Code” and put in TECHPACK to get a free pack.  There’s also a free spider pet.

Gamma has a little birthday quest that takes you to a previously inaccessible building in the Shopping District; it’s a surprise, so I won’t give away more.  It leads to a gift and there’s a glitch happening, so do know this:

The Five B.O.X.E.S. are also back and later in the month the Lost Pages will return.

The Double Gardening is only through Monday.  I’m a bit disappointed as it usually has lasted a week for the birthday celebration, which meant it was a chance to get double harvests on some plants that take a little longer to reach elder harvest.  The only things I regularly plant with a chance of being planted on a Thursday and hitting the final harvest by late Monday are Evil Magma Peas and Couch Potatoes.  However, the timers have either been glitching into slow downs or KI is slowing them down for Double Garden events, so we’ll see if any of the new crops I planted make it.

Lots going on, lots of free stuff — HAVE FUN!

Housing sale and free pack

There’s a sale on houses and housing items in the Crown Shop from today through August 8, 2018.  50% off lots of stuff.  That’s only for purchasing with Crowns.  These sales never –in my experience– extend to buying with gold (many houses and housing items can be purchased for gold).

You can also log into your account on the Wizard101 web site, click on the redeem code link (drop down list appears after you log in), fill in the “I’m not a bot” word, then the code “atticpack” and you’ll receive a free Emperor’s Attic Pack.

Pack Sale

Through July 15, 2018, packs are on sale at the Crown Shop.  A couple of Halloween ones have been added back in as well.

I always waste some crowns on these sales but I stop with a few packs.  They all have a slim possibility of some pretty good stuff, but if you look at the lists, they also have loads of crap and that’s mostly what you get.  And some of the crappiest stuff repeats often.

I tried a few Wyvern’s Hoard packs, hoping for some of the energy gear, but after I’d collected 4 square hedges and some more useless junk instead, I gave up.  I know I run into people in the game who apparently spend hundreds a month on crowns and among other things, throw them at packs till they get what they want.

I can’t afford that, so I won’t be taking much advantage of the sale.  If you want to try for some of the good stuff packs occasionally yield, like Deer Knight pet or energy gear, the sale is the best time to try.

Daily Assignment event and Pet-a-Palooza

June 1, 2018  KI announced a Daily Assignment Rewards Bonus started today and will run through June 17.  They’re also offering Pet-a-Palooza, wherein you can buy pets and some pet-related items in the Crown Shop for a sale price.

The previous Daily Assignment events offered double rewards but I noted they’re carefully not saying double.  I haven’t done any of the assignments yet so I’m not sure what the “bonus” will turn out to be.  Since I haven’t found the Daily Assignments to be worth the time they take and have been less-than-impressed by doing it even for double rewards, I’m skeptical about how likely it is we’ll receive anything that justifies wandering to far flung corners of the spiral to fight battles that take as long as finishing quests with far greater rewards.

The pets can be up to 50% off, which means many will be less off.  Personally I’d say go to the hatching kiosk and find a pet with the talents you want with which to hatch.  Many — if not most — in there require gold only and the ones that require paying something in crowns offer way lower crowns prices than the pets in the shop.

Or better yet find a friend (there are also Facebook groups you can join where you can ask to hatch for specified talents and many people who generously offer pets who have just what you want.  You can also specify the type of pet and the talents so you can get one for whom somebody else has already hatched to the perfect talent set.  No crowns at all.

But if you’ve had your eye on a favorite Crown pet and you can’t find someone with whom to hatch, now is a good moment to save.