Birthday 2019

The birthday celebration for 2019 has already arrived, August 30, 2019.  It’s going to last 11 days.  And they’ve changed it up a bit again.

For some years it was one week and all the member benefits ran for the week — or at least the pets and gardens did; I remember always trying to choose between them to stay within energy.  Last year for the 10th, the celebration lasted a month and they split the benefits up so there was one every few days.

Apparently the same idea of meting them out through the 11 day celebration is happening this time.  They’ve started with Double Gardens, which runs through Tuesday, September 3, 2019.

Since we just had a Garden event I wasn’t sure if they would put it in.  Since it’s only 5 days, there are a number of plants you won’t be able to get to elder harvest if they’re not already planted, but depending on how they work the timers (many of us think they’ve been slowing down progress on plants for these events) you should be able to plant EMP’s, CP’s and a few others today and get to elder harvest in time to garner the double drops.

As recently noted, while you still get double reagents, snacks, xp, gold and treasure cards, you no longer receive double seeds.  I’m having mixed feelings as it’s a bit of relief with my well-seed-stocked wizards not to have to spend a bunch of time finding places for the extras and/or feeding them to pets. But for a couple of my accounts the whole account could use more seeds of some sorts and I really don’t want to spend hours farming for them.

Anyway, celebration is launched.  Keep an eye out for the benefits as they’re going to roll different ones in at different times and you’ll have a shot at all of them during this 11 day stretch.  Also, birthday items for sale in Crown Shop and some can be bought with gold.

Crafting and double reagents

I’m a day late mentioning there’s unlimited crafting this weekend and you get double reagents.  The reagents double from every source, from gardening to picking up “on the street” to battle drops.  Ends Sunday, April 28, 2019 (usually actually stays up till the following morning, 8 or so Central time).

If you need to stock up, this is a good time to (1) farm an area with a particular reagent you need (i.e. Pegasus Place for Black Lotus) or (2) harvest plants that drop it in your garden or (3) battle a boss who drops the one you need.

Finally, Double Garden

At last there’s a Double Gardening event!  Through Sunday, January 13, 2019, double XP, gold, reagents, pet snacks, housing etc.  Anything that drops in gardening, you get double at both mature harvests and elder harvest.

Take advantage while you can.  KI is stingier about offering this benefit than any others so you may not see it again until summer.

Unlimited Crafting and Double Reagents

Through Sunday, July 1, 2018, KI is running an event in which members can craft as much as they want without any wait for timers.  You also receive double reagents anywhere you can get them:  plant harvests, collecting on “ground”, battle drops…

It’s a fairly good moment for picking up reagents at the Bazaar as some of us gardeners who are not using all those doubles for crafting are instead selling them

The main crafting projects I want to do involve the recipes from the B.O.X.E.S., all of which require sonic springs.  You can only get the sonic springs during the B.O.X.E.S. events and they drop so seldom even then that it’s a slog, so I don’t have enough nor the patience to keep farming during the events.  So I’m not really crafting and am selling all the reagents I’m getting from lots of gardening.  You’re welcome 🙂

Double Garden: good days to go to the Bazaar

Even if you don’t have anything to do with gardening in Wizard101, you can benefit at the Bazaar from Double Garden events. Those of us who DO garden are busily harvesting double reagents, double pet snacks, double housing items — most of which are “likes” for plants — and double Treasure Cards.  And any of us who’ve been doing large scale gardening very long don’t need most of those things, so we’re also selling all our extra stuff at the Bazaar.

For instance, Evil Magma Peas drop Djembe Drums and Egg Baskets (both likes for Evil Magma Peas), Tower Shield and Feint TC’s (and more), and Scrap Iron, Black Lotus, Aether, Aquamarine, Sandstone, Sunstone, Pearls and Golden Pearls.  I have the likes for all my gardens, have giant stockpiles of the TC’s and my banks and shared banks have huge stores of the reagents.  So I sell almost everything I get in the harvests.

Couch Potatoes drop a bunch of pet snacks at every level of harvest, plus Empower and lots of Star TC’s and their own “likes”, Litter and Sandwich Stations.  Again I’ve collected all I need and, if anything needs replenishing, these events refill my stores and still leave me with lots to sell.

Sword Ferns drop so many blades of almost every sort that I sell tons of those, and they drop their own likes plus some other housing items as well.

You get the idea.  those of us who garden have to stop once or twice in the midst of harvesting to sell things in the Bazaar so our backpacks and shared banks have room to collect the rest.  It means there are not only lots of often-hard-to-get items available in big numbers, but because there are so many the prices are often down.

What you can’t get easily during these events are the gardening tc’s.  Since all the gardeners are frantically buying up these cards to use while they wring the max out of the event, the gardening tc’s are harder to come by.

If you need some rare reagents for crafting or want to pluck up a bunch of pet snacks while available and cheaper or you’re ready to start gardening and need some likes for your chosen plants, it’s worth watching out for Double Garden events and hanging out at the Bazaar.  These events happen way less often than most of the other member benefits so take advantage while you can.

Finally a desired pet with ease

As I’ve mentioned many times, I mostly find the whole pet aspect of Wizard101 extremely frustrating and I pretty much don’t bother to hatch, train, etc. any more other than an occasional flurry during a Double Pets event.  So I pretty much let the first day of this event slip by without bothering.

I’ve also been under-impressed with the Hatchmaking Kiosk.  But I have realized my initial assessment that you couldn’t get a good pet there is premature.  I forgot about the folks who love fiddling with pets and make a point of hatching some of the not-so-good dropped or vendor-bought pets into high level pets.  These pets seem to still be eligible for the kiosk, so if you have the patience to make your way through the tedious search for a pet, you can find something.

I’ve been wanting a pet for my level 82 Storm wizard with three may cast heals and two universal resist talents.  I’ve searched a few times but lost patience for the process.  You can search by “pedigree”, which lets you check out the talents received and stats but there’s no further breakdown, so if you have a particular set of talents you’re after, you just have to scroll your way through the entire supply of pets in the kiosk until you find one that suits.

I was just about to pass out from boredom when I finally ran into a Drowned Grimhorn with exactly the talents I wanted.  Even better, the pet card it includes could at least occasionally be useful.  So far so good.  Then, of course, comes the training — the part that usually leaves me gnashing my teeth, shaking my fists and deciding I’m never going to have anything to do with creating a new pet again…

As soon as the pet hatched I headed for the one game I’m willing to play (Grumpy Gobblers) and started training.  First talent, Spell Proof.  Okay.  Try another.  Next up Spritely.  Wow, on a roll.  Hesitated over whether I should just go ahead and hatch again at adult on the assumption something would fail but decided to keep going until I actually hit a fail.

Generally I refuse to use the energy elixirs but I had a few free ones sitting in my “gift box” so I decided this seemed a good occasion to use a couple and I kept on training.  For the first time EVER I got exactly the pet I wanted on the first hatch!!!  And she’s cute!

Meanwhile, so far the only pets I’m allowed to offer at the kiosk have never been chosen so not a single wizard has earned a single pepper since the only pets allowed from the dozens and dozens I have are crap.  Continues to be a big disappointment because I hoped the kiosk was going to provide a way for me to offer my better pets to others without having to use up all my gold or a lot of my time…

I did offer this pet, so we’ll see if I finally get a pepper or two 🙂

New member benefit

KI has launched two new member benefits:  Unlimited Crafting and Double Reagents.  Members can do unlimited craft projects without having to wait for timers to reset.  And any reagents dropped in battles, found in spots where they spawn or harvested in gardens are doubled.

I’ve been saving gardens to a double garden event, but for one of my wizards who’s gold supplies keep being depleted due to lots of hatch requests for her quint heal pet, I went ahead an harvested some Pink Dandelions so I could sell those extra black pearls, crystal vials, etc.

Runs through the weekend, so you have till something like 8 a.m. central daylight time Monday.  Have fun!

Double Garden benefits for non-gardeners

As the Double Garden event wound down and I kept taking wizards to the Bazaar to sell off the last of their harvests, I realized even those who don’t garden and don’t want to can reap some some benefits during the double reward events.

Plants routinely can drop:  (1) housing items; (2) reagents; (3) treasure cards; (4) pet snacks.  Many plants drop all of the above, some just drop two or three.  Those of us who do a lot of gardening generally have well-filled stores of reagents, TCs, etc.  When we start getting double we make a lot of trips to the Bazaar to sell things off as we keep hitting our limits.

Many treasure cards, snacks, plant-“like”-housing items and reagents that can be hard to come by at the Bazaar are suddenly being sold in copious numbers.  Not only can you sometimes pick up cards, etc. that usually require a long slog at the shop, but often because more are available, the price is better.

For instance, I grow Pink Dandelions quite a bit.  They drop

Ancient Scroll
Black Pearl
Blood Moss
Bone
Cat Tail
Crystal Vial
Lava Lily
Spring

and several of those — like Black Pearl — are much in demand for crafting.  They can take a lot of farming to get enough and I sell a bunch every time I harvest.  Evil Magma Peas, besides a similarly enticing list of reagents (including Scrap Iron!!!), also drop Feint and Tower Shield tcs, both of which are so sought-after the Bazaar often has none.  Couch Potatoes drop a bunch of level 5, 6 and 7 snacks at regular harvests; because they drop mega snacks at elder harvest, many of us sell all the other snacks, so items like Killer Tomato and Shanta Pudding that can be not only hard to grab but pricey can be more available and lower in price.

So even if you never garden and never will, you might want to take advantage of the next Double Garden Reward event by hanging out at the Bazaar stocking up on items you usually have trouble finding.  If you have particular items you want, check the wiki to see whether there are plants that drop them.  If there are, make sure you haunt the Bazaar for them on Double Garden days.

Mid-way through Double Garden days

Elder Harvest

March 10, 2017

I’ve been a bit lax on the posting front on all my blogs lately so I didn’t manage to post a heads up on Wednesday when Double Garden XP days started.  Through Sunday you get double XP, gold and harvest drops for all gardening.  Took me by surprise as I’d not expected one for a while, but it happened I had a bunch of gardens sitting at elder harvest 🙂

There’s possibly enough time to plant Couch Potatoes, Snap Dragons or Tiger Lilies and get them to elder harvest if you have every like as those grow pretty fast but it’s too late for most plants–although you could get a mature harvest or three off some, like Evil Magma Peas.

I’m mostly pointing this one out to note it tends to be a good moment to pick up some of the rarer or hard-to-get treasure cards and reagents at the Bazaar as all the gardening folks are getting huge harvests and needing to sell stuff.  I’ve already hit the limit on treasure cards and headed to the Bazaar to sell them with several wizards numerous times.

For instance, Evil Magma Peas drop lots of Feints and Tower Shields.  I have so many for most of my wizards that I sell quite a few at this point.  EMPs also drop Black Lotus, Scrap Iron,  and Sandstone (among others) and most of my wizards have huge stores of them plus I have the maximum in the Shared Bank so I’ve been selling lots of reagents too.

If you’re looking for crafting ingredients or to shore up your TC collection, spend time sitting at the Bazaar this weekend!

 

Planning ahead for reagents

When it comes to crafting in the Spiral, there are a few places that wind up catching people without the right ingredients if they haven’t done research.  I did a lot but when I got to Azteca it turned out I hadn’t done enough.  Now I’ve found a nice chart that lets you know what you’re facing in terms of reagents for all the crafting quests.

The first place for me that created a problem was Marleybone, where it took me quite a while to farm both MB and the Bazaar for enough scrap iron.  But the Dragonspyre crafting quests were the ones that pushed me into gardening.  I did a bunch of research about reagents and figured out I could get them as drops from lots of plants.

Pink Dandelions and Evil Magma Peas between them drop copious numbers of the reagents you need not only for the crafting quests through Celestia but also for crafting a lot of the recipes you can buy along the way.  I stopped questing for a while and just grew crop after crop.  Now all my wizards have big supplies of reagents in their backpacks and the Shared Bank has a giant store as well and all the early crafting quests have been easy.

Even the Zafaria quest, which causes a lot of people trouble, went quickly for me.  However, for a few reagents I had to pass every piece any wizard on the account had through the Shared Bank, so I’ve needed to grow more crops and do more farming at the Bazaar to make sure my other wizards will have an easy time when they get there.

I read a lot about Amber becoming important as you move into the higher levels so I grew various plants that drop it, finally landing on King Parsley as the easiest to grow in an array of plants that all drop it so rarely you have to repeat crops over and over to get much of a supply.  I didn’t look ahead to get the numbers I’d require; wound up having plenty to craft Deer Knight but I can see I’ll need to get cracking on growing LOTS more crops of KPs to have enough Amber for all my wizards to craft stuff.

What I missed was any warning about Turquoise, Agave Leaves and Agave Nectar, all of which come into play for the Axteca crafting quest.  Turquoise is a pretty infrequent drop, available in a couple of packs and, if you keep refreshing the reagent tab, available in small numbers at the Bazaar.

Agave Leaves are supposedly available to pick up in a few areas of Azteca.  In spite of farming quite a bit, I never even saw one till the Floating Mountains; with two wizards questing through the area at once (two accounts), I got one for one wizard.  Both the leaves and the nectar are available in small occasional numbers at the Bazaar.  Some Ultra plants drop it but since Ultra plants are hard to come by, not a great way to collect a bunch.  A bunch of bosses drop it but, again, two wizards who’ve both fought most of the main story bosses in Azteca and one of them has received one.  You can also buy one of the Leaves for 400 arena tickets but since I don’t play PvP I have tiny amounts of tickets.

Nectar is possible to get when you find the Agave Leaves (much like Stone Blocks can give you Sandstone or Black Lotus can give you Black Pearls), so if you have better luck with finding the Leaves than I did, you can probably get enough of the Nectar.  You can also transmute the Leaves into Nectar.

If I’d realized the quest was coming, I’d have started having all my wizards pick up the Leaves and the Nectar every time they hit the Bazaar from an early stage.  If you want to have plenty of these reagents for the quest when you get there, I advise starting to pick all three–turquoise,agave leaves, agave nectar–up whenever you see any at the Bazaar from the earliest level you can (for me it’s around level 14 or 15 when I’ve managed enough garden crops to have that much gold).

The finisher for me with the Azteca crafting project is the Potent Trap TC requirement.  Although it’s a possible drop from Ultra Alligator Pear Tree, it’s basically only available as a drop from Bosses.  One of my two wizards got two on the way through Azteca, the other zero. And you can’t trade it or buy it at the Bazaar or from a vendor.

I assume it’s another deal where you wind up having to pick one of the Bosses who drop it and fight 50 times to get one.  I’m digging in my heels and saying no to that, so I won’t be completing that quest for the one who didn’t get any.

For all the rest of the quests, though, if you start gardening early and spend some time farming at the Bazaar, you can arrive at each crafting quest with the ingredients already in your stock.  Click the link to the chart I mentioned at the beginning so you can see all the numbers you’re going to need and start your plan early.

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