so I’m back… and confused
Sorry it’s been a few days, more like a week. I’m a very busy Fabricated American sometimes and just got a bit too busy to film my most recent Wizard 101 adventures! I’ll have videos back up soon, though…
In the meantime, I was given a gift card by my roommate and it came with a new pet – a VERY cute and awesome CrimsonZilla – a little bitty red dinosaur that matches my outfit AND gives me health and boosts my damage. She’s very cute and follows me around all over the place, I really like her.
Digby hanging out with his new pet CrimsonZilla
So I did make level 10 as I was playing the other night and I’m almost level 11 – I should have that level today because I’m finally done with other stuff and can get back to some serious wizarding. I have noticed a new phenomena however and it seems to be more prevalent in the higher level areas. I will begin a fight with, say, a lumbering troll, and as I’m fighting another student will join in the fight and bring another creature to fight – this is normal and something I would expect. the odd thing, though, is that many times, this student will just stand there and not do anything. They’ll let the timer run out without choosing a spell, or they’ll pass every turn, or maybe just throw a shield on themselves. In any case, they aren’t helping me to fight the new creature they just forced to join the duel and I have to manage the whole fight on my own, while presumably these students get credit for defeating the monsters I just fought. If it happened once or twice I might have chalked it up to coincidence, but it has happened multiple times now and in several cases I’ve come pretty close to defeat with no assistance from the other students. I find that a little rude…
Worry not, though – I’m still having a great time and looking forward to more amazing adventures in The spiral! Next video I believe I will start attacking my dorm room – I wonder if I can keep a virtual room clean, since my roommate believes I am physically incapable of keeping my physical room neat…
Diego and ‘The Puppet Incident’
So I was in Wizard City and the Headmaster told me to go see Diego, the duel master, over in Unicorn Alley. Well, never one to turn down free help, I headed right over to find him. ‘Why the long face?’ I asked him, but he didn’t even crack a smile. Must get that a lot…
Diego starts telling me all kinds of great stuff about dueling, then he puts me in an arena facing off against… a PUPPET! Well, HE called it a puppet, just throwing the ‘P’ word around like he didn’t have a care in the world! So I get into the area to face this ‘puppet’ and it’s not even a fabricated being, it’s an ANIMATE – Golems and ‘puppets’ are VERY different, right down to the way they’re created and what baseball teams they root for! This definitely annoyed me but I dealt with it – living as a Fabricated American I’ve dealt with this kind of thing my whole furry life, I wasn’t going to let it ruin my experience…
Of course in this training session Diego did let something slip – Malistaire is Professor Drakes’ TWIN BROTHER! NO WAY!! I knew Professor Drake was kind of mean and scary, but now he’s much MORE mean and scary…
So here is my epic training fight against the ‘Puppet’ in the arena… hmph….
Part 1
Part 2
Ditto VS. Storm Kraken!!
My less than epic – yet still very exciting – Storm Kraken battle!!
A big weekend in The Spiral!
I had a great time this weekend in Wizard City! I’m almost level 10 now – might make it to level 10 by the end of the night!
So I met with Headmaster Ambrose and he told me to go see this guy named Diego. Well, Diego wanted to teach me even more about the wonderful world of dueling and had some great advice for me. Then he had to go and do it… For training he had me fight a PUPPET! Yup, he used the ‘P’ word!! You might think a guy who looks like a horse would be a bit more sensitive! So he sends me into the dueling ring to fight this ‘puppet’ – which was in reality a golem, not even an actual PUPPET (Golems are Animates, not fabricated folk… there’s a difference!) and he has me fight it for ‘training’. It was a weird and uncomfortable situation, I can tell you that much, but I did learn more about dueling, which encouraged me to try…
PVP! I tried some practice PVP matches and I think I am hooked! They seem to be much more exciting than normal fights, and the spells people use are amazing! Someone attacked me with the Storm Kraken, then someone else attacked me with some kind of giant dinosaur! It was crazy but really, really exiting!
Speaking of that Kraken – I fought him with three other students and I got the killing shot in, and that was a great fight! That Kraken was scary! I can’t wait to fight some more big bosses and take them down!
I’ll have some great videos posted throughout the week – see you in The Spiral! PLOX!
A Public Service Announcement
From KI –
Wizard101 Scheduled Maintenance
Wizard101 the game will be offline from 3am to 5am Central US Time.
During this time, players will be unable to log in to the game, and active players will be prompted to log out. Our website may also experience interruptions in service during this downtime.
Help Save Wizard City
Here is a cool contest being run by A Hen’s Nest – you could win 5000 Crowns in Wizard 101!!
Check out the great Wizard 101 review and contest rules here!
New friends new sites new bosses!
I’ve joined the great MyDiaryofaWizard social network site MyDiaryofaWizard and I’m still meeting lots of great new people in the spiral. I’ve also beaten two more bosses – the iron golem at the top of golem tower and Lady Blackmore (Might not be right, I didn’t write it down) who looks exactly like The Corpse Bride – one of the great puppet actresses of our time I might add.
I’m probably going to jump in and play for a bit now…
Losing to Rattlebones
My not-so-epic first fight with Rattlebones
Introducing Princess Daisy!
So the Headmaster sent me to Olde Town to talk to a guard, and what do I find?? The Bazaar! So while playing around in the bazaar, I sold all the stuff that I got from the fights I was in, and I sold all the reagents that I had picked up (I haven’t even found the crafting lady yet) and I found that I had a pretty good pile of gold! Not only that, but right there in the bazaar there was a perfect little red dragon, so naturally I bought her!! I named her Princess Daisy – because it actually sounds like a great Fabricated American name – and she follows me wherever I go, I love her! I’m getting snap-happy with the screenshots, too, so here she is!
It's Digby and Princess Daisy!
A new staff, a new spell, and my first defeat…
I am just loving this game!!
At the recommendation of The Friendly Necromancer I checked out the Ascendant Staff in the crown shop. I had a few extra crown rolling around my school chest, so I bought it! It’s very shiny and it gives you a power pip right away, first turn. I don’t think that’s as handy right now, because all my spells are one pip or less, but I think as soon as I get a good damage spell with a 2 or 3 pip cost, it’s going to be great! The spell it comes with is zero casting cost spell that does 70 balance damage – not as much damage as the other spells in the starter wand, but those were all one pip, so I can throw this spell five times for zero cost! It’s pretty cool!
My New Ascendant Staff
As I said in an earlier post I took Life as my second school, and my first spell was Imp, an odd little creature who apparently sings so badly, he physically hurts the beings he’s singing for. Being life damage I find he’s very effective against the roaming skeletons and other death-related minions roaming about. I don’t have any ‘blade’ spells for life to boost his damage, I’ll have to look into that!
Finally, after equipping my new staff, putting my deck together, and adding in some treasure cards, I was ready to fight Rattlebones. Or at least I thought I was. Turns out I wasn’t. I took out his dark fairy lackey easily enough with a fire blade and a firecat, but by the time I had her taken out, I was at half health and Mr. Rattlebones was pounding on me pretty effectively. I got a hit in on him but it wasn’t enough – before I could cast my Pixie healing spell, I was defeated and woke up groggy and disoriented in downtown Wizard City, thankful I was still wearing pants.
I was not to be deterred, though – I regained all my health and mana thanks to the handy floating wisps, then headed right back to Rattlebone’s tower. I had a different strategy this time and so I hit myself with a Fire Blade and then hit Rattelbones himself with a Fire Cat – I remembered in my first fight that this was enough to kill the Dark Fairy, and Rattlebones had the same amount of health. If I took him out first, I figured I’d take out most of the heavy damage he was dealing and then take the Dark Fairy out at my leisure. Executing on this new strategy I learned a new and important lesson regarding combat in The Spiral…
Boss monsters have armor. Or at least you can’t to as much damage to a boss monster as you can to a non-boss monster with the same spell combination. I didn’t take him out, and he was un-thrilled with my attempt. Fortunately, I used one of my new staff blast spells to take him out next turn, and I had defeated my first boss!!
By this time I was below half my health and the Dark Fairy had hit me with my own Firecat – not fair! – so I used my healing spell and got back up to full health before I started i her. Then it was just a matter of fire blade and Fire Kitty and I had my very first Boss Fight victory! I got ‘Rattlebones Footwraps’ as the Boss drop, the little Australian zebra guy told me these were special, but they’re death school only so I guess I’ll sell them or something.
Tonight’s Tale…
I played for a while tonight and had such a great time! I found SHOPPING! I made it to the shopping district and was ooohing and aahhhhing in all the stores. I bought a new hat and new shoes which both give me a damage boost (It’s so easy to understand what everything does I didn’t even have to look it up!) and I found the pet store. The pets were all more money than I had, but there are some cute ones so I have to save my money!
I was dueling in Unicorn Alley, doing some fun quests for the various people there, and had found the treasure cards shop (this is the reason I didn’t have enough money for a pet, I think) and bought a few cards from myth, life, and death schools. Well after some hard-fought battles, I officially decided that I am definitely a big chicken and want the security blanket of the ‘get my life back quick’ spells, so I have officially gone with Life as my second magic school. Maybe later when I understand things more I’ll change my mind, but I think for my play style and delicate constitution Life School will be a good choice for me.
I’m almost level 5 right now and am preparing to fight what I believe it my first ‘boss’ fight, a nasty looking skeleton named RattleBones. I’ll fight him tomorrow and maybe take some video of it – it should be very exciting.
I talked to the Headmaster, and he got me into a fight!!
So I got into school and was talking to the Headmaster and his Owl, a nice casual conversation. Suddenly the sky got all dark and stormy and the headmaster had me follow him up into a tower to see what was going on. I didn’t want to follow him – no I didn’t! Nothing good can come of scary shadows and dark and stormy weather!
I did follow him though – against my better judgment – and wound up getting ATTACKED! The headmaster tossed me right into a fight with this two dragon-looking henchmen while he had a little chat with some oily-haired guy named Malistaire! One minute I’m enrolling in school, the next minute I’m using these cards and pips to summon fire cats and trolls and having these dragon-guys throwing sharks and giant scorpions and – if you can believe it – NINJA PIGS at me!! Seriously!! And I haven’t even gotten my books yet!
Luckily I did win the fight, though I think the headmaster cheated a little. Some of those spells seemed pretty advanced for my first day – a meteor storm? Really?
In any case, I’m now successfully enrolled and looking forward to actually exploring the school and more of Wizard City and, after that, the other realms of the Spiral. I can’t wait to see Moo Shu – I LOVE Chinese Food!! Two orders of Crab Rangoons please!
A Very Exciting World!
I was looking around in Wizard City and was really amazed by all the people there, flying on brooms or dragons, casting spells, or showing off their pets. I definitely know I want a pet!! And some day maybe a dragon! I can’t believe how alive and exciting the world is! I do hope there are other Fabricated Americans playing the game and that we can meet up!
I haven’t really started questing yet, I’m still learning my way through the halls of Ravenwood school. I am in the Fire School (so excited about that!) but I guess I need to choose a second school – not sure what will be best there? Anyone have any suggestions?
One last thing – outside of the game I am finding a HUGE number of fun Wizard 101 sites and fan pages that I’m starting to follow, sites like Diary of a Wizard and Mythspent Youth are great to read, thanks for making them!
My new character
Here is me creating my fun new Wizard 101 character, Digby Hexcrafter! He is very cool, and gets to play with FIRE!
Digby Hexcrafter
So I logged into Wizard 101 tonight and was met by the headmaster of the Ravenwood school. At first I was a bit put out, as I didn’t realize there would be schoolwork involved in this, but I let him talk and all the magic and dueling sounded pretty exciting, so I went ahead and answered his questions. His fancy book chose the Fire school for me, which I was very excited about, as I am orange and furry – fire magic seemed a natural fit!
I was able to create my little player character and I named him Digby, because it was the closest name to ‘Ditto’, and I gave him orange hair too, naturally. For a last name I chose ‘Hexcrafter’ because, hey, it sounded cool, like something out of an old 80’s direct to video horror flick.
So far this is very fun, and I’m taking fun video of my exploits as well. I look forward to meeting lots of new people in ‘The Spiral’….
My New blog
So it’s me, Ditto. Yeah, I’ve had some recent ‘problems’ that I don’t want to get into here, but let’s just say that I have been ‘encouraged’ by certain state and local officials to find a good way to entertain myself and have fun in a safe and morally un-ambiguous way.
I thought computer games would be my ticket, as I love shiny flashing lights and sounds, but having thick orange fur and only three fingers on each hand makes playing first person shooter games problematic, and my attention span isn’t really good for the long-playing ‘strategy’ or role-playing kinds of games. I thought I was stuck, but thankfully my friend Grover sent me a link to this ‘Wizard 101’ game. At first I thought it was just a kid’s game, and a cheesy one at that, but then I realized that I was judging it without really knowing anything about it – like people judge me as some silly orange ‘stuffed animal’ without ever getting to know me. without ever digging deep to know the REAL Ditto Monster. Of course those that have often wind up getting a restraining order against me, but that’s all in the past, we’re not going to talk about that here…
So anyway – I decided to give it a try, and I’m really glad I did. I’ll keep updating this blog as I play, and hopefully meet some other Fabricated Americans and even other people who like playing this game. Maybe I’ll even make a few friends, because really, isn’t that what life is about?
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 