Test realm online! Cool new updates coming!

There are a million different updates coming to Wizard101 but a couple ROCKIN ones of note can't wait to be mentioned...

Energy will refill twice as fast.
Your backpack will grow to 120 slots!

Your Crafting Timers will now reset twice as fast.

Your friends list will expand to 120 people!

And perhaps WAY coolest of all (and I do mean COOOOOL) is that ice hound pet will now cast ice hound!

Oh! And new houses are available!  A crown one (below) 

                                                        .... and a crafted Celestia one

Read all about the changes coming at Wizard101.com and don't forget to log into the test realm.
https://www.wizard101.com/game/community/updatenotes/january2011

Celestia Sun school mutates and where to get them

Check out this secret trainer in Storm Riven Hall in Wizard101's Celestia world.  He's quite the sneaky salesman even though he doesn't look it.  He sold me that mutate card from the previous post.  So that doesn't happen to you check out this list so you know what to expect.

Level 54 - Sprite to Midnight sprite (180 Death Damage and +20% to next tough spell)
Level 55 - Locust Swarm into Polar Swarm (35+420 Ice Damage over 3 rounds)
Level 55 - Banshee into Forsaken Banshee (375 Life Damage and Hex)
Level 56 - Ice Wyvern into Fire Wyvern (95+600 Fire Damage over 3 rounds)
Level 56 - Kraken into Inferno Kraken (245+450 Fire Damage over 3 rounds)
Level 57 - Minotaur into Deadly Minotaur (65 and 600 Death Damage)
Level 58 - Phoenix into Thunderbird (610 Storm Damage and Hex x3)

So it appears that if a Storm wiz learns Fire spells they get a pretty good card for their trouble.  5 pips for a huge hit plus the hexes is a no brainer.  Fire gets a good mediocre spell for learning Storm as a second school but a rocking spell if they learn Ice for a second school.  Then Death, which often picks Myth as a second school (for the early and reliable multi-hit of humongofrog) get a great reward in Deadly Minotaur which hits harder than "captain jack".  Ice gets a nearly duplicate spell to frostbite for learning Balance.  A Life that learns Death school gets an ok spell in Banshee.  And Death gets a pretty fair deal with Sprite which most Death wizards will have.

As I discovered, just because the card shows as Sun School, the resulting card will not be usable on your pips.  The mutate itself takes 0 pips but to cast the resulting card takes the usual number of pips for the original base card.  Basically, it makes a card that acts like the school of the spell it mutates to.  But the school that the card turns into is not always obvious unless you have a cheat-sheet like this.  For example... who would ever guess that a "Forsaken Banshee" is actually a life Banshee?

So, when you train with this guy be careful to be sure you can use your school's pips on the card that it creates or I'd strongly recommend against it.

Happy Casting!
Valerian Nightbringer

It's Gonna Be Lame But It Looks Awesome :)

Yep, that's a good take on mutate spells.  They look awesome but they're really a waste of time.  This is the transform for Ice Wyvern.  It does some damage... 600 over time plus a small initial hit a-la Fire School.  It looks freaking awesome!  What's not to love?

Here's the downside:
1) You can't use the transform to make treasures, you have to keep it in your deck which takes up precious spots and you can't pre-make treasure cards because of that.

2) And now for the serious bummer... you can't use it with power pips. (** picture the sound of a balloon deflating and insert that sound here **)

I SO0o0Oo0Oo want that training point back!  But if there's one thing I'm confident about with KingIsle and the Wizard101 community is that they love their virtual family and always work to improve gameplay.  I wouldn't be surprised if we see a push to make these transforms usable on the equivalent power pips.

What transforms have you trained and used?

Valerian Nightbringer

Travel by flying carpet...

The other day I was playing around with furniture at my Wizard101 summer home (I go there to get away from the cold) and I ran into an fun if somewhat nauseating feature when you try to place the large rug off of the side of a building or a cliff.  See what happened to me!  I was kinda blown away by the coolness of  flying around a few steps away from a flying carpet so I took some pictures before I got too dizzy.

Check them out.
Valerian Nightbringer (Vale)

Stark Raven Mad

I thought it would be fun to solo the Ravens the other day.  It's true, I'm level 60 now with the best ice gear.  Still this was a challenge.  First I drew all my hits in the first draw of cards leaving me only one card's worth of room to find shields and blades.  I had the pips to take them down 2x over but no blades to set up for it.  I fizzled on a critical ice armor and got nuked by a round of hits.  I had no choice but to use all my pips for healing at this point.  Then I fizzled on a storm/fire shield! (good grief)  After that I thought I'd put on the dome that gives you a pip for each 4 pip spell that hits you.  Wouldn't you know but I got hit by two rounds of 3 pip spells!  Finally in despiration with 4 spammed weakness on me I threw a frosty followed by a blizzard.  Naturally, with their cheating ways, they didn't get stunned by the Frosty and continued to nuke me like crazy.  Thankfully my puppy woke up and cast a couple of very much needed sprites.

With the 4 ravens having about 1500 health left I cast a double bladed (plus dome) frosty and it went critical for 4400! woot!  My friend Tera ported in to witness the final round of blizzard that finished off the last one that had been hiding behind an ice shield.  I finished with 1102 health... not a bad showing for an ice wiz.

Sadly when i finished i checked my video which had grown to 3 GB and it refuses to open in any player.  Here's a picture of me and my only living witness to the awesomeness that took place that fateful day...

She by the way is entering the castle contest.  I'll show you some pics tomorrow.

Have you had any amazing solo victories?  Post about them in comments and I'll pick one at random for a prize!

Pet mixing and Spritely

Here's my kick-butt-side-kick.  A pet with spritely and 9% spell proof!  Woot!  He was a mix of ice hound with proof and defy, a fierce hound with spritely, and fierce hound with defy but not spritely.  He didn't develop shields until he was ancient which is really unusual to get high shield stats at that age.  Sadly his last gift was a dud... mana gift :(  *sigh* 

So naturally I will still want to mix him back with the original ice hound that had a rockin 15% shields.  This is the first fierce hound I mixed that got spritely. 

From what I learned about spritely you can get conditions to trigger your pet's spritely casting.  It seems that someone needs to be hurt first... and a multi-hit spell seems to increase the chances of a spritely proc.  Not only that but if you're experiencing a dry spell you can increase changes of him casting by using a life spell it seems.  That's just my experience but comment if you have experience with this!

Enjoy mixing!
Valerian Nightbringer

New Years Party

We had a new years eve party at Amber Song's castle.  It was an evening of dueling, mayhem and bad jokes.  In the end we killed eachother a few times in the new old fashioned way and celebrated the new year in each time zone.

Thanks for the fun!