Merry Christmas Greetings from Ditto!
Just wishing all my friends, fans, and followers a happy and joyful holiday!!
Ditto faces the Test of the Mind… and finds rocks
As part of my adventures in beautiful and tranquil Mooshu, I must face the tests of Mind, Body, and Spirit. the first test, the Test of Mind, is traditionally only given to monks, and I am apparently the very first furry orange monster to attempt it. I pass the test by apparently being able to see rocks. It wasn’t all that tricky, come to think of it.
All kidding aside, I have to say there was a really wonderful message in this quest – the ‘Book of Celestial Wisdom’ stated that Happiness never decreases by being shared. That’s a really wonderful sentiment, made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Oh Ok – warmer and fuzzier….
Thanks for that nugget of wisdom, Kingsisle. Really made my day.
The Daring Adventures of Ditto – Episode 16! Ditto Saves Santa!
Here is Episode 16 of ‘The Daring Adventures of Ditto’ – Ditto and Madame Jasmine are on special assignment to the North Pole to save Santa! As originally heard on Ravenwood Radio episode 31 – enjoy!!
Crafting Bloopers in Mooshu
I was making videos in Mooshu and thought I was on the ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ quest, but it turns out I was actually on the crafting quest, which was fine but kind of amusing. In the middle of that, however, I had a Java update on my laptop and it froze the game, so it turned into kind of a double-blooper… Well I thought it was funny anyway.
Ditto’s Holiday Video Bloggy Thingy!!
Hello everyone and happy holidays! Here is my video bloggy thingy, where this week I talk about what furry orange monsters think about the holidays, my big Twitter update, and what I want for Christmas! As always, enjoy and I’ll see you in the spiral!!!
Ditto’s Current Games – Dec 17th
Here I am, back with another THRILLING blog about the games I’m playing and what I’m doing… and this week we’ve got some great new stuff in my older games, and a new game that has rocked my furry orange world… I think many of my Wizard 101 friends will agree, too.
Wizard 101
As always I start with that game which is nearest and dearest to my heart, Wizard 101. Of course as people know, I have made it to MooShu, and it is SO nice!! It finally feels appropriate to be riding a Koi mount through the lush green landscape, surrounded by gentle streams and tranquil settings. I absolutely LOVE it here, and so does Madame Jasmine!
Ditto and Madame Jasmine Exploring MooShu
I haven’t tried gardening yet – I will, I promise, but right now it’s more about exploring the wonders of Mooshu, since it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything but grimy old Marleybone..
LOTRO
I jumped into LOTRO ‘for a couple minutes’ this week to check out the winter festival they’ve been promoting. ‘A couple minutes’ ended up being about four hours! My jaw dropped…. I’ve never seen anything like it, to be honest. Their winter festival is in a complete instance, a beautiful snow-covered village with lit trees and dancing revelers and really interesting quests, with many layers of interaction. There is one quest line that has you rousting a bunch of what are essentially homeless people off the streets, but then you’re given an opportunity to have a change of heart and donate a bunch of festival tokens to these same poor unfortunate souls. I don’t know what happens after that, but it’s wonderful!
A Hobbit who was partying a little too hard
LOTRO does continue to impress – it’s still a little overwhelming at times, but the game is just so pretty, and the quests are really immersive and fun.
The Game of the Week
Zynga’s ‘WarStorm’
OK, I promised myself as soon as I joined Facebook that I wouldn’t fall into the ‘Zynga’ trap of Farmville and Frontierville and Mafia Wars and all those other mindless Zynga games.
I failed.
WarStorm - Card based combat
WarStorm is a new Zynga game based around your standard collectible card game, similar to Magic the Gathering. There are different ‘armies’ – Human, Elf, Undead, etc… and there are specific cards for each, and you create ‘squads’ – basically small decks featuring a leader, some infantry, and some ‘special forces’ type cards that have special triggered abilities. There are also artifacts and spells you can add to your deck if your leader/general has the space for them. There’s a lot of complexity, but not TOO much.
Combat is standard CCG combat – random cards drawn, cards have a ‘cost’ in turns until they can enter the field of battle. You win if you get your opponent down to zero life, or if they run out of cards, so multiple strategies are possible. By winning battles, you gain silver and you gain control of lands that produce silver. With silver you can buy more cards – single cards, faction booster packs or even pre-made squads. You can also spend real money for these as well, but I haven’t had to (yet)
So far, I’m really hooked on this one, though I’m still just starting out. It’s detailed enough and challenging enough to keep you hooked, but not really frustrating and there doesn’t seem to be any PvP ganking like in Backyard Monsters. Nothing worse than logging into your casual Facebook game and seeing your entire yard in ruins because somebody decided to attack you eleven times in a row while you were asleep…
That’s all for this week – see you in The Spiral!!
PLOX!!
Can Daring Adventurers garden?
So the new fad sweeping across the spiral is gardening – you can buy seeds and use magic spells to grow adorable plants in your dorm room or house, and then you can harvest things like spell cards and gold from the plants. It’s fun and cute and looks like it will be a good time, with some pretty decent rewards.
My problem with this is that if you’re spending all this time and energy gardening, then how do you go on daring adventures? How do you swing into action and save Grizzleheim villages when you’re worried about watering your daffodils? How can you defeat Meowiarty if you’re fertilizing your sunflowers? And how is a furry orange monster supposed to work his way all the way through the perils of DragonSpire when his Dandelions are almost ready to harvest?
Instead of complaining, however – as monsters try very hard not to complain, we’re very ‘people’ oriented – I have some potential solutions to this dilemma! And in the interest of both enlightening and entertaining, I shall list them here:
1. Get a crafting quest to build a clanker style robot with a rake for a hand and a watering can for a head. You can program HIM to be your robot gardener and take care of the plants while you are on your daring adventures! A drawback, of course, is that like most clankers he goes haywire and attacks you every time you come home, but a surprise duel will help keep you on your toes!
2. Pocket-garden! Plant a full garden, then get a ‘shrink’ spell that enables you to keep it with you at all times. IF the plants need water or some sunlight, the pocket garden can beep and let you know it needs attention – a real Palm(tree)Pilot. You can stop and take care of the plants at your leisure. Of course one downfall is that if you’re too active in your daring adventures and jostle the mini-garden around too much, you could open it up to find tossed salad instead of your lovingly cared for plants.
3. Daring Adventures in Gardening!! Instead of shrinking your garden, YOU can shrink down to the size of a bug (eewww, bugs!!) and then go on many daring adventures and exciting battles against the pests and creepy-crawlies in your own garden! Duel mites and tomato worms and horrible squishy grubs as you defend your garden! Sure, you have a high chance of getting eaten by, say, your own pet CrimsonZilla (Madame Jasmine, you spit that out right now!! Bad dinosaur, bad!!) but just think of the possibility for adventure you’d have!!
4. Zombies. Seriously – you’ve got the plants already. Throw in some lumbering zombies for the plants to attack and you’ve got some serious daring adventure material! As long as you don’t do anything to make the birds angry, this definitely cant’ miss!!
So there you have it – Can Daring Adventurers garden? Maybe not quite yet, but just you wait… I’m sure KingsIsle is writing all this down right now!
See you in the Spiral!
PLOX!
Ditto discovers Mooshu!
After our epic battle against Meowiarty in Big Ben, Malistaire still got away with the Krokonomicon, stealing the spiral key to Mooshu in an attempt to reach the dark and mysterious Dragonspire, which the headmaster assures me is a really bad thing.
So taking the spare copy of the spiral key to Mooshu – it was under the door mat – I headed out to Mooshu to talk to the Emperor in order to keep him from giving Malistaire the Dragonspire Key. Of course as I expected, this isn’t going to be as easy as I had hoped, and so my adventures in the beautiful and mystical Mooshu are just beginning!
Big Ben – With a little help from my friends!
So I finished Counterweight East, no sweat. Counterweight West gave me some trouble, but I got through it. Big Ben, though… I knew Big Ben and Meowiarty were more than one furry orange monster could handle, so I called up a few friends to see if they could give me a hand!
Ditto and friends in Big Ben
Leesha Darkheart, Steven Spiritcaller, and the amazing IcyWiz all dropped in to help me out with Big Ben, and I am SO GLAD I had them with me, because there is just no way I could have done Big Ben by myself. It had like thirty seven floors, all with big mean monsters on them! It was pretty scary, but I knew we could do it!
There were some really fun parts – well, it was all fun questing with the Ravenwood Radio team – but I liked the big floor puzzle, and then knocking over the milk bottles and making Spike the Crusher mad, that was really funny. Of course it wasn’t as funny when I realized that Spike was a 3500 health boss who attacked us near the top of the tower, but even he was still no match for us!
As for video, this dungeon is looooong – like an hour or more – so I didn’t take video the whole time. I DID get a great video of the final fight, though, so here you go – Ditto and Team Ravenwood defeating Meowiarty, with me dealing the fatal blow with none other than my trusty meteor strike!!! Yay me!!!
Ditto’s Adventures in Counterweight West – the finale!!
Here it is, my final – and ultimately successful – battle with the mighty storm boss Bellows at the top of Counterweight West. This was definitely the toughest dungeon I’ve done so far, as you can tell by my rather lengthy string of embarrassing defeats.
I think the big lessons learned from this dungeon are that you ALWAYS make sure you have full health when you go into a fight, which is common sense, but also I think I should have had more shields in my deck. The biggest problem seemed to be Bellows spamming storm sharks, which were hitting for 500ish damage every time. Your health goes down quickly when that happens. Maybe more ways to get health back, too, as I have kind of abandoned my ‘gain health’ ability in favor of doing more damage more quickly, ending the fight as soon as I can.
So next up – Big Ben!! I’m definitely not trying this one alone, so I’m going to be trying to set up a night soon to grab some friends/fans and face the dreadful Meowiarty!! I’m looking forward to that!
The Daring Adventures of Ditto – Catching Up
So it appears that I’ve been remiss in my posting of Daring Adventures episodes and, naturally, Miss Narrator is making me do my chores, so here are the last two episodes that aired originally on the awesome Ravenwood Radio -Daring Adventures 14, originally from Ravenwood Radio 29, and Daring Adventures 15 which just aired on Ravenwood Radio episode 30!
Ditto’s Adventures in Counterweight West – Bring on the Boss!!
Here is my first (and, sadly, second, and surely not final) attempt at the final boss fight in the Counterweight West dungeon. This is a really tough fight! The final boss, Bellows, is a rank 6 storm school boss who seems to LOVE throwing storm sharks. His minions like tossing elemental shields too, which can really throw a wrench in a pyromancers plans!
I’m pretty sure this was my first ‘Third Time’s a Charm’ battle, but I was eventually successful! I’ll post the winning fight a little later to show you what I changed to finally beat the mighty Bellows!
Ditto’s Adventures in Counterweight West – Part 3!
Here it is, another epic battle in Counterweight West – this is part three, where Ditto and Madame Jasmine battle multitudes of maniacal mechanical minions in the quest to throw the third lever and make it to the top of the counterweight tower!!
Once again we’re defeated on our first attempt – I must say Counterweight West seems much more challenging than counterweight East for some reason. We are finally victorious, however, and make it through to the next level!
Ditto’s Adventures in Counterweight West – Part 2
So here is the first step on my road to ruin, or at least a chain of defeats while completing this dungeon. I wasn’t paying attention (one of the pitfalls of recording yourself for a blog, I think) so I go into my first battle with less than half health. It was a close fight, but starting with 700 health was just too much badness to overcome.. I do win the second fight, however, and move on to the next level.
The Daring Adventures of Ditto – episode 5!
OK for some reason this never got posted like the rest of them, so here it is now – Episode 5 of ‘the Daring Adventures of Ditto’…
Ditto’s Adventures in Counterweight West – Part 1
So Madame Jasmine and I, following hot on the trail of Meowiarty, enter Counterweight West and begin the long climb to the top. This is the intro to the dungeon and our first battle, which we won handily. Sadly, I think this made us a little too cocky, because this would be the only duel we won on the first attempt in the dreaded Counterweight West….
Happy Monday everyone
I hope everyone had a nice holiday or, if you didn’t get four days off, you at least had a nice weekend… I had a pretty relaxing weekend, though I definitely ate too much! How can one meal stretch out into overeating for four days straight?
I did play a lot of games during my time off, including Wizard 101 (Videos coming soon, just need to pull them off the camera and edit.) LOTRO, and some new games, Zentia online and Iris Online, that I saw Massively magazine posting about. I also got a new copy of ‘World of Goo’, which my roommate had on his old computer that died. That is such a fun, cute, and addictive little puzzle game, I’m sure I’ll be playing it constantly…
The new MMO games are interesting so far, though I’ve barely scratched the surface. Zentia I’ve seen a lot about, it’s pretty cool but hasn’t ‘grabbed’ me yet. Iris is cute, I love the graphics, but the fixed camera is really frustrating, especially since you can get stuck on objects in the world that you can’t even see because of the camera angle. I’ll play them both a bit and see if any of them hook me in like Wizard 101 did – somehow I doubt it 🙂
I had a fun and interesting LOTRO experience over the weekend – I was doing a quest in Thorin’s Hall that completely reminded me of the quests in Krokotopia! The quest is called ‘The Puzzle Vault’ and in it you have to pull four levers (Sun, moon, axe, jewel) in a specific order, based on a riddle! It really reminded me of a few of the Krokotopia puzzles, like the Test of Aptitude in the Temple of Storms.
So overall I’m a happy Fabricated American today and I’m looking forward to Ravenwood Radio on Wednesday – I’m sure it will be an awesome show! Until then…
See you in The Spiral!!
PLOX!
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!
I just wanted to say Thank You to everyone who has come to my blog and shared my videos and listened to my Daring Adventures, thanks for all your friendship and support – I’m the happiest furry orange monster in the world thanks to each and every one of you. Oh, and strawberry shampoo, of course!!
Ditto defeats Smogger! Full walkthrough
So after defeating the evil Katzenstein, I was told that there is a secret, secondary boss called Smogger in the lab that gives a special title and some good drops. I decided that this sounded like a fantastic daring adventure and headed back into the dreaded Katz’ Lab to find and defeat Smogger.
The area was easy to find – right inside the lab itself, on the left, there’s a platform. When you walk onto it, the narrator tells you to find some boards and build a bridge. It took me a little while floating around on my Koi to find the boards and, once I used my handy-dandy carpentry skills to build a bridge I found Smogger, a rank 7 storm boss with terrible dialog. He had 4,000 health, which I think is the biggest thing I’ve ever fought thus far…
I did try something new – I hired a level 60 life henchman early in the fight, in the hopes she would help keep me alive during the epic battle. I have to say, the henchman was a mixed bag – she burned my feint a couple times with low level rank 1 or 2 spells, which was unfortunate, but she also healed me for 1000 points a couple times and did, in fact, keep me alive throughout the fight, so she did do what I needed her to, it just made dealing 4,000 points damage take a bit longer.
Anyway here is the epic 13+ minute video that details every part of this exciting side quest. If the video is just too long let me know, I can break them into more digestible chunks in the future.
I will wear my title ‘Smogger Smoker’ with pride!
PLOX!!
Ditto fights random mechanical spiders…
I was in the middle of figuring out the Smogger side-quest in Katz Lab, looking for stacks of wood to build a bridge, and I got pulled in by a couple evil steampunk spiders. It’s a fun, quick fight with some great meteor strike action… It’s very funny in that I get my last opponent down to two health and couldn’t take him out because I had to wait for more cards… I thought it was amusing anyway.
Ditto’s Weekly Video Bloggy Thingy 11/23
So I’m feeling much better, I’m back in game and just defeated Smogger, using a henchman for the very first time. I’ve got a whole new video about that which I should be posting tomorrow (Needs a little editing) but for now here is my weekly video bloggy thingy, almost completely cough and sneeze free. I talk about Wizard 101, LOTRO, Twitter, and what it’s like having a cold as a furry orange monster…
Curse you, cold and flu season!!
So there will be no video post today – sadly, your friendly neighborhood furry orange monster has a MONSTER of a head/chest cold, and can’t get through more than half a duel without breaking out into a fit of coughs and sneezes. Thanks to a coffee mug full of cold medicine and careful editing, this weeks ‘Daring Adventures’ is all set for tonight’s Ravenwood Radio broadcast, but a video full of hacking and sneezing is really not the kind of entertainment I prefer to publish, so I’m just doing a regular old blog post today, saying hi and stuff…
Of course a head cold for a Fabricated American is probably a bit worse than a ‘typical’ head cold – I mean, I don’t even have a nose, so sneezing is kind of an ordeal in itself, I’m sure you understand!
So I DO have a plan for getting through Clock Tower East and Clock Tower West, and I’m also going to go back into Kat’z lab and try to take on Smogger, because I heard it’s an intense fight and you get a cool badge/title, I’m all for that. Once that’s done (soonish) then I’m going to try to plan hooking up with a few others (Ravenwood Radio gang?) and getting through Big Ben, all while taking video that I can then edit into something cool.
So that’s it for me today – I’m going to snuggle up with some hot cocoa and hit the bazaar to see if I can get any new gear before I attempt Smogger – I’m hoping for a wand of ‘1000 points damage for one pip’ but I haven’t found that one yet. I’ll keep hoping…
See you in the {sneeze} spiral!!
PLOX!!
Ditto’s Current Games
Not a lot of movement on the current games this week – I finally got back into Wizard 101 and finished Katzensteins’ Lab, which was pretty awesome. I did find out that there is apparently a side-quest in there that you can finish as well, to defeat some elite side-boss called Smogger or something like that. I think I’m going to try for that – wish I knew about it before I exited the dungeon, because I think the pre-fight bosses were actually more challenging than Katz…
Ditto and Madame Jasmine, preparing for the first Clocktower
so now I’m ready to start the big Marleybone Finale – I started reading up on it and got great tips and pointers from readers, thank you SO MUCH for that! I ‘think’ I’m going to try to do each clocktower solo, then get a few friends together for Big Ben. Big Ben seems insane to try alone (though I did pull off Sunken City solo) – we’ll see what I can put together.
LOTRO
I did jump back into LOTRO again for a while, as well – I just love the look of this game, the epic feel of it. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes, it feels like there are a thousand different things you can be doing, where I’m used to the much more guided Wizard 101 quest lines. It’s still awesome, though, and I do still geek out when I see something I recognize from the books, like the dock for Buckleberry Ferry.
Right now I’m just questing and looking for crafting supplies to sell at auction, which is certainly a lot more involved than the Bazaar on wizard 101. It’s fun, though, and I’ve gotten some good gear for great prices just be being in the right place at the right time, so to speak.
Ditto the Dwarf riding across Middle Earth
Backyard Monsters
Backyard Monsters had a huge update this week, including a new level of Town hall which I’m currently in the process of building – it takes SIX DAYS! I also upgraded my catapult another level (I can now fling goo at my enemies – LOL) and unlocked the new ‘worm’ monster they just added, who has some underground burrow attack I havent’ tried yet. Sounds interesting but worrisome, as if it works the way I think it works, it will be VERY hard to defend against, especially since they didn’t seem to add anything that would defend against subterranean attack yet…
Other Games
this week was pretty much all focused on Wizard 101 to be honest, with a little LOTRO and my daily Backyard Monsters fix. I’ll try to find a new ‘Game of the Week’ for next week, because that is a lot of fun.
I’ll try to find a new and exciting game for my ‘Game of the Week’ next week.
Daring Adventures of Ditto, Episode 13!
Here it is, as originally heard on Ravenwood Radio Episode 28 – The Daring Adventures of Ditto Episode 13, where Ditto and Madame Jasmine face the unthinkable – Marleybone Zombie Apocalypse!! At least they THINK that’s what it is…
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 