The Friendly Necromancer

Hey all! I had a great time on KI Live with Leala and #JuliafromKI. Here's the video if by some crazy chance you haven't seen it yet:

We had a chance to answer some great questions, play through Baddle of the Bands, Talk Test Realm, Chat with Matthew F, and even encourage the wizards to play through a little bit of Pirate101.

Hope you all were able to join us!

Happy Dueling!

Hope you enjoyed your April Fool's everyone!

I'm just going to leave this here:

We had a lot of fun watching your reactions to the Wonky Donkey mount (which was hilarious by the way--thanks for all the punchlines and for sharing all your pictures and laughs with us).

Ahem! So if I could paint the picture of how this video idea was born, it would simply be me and Leala sitting at our desks, shooting the breeze about the upcoming April Fool's Day event with Wonky when Leala asked (and encouraged), "What should we do? We should do something!" That's always a dangerous question . . .

Before you know it, Leala was writing up a script, and I was donning a robe and black fingernail polish. LOL!

We shot the entire video in a couple hours at the end of work one day with a few willing and accidental victims. (Not to mention Leala's time sculpting the perfect stapler in Jello mold. She's amazing.) After that, our hard working video editing genius, Damon Brown, did his entire production magic over the course of a couple days--then it was just a matter of adding credits and anxiously sitting on the video until today.

Have I told you how much I love working with hardworking creative people? The KingsIsle Team dreamed up a really awesome mount this year (I should mention Karl Holbert was the real inventive genius behind the Wonkey Donkey, not Retired Malistaire!), and our Community and Social Media team simply tried to help us step up to the plate.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did making it for you! Good times.

Happy Dueling!

We noticed a couple months agos that #JuliafromKI ate salads every day for lunch. There was some gentle coworker ribbing at the time, and whenever we'd bring in a salad for lunch, it was always in tribute to #JuliafromKI. There was even once a lengthy discussion of salad costs and expiration dates on pre-packaged salads . . . are they to be trusted? You know, stupid stuff like that.

Yesterday, I came in to a photoshopped surprise from Leala, and it demanded the full parody treatment. SALAD CLUB!

I also wanted to leave our last KI Live recording here since it's been forever since I blogged, and I haven't put it up yet.

It's always a great time, and we loved hanging out with the community. We'll see you at the next one!

Happy Dueling

Heya all!

I'm so sorry I've been slacking off with my blogging duties. I've been otherwise occupied . . . it's easy to do when you're throwing yourself into your work; playing lots of other games; and have three kids, a Nanamancer, and a wife to look after. I know right, excuses! ;)

So what I'm discovering is that . . . this blog is a little old now . . . I mean, Diapermancer is six now. CRAZY! When that happens, some old links found on this blog are dead, defunct, or in the case of the old Wizard101 Damage Calculator--malicious. (I deleted that link as soon as I found out, whew.)

I downloaded Xenu this morning to do a complete scrub of my site for dead links, and it's busily chomping through the 13,000 URLs it found on my site -- I don't think it'll be perfect though. For instance, I searched the term "Maria" this morning to see if I ever made a mention of Maria's Taco Xpress on this blog and instead found an old joke where my wife said the unicorn princess at the end of Dueling Diego should be called "Maria" (we didn't know it said her name was Francesca in the instructions to the game). Anyway, there was a link to a play through of Dueling Diego that has since been taken down (Boo), but the link isn't necessarily "dead."

Anyway, I've deleted the link now, but if you are going through my site and find something broken or off, feel free to let me know. I'm easy to contact over Twitter: FriendlyNecro.

In the meantime, I'll scrub a bit and do what I can . . . maybe even get into some NEW blogging. That'd be different, eh? My site is in need of some attention. Maybe even a makeover? I'll see what I can do.

Happy Dueling

p.s. Who wants a blog post about Maria's Taco Xpress? (I've got a couple good stories about it actually ;))

Ever since Double Gardening Rewards were introduced into The Spiral, I've been sitting on a nasty little problem -- pages and pages of King Parsley and Evil Magma Pea Seeds. I mean, it was a problem before since King Parsley used to love to reseed like crazy, but now it's just out of control.

Now, thanks to the Seed Vault where I can stash those extra one-off seeds and thanks to the ability to simply force feed Lady Dexter Parsley by the truckload, I think I may finally reclaim some of my bank space back that was all kinds of overstuffed. Woot!

How many people would like a mass feed to pet button for feeding multiple items to a pet at once? I mean, it was kind of cool seeing if Lady Dexter was going to spit out 180 gold or gain some experience, but there's gotta be a way for me to more easily clean house when I'm in the mood to clean house, amirite? (Who will come forward to tell me they've been saying that for years?) (Which programmer will come to me and yell DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE ASKING?!)

Anyway, it's a good time to clean house because . . . I need money and Lady Dexter needs some XP! (She got 10 percent of the way to Ultra on King Parsley alone. LOL.)

Why do I need money? Because of the evil Roger the Shrubber!!!

300,000 for that Plant All spell . . . dang . . . Time to Farm (farm, not garden . . . get it? Oh, it's not that funny whatever.)

. . . or start up a Stinkweed Garden . . . I hear those make a lot of money and sellables. THE GARDENING STRUGGLES ARE REAL, PEOPLE!

Happy Dueling!

First, I just wanted to put a reminder out there that we're having KILive today! Head to this page, follow us on Twitter @Wizard101, and watch at 4:00 PM US Central (on Thursday, July 30th, 2015).

We'll be hitting Pirate101, Wizard101, and just a dash of Rise and Destroy.

~~

Second, I sold a bunch of those rank 5 pet snacks from my Elvis Parsley hoarding and Roger and I are buddies again. MASS PLANT SPELL!

~~

Third, the infamous Lady Dexter is now an Ultra Pet! YAY! I'm still on the hunt for a really good death gem for her, but for now, Death-Eye will work (less fizzles are always good, right?).

Any suggestions for what to socket Lady Dexter with? She's a pretty solid defensive healer pet.

Happy Dueling!

Here's the YouTube in case you missed it:

I just wanted to thank our 1,500 concurrent and 9,400 unique viewers that joined us on our epic journey of giveaways, fun, and tom-foolery! We had a great show and a lot of great questions . . . a plague of 100 duck-sized Meowiarties upon thee!

I'm gonna go right now and check on my ship equipment . . . promise!

Happy Dueling!

p.s. I shaved this morning.

Amirite? Challenges make people do crazy cool stuff:

The Blaughust challenge appears to be no exception! It was good to see a few of our faithful Wizard101 and Pirate101 staff and fans jumping to the cause, and with that . . .

I'M IN!

Honestly I don't care if I win any prizes or anything. I've been trying to revitalize my love for blogging (I mean, seriously, game blogging was my gig for several years . . . with . . . several . . . blogs . . . like . . . these . . . and what ended up helping me land a job at KingsIsle). I have a passion for it, for gaming, and for writing--and I'd love to bring that back.

Hopefully by the end of the month you will see a NEW Friendly Necromancer. Not just a new look and feel (gimme a couple days . . . no more black background with white text), but a blog that talks freely about whatever it is that I want to talk about! Still "friendly" and still a "necromancer," yes, but no more "I'm an employee of KingsIsle and yet somehow still on the list of official Wizard101 fan sites out of seniority therefore I must always talk about . . . work." i.e., this blog is no longer ONLY about Wizard101 and Pirate101. (Not that I've always talked straight Wizard101 topics anyway.) This blog needs a shake up and a bit of a change because . . . I've changed a bit too. Yet, I'm still going to be the same Friendly Necromancer I've always been--you can trust that. I'm not going to start posting about M-rated games or whatever because I don't play M-rated games (for the most part).

So this isn't 2009 and 2010 (as I joked about on Twitter), it's 2015, and this blog is now about anything and everything I want it to be. YAY! That said, I'm not ashamed at all of anything I've ever said on this blog nor for my undying love for KingsIsle games, and there will still be plenty of talk about Pirate101 and Wizard101 in the future. Don't get me wrong with all of this. It's just . . .

SWEEPING CHANGE NUMERO UNO!
To be honest, I feel what needs to happen is for me first is to excuse myself from the list of official Wizard101 fan sites. In fact, I'm going to fire up my work computer and do that as soon as this post hits the blogosphere (and now with added approval via text message to Professor Greyrose). Whew! What a relief. I can't tell you how many times over the past three years I've considered doing that. It's incredibly freeing for me. I don't want people coming here looking for contests and events and strictly Wizard101 information because suddenly everything has changed!

Hope you all understand what I'm going for here, and it shouldn't be something met with sadness at all (if there was a twinge of that). What it should mean is more posts from me about whatever it is I'm wanting to talk about, and usually that topic is MMOs, But, I play all kinds of games! Not only do I try to stay fresh on what's out there and what's happening, but I also keep an eye on the past (Classic gaming ftw). Console gaming? I've got a very wide collection still: Atari, Dreamcast, TurboGraphix, Super Nintendo, Nintendo64, Wii, WiiU, Xbox, Playstation3 . . . I've got it all upstairs (um, and downstairs too).

So . . . Blaughust? I'm in! Let's do this thing! It's a clean slate . . . kinda . . .

Happy Dueling!

So, if you aren't familiar with my Angus UnicornPants challenge, here's a link. (In short, it's my solo storm wizard that I play with no clothes on and only a starter deck and starter wand -- he beat Malistaire) If you are familiar with Angus, then you know I left off at Optio in Celestia scratching my head after several defeats. It left me thinking . . . maybe I should rethink the Angus Unicornpants challenge in Celestia. But I also left off with this thought, "Polymorphs seemed to be the answer to wearing no gear since they supposedly have their own statistics."

So today, while harvesting my Evil Magma Pea Garden, I got an idea from the harvested Ninja Pig Polymorph card I saw on my window . . . said I to myself . . . I wonder, self, if the Ninja Pig Polymorph might stand up to the challenge of soloing Optio with Angus?

It was a bad idea. No definitely not the Ninja Pig Polymorph, but then I started to think. I remember not being able to buy cool Polymorph treasure cards with Angus, but I was able to trade polymorph treasure cards to him . . . so . . . mind blown. THIS MEANT I COULD TRADE DRACON AND TREANT POLYMORPHS TO ANGUS!

And trade I did!

I started out with one treant polymorph and one dragon polymorph. This ended in defeat, but I had got farther than I ever had got before.

The beautiful thing about the Treant polymorph card has always been that final cast of Regenerate right before getting out of the polymorph. This tactic remained as awesome as ever.

The beautiful thing about the Dracon polymorph is the potential to stack up a big hit. You get a bubble up with the Ignite spell, you break a shield and lay a trap with the Cursed Flame spell, you blade up, you trap, and then the 4 pip Firezilla hits a big POW with a lot of efficiency.

It took two Treants and three Dracons to crack that evil Optio Crab in two! Here's the round-by-round play-by-play

round 1 - Snow Shield
round 2 - Snow Shield
round 3 - Water Elemental
round 4 - Fortify
round 5 - Polymorph Treant
round 6 - (stunned / pip build)
round 7 - Regenerate
round 8 - Guiding Light
round 9 - pass / pip build
round 10 - pass / pip build
round 11 - Regenerate
round 12 - Snow Shield
round 13 - Fortify
round 14 - Polymorph Dracon
round 15 - Ignite vs. crustacean minion
round 16 - stunned / pip build
round 17 - Fireblade
round 18 - Firezilla vs. crustacean minion (dead crustacean)
round 19 - Cursed Flame vs. Optio
round 20 - Firezilla vs. Optio (fizzle)
round 21 - Polymorph Treant
round 22 - Regenerate
round 23 - Spirit Armor
round 24 - Guiding Light
round 25 - Pass / Pip build
round 26 - Pass / pip build
round 27 - Regenerate
round 28 - Polymorph Dracon
round 29 - Cursed Flame vs Optio
round 30 - Fireblade
round 31 - Firetrap
round 32 - Firezilla (fizzle)
round 33 - Firezilla vs. Optio (1000 damage)
round 34 - Firezilla vs. Optio (495 damage)
round 35 - Wild Bolt vs. Optio (50 damage -- hehe, tested my luck)
round 36 - Water Elemental
round 37 - Sprite
round 38 - Polymorph Dracon
round 39 - Cursed Flame vs. Optio (230 damage)
round 40 - Firetrap
round 41 - Fireblade
round 42 - Firezilla vs. Optio (2000 damage)

WIN

So, that's that . . . it's on Celestia! I highly doubt I'll be able to say (as I have said so many other times in the past) "Your gearz don't matter none," but I'm a little bit further in the Angus story line than I was yesterday

Happy Dueling!

Aren't familiar with Team Spode? What?! Then you certainly missed pages 72 and 73 of Becket Massive Online Gamer back in 2011! (Gasp, how could you?)

Team Spode is my "Sunday Night Gaming Group" that's been playing MMOs and RPGs for many many years (over 15 years? 20 years? something like that?) . . . and the main cause of me feeling super tired on Monday morning for all those years as well. ;)

We've played Diablo through Diablo III, Neverwinter Nights (enough to know we didn't like it), all expansions of Guild Wars 1, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Dungeon Seige I and II, and DC Universe Online.

Our current game is Guild Wars 2. I took a few snapshots of me and the members of Team Spode last night when we were waiting for the Claw of Jormag event to happen. (Forgive the wall of selfies about to hit your screen -- um, I'm the guy in florescent blue with the obnoxious goggles and green Mohawk wielding the butterfly axe)

Vanorika and TFN

Jovan and TFN

Saun Zaumbie and TFN

Tipa Starr and TFN

Lord Spode, TFN, and DreamTamer

We're all level 80 now and it's hard to say if we're ready to move on to a new game or not . . . most of us still seem to be having fun with Guild Wars 2, and some of us *cough* me *cough* might have put in a bit of overtime in the game finishing the personal story and living world story 2, Been there done that explorer badge, full set of luminescent, 500/500 in both Weapon Smithing and Tailoring, and full set of ascended gear to boot (still no epic weapon though).

Most of the time the team has one or two that can't make it to the evening's events and we group up to run fractals or dungeons or WHATEVER.

Everybody showed up last night and we decided that (instead of Silverwastes) we'd hit the World Boss Circuit. You see in Guild Wars 2 there are timed events that happen throughout the day and there are many cool sites that track when an event is about to happen. I personally like the Guild Wars Temple site . . . but to each their own.

We ended up taking down Tequatl the Sunless, Claw of Jormag, Shadow Behemoth, The Frozen Maw, The Shatterer, and Megadestroyer for the night, and pretty much had a lot of fun smack talking each other over Skype and listening to Spode's son torment him while he was playing. (I was just glad it wasn't me this time . . .)

There still is a lot of content left for us to cover. Although we've hit each dungeon, we haven't hit each path of each dungeon, and I would love for the group to persue that, but you never know with Team Spode what's next . . . although a few of the members have been dipping their virtual toes into the pools of Skyforge.

Things go a bit slow when the group only gathers on Sunday nights, but it's a guaranteed group with friends . . . you can't beat it.

Happy Dueling!

Guild Wars 2 allows a person to be very flexible in the way they build a character. With five specialization trees that can be built out in several ways and a set of skills that is far deeper than the five slots (or 10 if you count weapons) that you're given to shape your character, there's a lot of potential to design or tweak a number of builds.

For instance, on my necromancer, I usually run an axe/dagger/staff combo that focuses on wells, marks, and condition damage.

But if I'm out in the world exploring, I typically like to put up a summoning build that has a full spread of minions that will gladly offtank for me as I run by, but simply switching the skills to minions from wells still means I'm not prepared on the back end with my specialization trees.

Or, what if the group I'm in suddenly needs me to switch to a utility role where I'm cleansing, healing, fearing, and buffing? I've got the skills, but I may be short on time to set everything up on the trees to be my best at what the group needs from me . . . and gear swapping? Well, it's just extra clicks and extra inventory space.

What if I'm hitting teq, and I can't crit on that dragon . . . at the least I'd like to switch to some gear with a bit more health . . .

I can typically do just fine in any of these roles if I'm just chasing a zerg around in the Mists, but . . . serious 5v5 PvP? You'll want another special build so you can hold nodes.

Now keep this in mind while I switch gears to a different game . . .

DC Universe Online also allows a person to be flexible with how they build their character. You have three trees of skills that you swap out and weapons/movement you can invest skill points points in to really make your character shine.

For instance, on my sorcery hero, I usually run a shield/rifle DPS build that uses a pet. He's an amazing powerhouse that brings the deeps yo.

If I want to PvP, however, I'm going to need to change my gear . . . and changing my build is probably a good idea too.

And if the call goes out for a healer, I'm again going to want to change pretty much everything so I can be the best I can while still mixing it up with damage as well.

Now, this is where DC Universe shines. There's a really cool housing item called an Armory -- you use it to imprint your current build and assign it to a button key press for instant use anywhere in the world.

In other words, these allow a person to click one button and POOF, as long as I'm out of combat, I'm fully dressed, equipped, and set up with the powers and skills I want. ONE BUTTON and I'm the best healer setup I have. ONE BUTTON and I'm the best DPS I can be.

. . . and they sell this amazing magical item in the cash shop. It's genius, and would be perfect for Guild Wars 2.

. . . even better it looks incredibly swanky in your player housing.

What's surprising to me is that we just give this one away for free in Wizard101. Equipment Sets went into the live game back in November 2014 . . . and it's free?! ONE BUTTON and you have all your gear and the correct deck for questing in PvE. ONE BUTTON and you have all your gear and the correct deck for PvP. It's quite cool and people love it. I don't blame them. It's a must have quality of life item.

I'm sure this is in more MMOs (and especially older MMOs that grow more complex as they age). If you know of one, leave a note in the comments. Personally, I would love to see this implemented in Guild Wars 2, and it's something I'd buy a pre-paid card to invest in. (And looky here! I'm not the first to suggest this.)

Happy Dueling!

The word went out last night that the Pirate101 was updating the game and bringing the Test Realm to the live Realm . . . and we've finally got ourselves some Ranked P V P! Practice PvP was put into the game a couple months after launch and always with the promise that more was to come. It has always been hugely requested, and so I'm very happy to see that it's finally made it into the game.

Enzo is up and ready to get you queued for combat!

That bit of dialog in his picture is one of the main differences you'll find between ranked PvP in Wizard101 and Pirate101. Ages in Pirate101 are going to roll much faster than the longer ages of Wizard101. It's seasonal. Rewards are going to rotate a bit on the PvP vendors season to season and if you're a heavy PvP'er, you're going to want to come back every season when you hit the top. (There's also a cool free for all mode -- FOUR PIRATES ENTER, ONE PIRATE WINS!)

Speaking of vendors, I had to run into game and take a picture with the one named after me this morning. :) Yup, I'm a dog pirate who sells pets. LOL.

It's really an honor, and I'm very flattered. It was a total surprise! Kind of embarrassing and kind of awesome at the same time. I talk a bit about it in our recent KI Live show, and also show off a very short bit of the new nautical instance: The Pirate Regatta.

PvP Seasons are going to be cool . . . it gives us an opportunity to tweak things if something goes completely out of balance, and I certainly hope you enjoy it to its fullest!

Happy Dueling

Going to a few cons here and there is my family's latest "thing" ever since we moved out here to Texas, and I joined KingsIsle. I've been shipped off by plane to talk at two different Syndcon events and invited to be on panels for a few other local cons like Comicpalooza, Realms Con, and Mizuumi-Con. On the local cons I've been lucky enough to drag my family along with me, and I always end up a few dollars poorer and a few geek items heavier thanks to the ever present booths full of awesome things sold at the conventions.

A couple weekends ago I decided to hoist the kids into my car and make it down to Classic Game Fest 2015 out of my own volition. At first I thought I might actually get a chance to sit down and watch Richard Garriott and Starr Long talk about Shroud of the Avatar, but being solo on the parenting gig with three kids that want to go three different directions was not going to let me do that. Still, I was able to watch a bit from the distance and listen in when I could. (You can also get a glimpse of Richard and Starr in this recap video.)

This wasn't a huge con compared to some we've been to, but there was a fair selection of vendors, and my kids did indeed each end up with something they liked. The youngest went for a Zelda wallet, the middle went for a PacMan amiibo he had his eye on, and the oldest grabbed a couple posters. No one went for the Asian versions of the classic games though. What?!

I had a nice talk with the local reps from Extra-Life (which reminds me, I need to talk with Leala at work about a few things from that conversation -- our drive last year was pretty good). I like the organization and the guys at the booth were very nice.

It was pretty cool to see the 501st legion there for pictures, and of course we obliged.

Probably the most fun for us was sitting down to the Atari Age section where there were a wall of Ataris with some pretty amazing classic games redone on the Atari, and the games they had were way better than the old Atari games of my youth . . . then again we were playing on an Atari 7800, and I never owned one of those. Regardless, Froggie on the 7800 was far superior to the old Atari 2600 Frogger by Parker Brothers. The kids hopped to it and played several games.

I'd actually rate our AtariAge game experience the best of show for us. To be honest, the classic stand up arcade cabinets were extremely crowded when we went, and you'd have to wait to get a game in (and again, with three kids pulling me in three different directions that just wasn't going to happen). But there was enough room to breathe, sit down, and each of us play Froggie and a few other games (like a Warlord clone that was AMAZING) multiple times as a family. Even better, I was able to show the kids my joystick skrillz. *blows on callus between the thumb and first finger from 1981*

We all got tired quickly and were all only able to take it a few hours before we called it, but I really would have liked to catch a couple of the bands. Maybe next time!

A big shout out to our favorite local classic game store for being the main sponsor of this show! We love ya Game Over Videogames!

Happy Dueling.

It's kind of weird how a bad night of gaming can just throw you off. I had one of those the night before last. First, I got discouraged by the gold sink required to craft the Tempered Spinal Blades back piece. I tried to explain this to one of my friends in Guild Chat and why I'm doing it . . .

But what I talk about there doesn't even cover the cost of crafting all the other back pieces that led to this piece:

Advanced Spinal Blades

Quad Spinal Blades

Twin Spinal Blades

Spinal Blade Pack

When I looked back at all the time and effort I was spending creating this thing, I don't know . . . I just kind of got depressed. At that particular moment two days ago, it just didn't feel worth it, and I got discouraged, and this was after I had already completed my Gift of Blades! I think the real kicker for me was the feeling of futility from buying watchwork sprockets and doing this:

Buying those sprockets and dumping them in the mystic forge . . . dunno, it was a weird feeling. I can't quite call it anger. I can't quite call it sadness . . . it's just a game after all . . . I can't quite call it nerd rage.

I shall call it the feeling of, "meh."

THEN, I had a huge string of defeats in the new Tavern Brawl in Hearthstone. LOL.

I haven't built up a ton of cards, and I have very very few legendary cards, so when I'm forced to build my own deck instead of say the awesomeness of the last couple of weeks where the Tavern Brawl put people on equal footing . . . I don't know, there's just more defeats for a chump like me. This also left me with said feeling of "meh."

Last night, however, was an OK night (can't really call it a "great night"). First, I actually hooked up the Atari and played some Adventure. I ain't kidding. I was actually kind of surprised that my cartridge was in such good condition. The whole reason I loaded it up is because my son asked me to. I think he might have seen it at Classic Game Fest and got interested. That worked for me because it also kicked him off Guild Wars 2, so dad could play. I eventually returned after he beat his head against the second level of difficulty and showed him the old pro's ways of running the chalice to the gold castle in all three levels of difficulty. *smacks hands together* If an old game of Adventure can't break the "meh," then I don't know what can!

In Guild Wars 2 I took myself back up to 13 gold from my poverty levels of "99 silver and some chewing gum," and continued on my futile quest for the tempered spinal blades (did I happen to mention there's another two stages of evolution for these Spinal Blades? Such a gold sink. I don't know if I can keep going.)

And any time I can help down the Teq and get some easy loot . . . I'm in!

I also hopped over to Wizard101 and harvested several gardens and got gobs and gobs of loot. As I said a few days ago, it's just pure happiness seeing all that loot.

I was also super happy I got to crash through the first part of Darkmoor with some quality people yesterday (*fives* to my friends--you know who you are) and will probably have my Krulhu spell here very soon . . . like today soon.

Finally, Hearthstone was treating me well again and I managed to win a couple more Tavern Brawls before calling it a night while watching some Twitch to wind down.

What's the moral of the story? Well, there really isn't one . . . i'm just trying to make a Blaughust post for the day. LOL.

Ok, I'll at least try to shoot for a moral of the story: I think it just comes down to attitude and variety really. For grindy stuff like the blades, if something isn't really working, you need to just step away and try again another day. That's usually how it works in MMOs anyway. Having friends to rant to and gain insight from is also a definite plus.

I don't know, Hearthstone really is about getting some luck with your draws mixed with having great cards. Playing your strengths (or at least a strong build) while earning and crafting those rare and legendary cards is probably your best bet. (Thanks Cavernshark for your infinite gobs of Hearthstone wisdom you dispense to me.)

Hope you all have a great day of gaming and keep your chin up! There's going to be good days and bad. Just keep playing.

Happy Dueling!

I've been a bit busy in Wizard101 catching all kinds of fish in Dragonspyre. I'm behind a world as Dragonspyre fishing hit the pavement back in April and the latest fishing craze (and levels) can be found in Celestia.

That said, if you're looking for a full fish guide, there's plenty around between Swordroll, Stars of the Spiral, Duelist101, Wizard101 Central's Wiki, Mercenaries for Hire, and Adventures of the Spiral Fishing Database.

What about me? Where's my guide? Pffttttt, all I've got is fancy Vines and a story about me fishing in Dragonspyre to share today! ;p

So I remember I left off in Dragonspyre after Lucky Hookline sent me there, and today after doing a round of gardening I saw I had some energy left. Knowing I needed to do a Blaugust post today, I thought to myself, HEY, MAYBE FISHING! YEAH!

I didn't read any of the above guides to refresh myself (the mercs guide would have been particularly helpful to read in advance) and just started casting out my old rank 1 lures and caught a lot of this . . .

and this . . .

and even one or two of these! (Which ain't that shabby)

Somehow I muddled through the quest and managed to catch a Dragonfly Fish and a Hard Albacore, but it took me a bit to catch this freaking thing:

YES! YELLOW GRUNION, BABY! YES!

The next quest old Yuri Smokesnare had for me was to catch a . . . dun dun dun . . . Sentinel Fish! This one I remember reading you had to slap that spacebar as soon as a sentinel fish nibbled your lure, and it wasn't too much pain to fish up the guardian of Dragonspyre's lava lakes!

HA!

. . . and then the streams went dead with the quest to catch an Ember Parrot Fish . . . I did a quick search on the Ember Parrot fish and found this thread where I soon found I was not alone, but it also put out that missing piece of information for me "Rank 2."

*slaps head*

Therein lies the problem of picking up on a quest from several months ago, you forget things, like there being a Rank 2 version of a spell. HA! I went and snatched up my missing spells back in Grizzleheim and ran back to The Tower Archives fishing spot I was at, so when my energy was back, I could give it another shot.

I had a lot of fun, and I'll be seeing you in Celestia's ponds soon!

Happy Dueling!

Leala and I prep'd at work on Friday, and we really wanted to head through Darkmoor in the afternoon to get our wonderful Khrulhu spells simultaneously, but, you know, work actually got in the way . . . again. ;)

So when we left work for the weekend, we absolved each other of any wrong that could be seen from separately gaining the giant tentacled monster of death over the weekend (these absolvings are good mojo), and the rest is history. Leala got her Khrulhu, and I got mine too!

Look at that team!

It was all about buffing up Blaze for the smackdown with Glowbug, and BAM!

The next thing I know I've got some new found tentacle power ready to drop on all the unsuspecting ghosts of Unicorn way (A definite misuse of new found power).

I'm sure you'll be seeing more Khrulhu from Thomas Lionblood in much more than Unicorn Way in the future. ;)

Switching gears over to Guild Wars 2. I finished my back item! (You know that one I was whining about a couple posts back? that one.)

So looking at Khrulhu and my new backpiece, apparently all the cool things in this world are tentacle looking.

DONE AND DONE!

I'm so happy to be done crafting that back piece. Whew. The only thing left would be to gather up 500 fractal relics and make it infused. Yeah, that's uh, going to probably never happen. *shrug*

Switching gears to LOTRO . . . WHAT?! WHAT DID YOU SAY?! WHAT IS THIS TOM FOOLERY?! Yup, I had a special task from the Uber Wife yesterday where she commanded me to clean up my desk area that had become a heath hazard, and I found an unredeemed LOTRO pre-paid card that Fred Howard had given me a couple years ago. (Side note, Fred no longer works for KingsIsle in case you all hadn't heard that already.) A rep from Turbine had given it to him at a convention I believe, and he just didn't have the time or inclination to play the game at the time.

I have a level 51 Minstrel and a level 50 Champion in LOTRO from when that was my main game (it used to be all about the LOTRO my friends), but outside of a short stint playing LOTRO with the crew from Spiral Radio and a visit to Weatherstock, I personally just turned a blind eye to it. I guess that you can get all the way up to level 100 now! CRAZY!

I had purchased the expansion after vanilla LOTRO, and so there actually is content in there for me to do . . . so why not!

It took a couple hours for LOTRO to download and then I started up the drums of death and horrific lizard-frying beams of light!

Apparently a lot has changed since I played last, but I still managed to set up a skill tree as a damage-spec minstrel and, at least in this quest area I was in, there wasn't really any danger at all. Just mostly inventory problems carried over from 2007. ;)

So, maybe you'll hear a bit more about LOTRO as well during Blaugust!

Let me know in the comments if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear more about in any of these games I've been playing . . . or even just feel free to issue me a (minor) challenge of some sort. I'll see what I can do to oblige.

Happy Dueling!

I spent a good portion of yesterday being dragged around shopping by my wife and father-in-law, and when that happens, at some point I'm either going to end up chatting on Twitter or playing a game. Yesterday, the games won, and I rediscovered a fun game buried on my phone that I paid honest to goodness money for. Crazy, right? You know it is! Paid apps only make up a third of the app store and with so much "free" around, paid apps better be a gem.

Remember the Flappy Bird craze? Of course you do. It was confounding and inspired the even greater game of Flappy Bert. When Seasame Street joins the fray, you're solidly cemented in pop culture forever. (My high score is 35 on Flappy Bert btw . . . THAT LAUGH)

But before Flappy Bert hit the world, I had downloaded Badland, which is a much cooler and more stylized game to the Nth degree.

If you haven't heard of it, then you probably weren't paying attention back in 2013 when it was announced as the iPad game of the year . . . and probably overshadowed by its co-winner, Ridiculous Fishing. That's alright, I forgive you.

Check it out:

This game is such a fun side-scrolling puzzler, and even comes with a multiplayer mode where you and up to 3 others can each take a corner of the device and flap flap flap your way to the goal line where one of you will be announced the winner.

The hardest thing though is trying to play Badland and take a screenshot on your iPhone at the same time. This one didn't turn out too bad though!

Just look at that little fat bat flapping around! So awesome.

This was a particularly hilarious level where I ended up controlling a sea of overweight bats trying to clunk their way though a collapsing metal pathway. FLOP *clunk* FLOP *clunk* FLOP.

And that's what makes this game great. It takes that constantly falling and flappy mechanic and adds a lot of depth to it. You'll grab power ups that give you top spin, shrink you, grow you, split you into a million little bats . . . Flappy Bert can't even come close to this. Meanwhile you're doing all this flapping to a great soundtrack in a world that just . . . looks . . . cool.

Apparently there's a PC version now that's available for $10 on Steam. I may just have to pick that one up. I wonder how it plays on the PC? hmm.

Anyway, this one is on Friendly's phone and was super fun last night as I was pulled around from store to store. Glad I could show it off to you! If you like hearing about Mobile games and particularly which ones are on my phone, gimme a shout in the comments. (Plus leave me your Flappy Bert high score while you're at it.)

Happy Dueling!

So, I'm going to be real here and step outside of my Angus shoes. I was overjoyed to discover polymorph treasure cards were the answer to Angus's woes in Celestia, but if I take a step back and think about this as Joe Schmo wizard, Polymorphs seem to be a hotly contested problem.

Flash33 is probably the greatest expert on Polymorph magic there is in Wizard101. His guide is Angus's bible for Moon Magic. He pretty much sums up what most players think about these "useless" spells:

"you lose your stats you had before"
"they're useless in pvp"
"oh, I can't attack head-on in some of them"

His post specifically goes over the hidden back-end mechanics (definitely not found on the cards themselves, which adds to the confusion) that make these cards special and how to use them.

For the new Polymorphs, I'm going to look to Duelist101's guide here.

Over time, unfortunately I think the case gets even worse for Polymorphs and Moon magic. We now have access to Mastery Amulets, which we didn't have in Celestia. Personally, it feels like that was probably the death nail for many of these cards. Why turn into a Treant if I can heal much more effectively with a simple gear swap or in my everyday gear? With the ability to crest 80% resistance with gear now and without adding weakness to another class simultaneously, why use them? They are fun. (who doesn't like throwing a taco at a mob while polymorphed as a Gobbler) They are unique. (you definitely don't see a lot of these being cast out there.) . . . but I think I'd add one more bullet to Flash's list of anti-poly hate:

They haven't aged well due to advances in player gear

On the plus side, they're fantastic for lower level players as treasure cards and for those who are tragically under-geared at every level! :)

ANGUS, ANGUS, ANGUS!

~~

Let's shift gears over to Hearthstone and take a look at this game's single and unique "polymorph" as it were:

Lord Jaraxxus

This video does a great job of showing the power that comes to play here. It *can* be a great finisher, it's a risky move, but opens up tons of potential power to end a game.

As noted on this wiki page, it does have its counters:

Repentance: Reduces Jaraxxus' health to 1 instantly
Snipe: Deals 4 damage to Jaraxxus instantly
Sacrificial Pact: Destroys Jaraxxus
Mirror Entity: Summons a 3/15 Lord Jaraxxus minion
Blingtron 3000 / Harrison Jones / Acidic Swamp Ooze: Destroys Blood fury
Extremely rarely, Sylvanas Windrunner can steal the Lord Jaraxxus minion before its Battlecry is triggered, causing the other player to become Jaraxxus. This can happen for example if the player has Knife juggler and Illidan Stormrage on the board, and then plays Jaraxxus. Playing Jaraxxus will cause a Flame of Azzinoth to be summoned, triggering Knife Juggler; if the knife hits and kills Sylvanas, her Deathrattle will have a chance to steal Lord Jaraxxus. Jaraxxus can similarly be destroyed by Deathrattle effects such as those of multiple Abominations.

~~

Of course, there are some very key differences between game play in Hearthstone and Wizard101. They are completely different beasts in many aspects, but what I like about Lord Jaraxxus is that

1- It sets your life to a new (low) maximum and acts as a heal, you can never shift back.
2- It breaks you free from stuns, so casting it is more than just an expensive shift with no utility.
3- You still play your deck, but you have a new power available to you with extreme high efficiency.
4- There are counters
5- It's a finisher.

~~

While Angus is going to get some great mileage out of Polymorphs in Celestia, I don't envy the next designer who's tasked to make one (if that ever happens, shifts are the new hotness for moon magic). If it were me, I'd make the next Polymorphs much more deadly and efficient (think BIG SPELLS for LOW COST), make the health and resists much lower, add an instant taunt effect from using it, and cause the effect of the Polymorph to be near permanent.

Basically, much more risk for much more reward and turn it into an expert card. You'd be deadly, but you've got to know how and when to use it or you're left with your head spinning.

Thoughts?

So yesterday over in the Marketing section of KingsIsle there was a gauntlet thrown down and a challenge made to see who the champion of Hearthstone would be in the group. Quite simply put, the Cavernshark is easily the best player among us with the most advanced cards, so I fully expect him to rise to the top -- but you never know who on this fateful day might have . . . THE HEART OF THE CARDS, BABY!

Today at lunch (or over the next couple of days) we're going to try a double elimination tournament style battle to see who rises to the top in the "Smack ya Dead Marketing" tournament.

I was quite happy to find the challonge.com website to quickly set this one up! After landing here from a lucky search of the Internet, I remembered seeing at least one of these tournaments pop up over on Pirate101 Central. I think Fiesty Orange had set one up.

Anyway, I like the simplicity of the Challonge style, but it made me think about what other bracket making apps or sites are out there that I could have created our little tournament with. If I do one of these in the future and the participants of the tournament don't bonk me on the head for revealing it to the world, we may want to do another one of these in the future . . . maybe with dare I say . . . MORE participants?! Dun dun dun!

Further searching showed these sites:

Brackets Ninja -- I like that this one looks like you can have a colorful background and use Facebook integration to invite your friends.

Print Your Brackets -- This looks like simply something you'll use to print and hang on a wall. A simple 5 person double elimination print out would have done nicely as well, plus put us in more control over who would go first out of the five. This site also seems like a nice one with some stock "pool" brackets for standard sporting tournaments. Not my scene, but probably good for people who like to "make it interesting."

Tournamentscheduler.net -- Simple interface, but limited to round robin tournaments. This kind of looks like it'd be perfect for scheduling up kids basketball tournaments. *shwoosh*

Binary Beast -- On the surface this looks like an eSports heaven. One look at the bottom tells you that Starcraft, League, and all kinds of gamers use this site. It's probably solid, and it looks donation driven, like most of the other tournament creation sites. Um, the FAQ is super honest: "I have next to zero programming knowledge, so please be patient with our FAQ page"

KonKuri -- This looks to be a paid service . . . but only when you're ready to actually activate the tournament.

. . . there's a ton more, in fact App Crawler pinned down 57 unique apps for iOS devices (and 34 more for Android) that will make tournaments in one way or another.

. . . and that doesn't even touch the game specific tournament sites like Wizard101 Central's PvP Tournaments.

It's actually kind of mind blowing to see how many tournament creation pages are out there, and I'm very interested in hearing your successes with using these or other Tournament pages! Please leave me a comment below and tell me what you use and what you like about it.

Happy Dueling!

So, I like Necromancers, um, obviously. If there is a necromancer choice in a game, it's a good chance I've tried it or it's my main class I play. I'm the Friendly Necromancer after all. (So many "Duhs" were just whispered.)

Yesterday I asked the people around me which they thought would be more of a Necromancer-based class in Hearthstone, a Priest or a Warlock and the quick vote was with Warlock.

I can see that -- especially with all the demon summoning and sacrificing life for cards going on with Warlocks. There's even a "Drain Life" card that deals 2 damage and restores 2 health, but a Warlock is more about the demons than the undead. It's a slight difference. Some might argue the nature of the spells are different as well.

Priests on the other hand have their "Shadow" side, which is what I was thinking. spells like "Shadow Word: Pain,""Shadow Word: Death,""Thoughtsteal,""Cabal Shadow Priest," and "Mindcontrol."

So it's an interesting question. The Internet gave me a third option: Shaman. This build focuses on spells like "Reincarnate," and "Ancenstral Spirit" and "Feral Spirit" with a whole lot of Deathrattle.

Any way you slice it though, it looks like the best way to get Necromancer-esque cards is to play through the Curse of Naxxramas PvE Adventure, where (as it states on the description in the shop) The Lich Kel-Thuzad awaits within. OH NO, YOU DIDN'T JUST SAY LICH TO ME!

I need Zombie Chow like yesterday. How many times have I been destroyed by the Stalagg/Feugen combo (at least a couple)? Lich! All these great cards are available in the Naxxramas adventure if you can make you're way through it.

(Sidenote, speaking of Naxxramas cards, I found another "Polymorph" type of card from Hearthstone . . . Majordomo Executus -- when it deathrattles, your hero becomes Ragnaros.)

To be honest, ever since seeing this particular adventure, I've wanted to play through it. The question is, do I want to earn it with Gold (which, yikes, 700 gold per wing) or just buy it. It's only $24.99, and I'm sure I'll get the value out of it. As my character sometimes says in Hearthstone, "Hmmm, what to do, what to do."

. . . I'm pretty sure you all know I'm going to cave and buy it, especially when I don't have a lot of time to play Hearthstone all day long. (I've been struggling to find game time with Blaugust going on as well, hehe.)

So, leave your thoughts if you could.

1- What do you think is the most "Necromancer'y" of the three choices: Priest, Warlock, or Shaman

2- Do you have any other ideas about building a Necromancer deck?

3- I should just cave and buy this outright, right? I've heard such good things about these adventures, and I haven't given Blizzard money since Diablo 3 (which reminds me . . . I wanted to try out the Diablo 3 expansion)

4- Other recommendations?

Happy Dueling!

KI LIve -- March 26, 2015

The KingsIsle Office

Salad Club (and last month's KI Live)

PSA: This Blog is old now

Wizard101 "Operation: Cleanup""Subject: Gardening"

KI Live Today + Roger That + Ultra Dexter

KI Live -- July 2015 (The no-ship equipment incident gasp Ratbeard gasp)

It's all about the challenges! #Blaugust Day 1 -- Clean Slate

#Blaugust Day 2 -- Angus beats Optio in Celestia? What?

#Blaugust Day 3 -- Catching up with Team Spode

#Blaugust Day 4 -- Paid Gear/Spec Switching in Guild Wars 2?

#Blaugust Day 5 -- Pirate101 PvP Updates are live!

#Blaugust Day 6 -- Classic Game Fest 2015 Personal Recap

#Blaugust Day 7 -- Lame Night vs. OK Night

#Blaugust Day 8 -- Fishing Vines for a Fishing Story

#Blaugust Day 9 -- Done and Done with a side of LOTRO

#Blaugust Day 10 -- Of Flappy Bert and Badland (Mobile Monday?)

#Blaugust Day 11 -- What to do about Polymorphs . . . Wizard101 vs. Hearthstone?

#Blaugust Day 12 -- Sites for Making Tournaments between Friends

#Blaugust Day 13 -- Building a Necromancer in Hearthstone?