Monday, November 25, 2024

Just a Mirage Update

Hi, I just beat Mirage so I wanted to give another update!

First of all, I love Ozzy. He has so many great lines that made me laugh.

I imagine his sinuses are always dry since he's a skull, haha

I also really liked Istar. She's so cute! And even though she makes a lot of mistakes, I forgive her since I think she's always trying her best.

I know people think she's annoying, but I like her

The first fight I had trouble with in Mirage with Loother Ray. He's a cheating boss and a 4v1 fight but I managed to beat him on the fourth try. 


I didn't really like Aggrobah that much as an area. It was maze-like and my quest helper arrow broke on two different days when I was questing there so navigating was kind of a nightmare. Also, implementing the Sultana's plan there was pretty repetitive since it basically makes you do the same fights three times. To make it even worse, there aren't any wisps in that zone so I kept going back to Caravan for health which was annoying.

I thought recruiting the house qhats was a bit more interesting. They were different enough where it wasn't as repetitive and I thought their names were funny (Purrzian, Calixco, and Sayameez).

In Istanboa, I saw the "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" reference coming a mile away but I still appreciated it. "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" is of course the 1953 song originally recorded by The Four Lads but popularized by They Might Be Giants. I think that's the second TMBG reference in the game, after the "What's That Blue Thing Doing Here?" reference that the Oracle in the Acropolis house has (that I made a whole post about in 2013).


Snake Plizkin isn't my favorite Mirage companion, but he did have some good lines. I like that at the very end in the Thieve's Den he has a side quest to get his teddy bear back. 

The Taffy/Tiki/Ricky fight was another tricky cheating boss. The first two fights weren't too bad, but all three of them together were too much for me. I ended up getting henchmen to help with it.


The fight with the Scorpion was pretty cool! It was a lot easier than the Rat fight though, I managed to beat him solo on the second try. In that fight, there was an amazing round where I got beguiled and two of the Scorpion's minions healed me. They weren't very loyal to him, I guess.


When I got to the part where the plan was to dress up as a camel and dance I thought it was similar to the Polaris quest where you do ballet as a polar bear, so I thought it was really funny when Ali Baboon acknowledges that by saying he's not a Walrusk Empress. 

I also thought it was funny that Eerkala turned out to be an evil Istar reskin. Oh yeah, and the Chronocle was an Auroracle reskin, which I wasn't expecting but did make some sense. I liked the pictures it had since they were cool and made the encounter different from the Auroracle.


I quickly swept through the battles up to the Grandfather Spider boss fight where I ended up needing henchmen again. I maybe could have done it but I was too impatient to chip at 30,800 health by myself.

The storm henchman did the finishing blow with a Catch of the Day

I felt so betrayed by Mellori. I thought we were friends! I felt bad leaving her behind in Wizard City when I started Mirage and was so excited to have her back at the end. 

I did not see that coming!

They really made that moment worse with how sappy Mellori was about our friendship right before she attacked Grandfather Spider and revealed she's not actually Baba Yaga's daughter. And then Grandfather Spider kidnapped her! I'm excited to see her again and I hope she apologizes and we can still be friends.

To make it even worse, I did the Sinbad side quest right after. I thought he would be my new friend after I lost Mellori but he betrayed me too! I did laugh when he said I'm too powerful which makes him look bad.

It's true but he didn't have to kick me while I was down

Not only did I finish Mirage, but I also completed my first Scroll of Fortune! 





















I entered the Rate My Stich event again and this time I got judge's choice for my Krokotopia outfit and my new overall outfit got rated pretty well too.


I also tried the PvP version of Beastmoon, but I think I like the other version better. It's very hard, but overall less stressful to fight NPCs in my opinion. I still favor balance dragon right now, but I found I also like death cyclops. I also tried myth colossus once and managed to win a fight where I had odds very much against me with a bunch of minions, so I might try that one again if I get a chance. 

Well, now it's time to start Empyrea! I'll make a post about how that goes when I finish it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Coming Back: Adventures in Polaris

Hello! It has been over 10 years since I've made a post on this blog but now I'm coming back!

For anyone new here, you should probably know that I played in the Wizard101 alpha and beta when I was a kid. I started this blog as a pre-teen, and I stopped playing when I was in high school. I got to level 100 and the end of arc two and pretty much stopped completely, only logging on once or twice and hearing some background news about the game in the years after that.

But now with my trusty rainbow plushies by my side, I've finally decided to start arc three, and I'm going to blog a little bit about my experiences in the game again. 

I had stopped playing at the end of Khrysalis and at some point I remember I logged in just to do the graduation. So next I would be starting Polaris, but first I wanted to cross off a few side quests in Azteca and Khrysalis that I had never completed for some reason or another.

After finishing the side quests, I decided it was Polaris time since I was eager to start the new world. 

I liked the quest where you get to dance as a polar bear since it was pretty funny and I got to wear a pink tutu. All the fights so far were soloable (especially since a lot of the bosses that used shadow magic were hurting themselves more than me) but I ran into trouble with the Baba Yaga fight, since she summons a bunch of high HP helpers. Luckily someone else was around and joined me during one of my attempts and they summoned some henchmen for us when we couldn't handle it alone. I ended up liking Baba Yaga and Mellori though; they are pretty cool characters.


Speaking of cool characters, Zoot was fun! I liked that he's a Yeti raised by Marleybonians but he's like a surfer dude. In that area I thought it was weird that I was skidding on the ice with my flying umbrella mount, you would think hovering above the ground would prevent that.


Also, I thought the Auroracle was really cool. The effect was neat and I felt like I understood the story better than Mellori seemed to- like she thought it was more cryptic than it actually was. I guess knowing the context of the story so far helped, but it's funny that she doesn't ask us if we understand it. I forgot if she knew that we fought Morganthe at that point.


It turns out Grandfather Spider was right because I did feel like taking a break from the main quest after I got to the Ygor fight. His cheat combination of Power Link when he gets hit and life shields every six rounds made it really hard to solo as a life wizard. Plus my secondary school is death so he had resistance as a death boss. So after a very long attempt where I got down to the last card in my deck while he was still at 8000 health, I asked my dad for help, and we beat him pretty quickly.

So close, and yet so far...
The rest of Polaris went smoothly. A random person joined my first attempt at The Rat fight and we got really close to beating him but ultimately KO'd from his cheat on round 30 due to some bad luck. My dad helped me with that fight too and then I was done with Polaris! I sped through the Arcanum quests and also took a break to check out the events for the Scroll of Fortune. 


I entered my normal outfit (but with a wand that matched better) and a Halloween outfit I threw together into Rate My Stitch because I hadn't tried out that event before. Neither got rated very well, but I thought the event was cool!

I also liked the Death Deckathalon, which is another event I had never tried before. I only got up to stage six but I had fun trying to figure out the right combinations of treasure cards to progress. I was continuously thwarted by stacked poisons, so obviously I need a better strategy for next time. 


The last event I tried was Beastmoon. I actually managed to win one of the three attempts I tried, probably due to lucking out with having experienced players on my team. I was super confused at first, but by the third game, I felt like I mostly understood it. I tried out a few different beast forms, but I liked the balance dragon the best out of the ones I tried. I mostly did healers though, so I might want to experiment with some other combat types the next time the event comes around.

That's it for this post! I have started Mirage, so I'll make another post whenever I finish that world.