of The More The Moneyer Mid-level Mayhem!

My first wizaversary is coming up and I've decided to celebrate by hosting a tourney!

While leveling with friends we debated hitting mid level team PvP, only to quickly realize that mid level team PvP consists of very little else but legend/newb teams trying to gain some easy rank. I would love to see some REAL mid-level team PvP with complete, fair teams of like-leveled players. Since team mid-level 4v4 play is so rare, in an effort to encourage more people to give this a try, I'm dishing out the prizes on a sliding scale - the more teams that join the tournament, the greater the pirze to be won!

Rules:
-You must be a minimum of level 22, maximum of level 39.
-No pet spells or treasure cards of spells trained past level 38 (including vengeance). Exception: Damage and accuracy enchantments are permissable.
-No critical rating (I'm looking at you, greenwarden's boots). Block rating, including conviction, is fine.
-no more than two players of the same school on each team of four.
Edited to add: You must behave in a sportsmanlike manner. Cussing around the filter, or even something as simple but annoying as shouting out "CHEATING SPAMMER NOOBS HACKERS!!!11!!!1!" ;) will be an automatic loss for your whole team, even if you've won your match. Make sure your entire team is aware of this, since one person's bad behaviour could cost your whole team.

Prizes:
First Place:
For every team that enters, each member of the winning team may select 1,000 crowns worth of items from the crowns shop. Eg, If only 2 teams enter, each member of the winning team will receive 2,000 crowns worth of items. If 10 teams enter, each member of the winning team will receive 10,000 crowns worth of items.
Second Place:
For every team that enters, each member of the 2nd place team may select 250 crowns worth of items from the crowns shop.
Third Place:
Each team member will receive their choice of a Wyvern's Hoard or Dragon's Hoard Pack.
Additional Prizes:
The cast & crew of Ravenwood Radio are donating several prize codes. How these are distributed will depend on the number of teams that sign up.

Sign-ups:
- Please comment on my blog or email me at kath_light@hotmail.ca to sign up. I will need to get the contact info for the leader/co-ordinator of your team so that I can put you in touch with the leader of your opponent's teams to set up match times.
- the deadline for sign-ups is Friday September 9th. Matches will begin as early as September 10th, and the finals will take place on September 24th.

The final match will be broadcast on livestream by Kevin BattleBlood with commentary by himself and Cassandra DragonHeart (and possibly myself if I'm feeling brave). ** Amendment - The finals will be livestreamed IF Kevin & Cassandra's team is not competing in that match. Should their team make it to the finals they obviously don't want to give their strategy away live, so it will be recorded and posted to youtube after they record commentary. **

Feel free to post with any questions or comments as well. Good luck, and Happy PvPing!

Update: by popular request the level limit has been increased to 39. 

Of Wysteria and.... Oooo... Sparkly.

By now most of you, like me, have probably run through Wysteria on any number of wizards. Since most of my wizards are legendary (or close to it - fire is 59 and barely into DS Academy, but that's a whole other story), I really didn't get much of an idea of how much XP Wysteria gave.

Aside from a Kensington Park run or two, my balance baby has been collecting dust for a while. I mean, really... I'm in the middle of Marleybone. Heading back to leveling there is not a prospect I much relish. But Wysteria? Now THAT I can handle! So I decided to take some quick screen caps, just to see how much experience Wysteria really gives. Turns out that, given the size of the world, this is more of a Wintertusk than a Grizzleheim.

This is where my level and XP were sitting when I first started Wysteria.

Level 32, almost to 33.

Here is where I set AFTER Wysteria (and only Wysteria).

Just a hair past 35. I wouldn't say the XP is overkill, but this in combination with the XP of Wintertusk at level 40 is, imho, a bit too much XP for the game to handle. This world is so gorgeous and so fun, I doubt anyone would have stayed away from lack of XP.

And now, on to more important matters. With this most recent level, there has been a VERY important change. Please observe.

Katherine LightGiver, Pre-Wysteria, level 32.

And now, Katherine LightGiver, Post-Wysteria, level 35.

Oooooo..... sparkly. What can I say, I like pretty clothes. This character is much more bearable to play on now.

Also, I'm a Wyvern's Hoard addict.I think I need to join a support group.

It was worth it. I am not ashamed. Okay, maybe I'm a little ashamed, but not ashamed enough that I regret it. And again I feel the need to say.... Oooooo, sparkly. I'm riding a dragon. That shoots sparkles. Check your reason at the door and just enjoy this. Say it with me. "Oooooo.... Sparkly."

Speaking of pretty things, check this out!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
[covers eyes]
Is it gone?

Oh that note, whether you be sparkly, just plain creepy, or somewhere in between, I hope you're enjoying Wysteria. Happy Wizarding!

Of new content (AKA there goes my weekend)

Today Wysteria goes live! You all know what that means!

Yes, it means more people will be begging for crowns in the commons so they can buy the new areas, but that's not what I was getting at.

It means I will online far too much for my own good, enjoying every second of this! :) It also means... NEW CHEAT TOWER!

This fight can be BRUTAL. However, if you can cut off the bosses' cheats at the pass you should be just fine. Here's the (of course, lol) guide I wrote to help get you through the boss fights in this tower.

DiSpellbound: A Strategy Guide for the Tower of the Helephant

Using these ideas we actually ENJOYED this fight, and got in a bunch of hits like this one. :)

So have fun, and enjoy yourselves! I'm sure I'll be seeing a WHOLE lot of you in Wysteria VERY soon.

Of my crazy PvP noobness (or is it nooby craziness?)

Well, we finally got our PvP team off the ground! I was gifted (yes, I just turned 'gift' into a verb, and I stand by my choice) some lovely crowns a while ago and, after giving some away here I bought some fancy schmancy mastery amulets for myself and our myth player, Mr. Owl. Josh and John had already won the amulets they wanted from the WaterWorks. At this point I COULD go off on a rant about how I've run the Waterworks at least twice as much as they have and have yet to get either of the amulets I want, although I HAVE won them and they just keep dropping on the wrong account, and Josh and John somehow have had the incredibly unfair good luck to get exactly the amulets they wants on exactly the wizards they wanted them. However, I WON'T go off on a rant about that, because I'm just not that sort of person. ;)

After getting our gear, we worked on a strategy for our team. Our final strategy is a very complex, hard to understand one that I couldn't begin to explain. But for those of you who feel ready to have some insight into our well thought out plan, it's mostly based around the extremely in-depth concepts of 'winging it', 'playing it by ear', and 'let's try this out and see if we all die." Like I said, VERY complex, you've probably never heard of it. (Hipster PvP'er used winging it strategies before this blog post.)

Also... don't put up a doom and gloom when you're going second against a powerhouse team, no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time. That's one definitely nailed down piece of strategy.

My rank going into team PvP (after I took this picture I won 1 more match, and then lost for the first time in 1v1).

My current rank:

If you do the math *which you don't have to do because I did*, that translates to 50 wins, 8 losses for our team. Not too shabby! Thanks for different experiences in 1v1 prior to making our team, and a few ill-timed random disconnects, this has brought Mr. Owl to overlord, Josh to commander, and John to captain. These are the highest ranks any of us have gotten on any of our wizards so far, so we'll all pretty happy with how it's going. We'll keep on with this team until we all hit warlord, and then I suspect we'll switch up our schools and fight as Mercenaries 4 Honour, version 2.0.

Don't let this fool you, though. We don't have a clue what we're doing. In fact, we are
-treasure noobs
-dispel noobs (often this is in combination with bring treasure noobs)
-shield noobs
-heal noobs
-attack spamming noobs
-beguile noobs
-pet noobs

.... and the list could go on. As a matter of fact, it did. One of my good friends, Alex Lionheart, actually sent me a (friendly, funny) list of the 101 types of noob I am. It was greatly appreciated, as I need to know the extent of my noobness before I can fix it.

In other words - the better the do, the more annoyed you make people. So don't take it personally. Choose a group that you'll have a blast with no matter what, win or lose, and that go out and do just that. It's not about winning or losing, it's not about being a noob or pwning, it's about having a blast.

Also, we may or may not be crazy.

And on that note... soon to come, the story of day my pet got himself reported. BAD Moose!

Of Guiding Light

Wow, that post title may just be the corniest thing I've come up with yet.

The past month has been busy with merc requests, my PvP team, leveling up my fire wizard (just got fire dragon, w00t!), all of which I plan to blog about soon. However, the news that has me all excited now is a NEW CHALLENGE!   New content for levels 25+? Possibly a new CHEAT DUNGEON?! Yes, please!

On that note, I realize when they released this info that I never got around to finish up my guide on the Warehouse. It's been in the works for a while but somehow I just never got it all down on paper. Er, on screen? Either way, I loooooove cheat dungeons - figuring out how the bosses cheat, how to cheat them right back, and helping people accomplish something they're struggled with just makes my day. But with news a new dungeon on the way, I finished up the warehouse guide yesterday and will be able to focus on the newest dungeon when it comes out.

I also realized that those wizards who are not on Wizard101 Central probably haven't ever had cause to see my guides, so if anyone is interested, here's a link to the two current ones. Here's hoping I get the chance to make another one very shortly! Thanks for yet more new content, KI, and I'm excited to see what new challenges are in store!

Plumbing101 - A Guide to the Waterworks instance

Exterminated - A Guide to the Warehouse/Spiral Geographic Tower