The Life and Times of an Ice Wizard

Lately I have been working on my ice wizard Darby. It's seasonal. Every year around this time I have the distinctive urge to dress up an ice wizard in pretty clothes and smash things with Frost Giant. So every year at this time I move Darby forward. She's been idling at 34 for months now, so I took her up to 35 to get a new outfit, and then pushed on to 38 so she could get her ice blade. Finally. It's really hard to function without a blade. Especially for an ice wizard. 

Along the way we experienced some... uh. Technical difficulties.

And the plant that would not die. (I planted this for Paige's Best Little Dorm contest in the summer!)

Then we finally got the call from Lydia.

And she got her blade. I kissed the computer screen.

Oh and an ice desk. Yay.

~Heather

Hey Foo Dog

I'm going to save my negative comments about the Kirin pack for another day, today I'm much to excited by Foo Dogs to talk about anything else.

My good friend Bailey Skystaff let me hatch with her fire foo, and lo and behold I got one. This resulted in literally 'squee'-ing out loud. 

 As you might have guessed I am really into anything that has to do with Japanese culture.

So what is a Foo Dog exactly? 

Well Foo Dogs aren't really dogs at all. They are lions. In Chinese they are called 'shishi' -- which means 'stone lion', and in Japanese they are called 'komainu'. 

In Japan, komainu -- which means 'korean dog' guard the entrance to shinto shrines.

 They are always found in pairs. 

Big komainu and little.

 I don't usually recommend it but Wikipedia has a nice article about shishi, if you're interested I suggest you take a look. 

If I had to assign the Foo Dog a real dog counterpart I think it would be a pug. The smooshy face. It is undeniable. 

via: it's called ephemera

Now if only they would snort too... I think I would be in heaven.

(One thing that keeps bugging me is that the dogs have a collar/medallion on. It has kanji (Chinese character) on it, and I don't know what it is. My kanji reading skills are hardly existent, but still it's bothering me! What does it say? Does anyone know? Or is it just 'faux-kanji'?)

~Heather

P.S.

Oh you want more? If you're a music/smooshy faced dog lover, you'll appreciate this song (which is my post title reference):

We are not amused

Pack-a-palooza. Really? Okay, now let me move onto-- can't you people think of anything better to end in than 'somethingsomething-a-palooza'!? It's just getting old. And boring.

Also I would like to mention while I've paused for a rant, that I personally mentioned how I would like to see a Kirin mount in October whilst having a twitter conversation with my friend Connor Mistblade. We were theorizing about a new Mooshu themed gamestop card. I wanted Osaka Castle and a Kirin mount to boot. What do I get? A pack. Noooo, no, no. Fail KI. Just fail. If you were looking to gather ideas for your packs from the players you picked the wrong girl. I am so pleased that they decided to include the idea Connor and I were discussing, in the game, but they have sure lost a whole lot of potential money from me. I was hoping to spend at least $40 on this, and now I'm going to spend less than $5. I would love a Kirin mount so much. But I cannot afford to spend $40 worth of chances. I would like to know that it's there, and that I can have it.

As most of you know this blog and my Wizard101-ing is in semi-hibernation, although I am playing PvP with my team of good friends. It's been hard to keep up with Wizard101 and the community due to colds, schoolwork, and my other interests. And (it makes me sad to say) I don't feel I'm missing that much. Back in the old days, we were all still figuring things out. For me that was a much more interesting time, when it was really exciting to sit down and see what everyone was up to and learn more myself. I look forward to the rest of 2012, and I hope that KI will continue to produce a game like that. Maybe then I'll have more patience for annoying distractions like the packs of doom.


~Heather




edit to add: I don't claim that the kirin idea was mine alone. I'm sure other brilliant individuals suggested it as well. They also have been gypped. (Okay maybe not gypped. But certainly hard done by.)

A little plug

No not that kind of plug.

I'm here to talk about all the super contests that are going on with House-a-Palooza right now.

Yeah and before you go to sleep on me, hear me out!

You may have looked at the list of houses that are being given away (and  if you haven't, go do that now) and gone "Aw man, there are a bunch of lame old houses on that list." To you I say, don't be to simple minded! Some of the older houses are some of the best! And think about this for a moment; if every one has the 'cool' houses (i.e. MFP, MSP, CL observatory, etc.) then won't your having an unusual house make you more unique and interesting? I mean, who wants to be a copy cat anyway.

"But Heather!" You're saying, "Those houses have a dueling circle!" Okay be honest, how often are you going to use that circle anyway? You need at least one other person to duel with, and if you make the PvP parties argument I can say from experience that it is a lot of work to keep people OUT of those circles. People kind of tend to help themselves without being polite, or asking permission. Well personally I prefer to have fun with my guests instead of wrangling them.

Here are some houses that offer an interesting potential: 

Alia's giving away the Desert Villa. I personally love this house, and I made a video of a tour of my own. 

Isaac is giving away the Oasis Camp. I entered this one! I haven't seen this house done very often, because of it's interesting structure. But I think it has a lot of cool features!
Valerian is giving away the Tranquil Cottage. You know how much I love a Japanese house. This house would be a great mini version of something like what I've done in my MFP.
Paige is giving away the Royal Playhouse. This was the first house I ever got and it remains one of my all time favorites. Not too big, not too small. I also did a bit of a zen/mooshu/Japanese theme in it.
Kestrel is giving away the Wooded Cottage. It comes with Doug the Unicorn. 'Nuff said.
Jessica is giving away the Great Citadels. I can think of no better place for an evil lair. Or you could work against type and make it this really posh, fancy house that some really nice people would live in.
We on the Petnome Team are giving away the Island Getaway. It's a really cool house that I have spent a lot of time with friends in. It's like your own personal Indiana Jones adventure... with a beach!

So I encourage you all to go and enter ALL of the contests! If you do, maybe Mr. Weasley could be persuaded to part with some of his plugs....

~Heather

Spider Web Castle

Here it is folks. A tour of my finally finished MFP! I was mostly inspired by the gorgeous palaces of Japan, and their temples and shrines.

There is closed captioning for the hearing impaired wizards. I recommend using full screen with them though, they are kind of long. And please forgive me if they are kind of hard to read. I talk a lot and it was my first time doing them.

Enjoy!

If you are interested in Japanese history I recommend Modern Japan: A History in Documents and also the TV mini-series Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire  and Seven Samurai! Nah I'm kidding. Kurosawa is an awesome film-maker, but he's not really educational (ten points if you got the other reference in the post). ^_^

~Heather

So Crafty

If you've ever tried crafting beyond Krokotopia, you probably have encountered every crafter's bane. Black Lotus. It's evil. Pure and simple. The problem is that you often need it for crafting quests. Or for something really cool that you want to craft. Well unless you're going to drop thousands of gold at the bazaar sniping them whenever you can find them, you're probably going to resort to farming for them. "Where do I go?" you're asking (or maybe you're singing if you're familiar with Hair). Well it just so happens that I have my very own top-secret black lotus farming route! Today it becomes top-secret no longer! Because I'm going to share it with all of you my readers. Yeah, not sure how wise this is, but I'm doing it anyway.

This route takes place in the Tatakai Outpost a long time ago in a Galaxy far, far---oh wait. That's Star Wars.

Well there you have it. I have relieved my greatest crafting secret to you. Use it wisely young wizard.

~Heather

Fortune Cookie

You find a fortune cookie on the ground.

It is inside one of those cellophane wrappers, so it looks safe to eat.

Since you never eat anything ever, you are starving and decide to eat it.

You break open the cookie and the fortune says . . .

Miss Lenora is now level 35 which means a new outfit!

She's a Death-Ninja!

Fear her, piggies. She's gonna getcha.

Lenora/Heather

Eventful Weekend

Wow! This has been one busy weekend!

First off, I got the Spectre to Epic.

Then I gave him to Lenora. It's very useful!

Then on a whim I did a couple Briskbreeze Tower runs with Kevin Battleblood and Co, and I got my Myth ring! I think that it's going to help a ton.

Also I swear I saw this glitch at least three times.

Hehe!

Then I powered my way through Marleybone, with Miss Lenora and in Counterweight West got me a Clockwork Golem.

Off to Mooshu with her! She's level 34 now, only about half a level away from wearing a pretty new robe.

We also had the very first meeting of the Petnome Project.

This 'short' meeting only lasted about four hours. Boy, when we get talking... better pack a lunch!

Miguel summed it up very nicely on his blog.

I took gobs of photos, so here's a little slide show for you!

Find more photos like this on Diary of a Wizard ConnectX

Then just a few moments ago I was farming Ye Old Crazed Forest Spirit and I got my crab!

WOW! I am still in shock! I mean, I've been farming for him since it was discovered!

I named him Sebastian, which is the name of Kestrel's crab too. Ugh, I tried to name it something special...

But I'm going to keep it like that for a while because I like it.

We'll just have to have matching pets. :P

As you can see it's been a very eventful weekend!

And we've got a whole half a day left!

I wonder what's in store?

~Heather

One Hits: a Tweak

Bosses. They have a lot of health. It can be hard to kill them sometimes.

And if you want to farm one with a lot of heath it's darn near impossible!

Take the Jade Oni for example. He drops some nice loot, but he has 7,500 health.

But you can kill him in under ten minutes. It's true! The very lovely Sierra Starsong introduced me to this strategy a while back, and when ever I farm the Jade Oni this is the way I do it.

Here's a link to Sierra's guide (look at her's first then come back and learn the tweaks!), which was a launch pad for a bunch of tweaks and experimentation.

(Helping me demonstrate today is my Life friend Jared.)

I didn't mess too much with the life deck. Why fix it if it ain't broke?

Life Deck

I did fuss I bit with the balance deck. Since Victoria was wearing her Malistaire coat, she didn't need another attack card in her deck. I substituted Locust Swarm with Satyr so she can heal up Jared for the next round of farming. Then I just added wearing a pet to the equation. Since Jared doesn't have his Malistare coat yet, he wasn't as powerful as he could be, which ended up in a lot near misses. So I put on my Hero Pig which gives me a Dragonblade card. It made all the difference in the world! Any pet that gives you an extra blade will work, you could use treasure cards but they're pricey and I don't recommend them. If you do have your Malistaire coat, you probably don't need the extra blade, unless you like really big numbers.

Balance Deck

This strategy will work for practically any boss and any school. Here's an example: for fire use Elemental Blade, Elemental Trap, Fire Blade, Fire Trap, Fire Prism and Helephant.

The only thing that you have to remember is to let the person with the prism into the battle first.

Other than that, it's pretty simple. It sure is a whole lot faster than a bunch of people randomly doing spells.

Here's our highest hit today:

Muahahaha. And you thought Life was weak...

Victoria/Heather

Kestrel's new look

A couple days ago I took a stab at the Plague Oni and Kestrel's lovely storm robe dropped!

I quickly hurried to the Seamstress and now this is Kestrel's new look.

I want to dye it Light purple and green, but I don't have enough gold right now.

I love that Victoria, Kestrel and Heather are matching now. :) I even have the death robe for Lenora when she hits level 40.

Speaking of Lenora, I gotta keep working on her! She is dying to get out of her mis-matched Krok outfit into her sleek new Marleybone uniform.

Kestrel/Heather

Paper Lantern

I adore paper lanterns.

One of my favorite housing items ever is "paper lantern".

It drops from Do-Daga in the Hamestu Village.

I would like to see a string of laterns that we could hang on the wall.

~Heather

My 'weekend'

On Thursday and Friday I had no rehearsals. So I got some ITS time! I went pet farming. I got a Life Scarab, a Dire Ghoul, a Red Banshee, and a Pixie Queen.

Also there was some pet leveling,

an 48 hybrid attempt by me and Bailey (no luck), and a couple of Mali runs.

I had a lot of fun! :)

~Heather

Oooh! Cryptic New Stuff!

So by now I am sure you are all sick and tried of seeing this. But let me just say: "HOLY HECKHOUNDS!"

What could this mean?
I don't know.
Is the ninja pig about to stab the mander with his sword?
Probably.
Does the crab from Celestia look crabby?
Yes.

Time will only tell.
(Time turners? I doubt it. Although, that would rock.)
~Heather

Thank You Mr. Oni!

Look at what I got from the Jade Oni yesterday!

A Lucky Leprechaun! His name is Jasper. He is so cute I can barely stand it! =)

Victoria

(P.S. You all do know that Victoria, Kestrel and Lenora are my alts right? ~Heather)

Who's "that girl"?

She's looking good!

(here's Kestrel sporting her new mooshu look. oh yeah level 35 baby!)

Kestrel

Icey

I really like Ice school clothes.

I think the little swirly things and snowy dots are just lovely!

Ice clothes also look good in black, they look like they are dotted with stars.

These are Youkai's Slippers.

And this is some one's cloak that I saw in the Basillica.

I think it's the "Death Oni's Tunic".

So pretty!

~Heather

New Robes, and New Year

Well Kestrel said that Yakedo's robe was really pretty,

so I went and farmed for it.

Funny story, it's not a tradeable item so I got it on Victoria, and then realised that I couldn't give it to Heather. Fortunately it was auctionable so I was able to pick one up at the bazzar.

Here it is!

I really like it! Thanks for the tip Kestrel!

Then I also got Victoria's balance robe from Mr. Defiler.

I love the colors.

Now we just need to find the life style one of these robes for Kestrel and Alia.

Oh, and get ready to PAR-TAY!

OH YEAH, IT'S ALMOST 2010!

Here's to an awesome new year!

~Heather

Level Up!

Whoohoo!

I'm now lvl 42 and I just got Hydra!

Muwahahahahaha!

Look out Death Soldiers, here I come.

Victoria

Kimono

Here's a little something for your house to give it that Mooshu flair.

You can pick this up in the Jade Place.

Head on into the Emperor's Throne Room turn left and there you are!

Just press X.

Your very own kimono!

It makes me want to have a tea party and go moonviewing! Ahh, so relaxing.