Choose My Adventure: Soloing a dungeon isn't a good idea edition
What a week in Wizard101! Not only was I humiliated over and over in my attempts to conquer a dungeon all by myself, but I was later joined by three higher-level players in that same dungeon and received schooling from them. It turns out that there are more cards that you can shake a wand at, and I hardly knew about any of them. I am, for sure, teh noob.
I still had a blast, though, and learned all about prisms and other types of cards that give strategical advantages in combat. It was a little too much to take in all at once, especially for an airhead like yours truly. Playing with people like Kevin Battleblood, Leesha Darkheart, and Fallon Deathslinger essentially made me feel like I was doing everything wrong. But to be fair, they have been playing far longer than I and I had recently retooled my deck for soloing. I have to learn to take instructions from others. I'm not very good at it, and I generally enjoy soloing. When I am in a group, I tend to joke around or simply stay quiet -- grouping is just not my thing normally. In Wizard101, however, grouping is very beneficial to new players. While everything that I was told was sort of going in one ear and out the other, I picked up some great tips.
Click past the cut and I'll tell you all about it and about my week (so far) with gardening.
One of the most exciting things I did this week was to acquire a Massive Fantasy Palace -- essentially the most luxurious house in all of the Spiral. It comes with many, many rooms for decorating, tons of storage, and even a dueling circle. Basically, you can invite your friends over and duel each other from your very own house. Unfortunately, I hardly have enough furniture to fill a broom closet, but I plan on remedying that. The housing in Wizard101 is absolutely fantastic and straightforward. There's none of this "rent this" or "deposit" that nonsense going on. You simply buy the place and decorate it. The MFP pack also came with a cool wolf pet, a minigame (a housing edition of the popular minigames that are used to refill potions normally), a killer griffin mount, armor and weapons, and a batch of crowns to spend on goods. For 40 US dollars, it is a great deal.
Since I then had a fantastic house and room to spare, I decided to try one of each type of plant that was voted on. Yes, that's sort of cheating, but I couldn't resist. I wanted to test it all out -- as much as possible -- before my official time drew to a close. The gardening system is incredibly adorable, boasting plants like Dandelions (a lion head on a plant), Desparagus (one of my favorites: a goth stalk of asparagus), and Boom Shrooms (you guessed it -- exploding mushrooms!). You can learn all about gardening from a diminutive mole in Golem Court and use what he teaches you to start planting. It's a simple process. You dig up some soil, plant a seed, and wait for it to grow. As it does, the plant will give you hints as to what it needs through a series of icons that float above its head. My Boom Shroom, for example, needed to hear some music, which was indicated by a small bar of notes floating above its dome. I used my music spell and everything was fine.
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What is the use or benefit of gardening? From what I understand, players can harvest these plants for loot. You can get cards, treasure, and other items for use during battle. While the developers could have just sold these items through the cash shop, the gardening system provides additional depth to the greater game. Add in the fact that the plants can be very amusing to watch and collect and you have a wonderful thing. You even have to be careful about planting the wrong kind of plants next to each other -- I've heard that this can affect how well they grow and produce loot! Gardening is simply a well-designed time and money sink, and there's nothing wrong with that.
In another milestone, I attended my first dungeon over the last week: Sunken City. I decided to try it on my own at first and did pretty well by killing the first two groups of monsters. I was eventually stomped to death by the baddies, though, and needed help. I put the call out on Twitter and was almost overwhelmed by the response. It turns out that tweens really love Twitter and Facebook (which is more than a little scary). In the end, I took the dungeon on with my wife and two of her friends, and we generally had a blast. I tried to learn a bit but was quite distracted by the noise and lights. As I pointed out before, the spell effects and animations are simply some of the best I have seen in any game. If you add in the fact that the game runs on a netbook or ancient PC, then the graphics are even more impressive. If you don't mind my getting very nerdy for a second, I'd like to point out that the camera angles and direction during the combat cutscenes are downright flawless 99 percent of the time. I don't know how they do it, or who made it, but it should result in a raise for someone.
Playing with these three masters made me realize that my deck really needed some work. Generally, I do not care about performing well. I would rather learn slowly and clumsily simply because failure is a better teacher. Still, I found myself a little jealous of my groupmates' power and felt myself wanting to go immediately to the care store to buy more. After all, who wouldn't want to cast a giant Kraken? I do! I DO!
Now it is time to venture into Krokotopia, the next area I have been sent to. Imagine: It is an Egyptian-themed area populated by Indiana Jones-tinted design jokes, monstrous crocodile mummies, and helpful Salamander creatures that talk like Frankenstein's Igor. Needless to say, it is downright hilarious. I'm not totally sure what my mission will be there, but I am looking forward to it. In the meanwhile, I need your help. I want to concentrate on a new area over the last week of this series, but I am not sure where to go and what to do. Should I PvP? How about gardening more? Would I enjoy crafting even though I haven't touched it yet? I need to spend some time leveling my pet, so is the Pet Pavilion in my future? Vote below!
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Beau Hindman is your puppet. Make him dance, if you'd like. Over the next several weeks, he will be your guide through whatever game you choose, through whatever activity you command him to participate in. Follow him on Twitter or Raptr to see when he might be playing, then go in game to shoot bullets at his feet!
