Gardening, Questing And Crafting With Pets In Mind

As mentioned in my last post, I have decided to concentrate on a few select pets, raising them all the way to epic without the aid of any mega snack packs. Let's be honest using mega snack packs is probably the fastest, most time efficient way of training your pet. True,  there is a large cost of crowns and you never know what you are going to receive in the mega snack pack,  but you don't need that many mega snacks to get a pet to at least adult. However,  with a little patience you can still get great pet snacks in a variety of ways and keep crowns for other precious purchases. I have decided to garden, craft and battle my little wizard heart out and see how far along I can raise my new pets.

 

Concentrating On My Fierce Hound.

This was one of the pets that I mentioned I would be raising in my last post. My fierce hound Mister Rusty is a death pet so obviously likes death snacks. Fierce hounds seem to be a relatively health conscious pet as they also like their vegetable snacks. So by feeding him death vegetable type snacks I am giving him the snacks he loves the most, which in turn gives me valuable extra pet XP points after each feed.

The list of loved pet snacks for the fierce hound I have so far observed are  Dastardly Radishes ( Rank 6 Snack ), Cauliflowers ( Rank 5 Snack ), Orange Jalapenos ( Rank 2 snack ) and Evil Carrots ( Rank 1 Snack ). 

You can usually find all the above loved snacks in the bazaar and simply purchase them with gold. Though Dastardly Radishes can sometimes be a little more tricky to find in there. Cauliflowers the lower Rank 5 snack are often available and usually tend to be reasonably priced around the 800 mark, which is great as they give 8 XP points per snack. I have also been getting a lot of the cauliflowers as drops from street fights in Winter Tusk.

Cauliflowers, not as cheap as they can usually be

found in the bazaar. 

Dastardly Radish, very sinister with a moustache!

Gardening With My Fierce Hound In Mind.

All of the above snacks can be harvested from my garden,  I have been concentrating on harvests of the dastardly radish and the cauliflowers for the higher XP points.

Grapes of wrath, yes they are a pain to grow, often yield dastardly radishes. Grapes of wrath are abit unusual as they dislike garden gnomes, but I have been speeding up their growth with a fickle pickle, they also like the crafted weapons rack. 

The relatively easy to grow prickly bear cactus often produces caulifowers along with many other great pet snacks. I am speeding up their growth by placing a pile of sand by them. Once you have one prickly cactus they almost always drop another seed you can go on almost indefinately with them.

Liked pet snacks which can be harvested or crafted that will give your hound experience of over 5 XP points each feed are listed below.

Crab apples – Rank 8 Snack – Very rare harvest from the prickly bear cactus.

Killer tomato – Rank 7 – Burning Snap Dragon, Purple & Red Grapes of Wrath.

Dr Jalapeño – Rank 7 – Red Bell Pepper

Raising Bran Cereal – Rank 6 – A crafted snack – Recipe available from Darina Bloodflame found in dragonspyre ( The Atheneum  In The Boot Shop, You can also pick pets up from here ).  Crafted using basic crafting table.

Raising Bran - Rank 6 Snack

Rock and Roll Candy- Rank 5 – king Parsley, can be crafted the recipeis available from Yachi the snack recipe vendor in Mooshu ( main shopping area just after entrance ).

Dagwood sandwich - Rank 5 - Crafted snack recipe from Yachi.

Taco Town Special – Rank 5 – Harvest from fickle pickle. It can also be crafted. Recipe from Yachi

Taco Town Special - Rank 5 snack

Another way of training any pet quickly without mega snacks.

OK I so I've mentioned how I am trying to get some of the best loved and liked snacks for the fierce hound. There is another way to level pets up without using mega snacks, it can be wasteful, but it can be very fast. Just feed it everything, throw everything at it that rates high on pet xp points. You will not get any extra bonus points for feeding liked or loved snacks, but you still get points! It's amazing over a period of time how many snacks can build up in your back pack. It's a quick way of cleaning them out.  There are concerns that using this method can make your pet more likely to manifest a selfish talent.  But there is no concrete proof of this.  So if you are in a rush go for it.  

Thanks for reading :)

It's Official Christmas Is Definitely Over.

Felix Navidad has now left the spiral and the Christmas items have left the crown shop, roll on valentines. Wizard 101 have already introduced their first new product of the year the Ravens Hoard pack with lots of new items, I have lifted the blurb from wizard 101 and posted it below.  It all sounds great.

The new Raven's Hoard game card pack has more new exciting items than any other pack before! Each pack of 7 cards contains a chance to receive these new items plus pets, treasure cards, pet snacks, and ice themed items.
What's new in the Raven's Hoard Pack?
The Raven's Hoard Pack has two brand new mounts, the Raven Mount and the Blood Raven two person mount! There's also tons of new gear with different sets designed for energy, PvP and more. To go with your new gear, we have three new sets of weapons - an axe, a new sword, and the first bow weapon in Wizard101! For Wizards with a green thumb, there's also a brand new plant, the Moonflower! 

Blood Raven Mount.

 

What my wizards have been getting up to.

My life wizard has finally faced Malistaire and was the victor.  OK,  so she had a little help from friends, but he's done and dusted. Malistaires butt was thoroughly kicked, he has learned the error of his ways. Raising a dragon titan in order to resurrect a dead wife is a definite no no in polite society. Still no life robe drop from him though :(  My life wizard is actually questing in Celestia now, rather than jumping in on friends fights. She has not fought anyone yet, but I am looking forward to some epic battles. My ice wizard has progressed a little through Marylebone but thats about it on questing.

I spy,  with my great big enormous eye...

Malistaire,  nearly dead. ...

 

I finally managed to not kill my Boon trees by increasing my time on wizard and they both reached their elder harvest, yay :) I received quite a few happy holidaisy seeds, a couple of seven day mounts ( candy canes ), some mega pet snacks and two pets. An evil snowman and a frostman, as well as numerous wrapped gifts which I've put away in my houses loft until next Christmas. I've also now put away all my Christmas housing items. Everything, well everything I could remember anyway. I am slowly concentrating on raising a select few of the pets I managed to get over the Christmas period, I say slowly as I am trying to do this without purchasing any mega pet snacks I will see how far I can get through crafting, gardening and hopefully picking up pet snacks as drops.

 

My Fierce Hound -  Mister Rusty

This is one of the first pets I have decided to concentrate on. He was a result of hatching with my 2^nd Generation Storm Cat, Lady Scout ( which is a storm cat mixed with a sea dragon ). Lady Scout has a pedigree of 68 and I have trained her up to ancient. So far her abilities are Pierce Monger, gives a remove positive card. Tower shield, pretty straight forward gives a tower shield card and dashing ( never mind ).

 

Storm Cat Sire of Mister Rusty

The fierce hound is primarily a death pet, so I am hoping to train him up for my fledgling death Wizard who is still languishing somewhere in Triton Alley. The original talents a fierce hound can manifest are pretty awesome.

 

	TALENTS		DERBY
1				1
2				2
3				3
4				4
5				5
6				6
7				7
8				8
9				9
10

The above information was taken from the Petnome Project website a truly excellent place to visit if your into your pets.

The Spritely Talent:

As you can see an original fierce hound has the spritely talent.  Spritely appears to currently be one of the most desired talents that a pet can have. Sorry for those who know what it is - it's when a pet has the ability to independently cast the sprite spell at any point during a battle. It appears to be triggered by attacks upon its the pets owner. However, as this is an independent talent there is no guarantee of when, how many times or even if a pet with spritely will cast its spell.  It's definitely a handy talent but a pet can still be great without it. 

 

Now I know that spritely is a talent/ability that the sire fierce hound of Mister Rusty had manifested. I noted it on the sire fierce hounds statistics/talents before I went ahead and hatched.   However, I have heard rumours that hatched 2^nd generation fierce hound pets do not often manifest this talent. This would make sense after all Kings Isle want you to buy their game cards for the pet, rather than just hatch existing pets with each other for the ability. If the spritely talent is going to appear it usually shows up on the fierce hound once you have trained it to the 'Teen' level. I have trained Mister Rusty to adult and still no appearance of Spritely, so it seems he may not get that talent. 

Not bad so far,  just please leave out dashing...

I am not really upset about this as he has the death shot and tower shield as abilities so far. I also know that even if Mister Rusty does not manifest the spritely talent it is in his parentage, so it may appear through hatching with other pets.

Thanks for reading I'm off to train my pet :)

Happy New Year - Abit late

Hi everyone, sorry about the long gap between posts, but once the children break up from school its very difficult to find time to do anything. I hope you all had a great Christmas and have had a wonderful New Years. I have been making slow but sure progress throughout the worlds of the spiral. My life wizard is about to face Mailstaire, again. This time its actually my quest yay! I have previously helped out others with Mailstaire before I'd got the quest. The good thing is due to this I think I've worked out a few tricks for completing that tricky dungeon. So now its my life wizards turn I'm hoping things run smoothly and maybe this time I'll get the life robe. ( Fingers crossed ). I have however been helping out my husband in Celestia and Wintertusk a lot with my life wizard and have been picking up some great clothing drops from there. So by the time I get my life robe from Malistaire I'll probably have reached a high enough level to wear that stuff and Malistaire's life robe won't really be my best clothing option anymore.

I have obtained quite a few more pets during the Christmas period, I never managed to get a Christmas pet in the end but did get my level 48 life pet The Satyr, a Rain Beetle, a Life Beetle, a Fire Serpent, a Fierce Hound, a Starfish and three more Storm Cats. 

Rain Beetle - Hopefully some good talents.

My Fierce Hound - Have a feeling he's not going to manifest spritely :(

 

Fluffy The Starfish - He looks weirdly naked from the back view!

I bought the Starfish for gold from the pet vendor in Celestia. The Life beetle and Fire serpent were dropped pets. The storm cats were all failed attempts at new pets but two have spritely in their parentage as well as other great traits I may train them up all the way to epic to see what they manifest and dish them out to my other wizards. The Rain Beetle and Fierce hound were successful hatches.

I am also looking forward to hopefully the elder harvest of one of my boon trees today. – I have heard they can drop pets, 7 day mounts as well as mega pet snacks. I am hoping this is true, I have not had much luck with these at all. I've managed to kill them so many times, I just haven't been able to get online so alas they have perished and been bought back from the dead a lot. So at my elder harvest they will probably give me nothing for being the worst gardener ever!

I'm really sorry boon trees for making Christmas a time of death for you.

 Thanks for reading.

Farming For Christmas Gear

I have been farming Lord Nightshade a lot over this past week in the hopes of receiving some Christmas Gear without having to spend any precious crowns. I have heard rumours on the message boards of some of the bosses dropping Christmas pets but these appear to be only rumours. No one appears to have directly received one, rather they know someone who says they have. So no real substantiated proof yet. There does appear however to be a lot more buzz about him dropping bits and pieces of the Santa suit. I have not been lucky enough to earn any of these items yet. I am able to happily confirm that he does drop the Christmas wands, though these are very rare drops. I have managed to pick up the nutcracker wand, the sweet staff, the ornamental paper staff and the candle wand. That’s the good news – the bad news is it took just over 250 battles for him to drop these. So he is dropping Christmas items, just not very often. I just love the nutcracker wand, soo cute.

Candle Wand

 

 

 

 

Sweet Staff

The Nut Cracker Wand - Too Cute.

The Ornamental Paper Wand.

What to do with all that Gold?

After failing to acquire any Christmas pets from boss drops ( I am now pretty sure they Christmas pets are not dropped. ) I spent some time at the hatchery hoping to find another wizard with one of the Christmas pets who was willing to hatch with me. Sadly although there were a lot of the new pets at the hatchery, I just kept on coming across babies.  So still no Christmas pets for me :(

After all the Lord Nightshade farming I had quite a surplus of gold and received some great offers from other wizards for hatching with my Storm Cat.  OK he is no run of the mill storm Cat I hatched him up with my Sea Dragon as a result he has some great stats.  Through these recent hatchings I now have a red gobbler - quite a low pedigree pet initially.  But he is really sweet looking so I couldn't resist,  he actually came out with a pedigree that wasn't too bad after hatching.  I am not sure what talents he will produce as I have not trained him yet but am looking forward to finding out.

Isn't he adorable.

The second pet I gained was an Evil Sandman - I am really pleased with this one overall.  This was once a crowns pet that I believe has now been discontinued.  I have trained him to adult,  no outstanding abilities so far,  but no selfish talents either and he came out with a high pedigree so I don't think he will manifest any!  He also has a the sandstorm card at baby which is a great little bonus.  

Thanks to those who hatched with me.  I have not given up on the Christmas drops yet - so watch this space.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Christmas Is Here At The Spiral Finally   - Yayyyyyyyy

The below blurb is taken from the Ravenwood  Bulletin

 It's beginning to look a lot like Yuletide! Hello, I'm Felix Navidad, and I'll be appearing in the Spiral a few days from now to start off the Yuletide Festival. We hold the Yuletide Festival every year and this year it's going to be spectacular!

There will be decorations in the Wizard City Commons, and I'll be taking up my usual post at the fountain in the Wizard City Shopping District. I have many Yuletide themed items for sale, and you'll find many more will be arriving in the Crown Shop throughout the month of December, so keep checking back for new items!

We'll also be holding a special event later in the month with sales, promotions, giveaways and lots of exciting surprises. 

And he is there now in Olde Town.  He has some great Christmas items as well as the pets the Frostman, the Christmas Elf and the Yuletide spirit.  All items can be picked up with crowns.  I will be undertaking some serious boss farming and will let you know if I pick any of the Christmas goodies up and from who.

End of Krokotopia, Planting, Crafting and Mistakes...

The End of Krokotopia

Finally my Ice wizard has finished Krokotopia, I had set apart a night to complete Krokopatras dungeon but finished it in about 25 mins. I remember how long it took me the first time I completed it using my Fire Wizard so I am guessing I am improving. Picked up a lot of pink dandelions from drops, but no more pets and nothing outstanding in the way of equipment.   Well Roll on Marleybone.

Krokopatras Demise

Have I got Sand In my Hair?

 

Gardening, Gnomes, Blue Yarn and Weapons Racks.

Well just a few updates on my gardening progress. I have been beavering away in my garden with my life wizard for a while now and reached the rank of master gardener. Apart from planting my plants and making sure they are next to plants they like I haven’t really done much else for them. So I recently picked up some gnomes knowing they make the plants happier. After this I decided to do a few more things for them. I had heard that Blue Yarn, a drop in Marylebone makes any type of dandelion a lot happier. So having picked up this item awhile ago on my life wizard placed it by them and yes it appeared as a like and the dandelions are growing faster!

Thanks for the wool

After the success of the blue yarn,  I decided to help improve the happiness of my honeysickles.  I had already surrounded them with the plants they like and had read I think on Wiki that they also liked the crafted Weapons rack.  Now I have never crafted anything other than the items specified in my crafting quests,  it was about time I took the initiative and did some I thought.  So I picked up the crafting recipe from Felicia Worthington in Marleybone,  then realised I needed a housing crafting table.  I picked this up from Mooshu at the housing shop.  All ready, to go then - luckily I have been doing lots of farming as the recipe for the weapons rack requires alot of ectoplasm,  44 pieces and a fair bit of scrap iron.  Anyway weapons rack was dutifully crafted and placed by the honeysickes and yipee, it does make them happier.  This has given me the drive to spend alittle more time exploring both the gardening and crafting both of which had been neglected.

Happy Honeysickle :)

Another Huge Mistake By Me - Mutation Spells
I have decided to share my many mistakes and misadventures,  many would keep them to themselves.  But if it helps prevent someone else making the same mistake its worth it.  I have been saving all my gold very carefully on my ice wizard,  I want the ice house and don't want to pay crowns.  So I just have to save 100,000 gold,  it can be done. ( I managed it with my life house ).

However,  I am a great fan of the fire elf spell,  it's great for taking shields off.   Now I know there is an ice elf spell.  Wouldn't it be great if my ice wizard had some of those I thought. I have the Fire Elf spell on my Ice wizard as a result of obtaining the Elven Pendant which gives me the spell card.  I have not paid much attention to them before but am aware of the ' mutate ' treasure cards. I knew there was a mutate elf card, I can just mix this with my fire elf card, it's just what I need I thought. At 800 gold coins each from the Bazaar they are not cheap but I think well worth it in the long run so I spent most my hard earned gold savings on ten of them, yup that’s 8000 gold on the mutate fire to ice elf spell. This all seemed like an excellent idea at the time, but no it was a complete waste of gold and a massive amount of gold at that. I can't use the spell!!!!!! The Fire Elf spell is not a spell I have trained from my schools, its from a treasure item so cant be mixed, just like treasure card spells cant be combined. I really should have thought of this first or just bought one and tried it out so its completely my fault, but I am still gutted.   And so now I know the mutate spells only work on spells you are trained in.

Elven Pendant + Mutate Ice Elf = Stupid mistake

Only 8000 Gold down. Great!!!

More Giveaways - Yay

First things first a big thankyou to the Friendly Necromancer for the link to the MMORG givewawy on his wizard blog The Friendly Necromancers Wizard Giveaway Link   I picked up a Krokotopian Hammock and a Wyverns Hoard Pack which contained permenant purple fairy wings. Very, very pleased there are still items left so its definitely worth having a look.

Facebook also has another Free Mount Giveaway – The Ostrich Mount.

Ostrich Giveaway

Attend this Facebook event for a chance to win a Permanent Ostrich Mount! This week we're giving away a Permanent Ostrich Mount for our Weekly Giveaway! Each winner will be given one code that will grant them one Permanent Ostrich Mount that increases travel speed by 40% when equipped.

All you have to do is click the "Join" button on the Event Page, and Friday we will randomly choose 15 lucky attendees to receive a code for the item.

You don't have to be online at the time of the event to be eligible, just click "Join" and those randomly chosen will be sent a Facebook Message on Friday.

 

Just How Are My Wizards Getting On

I am  progressing slowly but surely through the game. I have reached the last dungeon in Krokotopia with my ice wizard who is now a level 26 and has finally got her blizzard spell. Yay. I am looking forward to finally reaching Marleybone with her and hope to finish Wizard City with my death wizard shortly. Have not made any real progress with my life or fire wizards in Dragonspyre due to concentrating on these lower level ones. Sadly not much else to report. Good luck with the Giveaways.