Valerian's School for Wayward Wizards

What happens when you get reported?

2012-01-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

Reporting or getting reported is probably one of the least understood things in Wizard. So many times a person will go off swearing (usually in PVP) and end up getting reported. What pretty much always follows is the reportee reporting everyone else because they think that they can somehow get you in trouble. I will sometimes warn them to avoid that but they never believe me so I thought I'd paste in the official answer from Wizard 101 faq.

"When you report someone, or you are reported, a message is sent directly to Mr Lincoln that includes the chat logs of everything that was said before and after that report.

Mr Lincoln then reads the log and assess the situation. He determines how bad the offense was, looks up prior offenses for the reported individual, and based on that assessment he issues sanctions such as muting or banning and sends an email to the offending account explaining the violation and the sanctions.

If the report was falsely made, that is determined as well, and the player who made the false report is investigated as to whether or not they have made previous false reports. False reports are just a egregious as valid ones, and similar sanctions can be levied against repeat offenders of false reporting.

Everything that a player enters into the chat window is logged. These larger chat logs are also routinely checked for those infractions that are not reported."

So don't false report people especially if you're doing it out of revenge. As a general tip most people usually get frustrated and say stuff and others will usually let it slide unless people keep going on and on. So if you are the one losing it and you say stuff just count yourself lucky and keep your chats private. It's also smart of you to police yourself so that if you ever do have to report a nutty person that you don't get yourself punished in the process.

See you around,

Vale

PVP in a new world

2012-01-21T23:48:00.000-08:00

Something odd has been happening with crit and crit block. In a PVP tonight we got hit with several waves of crit from fire wizards and our crit blocks didn't crit block! What's up with 3 wizards with 115 crit block and 120 crit block having only maybe 1 block on one wizard out of about 4 critical spell waves?

I read through the forums on Wizard101.com and with all the questions about crit and crit block they were all answered very cryptically. The thread master even closed the thread after specifically dodging pretty much all the questions about how it actually works. But a number of astute wizards seemed to be insistent on a mathematical formula which doesn't quite bear out in practice. The typical guesstimate is that every 5 points of crit give you a 1% + chance of critical hit. This would mean, if true, that for 100 crit you have a 20% chance of getting a critical hit. But this doesn't explain why fire wizards can crit pretty much every hit at around 170 crit which should only crit one out of every 3 tries. It also doesn't explain why crit block used to be almost rock solid at 110+. There was a time when 100+ crit block blocked nearly all of the time. Now that seems to not be the case at all. So it leads back to my paranoid theory that we are looking at an adjusted percentage either from a recent game update or a synergistic effect between spells on the PRNG (pseudo random number generator).

Since Wizard hasn't announced adjusting crit and crit block in the update notes of late I have to go deeper down the rabbit hole and say that it's linked somehow to infallible or that crit block itself is being pierced by shield pierce stats. Our PVP opponents seemed to be un-phased by the fact that were were constantly critted without block. Either we were on the receiving end of the mother of all bad virutal dice rolling streaks in history or there's something to this theory. (my luck has been known to be bad from time to time... my eyelid still twitches when I hear the word "bolt")

I asked some of my savvy pvp friends and they didn't answer yet as to whether or not they've heard that pierce stats or infallible work this way. I'll keep asking around, but based on the sudden extreme popularity of infallible domes in PVP I'd say that people have sensed that it's a game-changer.

Back to the question of the formula for crit and crit block my sense is that it's a sliding scale even if not by intent. If you play a fire wiz and an ice wiz you'll know what I mean. I think that the formula is probably something like this:
if (crit% is less than 100) then crit-chance = crit/500
**** this is a straight 1/5 ratio or maximum of 20% or 100 crit = 20% chance****
if (crit% is greater than 100) then crit-chance = crit / 400
**** this would mean that 200% crit would give a 50% chance ****
I'm sure this would work into an equation that would accommodate the sliding scale from noob crit up to the super-crit of the 160+ range but I'll let you noodle on this for a bit.

Historically, crit block seemed to be the exact inverse of this. A crit block of 100 would give you an 80% chance of blocking the spell. Based on tonight's experiment something drastically reduced those odds. I won't rest until I get some answers.

Let me know what your experience shows!
Until then, good luck in your battles.
Vale

p.s. Jose had a good point that the new higher gear seems to behave a little differently than the celestia in terms of crit per the numbers.
Also Eric has a theory that crit block gets minused from someone's crit number and then there is a chance given the remainder of crit for you to get nuked. If people are actually getting into the 200+ range and a good block number is 112+ then you have a fair chance of getting hit. I don't think it should be that you get critted 4/5 hits without any block. That seems excessive in any probability model but until we find a link between infallable and crit block failure then this may be the best theory proposed so far.

Does your level affect card pack items?

2012-01-18T23:10:00.000-08:00

Yes! If you are close to level 70 but not there yet you may have reason to wait until you level up to open that new card pack you bought. Some items you get from the card pack will apparently auto adjust down to the level you are or just below. This is to keep you from winning items that you can't use - which is cool in a strange kinda way.

But you may want to consider leveling up to one of those magical cut off levels where you can get new gear. (usually a level ending in a 2 or an 8) In this case though I hear that you can score a level 70 wand if you wait until you're level 70 to open a Raven's hoard pack. I haven't won anything like a wand yet in half a million packs *a small exaggeration* so I'm not the best judge of that! But I hear it from very reliable sources :D The level 70 wand rules from that stats that I've seen.

I wish there was an accuracy spell I could cast on myself just before I open a card pack so I don't get stuck with wallpaper, stones and chicken platters again.

Vale

Crown Sale

2012-01-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

Check out test realm and while you're waiting for it to load go to the web site and buy some crowns. There's no better time to get crowns than when they're 50% off!

In the past they've always realeased something amazing just after the sale ends!!! So you might want to buy some and hold on to them for a few days to see what the sweet new stuff is!

~ Vale

Test Realm is Out!

2012-01-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Time to train your pets and see what talents they get. And test the new transforms while you're at it!

Log into the Wizard101.com web site if you don't have the test realm program and install it.

See you there!
Vale

New game at the KI Free Games

2012-01-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a sucker for tower defense games. They're kind of challenging and mindless at the same time. So I was thrilled to see that KI has added a new game that gives you XP for your PET (by the way, if you didn't catch that I said for YOUR PET) What's not sweet about that?

I played it and it's pretty basic even while being complicated at the same time. Sadly it ends after two rounds and you may get about 4 pet XP for 4 of your Wiz's pet energy. I'd like to see it go on until your pet food gets all eaten like what happens at our house when Rocky and Jack attack the food dishes.

Anyway, it's new and different and lets you train your pet while playing on the browser so what's not to like?

Vale

Here's a funny for ya. Idk if you can follow it exactly but it's a little cartoon of a duel my friends and I had recently. Sadly we don't duel so much any more due to death weakness spam (spam is anything that there is too much of). But this duel was a fun one. What made it really funny was that I messed up big time and dispelled their life guy just as my team-mate beguiled the life guy. That usually leads to a wasted turn and the loss of the game. This was one strange case where that didn't happen! Their on-the-ball storm wiz fixed our problem for us with a rare move.
I have to give gratz to the other team. They were really good and we wouldn't have won without first cast.

So if you can follow this zany little cartoon you may find it entertaining.

Reagent Buying

2012-01-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

So it would seem that millions of you are embarking on your Zafaria crafting gear based on the scarcity of sand stone and stone blocks. I went through all the realms on Saturday and collected a few stone blocks until a full trip of the realms produced 0 (zero) stone blocks. It reminds me of the Zorg guy on 5th Element where he says "Zero stones, zero crates!"

I spent days at the bazaar trying to pick up some crafting items only to see several hundred available for a millionth of a second and then gone... This happened so many times that after I took a breather to clear my head I began to experiment with the purchasing interface at the bazaar. Within a few minutes I was able to do what I think others were doing that were ALWAYS beating me to buying the items.

THIS METHOD WORKS WELL ON FREQUENTLY ADDED ITEMS THAT ARE GOING TOO QUICKLY FOR REGULAR BUYING

Here's what you do:
1) Spot the item in the list that you want and click buy multiple (it will have already been sold out by the time you even see the item so don't stress out)
2) Click the slider on the buy multiple to the maximum or as close as you can. Clicking it one at a time will take forever and will only frustrate you so just click in the bar near the right side of the bar near the Max marker.

3) Click buy - it will probably say you didn't get any
4) Click on the Buy Multiple button again, and repeat steps 2-4 as quickly as possible. Sooner or later you'll see this wonderful message! (otherwise you're never going to see it)

Using this method you will eventually get some of the item. This sniping method is the only logical explanation for how you can have 270 items and then 0 in less time that it takes to click "Buy" and "Ok"
I hate to give out these kind of tips because it means that I'll get fewer items in the bazaar when I'm desperate but given how frustrated I was the other day, I can't bear the thought of how frustrated younger wiz must be that can't manage to buy any crafting items they need.
See you at the bazaar until they add a good place to get sandstone :)

Vale
And P.S. for the people looking to find the Conga drum recipe... it's sold by the crafting guy in the commons of Celestia. Why does Celestia have conga drums and not the more well-travelled Marleybone? Hard to say but space aliens like music too! So keep that in mind when you start your crafting quest in ZF.

Gear Shocker

2011-12-28T22:48:00.000-08:00

Some friends and I were dueling with a Myth, Storm, Life, Balance combo of wiz tonight. After the duel and the usual rudeness dispensed by the more stunning team... I "statted" their myth wizard. I was more than a little shocked to see 48% resist all myth gear!!!!!!!!!!
The best outfitted Ice I know has about 55%! Maybe it's possible to set up more than that for ice gear but I've not seen it yet.

I have to admit it's frustrating to be the "tank" class and not actually be a tank compared to bigger hitting classes. What's good for Myth is certainly good when they get together with storm it seems. Frustrating that the health/shielding isn't really working for ice with pierce stat and the pierce that comes with accuracy boosts. And that's just on the shield side... a lot of the wizards now have roughly the same health as Ice. In the old days Ice had at least 30% health on most of the schools. Now it's lucky to have 5%. But the sadness doesn't stop there... the main damage schools are hitting harder percentage wise as well with incredible tough plus and insane critical. This leaves ice in the dust in several statistics where ice's shielding would usually put it on par or close footing.

Critics would say the big per-pip ice shields are the balancing factor, but with pierce, and the other shield breakers readily available and quake and readily available, steals etc, you can't keep them on for long. (believe me, I've tried)
Something to ponder if you're about to start an ice wiz with the intent of growing him up for arena. Other schools are almost as good at tank and hit way harder.
Vale

p.s. This last post is a lot of frustration talking. I'm frustrated in general with PVP at the moment. Death weakness spam seems to be the staple of 3v3 and 4v4. Paired with a storm to throw Siren that makes all your blades go away and hits you for an insane amount and put a fizzle on everyone. I've also been gearing up for a rant about insane life dispel casting as well but that's another story. Maybe in time I'll see some way around the spam, but for now I'm leaning toward bringing back the wall of shame that I used to have for chainers. I'm not going to say who was spamming tonight but his name rhymed with Jeffrey Dragonbunter ;D Thanks Jeffrey for reminding me to speak up about a growing problem.

Merry Christmas! - Peace and good will toward all

2011-12-25T22:40:00.000-08:00

I was having so much fun today I almost forgot to post. The twins Cody and Logan were not thrilled about having Christmas on a Sunday. This year being the first that we haven't had guests or family to help the time feel extra special. Add on to that, we didn't have snow this year and everything seemed a little odd! However the spirit of the season and pumpkin pie fix just about everything even snow-less, guest-less holidays.

From our IRL family and Wiz family to yours, we wish you peace in this new year. I hope you will also find opportunities to be charitable as it seems like there is a lot of trouble in the world these days and extra kindness is needed in a big way.

If you have any projects or ideas on charitable causes via your blogs etc please let me know and I'll try to help you promote them and or assist. All in all, make this the year of making a difference.

Peace and good will to you!
~Vale

Changing realms for fun and profit

2011-12-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

Wizards who have played Wizard101 for a long time know things that are hard for new players to figure out especially for those without open chat. So in answer to a question on a crafting post I thought I'd show those that don't know how to change realms a quick how-to.

Changing realms can help with:
a) finding more crafting material including more items per pick-up unless someone has beat you to it
b) getting away from a crowd if you can't get your team into an instance because there are too many random people joining
c) help you collect more items quickly in collecting quests
d) can help you find more of a particular kind of monster to fight
e) can increase your chances of collecting drop items

First click on the Gear on the far right tab. Then click on the dark spheres on the top tab set. (These are the realms) You will then see the Realms controls below...

You will generally want to pick a realm that is in the normal to perfect range. If the computer serving up the realm is big it may have several areas within that realm. They're basically like additional realms just on that same server. When you pick a realm and go to it you will notice that everything is the same except there may be fewer or more people.

So play around with it if you haven't used it and if you do use realm hopping you probably know these tricks plus a few. Do write us with tips or ideas you think new and old wizards need to know.

Thanks!
Vale

It's about time I decorated for Christmas!

2011-12-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

My friends were prompting me to get into the spirit and change my header. They were sporting some holiday colors so I dug up some old clothes out of my backpack, ironed them, dyed them. We tried to get some photos in the commons in front of the big tree but ended up having to go to Amber Song's house to get pictures in front of the Christmas tree.

Duncan, Kestrel, Amber and Kelly were kind enough to wait through about 20 minutes of photo taking (or so it seemed). In the end Kestrel, the photographer in real life, got better shots than I did.
I appreciate my friends and how they make my life brighter. I appreciate my readers for being willing to put up with me and make my job feel worthwhile. I hope that you all get to be near family and friends whether IRL or on Wizard and make some memories. (And maybe take some pictures!) See the post Virtual Tourist in a Virtual World to find out about taking pictures and how to get good camera angles and get rid of the clutter on your screen.
See you around the wintry spiral!
Vale

Code for Wizard free lights

2011-12-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

Wizard101 is giving free Christmas lights to decorate your house with. Sign into the web site and redeem your code lights

https://www.wizard101.com/game/twelve-days-wizard/free-lights

I had trouble getting in with IE9 so you may want to try Chrome or Firefox if the page won't load.

On the 11th day of Wizard...

2011-12-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

Check out the Wiz poetry contest! The winner gets 60,000 crowns and a special mystery holiday pet!

So be thinking up some good winter themed rhymes and go to Wizard's facebook page to enter or to this URL: poetry contest entry page

Have fun WINNING!
~ Vale

The 12 Days of Wizard

2011-12-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

On the twelfth day of Christmas Wiz gave to us... a moose? Well, that's how the song goes anyway. This one is not a promo for them to give away, but it's for sale. Proceeds go to charity so this is a good moose to have if you want to have a nice ride and know that you're doing some good at the same time.
This one seems to go 40% faster than your wiz and provides presents of some mysterious type. We'll have to wait and see what that's about but I'm guessing maybe it gives a crafting or few wiz coins each day. IDK. Let me know if you get one before me.

https://www.wizard101.com/game/twelve-days-wizard/chrismoose

See you around the spiral ~ Vale

Spells I most want to see

2011-12-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

Do you have any cool spell ideas? Here are a few that I'm hoping KI will consider adding.

Spy - Allow you to peek at an opponents spell selection.

Immunity - Pick a player on the opposing team. See a standard set of their school's attack spells. Pick one and if it's the one they actually cast you have immunity against it. Doesn't work on non-attack spells.

Blind - Make an opponents card hand appear greyed out. They have to guess which of several cards they can't see is the one they want. They can still cast but they don't know what it is they cast.

Proc My Pet - Make your pet have a 90% chance to cast it's may cast spells for 3 turns.

Rescue Pet - Put your life force into your pet for one turn. X-pips. This makes you immune from hits for one turn. Your health is returned from your pet on the next turn.

Reverse - Just like in Uno, this spell changes the caster's turn from second cast to first cast.

Love spell - Make someone on the other team your helper for the entire battle. 14 pips.

Switch lives - Put your opponent into your spot where they receive the hit meant for you. (kind of like beguile but puts you on your opponents team as well for 1 turn.

Poisoned pill - Cast on yourself for 1 turn. If an opponent kills you it kills them instead even if you only had 10 health and they hit you with a minor strike for the killing blow.

Ultra-charge - sacrifice yourself to add the ultimate blade 100% to your team mate.

Upside down - make the tough rating on cards opposite so that strong hits are weak and weak hits are strong.

Final sacrifice - give up your remaining life points in a match to fully heal your team.

Violence ward - increase likelihood of being missed by a spell entirely.

Bull in a china shop - a huge bull runs around critically and randomly damaging players unless they have a significant amount of Violence warding.

If you have some cool spell ideas please comment and I'll add them.

Vale

Fire PVP and Rowan's book launch

2011-12-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

My buds and I jumped into all fire PVP tonight with a couple high level wiz and a couple level 60. Except for a lot more fizzle and therefore some untimely deaths it was pretty easy pickings. It seemed to me that my fire was missing some gear but I haven't heard that's been a problem so I have to assume my memory has gone bad or something. (7 crit block is just nasty for pvp) It also felt like crit procs are down even though my wiz stats are the same. Has anyone noticed this? Storm wiz didn't have any problem throwing crits constantly which is great if you're questing with one but not so cool on the receiving end in pvp.

We took some turns in 3v because there were no teams in 4v and reported a few people, complemented a few people, won some and lost some. But most of all it was nice to see my buddies again. It's been a busy week with the launch of Rowan's YA paranormal book "Become". (Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com) We just got through with her IRL launch party and book signing at the karate studio. That was fun! Wish you all could have been there to join the fun and see the demos.

See you online!
Vale

Pet for long-time Wizards

2011-11-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Wizard101 is sending out a major thank-you to LONG TIME players in the form of a new rare pet. What does it look like you ask? Something like this!

So if you're a long timer... check your email.

Enjoy!

Vale

My conversation with Morganthe

2011-11-27T22:34:00.000-08:00

It's not so much that I oppose you but I really need the XP!

I told Ambrose he should have added a school locker combination lock! Those things never open on the first try.

Big deal. I think I have about 5 of those in my bank.

Well, maybe you're getting closer to being a match for me then!

Snack? I'm more like a happy meal... I hate spiders but squishing them is what I do best.

Hear the horn? Just send a text it's easier and you can send little frowny faces with your evil messages.

A thousand wild bolts and leviathin later... victory!

Why do rhymes always go with evil plans and not with good plans? I'll think one up, just give me a minute... Like to hear it? Here it is: "Ice team will form, frost will fall, Morganthe will get pwned and give lots of XP for all..." Yeah! That's my un-evil plan rhyme.

~ So Morganthe becomes super powerful after getting her deck of shadows. It seems to me that she is inferring our next encounter will have something to do with Darkside. I guess we can't be certain but it might make sense that she would try to attack Wizard City by way of Darkside.

What is your theory about how Morganthe will return? In a new world or in an existing one?

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!
~Vale

Finishing Zafaria

2011-11-21T21:04:00.000-08:00

A couple friends were kind enough to give me a trip to the end of Zafaria on a private safari if you will... We got a video of the drum puzzle at the Elephant Graveyard. It's tricky so you might want to check it out before you spend too much time.
After that we went to the final instance to chase down Morganthe who seems pretty shy about facing us for some reason. Ultimately her minions are quite the pain... first a set of ice minions then a set of storm with around 10,000 health give or take a little. They get good power pips and throw some big spells. Not to mention they will really pick on a person especially if their health is low. You can generally redirect them if another person hits but beware giving them too much time to focus on one person. We took some crit bolts and some tritons and leviathins.

I got some video of some of the battle and the final scene cut with Morganthe. It's pretty short but lets us know that she's perhaps growing more powerful than ever. (not good)
Anyway, I'll try to post those up as soon as I can get Youtube to convert them. If not I can host them on one of my sites.
There is big XP to be had in the final battles! Be sure to pop an XP elixir and go have some leveling fun. I didn't use an elixir but leveled twice! It's good to have buddies who have lots of time on their hands! (A hand-up is always appreciated)

See you around!
Valerian

ps: Here is the location of the first Monkey in Zafaria.

Rumor has it new world is being released in the morning!

2011-11-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

I've heard it now from several reliable sources (Suri, Duncan, and Fallon and Wizard 101's book of faces... facebook) that the new world is being released in the morning. KI does like their Friday releases!

If only I had enough warning to take the day off to celebrate!

See you in Zafaria tomorrow!
~ Vale

Book Party Launch

2011-11-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

We got together at Suri's house last night for the book launch. We gave away some pets and customizeable signs and a book! Rowan Watertamer (Ali Cross) did an intro to her book and did a reading from it. We also did some impromptu duels at Suri's arena.

I recorded a video but it turned out slightly too long to play so I'm posting some pictures instead.

If you like young adult paranormal fiction why not go check it out? Personally, Ali's writing is engaging and immersive. She writes great action and has put out the first book in a series that is intense and will keep you reading. http://www.alicross.com/p/become.html

If you have an amazing "first" in a virtual world, be sure to contact us to help you pull it off!

~ Vale

Another first for our blog!

2011-11-10T21:20:00.000-08:00

To check out more about the book Become and attend the online launch party and our wizard launch party go check out this YA/A thrill-ride on: http://www.alicross.com/p/become.html

Getting ready for Zafaria

2011-11-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

For those that are not yet done Celestia you might want to get a move on! To get into Zafaria you need to be done the Trial of the Spheres in order to unlock the new world. So for those of you grinding through the Science Center or the Crustacean Empire (less frustrating than the Science Center)... you are almost done! Don't give up! Organize a questing party with your friends and finish up.

See you there!

Here are some pictures from my last tour there :)

~Vale

Zafaria coverage Day 3.

2011-11-05T09:51:00.001-07:00

Welcome to zafaria day three! Lot's more has been found, but like yesterday, today is about spells.

Today we have the last of the spells!

I can't help but be sad by the death one.

it does around 825 to a single enemy and convert. thats all. not really much.

This is a pic of chimera,

310 damage of life death and myth to a single enemy.

I'm still waiting for a video of basillisk, to see what it's really like, but hopefully coming soon!

Zafaria Coverage Day 2

2011-11-04T08:32:00.001-07:00

Hey guys! This is day two of zafaria test and we have some spell pics!

More coming soon!

We're still missing exact numbers on the death spell, the katzenstein type one, but it looks good. also, missing balance spell stats.

We have seen myth spell, but I Havent got a pic of it yet.

We also have 2 new astral spells:

Mend; +20% heal

Berzerk; +40 outgoing heal +30 ingoing heal.

I hope you guys have fun in Zafaria! Keep testing!