A new idea for a challenge

I probably won't be able to put the next update of Natalie Owlwraith up until after the ball drops, but I wanted to bring up an idea for a Wizard101 challenge for those who are bored out of their minds. It's similar to the challenge from a fellow Friendly Necromancer, Thomas Lionblood, who works at KI, but it's a lot less restrictive. I named it after something from a rival MMO, Maplestory...

The Wizard101 Reboot Challenge is simple - in the Maplestory Reboot World, several things are disabled or nerfed and their cash shop has some items which can purchased with in-game money. Here the challenge is to get through the entire game - from Unicorn Way to Borealis Peaks - without having minimal funding. Everything you equip and use must be earned.

Here are the rules:

Starting Up: 
Create a new wizard in your account. You must have a free slot to do this. It can be of any School of Magic, though certain schools(Storm, Fire) will have a tougher time than others.
General Restrictions:

• You are not allowed to trade treasure cards with other players. If they try to trade with you, reject their trade.
• The Shared Bank is allowed but not to fund your characters; you can only transfer seeds, pet snacks, reagents, a groomed pet, and a maximum of one piece of Crowns gear like an Ascendant Staff from your other wizards on the account. That's all.
• You are not allowed to use the Bazaar; in fact, don't even bother entering it!
• You cannot spend Crowns in the Crown Shop, you can only buy things that are purchased with gold - that means that 90% of the Crowns Shop is off-limits for the duration of the challenge, only special houses, cheap permanent mounts, one-hour transformations and a few other things are the only purchases you can make in the Crowns Shop. Some Crowns items are dropped by bosses, so if you want a cool hairstyle, you'll have to pray that a boss drops it and it'll be in your hair color. ;)
• The only exception to spending Crowns is for purchasing XP Boost or Gold Boost elixirs, which you may do as much as you want. In Maplestory Reboot players gain more rewards in exchange for harder enemies, so the elixirs represent that.
• Merc101 Rule: Other players can join you in battle and fight for themselves, but if you two-box(aka have another account on your computer and use it as an ally in battle), that ally is NOT allowed to attack - he can buff, debuff or heal but attacking with your second character is NOT allowed, only your challenge character can attack. Secondary helpers are unrestricted in the rules and are allowed to have anything they wish but they cannot trade treasure cards.
• In short, all of your equipment must either be bought at regular vendors, crafted, dropped by enemies, or given to you as a quest reward. This includes transmogs - you are not allowed to buy a neat-looking wand to stitch your Sky Iron Hasta into if it's only in the Bazaar. You'll either have to wait until you reach the world that that wand or robe is available or settle for a less fabulous looking wand from your current world you're questing in. Too bad! :p
• As a side note, that means that you cannot use equipment, mounts or pets from bundle packs. You are free to have the bundle pack houses but you must place the mount and pet in your house and stash or throw away the equipment gifts. You are free to use the equipment as transmogs for appearances, however. I don't want to upset you for your $29-$39 purchase.
• Treasure cards can be found or bought, but they are restricted as well - you cannot use spells that you yourself do not have. In short, you cannot buy spells that you haven't learned, so no Cleanses if you aren't Storm or Myth and no spells like Spirit Blade if you haven't purchased them from trainers. Also, you are only allowed to use spells in your side deck that are no more than one rank higher than what you have - so no Scarecrows if you haven't learned Wraith yet. 

There are two variants to this challenge - the original which lasts until you complete Polaris, or the Throwback Variant, which ends when you defeat the Jade Oni in Mooshu and speak to Ambrose right after the events after the fight. (This is because when Wizard101 first emerged, Mooshu was the final world and the Jade Oni fight was the final boss - yep, they didn't even put in Dragonspyre yet!)

I hope you Wizards read this and make an effort. For those of you who don't want to go all the way, I added the Throwback Variant which is easy to do since the worlds up to the end of Mooshu aren't too difficult with these nerfs. I hope the Friendly Necromancer gives feedback! ;)

Have a Happy New Year and see you in 2016!

Journal #8: Wow, Really?

Wow, really indeed. KI has done a double event before, but I guess they wanted to give new players (like Natalie) a chance to enjoy the situation. Unfortunately, she hasn't even enter Mooshu yet...

Frogs are supposed to EAT bugs, not puke on them! O_o

And she still had a backlog of requests from the Marleybonian people which HAS to be cleared, including killing spiders. *shudder*

Well, at least I've finished up a Platinum Trophy so I have some time - I'm waiting for GameFly to bring in their next game. Tried LEGO Marvel and got far but... oh sorry, you don't care about that. You're here for Wizard101 content. ():(

At this point, Nat decided it was time to retire the narwhal - it was a nice mount, but she was in deep debt due to all the stupid surgeries she had to fund to repair people who were impaled by that stupid horn. Luckily, a windfall had occured and Nat was begifted 2500 Crowns from KI due to the holiday event, my luckiest pull EVER. With that and 5000 from a game card, we got a replacement mount.

Yes, I'll miss the 2% boost to damage, but hey, I'm helping a great cause! ^_^ This is the first Charity Mount I bought and it was nice and cheap(only 4500 Crowns). It's cute too.

While Natalie went and cleared out Spellwrit Screamers and helped save Professor Falmea's history, Christina spent the time trying to catch up in Khrysalis... then I realized that if I wanted Nat to reach that point, she needs Christina's help to get through the rest of the worlds. Thanks to some guy whose name I forgot for helping me out in Sardonyx. :)

 

Of course, Nat wasn't spending any of her earned Crowns on elixirs so I had to wait a day to get the Initiate Crafting badge, but it was worth it - now I can craft seven mannequins for the house and robe them in all the memorial gear I had collected over the worlds. :)

Fizzle-City.

 

 

Natalie finally swept Nzogi the Beguiler to oblivion at long last after I put the Tomb off for so long - and halfway through she hit Level 38, so now she is waiting to get to Mooshu and rip the War Oni a new one to get her nice nifty spell. ^_^

 

Also, Nzogi gave Nat this cute little Mander pet... which is totally useless as it's a Fire pet and its card is only gained on Epic. So Queen Bosco is now our gardener. ;)

Since Natalie was way past the required level, she got the alerts to get her Grizzleheim spell quest, which - surprisingly - she got by without henchs. She did get low on health but this Vampire brought Valguf Runethief down to a wand hit. Sadly, I didn't have any wands(the error of disabling half of my Super Blaze from my Sky Iron Hasta) so I had to take him out with a normal Vampire. Then the Winterwing Guard was a jerk, throwing up THREE TOWER SHIELDS. But we prevailed.

I found that I was a smidgen away from Nat's level up so I drained all the energy I could on pet training... (This is actually a decent set of talents! Pierce AND Critical Block!)

 

And fishing. I managed to fill out the rest of the Krokotopia fishipedia with a Strawberry Jellyfish and the elusive Krokotopian eel! :D (And the eel was a whopper so Nat got another badge.)

Nat: "Chris, can you take this b**** out, he's interrupting my reading time!"

Christina: "Can do!" ;)

And to end this part, Nat and Christina toured Mirkolm Keep which was lengthy but not hard thanks to Christina's presence. I know double-boxing with my Exalted wizard is a cop-out but Nat is getting close to Master status and that means Barkingham Palace is opening up. That and Nat will be restricted come New Years' Day 2016, so I cannot afford any luxuries to her - the faster she gets to Grandmaster status the better.

Ciao for now! ;)

Journal #7: The Cat Who Stole the Krokonomicon

Pardon the title, I am reading the books about two Siamese sleuths by Lilian Jackson Braum. I strongly suggest you check the books out. (/end plug)

But more importantly, I titled the post to reference the finishing of the story in Marleybone. Natalie got her detective groove on after a hiatus and helped take down Dr. Katzenstein(again - I told you about how she was forced to help another wizard running the dungeon) and Meowiarty. After that, she took a vacation and tied up some loose ends.

First up, we deal with Dr. Katz - AGAIN.

Oh, that's just dirty pool. :(

Wow, that's a lot of blades!

Wow, that's a lot of damage! (To be fair, he had every type of trap on him.)

Christina gets the booby prize. :p Also, her pet glitched out its Spell Defy. :(

 

Well, not much to say here. Yes, Nat will be whoring for ALL of the badges (except the PvP and Pet Derby ones.)

Sherlock praises Nata on her sleuthing skills. Time to apprehend the Cat!

 

Counterweights: Done.

Time for Big Ben.

The Death Frog did see a bit of use...

But he was lonely so Nat gave him a regular Frog as a friend. Yeah, TC Humongo. She used a few TCs of other spells which were burning a hole in her pocket... but she fizzled half of them. :(

 

My Exalted Sorceress doesn't give two ****s. :p (This was a critical hit. I was worried that I'd waste a Feint but then Christina got a Crit hit. I think her Crit Rate is higher than her stat page says.)

 

Sadly, Natalie was unable to save the Krokonomicon as Malistaire escapes with it. I've done this before but it's nice KI managed to figure out some cinematic zooms to make this game fresh. ^_^

Here is Nata taunting the boss. ;D

And here is the first of the zillion Frogs that will puke upon our heroines. Yep, Mooshu Myth enemies are pure EVIL. ;_;

Meet Nat's frog. :p

Sadly, it didn't finish off the Cat, so Christina launched a giant sun at him to end him.

I can be as cocky as I want - thanks for the nice amulet that has a free healing spell! XD

And finally Natalie's gumshoe career is officially underway. ;)

Sadly, Mal has the book and poor Zeke got hospitalized. I really need to replace this mount, it's hurting too many people. :(

Still, I'll miss doing loop-de-loops on it! WHEEEE! :D

At least Mister Chance, the hunchback, has a talent. It's a nice talent, but I wish it was stronger. We're going to need more Pierce when we have to solo Death bosses in future spell quests. :(

I love how the entire police station glows blue when you have a completed quest in queue. :)

I cleared all the Hyde Park, Chelsea Court and Ironworks quests(I had to go back and fight MORE Street Sweepers in Ironworks to get a MacGuffin), but I got tired of playing Wizard101 after a while and I still am working on a Platinum Trophy, so I might have to make tomorrow a no-go day. I do plan on reaching Dragonspyre before Christmas Day, so expect more updates! Ciao for now!