Building Your Dream Home

Wizard 101 has now been updated with the ability to buy your own home. A nice starter home in Wizard City will set you back only about 8,000 gold for your own slice of virtual heaven. An upscale home (huge one) will cost you between 20,000 and 40,000 depending on which one you get. Each world has it's own flavor of home, oriental style for Mooshu, castle style for Wizard City, Mansion style for Marleybone etc. It's hard to go wrong with the starter home in Wizard City (love jumping down the waterfall) and the Wizard City mansion, Krock homes and Moo homes are all very nice. The Dragonspyre ones are more a matter of taste. Personally for me, grass, water and the absence of spiraling stone ramps is a plus. (but that's just me)

Tips:
Buy the house you want from the turtle in the shopping district's store in whichever world strikes your fancy. Note: you can buy different sytles of houses in the different worlds.

Buy stuff for it in the shop.

Go to your backpack and the home item marker on the top will allow you to select and equip your house.

Then port home!

Click on the home icon at the lower right side of the screen to start placing your items.

Easy as that!

Here's me chilling (literally) at my new house. * Sorry gratuitous ice wizard joke *

~ Valerian

Other Wizard101 Blogs that I Recommend

The two coolest guys in the real and virtual world keep Wizard blogs. [I totally admit bias here] If you get a chance check out:

Logan Thundergem's blog is a story based on Wizard101 that reflects his wacky sense of humor. Narley Charley's Wizard Stories

Cody Skyrider's blog contains tips and tricks. Few people know their way around the game like Cody. Cody Skyrider's Wizard101 Secrets

Deck Preparation for the Street, Bosses and the Arena

When you are preparing for battle you will find your deck setup is generally the deciding factor in whether you live or die. But there are three totally different activities that you need to be prepared for: treet fights, boss battles and the arena.

ARENA

In arena battle you want as many shields and blades as possible with a few heals and one or two of your own heavy hit spells and perhaps two smaller ones. Your treasure card side-board should be loaded with heavy hits from your school's spells (for lower pip usage) and a couple from other schools as a surprise for your duelist who you are trying to kill. You should have one ice, one storm, death, fire and life if possible. The advice that was given to me, that seems to bear out is, have a couple minion cards and use them as often as possible to do general attacking.
One last thing for Arena battling is the essential Reshuffle card, or two, or three, in your treasure card sideboard. These help you recycle your cards in the event you throw away a good spell or the battle is going for a long time and you're running out.

STREET

For street battle you will want to coordinate with your friends and put as many multi-strike spells in your deck as you can fit along with blades and a moderate number of shields and a couple healing cards. With a couple friends and a few multi-strikes there's no street battle too hard. Keep your treasure cards set with a different school's multi-strike, one heavy hit and an extra healing card or two just in case.

BOSSES

Balance your deck with about 15% blades, 5% traps, 30% shields, 10% multi-strike, 20% heavy hits, 5% heals, 5% small strikes, 10% miscleaneous. Your treasure cards should include only perhaps three heavy strikes and two heals. (But don't forget to build them up after each battle) Having a small set of treasure cards ensures that you can draw what you want within one pass of card-play.


Treasure Card Treasures

You should visit your ice friends and get a steal, freeze a colossus and multi-strike like Frost Giant. From fire you'll want a Link and Choke along with a Fire Dragon and Phoenix. From storm you'll want a couple Wild Bolts, Triton and Storm Lord. From Death you'll want a Scarecrow, and a Vampire or Wraith. From Life you'll want a Regenerate and Centaur. From Myth you'll want an Authoros and Humongofrog as well as a Minotaur.

Yeah, there's more but I'm not going to give up too many secrets in case I meet you in the arena!

Valerian

Arena Mania

As people are bored of working in Dragonspyre after level 50 and not getting any new experience points, the number of Grand Masters obsessing with arena battling has exploded. One thing becomes quickly apparent as you battle in the arena. Either you find nice people or most often you find rude people.

Nice, or rude, everyone wants to win. This has led to some unspecified "Rules" of the arena in which some people frown on certain practices. For example, a number of wizards are chain-stunning people and then killing them in one wave of spells.

Others have a couple life wizards in their group who throw a regenerate every few turns. Still others cast minions constantly to do the attacking. In any event the side that feels taken advantage of, makes accusations of cheating, or simply, are just rude.

It seems to me that if there are certain "unspoken" rules of arena etiquette that they shouldn't be unspoken, they should be enforced by the game itself or accepted as a painful fact of life. For those without an unfair advantage, there is often little point in the arena scene.

For me, my bad experiences have outweighed the good and I've met more rude people there than not. I have, however, met two fast friends who in the heat of mortal battle were kind and light hearted and most of all gracious. In the end, whether someone has an unfair advantage or not, perhaps the real measure of a wizard is how they conduct themselves.

If I see you in the arena, win or lose, I'll expect you to be courteous. After all courtesy is what makes a good wizard great.

See you around,
Valerian Nightbringer

Stone Roses Quest

I've collected screen shots of the map locations for the stone roses. For those that follow my blog regularly and post interesting comments I'd be happy to share a location with you privately or simply take you there myself. I don't want to take away all the fun and satisfaction :)

Above is the picture of the Grand Chasm rose. A hint for this very difficult one... think time travel.


Happy Hunting!
Valerian