Oh yes, May Flower Sale...now that is worthwhile!

For any avid gardener, this is the sale for you!

Firstly, if you haven't tried them already, now is the time to invest in your EMPs. The Evil Magma Pea is easily the best choice of any seed.  See my free gardening book (link on the right) to see why!  Once you have one, keep your eye out for a 'Double Gardening Rewards' event to double your investment.

If you want to 'turbo level', grab a Key Limes.  You only need one or two to start as they multiply like crazy.  Great experience and fast growth cycles.

Then there is the solid Couch Potatoes.  My favourite when it comes to Mega Snacks and Treasure Cards, helping to level up your pet quickly and making you good money.  They are also great to watch, sitting there in front of the TV.

Even the Sword Fern can be fun, often dropping a Housing Item at Elder.

Remember, when you get into Gardening, don't forget to understand what things your plants Like and Dislike.  Grab a Tropical Garden Gnome for good measure.  Many plants like him and the more Likes you have, the faster your plants will grow.  Stay away from the Stinkweed.  If the name doesn't turn you off, the slow growth cycle of your plants should...

If you like stacking your garden to maximise your returns, it is hard to go past Moolinda's pack.  It just makes gardening so very easy.  Don't forget, you can also get this pack over at Grub Guardian if you are good enough!

Finally, if you plant for decorative effect, you can even pick up a planter in the current sale!

The Merle and the team have done another great job and selected an excellent range of specials.  Why not check them all out and see what is right for you?

Like I said - if you like Gardening, this is the perfect sale!

(BTW - If you are low on Crowns, one EMP and one Key Lime would be my suggestion)

See you 'round the Spiral!

Morgrim

Mastering Mega.....

You know Winston has been my choice of pet recently.... above Patch. And the reason is Pain Giver. Patch had Vengeance, Winston has Pain Giver..... but more importantly Patch is Mega and Winston is not. It's a funny thing - Winston has been my garbage collector. He has eaten all the stuff that flows out of my backpack and my bank - most notably all the Key Limes I had over in the challenge with Morgrim.

I never really trained him.... it was clear that had to change. Now Winston was already Epic, so it is time to start the journey to MEGA!!!
My game of choice is the Dance game, and as you can see it costs 10 energy everytime I play at this level. I had already completed my gardening, and had no desire to fish right now, so all energy reserves would be used for the game. Thanks to my Greenwarden's gear I have a starting position of 130, and I used 33 for gardening earlier. It wouldn't be enough to go to Mega, but let's see how I track!


You only need to get 3 our of 5 correct to win each round, but I still like to get it perfect :)

Each time I feed Winston Fancy Yoghurt. My gardening of EMPs takes care of my snacks, and as you can see I do have a few in my backpack. I choose the Yoghurt as they give Winston 50 XP each round. The other snacks are slightly lower.
Pretty soon I get my energy warning - not enough energy to play the game..... But I am not concerned! Grub Guardian takes care of both my Energy Elixirs and Moolinda Green Thumb Packs. So I redeem one of my Elixirs and get straight back into Dancing!

I play the dance game with the music on. I find that if I forget one of the latter steps remembering the music will often unblock the memory and help me get it right.

Now Winston started at a little over 200, and Mega needs 2000. Even at an average of 80% correct, that means each dance is worth 53. So I need something like 33 games to finish this. Yes, it can get boring - let's just hope the outcome is worth the time investment!

At this stage I need 2 more points until Winston is Mega. I know that I will not need any more Mega Snacks to complete this - one more game is required :)

What am I hoping for? I really don't know. I do know that I don't want to see any Pet Abilities...... so.... it is nice to see another May Cast spell. Winston now has Incredibly Infallible. This trait was my first ever May Cast spell back when my little Green Frog, Murphy, was at my side. It's definitely not a bad outcome.

Looking at his over stats - it's pretty good, but I need to hatch with some different pets. I'd like to trade Spritely for something else, and just have Fairy Friend for healing. But for now, with almost perfect stats and a good mix of spells behind him, I'm happy to have Winston at my side for a while longer!

 If any of you have suggestions for a hatching partner then please let me know, or ideas as to what in the mix would improve my hound.

Have fun, until next time!
Tabitha

Lighting the Fifth Candle

Drum Roll!!! We are nearly there... the fifth candle has now been lit!!!

And the prize being revealed today is a Major Fishing Elixir. For a whole hour you get 50% more chance of getting those fish you are after! Which is a great gift as we all received an Aquarium as part of this give-away and, of course, there is that Birthday Fish waiting to be found if you haven't secured yours yet! Time is running out as the end of September is drawing close now!

The other Birthday news is that a new set of items in the Crown Shop are now half price:

• Regular Keeper Aquariums Set
• Evil Magma Peas
• Mega Snack Pack
• Gold-Wrought Eagle
• Fennec Fox
• Red Barn Farm

Now I know a few of you will rejoice because the Mega Snack Packs are half price, but I would say "Don't go rushing in to buy these packs!". The reason is one a few will probably know well if you keep up to date on our Blog.... the Evil Magma Pea. Now these great little plants are a steal when they are half price. 

They reward you in different ways, but always with a Mega Snack Pack at elder. They are easy to look after and their life-cycle is pretty short if you have all their likes in place (one of which is the Red Farm Barn, which is also half price at the moment!). During that short life-cycle, you will get a host of Pet Snacks, Treasure Cards and Reagents. These are all good too - things like Aether and Sunstone. 

For me the TCs are great because I get my supply of Feint and Poison cards. Although I have these in my deck too, the TCs are just a little better and you can never have too many Feint cards imo!

Then at Elder you get a Mega Pet Snack. 

So you can buy 2 EMPs for the same price as the Mega Pet Snack is at the moment. That means that every few days you will get 2 Mega Snacks (in addition to some seriously good reagents!). And these are the gift that keeps giving. You get a seed back every harvest so you can continue to reap the rewards forever. If you want more information on gardening, see Morgrim's 1st Gardening Book which covers everything you need to start this worthwhile activity (top left on the blog).

Would love to hear what you decide to buy, and I hope the Gift today helps you to snare that Birthday Fish!

Have fun, until next time,

Tabitha.

Why Wouldn't You?

Hey Everyone,

Popped onto the Spiral to do some gardening this morning, and noticed that it's "Mega Snack Monday". That got me to thinking about how much my Mega Snacks would be worth in crowns, and I just had to work it out!

Now all my Mega Snacks are a result of gardening Evil Magma Peas. We have lots of posts on the Keep about these wonderful plants, but they have resulted in 248 Mega Snacks in my backpack. So lets do the sums:

248 Mega Snacks - all rank 9. (I am not including any rank 8 snacks in my calculations)

At 7 snacks per pack, you would need to buy 36 packs. Remember this is rank 9, when you buy the packs you get rank 8 and 9!

They normally cost 2,500 Crowns, so that would cost you 90,000 crowns, but currently they are 40% off, so that reduces to a mere 54,000 crowns. Now the best deal on Crowns is the Crown Sale that gives you 50% extra, if you spend $80. So the best possible price for the Pet Snack sale is $80 hard cash, with some Crowns left over.

I was chatting to Morgrim about this, and he has 475 rank 9 snacks. Wow - that's a lot, and yes they are all from gardening. Let's do the sums again.

475 Mega Snacks - all rank 9, at 7 snacks per pack you would need 68 packs! At normal price this would set you back 170,000 crowns, and even while the sale is on this is still 102,000 crowns. As you can see, $80 cash will not be enough to buy this amount - and this is the sale price. Imagine how much it would be at full price!

So my question to you all is - If you are not gardening then why not?

Have fun, until next time,
Tabitha

Mirror Lake - Making it Interesting!

Hi all,

It has been quite a while since I have last had an opportunity to post!  It seems like an eternity.  There are just times that real life really gets in the road :(

Nonetheless, Blaze and I decided we'd have a bit of fun the other day and head on back to Mirror Lake.  If you have read our gardening books, you'd know that the reason that lots of people like farming this (semi)-challenging dungeon is that the drops are great.  Mega-snack (Pixie-stix) and high energy gear are the real
rewards here.  These are a good all-round snack and are great for most forms of pet training.

Given that this is a Zafaria dungeon, it isn't really that hard once you get up a few levels, so for Blaze and I, there was a choice to be made.  Blast straight through it like bats out of hell, or give ourselves a challenge.  We were in a mood for a challenge, so we laid out some rules and headed for the World Gate!

The Rules
This dungeon (for those that haven't played it) has a bit for everyone.  Lots of bad guys, and interesting bad guy strategies.  So, for us, being Death and Fire, we decided that we would attack it in this way:

• First fight, only Rank 4 Spells
• Second fight, only Rank 6 Spells
• Third fight, only Rank 8 Spells
• Finally, just go for it!

For those Fire-types out there, this is a real challenge.  We are fighting multiple opponents, but, other than the first and last fights, all the Attack All Enemies spells are out of bounds!  It was challenging and frustrating.

So, we set up our decks and off we went.

The first fight, I had my meteor.  Bulked up and with Blaze hitting well too, it was over pretty promptly and Tse-Tse was heading back to Morganthe with his tail between his legs.

OK, fight two.  No meteor, dragon or anything else useful against multiple ghostly opponents.

This wasn't a fun fight - look at those noob-pips!  Worst of all, this shot was taken just as my blades were getting quaked off me...

So, what do you do when you get lots of noob-pips?  Play a nice off school spell :)  I had made sure that I had loaded up on a few 6 pips off-school spells in my treasure deck, so I decided to have a little fun.

Given that Blaze was on my left, and he was Death, look who decided to join us?

Yes, that's right, the increasingly confused Malistaire!  (is he good?  is he bad?  is he dead?  just what is going on here?)  And who would have thought it?  The guy can fight!

(if anyone is confused by this, when playing Grub Guardian, you get quite a few Minon pack drops...Malistaire is one of the guest appearances)

Well, it went on from there.  We finished the 2nd fight a little slowly, and the 3rd even more so, but after that Blaze and I just opened up and ripped through the final fight.

All in all, a solid session.

For those of you who are getting up in the levels - what kinds of 'games' and challenges do you set yourselves?  It is interesting to hear about how other Wizards spend their time, so drop us a note and let us (here at the Keep) know a little more about how you play.

See you 'round the Spiral!

Morgrim

(it's good to be back!!)

Pet Training - The PERFECT tip

Pet training.  If you want that perfect pet, this is simply unavoidable.  It is a task that some relish and a task that others fear or simply hate!

One of the challenges for any trainer is the speed to leveling up between stages.  There are lots of blog entries here at the Keep on how to accelerate this with snacks.  You can find them by clicking here, here and in Blaze's Tips and Tricks here.

Well, that is certainly part of the equation.  The other part is the actual training itself.  Typically, die hard pet trainers will always go for the Dance Game.  It is fast and easy to get a perfect score is easy when know how.
It is funny, but I think there are two types of people that enjoy this game.  The counters, and the music lovers.  Funnily enough, I love music and thought this was the game for me.  It seems that my basic premise that this would help me master this game was wrong from the outset!

Keeping my music up, I would charge into every game listening carefully for the change in sound in order to know which note to click on, when and how many.  I would usually average 6 although sometimes I only got 5 right, and sometimes all 7, but wow, that 7th note made it so much harder.

I was discussing this with Alia one day and she told me she didn't even listen to the music, she just counted the rhythm of the arrows and formed a pattern from one to the next.  I know Alia does this with numbers, so it did make sense that she'd do it here too.  The funny thing was, she was soooo fast!

Stubborn me, I kept at my practice of listening for the music, but with constant distractions, this just became a real challenge and I found myself getting a perfect score less and less often.  So...well...I swallowed my pride and turned off my sound.

OK, I started with a couple of 6's, but they were so easy?!  I could even get them if someone started talking to me?  What is this?  There might be something in this after all!

Well, times have changed now.  I fly into the Dance Game, sound off, watching and counting those flashing arrows.  It is strange, but sometimes you aren't sure of the next one, but your fingers just know.  And before you have it, another Perfect score.  Now, I am disappointed when I don't get a 7!

Oh, one last tip.  With the 7th note, focus on remembering the last arrow.  It can sometimes help you count backwards to make sure you have it right.

And as you can see, my regular supply of Mega Snacks make this activity soooooo much quicker!

BTW- if you have any other Pet Training tips, be sure to let me know what you do.  I enjoy being able to keep learning.

Good luck with your training and...

See you 'round the Spiral!

Morgrim

Doing the Happy Dance Right Now!!!

As you know, I hatched my Toaddle pet with a Coldfire dragon some time ago. I recently wrote about revealing abilities here. The last couple of days I have been training Baby Chester (who has been renamed to Murphy now) to Epic. The hatch has already proved itself worthwhile, so I was curious to see what other talents he would receive. So far he has 2 talents from each, plus the original Cleanse Charm card at Baby.

Last night was the big night, and boy I am one happy Wizard right now!! I just had enough Mega Pet Snacks to see me through, though a couple were level 8 snacks. Still they each gave 30 XP, and 10 Intellect - which is the only Stat not at full now, so that was a bonus!

Anyway - drumroll....... he picked up one of the original Toaddle's traits - as you can see.... Incredibly Infallible!!

This is absolutely awesome. Take a look at these Pet Stats!!

This pet is super awesome, and I will be continuing with the training to see what else he is hiding!

But for now I have to get some more Mega Snacks, so back to Gardening for a while. I may have to go over to Savarstaad Pass to farm some of the Troubled Warriors to get some more. If you want to know more about that then be sure to read Blaze's Tips and Tricks about Mega Snacks here.

Until next time,
Tabitha