Blaze's Tips & Tricks No. 9 Extra Energy!

Hey everyone! I'm here today bringing back something you haven't seen in a while! As you can tell, it's the Tips & Tricks series! I know a lot of you like these posts so I've decided to try and bring them back. Anyway, let's get into today's Tips & Tricks, Extra Energy!

Energy Gear is a unlike your regular everyday fighting gear and is often not very effective in battle. It instead, caters more to you whilst you're asleep or away from the Spiral for a while... Energy Gear is gear that adds to your max energy which lets you build up more energy during downtimes. If you can get the right gear, you can increase your max energy by huge amounts, up to even 234 at the very, very highest (includes sockets).

There are all sorts of energy gear and you can get the energy bonuses on all gear excluding decks, wands and mounts. You can even receive energy from pets such as the Dapper Corgi! Energy gear is any gear that gives you increased max energy, meaning you can build up more energy whilst equipping this gear. An example of when this is effective is whilst you are offline, you can build up energy for gardening, fishing and pet training.

Now, you obviously don't want to fight in this gear and switching out constantly, this is where gear sets come in handy! KingsIsle even including an 'energy set' name as a possibility to name a set. With this, just one click of a button and you can build up your energy to a greater extent.

There is one final piece of advice that I have for anyone buying energy elixirs. If you are going to buy an energy elixir, make sure you get your energy down low first than make sure you've got your energy gear equipped. This will again, give you more energy.

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

Until next time!
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 10 Chelsea Court

Hey everyone! I'm back today with the 10th instalment to my Guide to Grub Guardian series. This episode we're taking a look into Chelsea Court, the second of the Marleybone maps.

This map was fairly simple and straightforward. The strategy mainly only consisted of using star towers due to the treeants which are a pain to take out without star towers. I placed the pet in a relatively centralised position and then placed the myth tower opposite it to get a similar damage output on both sides. The myth and pet tower's job is basically to get anything the star towers don't focus on, stuff like the ghouls and sometimes skeletons. The combination if very effective and works well to gain a fairly easy win on Chelsea Court.

Well, thanks for reading/watching and I hope you enjoyed!

Until next time!
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 9 Hyde Park

Hey everyone! I'm back today with another episode of my guide to grub guardian. In this episode we are entering Marleybone and firstly conquering Hyde Park.

The strategy for this map was rather different but fairly simple and got the job done. We, of course, starting out by placing out Epic fire pet and started the map with a star tower and a myth tower. These guys were able to take out the first wave with ease and after that, I upgraded the myth and bought and ice tower placed just above it to give the other towers more time to hit. Next, I took the ice to snowman and the myth tower to minotaur.

After this, I decided we needed a life tower so I put it in a spot to get the most out of it's range. I then began upgrading everything again, including the star tower and to finish, placed the final ice tower. A couple upgrades later and we were done!

Although this week was fairly short/easy, the maps will begin picking up in difficulty the further we go into Marleybone!

That's all from me folks! I hope you enjoyed and learned something from this episode/post and good luck in your grub guardian endeavours.

Thanks,
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 8 The Krokosphinx

Hey everyone! I'm back today with another episode in the guide to grub guardian series! This week we are tackling the final map of Krokotopia, The Krokosphinx. While this means we are near the end of Krokotopia, we are fast approaching Marleybone so I hope you're ready for that!

Anyway, the basic gist of things for this map relied heavily upon luck (to an extent) as we were using death towers which I try to avoid most of the time. However, even if you aren't that lucky, it's still almost a guaranteed victory, you might just need to try again for the gold, however, I was able to get it myself.

Basically, we start off with our pet as always and I placed him a bit to the left of the big gap so that we can fit in our other towers. Next up was a few death towers for the early rounds although the pet should probably be able to take them down, it's better safe then sorry. After this, I placed a few ice towers to keep them in range of the death for as long as possible and finally placed a Life tower (which gets all towers in it's range) to get those death towers shooting even faster.

The rest was consisted of more and more death towers and then levelling everything. I'm happy with this strategy, regardless of the use of death towers and hope you will be too.

Well, that's all from me for today folks! Hopefully you enjoyed and learned something too! And good luck with whatever Grub Guardian maps you're tackling yourself.

Thanks,
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 7 Pyramid of the Sun

Welcome to my seventh instalment of my guide to Grub Guardian! This time we're taking on the second last map of Krokotopia, the Pyramid of the Sun! This map doesn't have many options for a pets 2x2 required space and so I decided to place mine off to the left of the centre point, (placing on the right would most definitely give similar results) and got started.

The strategy for this episode included starting off with myth towers to get damage done on the smaller enemies and the life tower to get that damage out faster. After the myth towers were max, I bought a few ice towers and after, began investing into a star tower.

Seeing as this map brings lots of bosses on the last few waves, the star tower did incredible damage to them and I was just able to max it, therefore utilised the red laser.

Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I helped you out!

- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 6 Tomb of Storms

Hey everyone! Today is the day we take on the Tomb of Storms in our expedition to conquer grub guardian :)

We are slowly making progress and are beginning to reach the ending levels of Krokotopia. Once we do manage to get into the higher levels, we will be getting better and better rewards.

Anyway, onto the strategy. This episode wouldn't have been possible without the ice towers, the were and invaluable help and allowed the myth/star towers to put out big damage and allowed the fire towers to keep everything burning longer. The fire towers were used to get damage onto the big enemies and and to take out the masses of smaller enemies. Finally, the star tower was used to take out a majority of the big enemies on the final wave.

Combining them all together the Tomb of Storms was beaten.

Thanks so much for reading and hopefully I helped you out!

Until next time!
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardin Ep. 5 The Oasis

Hey everyone! Today I'm bringing you the 5th episode of my Guide to Grub Guardian series. In this episode, we've moved on from Wizard City and are entering Krokotopia. The first Krokotopian map that we are going to be covering is the Oasis.

The main strategy in this episode was once again focused around myth and ice tower which are both incredibly useful for many stages. However, this time around, there was no optimal position for my 4x4 pet to be placed so I decided on putting him in the most high traffic area which was the right hand side.

I also decided on spreading the ice towers out to get the maximum slow time on the enemies. The myth towers were slightly spread and had overlapping ranges to give as much map coverage as possible.

Hopefully you enjoyed and I helped you out on your Grub Guardian journey.

Thanks
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 4 Colossus Boulevard

Hello everyone! Today I'm back with the 4th instalment to my Guide to Grub Guardian. This time, we will be taking on the final level in Wizard City, Colossus Boulevard. As we progress further into the levels, so will the difficulty increase.

The strategy this time was very much focused around the supporting ice and life towers which were both very necessary. Without ice, it is likely that some of the ghouls might have got through due to their speed and without life, there is no way that the myth and fire towers could have given enough damage to defeat the level.

Aside from the ice and life towers, only the Epic Fire Pet and a few myth towers were used as the source of damage. They may not seem like much but with the fire taking out the larger groups of weaker enemies and the myth focusing more on the larger targets, the strategy was effective.

Hopefully you enjoyed and I will see you next time.

- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 3 Triton Avenue

Back again with yet another instalment of my guide to grub guardian, this time moving on to Triton Avenue.

The main strategy in this episode was focused around the star and ice towers. Having the ice towers at the start is an incredible bonus for this map, giving the star tower enough time to take out the larger groups of Gobblers and Cyclops.

The star towers really shine on this map and I'm very glad that I had them, the storm is also put in near the start to help the fire pet take out the faster, weaker, enemies.

Hopefully you enjoyed and if you're wondering when another non grub post is coming out, it will be out soon.

Thanks!
- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 2 Firecat Alley

I'm back! This time with my second instalment to my Guide to Grub Guardian series. In this episode, we're going to be taking a look at Firecat Alley.

Once again, I will be using my epic fire pet throughout this series unless I decide to go to a life for the much later levels.

The main strategy here, like most, was focused around the epic fire pet and the star tower. Then I just bought some ice towers to let the fire really take effect. Finally, I just added a couple fire towers at the start to make them burn the second they leave the gate. Although not all necessary, this worked well.

Hope this helped and I'll see you all next time.

- Blaze

Guide to Grub Guardian Ep. 1 Unicorn Way

Since the last time I tried to do a Grub Guardian guide didn't work too well, I will be starting the new one from the very start.

Now obviously, this video will not be lengthy in anyway whatsoever.. but here it is anyway (we have to start somewhere!).

Hope you enjoyed it! :)

A new episode of the Grub Guardian guide will be out shortly however, so don't worry.

Anyway, I'll see you all next time!

- Blaze

Blaze's Tips & Tricks No. 7 Process of Elimination

Have you ever been out fishing and trying to catch a certain fish? If so then I presume you have used (once or twice) the 'Reveal Fish School' Spell. Although this is a very useful spell, sometimes, (when having to continuously catch multiple fish of the same school) it is hard to remember which fish is which!

A way to fix this little problem is by eliminating the fish of schools that you don't want! 

Let's say I was after a life fish from this pond in Grizzleheim...

After casting the 'Reveal Fish School' spell, you can see that there are many fish not of the life school.

After a quick run through, eliminating all the non life fish, the pond looked a bit like this...

A few bites later...

And a Lifeacuda is mine!

Hopefully this trick helped you out on your fishing adventure and make sure to put it to good use!

Until Next Time!

- Blaze

The attack on Cronus

With Blaze's last post " The Secret Bosses of Aquila" in mind Morgrim decided to try to get the 'Blade of the Felled Titan' or the 'Exalted Amulets' from Cronus.  At 30 000 health we decided that Morgrim would hit, Blaze would boost and I would look after our health.

It was fun watching all the blades and traps go on, and with a total of 13 boosts Morgrim attacked with Sun Serpent.  

The result, as you would expect, was complete overkill and I think surprised us all with how big it ended up being.

Unfortunately, no good drops for anyone, so we will be back to try our luck again.

Alia :)

Housekeeping Rewards

Hey Everyone,

As you know I am currently resident in Zafaria, and I am excited about a new crafting quest and level! But I have had some houseeeping to do since I did the gardening challenge with Morgrim. You may remember that my bank was rather full.... in fact it had 46 pages of seeds in it and over 400 items! 75% of the items in my bank were Key Lime seeds. I just hadn't got round to clearing them out.

So I decided that enough is enough and it is time for some housekeeping. Not only was my bank over full, but my gold was low - down to 7,000 Gold.

So I equipped Winston. This is a pet that I haven't finished training, and I use him for feeding pet rewards. You'll see below how well he has done being fed excess items from my bank!

Key Limes give one of two  rewards when fed to your pet. One is Gold and the other is Pet Experience. As you can see 120 Gold or 2 Pet experience of Will.

It took a while to go through the process, there are rather too many clicks required, but overall Winston and my Gold did rather well. Winston now has 472 Pet experience.... not bad as I have not trained him at all at his current level, all 472 has come from feeding rewards, generally from excess Key Lime seeds!

As for Gold, I know it won't last long as it never does, but I made around 30,000 Gold by feeding Winston.

A good outcome, Winston is happy, my Gold supply is a little more healthy and my bank is no longer over flowing.

Time to find out the details of my new crafting quest - and you all know how much I love to craft.

Have fun, until next time!

Tabitha

Grub Guardian: The Helephant Tower

Here we are with another Grub Guardian post...

The Helephant Tower is a Wysteria map (costs crowns to buy, I HIGHLY suggest spending crowns on Wysteria maps). Wysteria maps are definitely worth the couple hundred crowns needed as you will win so many crowns items as rewards that easily make up what you spent.

Anyway, I completed this map using star towers. Yes yes, I know, more crowns items... But seriously. This level is so insanely hard to get a gold medal on that I couldn't get it after going at it for around an hour. I can finish it, just not perfectly.

Here is the video.

Ok, basic strategy is just centralising the Epic fire pet and letting the star towers do the work. They are seriously overpowered. Anyway, you need to put down the Ice towers for those Helephants near the start as they are pretty quick but move ridiculously slowly with ice slow.

Hope you enjoyed and I will have more Grub Guardian posts out soon.

See you next time!

- Blaze

The Other Side of the Challenge

Hey everyone,

Now the challenge is over, and I have had a little break from gardening, I thought I'd take time to let you know a bit more about the Key Lime seed and what I got out of the gardening challenge overall.

So the Key Lime seed is the one to go for if you want to level fast. Now it is a crown seed for 750 crowns and it can also be picked up in either the Skywyvern's or Wyvern's Hoard Packs. But you really only need one. Just one little seed and you will soon be off and running - trust me.

There are a few reasons why it is a great seed. The first is that it is extremely easy to look after. It has 3 needs, as you can see - but importantly it only has Rank 1 pests. This is really important if you are a lower level gardener, or if you are running your gardening to the maximum of your daily energy. The bug bolt only costs 5 energy, but even better is the Pungent Bug Spray - this costs a mere 10 energy and keeps the pests away for 48 hours. If, like me, you have more than one garden, each of them can have this spell running consecutively. Very handy.

The second reason is the speed this seed grows. This is what I spent most of my time working out when I was researching. You see, you can't just take the face value of the details you can get in Wizard101 Central, you need to also note the affect of the likes on your seed.
As you can see, the harvest time during Mature phase is 16-22 hours. Based on this I could expect one harvest a day. However, I had all the likes in place, and my harvest actually ran every 5-6.50 hours. What a difference! This meant that I could potentially harvest four times a day.
And I can honestly tell you that when time permitted that is exactly what I did!

Look at the following pictures I took during the challenge:

This plant is ready for harvest.... so I harvest it and the take another picture straight away - this indicates how quickly the next harvest will occur, and as you can see it is 5hrs and 8 mins. If you weren't sure if the power of likes are really that important - there is your answer. They are VERY important!

And lastly, this seed is one of those that just keeps giving. As you can see in the info box, each harvest will give you the chance of 1-seed, with another guaranteed at Elder. With my garden I found that each standard harvest gave me approximately a third again in seeds. So with 6 plants, I started off getting 2 back each harvest. The more you harvest the more seeds you get.


Trust me, you will end up with far more seeds than you know what to do with. Take a look at my bank for instance. I have 49 pages of seeds, of which 45 of them are Key Limes - that's over 300 seeds. And I have not been storing them all either.... Oh and I still have one garden left at Elder because I didn't need to harvest it to win the challenge. As you can see, my Bank is literally overflowing. A maximum of 100 items is holding 439!!

So what to do with all these seeds? Again, the Key Limes are a plant that just keeps giving. The best thing to do is feed them to your Pet. Just make sure it is a pet you are leveling up. Feeding your Pet will either give you 120 Gold or 2 Pet XP.

And don't forget to sell all those low level Pet snacks you get from the harvests. They may be low level, but enough of them will boost your gold considerably (see my post on that here).

Well that's it from me on this subject. Hope you have found this useful!

Until Next Time,
Tabitha

Feb was Fantastic!

You know, it seems like only yesterday when we were welcoming in 2014, now, we are well into it with March kicking off and the year is simply flying past.

Here at the Keep, it has been a big month.  The opening of February was the announcement of our secret project that we had been running for more than 6 months - the Manual of Mastery.  HERE and HERE).  With a few people now owning their own version of the software, it is starting to get people excited at that it can really do!
With that first post, followed by a little more of an explanation of how it worked, we ended up with the most comments we have had on any post!

It was a month when Pack-a-Palooza was back, we started our series on Grub Guardian, and Tabitha's Bazaar stalking started becoming a little bit creepy!   (only kidding of course Tab, we all do it!)

I had a rant at one stage about the joys(!) of being a Fire wizard. and even KingsIsle had some challenges on their hands with pets not casting Fairy!

Absolutely everyone (at high levels) has been waiting patiently - or not so patiently - on the Test Realm being opened again to see more of Khrysalis Part 2, and when it finally arrived, no update was forthcoming, although the updates with the Test Realm were very, very handy!  :)

During February, Tabitha got her first Mega Pet, Valentines Day came and went with some great, although sometimes a little confusing, specials in the Crowns shop and Tabitha also showed a hint of her competitive side, challenging Galen to a 'Buy Off' in the Bazaar on her quest for more Jade Chairs.

The Lost Pages event was back in the Spiral, and there was a little post in there to help people know what to do if their backpacks started filling up with gear they couldn't Sell.  I even ventured back into Wizard City to see if I could inspire some of the young magicians to taking their Wizards on, in the same way I was inspired all that time ago...

Interestingly, and what was very important for us, was the renewed focus in the Wizard101 Weekly.  This newsletter (free!) goes out each week chock full of useful Wizard101 facts etc.

The last big item of note is the introduction of a new Keep member this month. I am looking forward to his contribution and I hope it continues to be worthwhile for you, the reader.

So, that's it for February.  It was a big month!

As ever, feel free to leave some feedback on the kinds of things you would like to know more about, and we'll look to getting some Blogs up for you.

I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to March.  It should be a great month!

See you 'round the Spiral!

Morgrim

What if I can't sell it?

Before I bought a membership with Wizard101, my 80 backpack limit was constantly being breached, and I'd have to figure out how to clean it out again!  Since membership, with the backpack limit increased to 120, it is quite amazing to think that I have exactly the same problem.

Then again, isn't that the way life works? :)

So, when you have this issue, and your friend Professor Lincoln pops up, what can you do?  

Well, as it turns out, quite a lot really!  

You can start by putting items into your Bank (if it is not full too!).  You can also use your Shared Bank for those items you are able to share with your other character.  These two options are the obvious and most basic of ways to fix this problem, yet some people I have come across are not away of the ability to use the Shared Bank.

However, to actually get rid of items, I always start in the Bazaar.  Don't forget you can sell items directly out of your Bank while at the Bazaar. Before KI introduced this, it was quite time consuming to traipse backwards and forwards between your house and the Bazaar!!

Most things can be sold here and for decent prices too...but not every thing will sell.  Those things defined as "No Auction" cannot be sold at the Bazaar.

So, what then?

Did you realise that you can sell items back to the normal shops?  The shops in the Shopping District and around the Spiral will buy most items, Crowns or special, however even a normal shop isn't the best answer for a bursting backpack!

Funnily enough, once you have finished at the Bazaar, the next best place to go is Pet Pavilion and drop in on the Pet Shoppe Boys.  Not only will they buy your unwanted and most of your un-sellable items, they will also buy back your pets! (and this can be a real relief in the middle of a hatching spree!)

However, if you are out and about in the Spiral, or in a Dungeon, there is another nice feature that can be quite handy - The Quick Sell.  You can do it anywhere or anytime.  This will allow you to sell your items very quickly,  The money is not great, but it is very convenient.

Again, not everything can be sold using Quick Sell, but as an emergency it can be quite handy.  If the Quick Sell option doesn't appear, that simply means that item cannot be Quick Sold.

As a fallback position, there is always the opportunity to feed your item to your pet.  This can be useful for either Treasure Cards, Reagents or even Pet Experience...

...but as a final option, when all else fails - you can always just throw it in the Trash (Delete).

I know some of these sound silly or obvious, but I just know that finding about these options was something I learned over time.  I figure if I didn't know about it for a while, there is a fair chance that others might not have known about it either!

See you 'round the Spiral.

Morgrim

Alia'a Sightseeing through the Spiral - G

G - is for Grub Gardian

When I was looking for new furniture I found some of it was dropped by playing Grub Gardian.  Although I had heard of it before I had never had a reason to play it before.  After a few tips from Blaze I changed my death pet to my storm pet and was off on the very addictive tower defence game.

You can either play to train your pet or play to win gifts for your Wizard101 character.

Although I've only had one furniture drop, I'll definitely play it again to see what prizes I can win.

Good fun,
Alia

Gardening Limits II - The answer to Question 2!

So, have you figured out how many plants can be affected by a Large Area Spell?

There is a fair bit of chat about this online, so I thought it was high time to find out for sure.  This was a slightly painful experiment to set up as the plants and their needs took ages to line up just right.  That said, I'm pleased to announce that the experiment is complete and the results are in!

If you want to see for yourself, check this video:

It is clear that this garden is simply too large.  It is at the absolute limit for a Small Plot garden, and that means there are 76 of these little guys swaying in the breeze.

The spell goes up, the bees disappear...well, most of them do at least.  There are, surprise, surprise, 7 bees left.  This means that 69 of the plants have been successfully serviced by the Large Area Spell.

What are the implications of this?

Well the key one is, you do not need to stack a garden if you are using small plots! Additionally, any medium sized plots (at 37 plots per layer) would be complete overkill if they were stacked.

The other key thing is that Large Plots, at 14 per layer, can be stacked to 56 without any real challenges, and the remaining 13 plots...well, if you read my book on Extreme Gardening, you'll get a hint that will help you get those 13 plots as well, allowing a Large Plot garden of 69 plots.

So, now you know all there is to know about how many of each type of plot you can plant - and ultimately, there is no difference at a pure  'count' level.  You can get 69 of any plot type into any garden and, seeing as that is the limit for the Large Area spell, any more is simply wasted Energy.

As ever, love to hear your comments.

See you 'round the Spiral.

Morgrim