Though I was away this weekend, I still managed to squeeze some hours into Wizard 101’s Test server to check out the latest changes. And there’s a LOT of them. This next update does not just introduce the world of Grizzleheim into the game, but a whole laundry list of things players have been begging for (aside from appearance slots, which haven’t made an, um, appearance).
**Grizzleheim opens, a new world of Viking Bears, Ravens and Wolves. **
Ah yes, Grizzleheim. The whole new world that pretty much has nothing for max level characters. You can do the next Zeke collection quest, which continues its classic rock theme this time with The Yardbirds, rather huge, wooden birds that look suspiciously like Mr. Lincoln’s less mobile cousins. But no new levels and gear that is no upgrade make this an excuse to haul out the lower level alts rather than to progress your main.
Grizzleheim works alongside your normal leveling path. The parts I saw were crowded with Rank 3-4 critters, which would place it next to Krokotopia in difficulty. And by the parts I saw, I mean with my level 30 Balance wizard, Allison Goldtalon, as I found certain quests were not offered to my level 50 Life wizard, Tara Mythcrafter. There were parts of Grizzleheim that only Allison could get to, though I could teleport Tara to her. This is the first time Wizard 101 has made content that can be out-leveled, and I have no idea why. Perhaps to give high level wizards a reason to befriend lower level wizards?
In the picture above, Tara stands before a Teleport Stone. You’ll find these throughout Grizzleheim; once discovered, you can teleport instantly between the stone and the main teleport hub in your region. Very handy, and I hope to see this brought to the other worlds of the Spiral.
**We’re introducing a Bazaar that lets players buy and sell items they’ve earned or found in the game. **
Yes, you can finally sell stuff to other people through the Bazaar. You can find an outpost of the Bazaar in at least Wizard City (in Olde Town) and Krokotopia (on the mysterious fifth island, before this unused, and no, I don’t know how to get to it, but it’s on the map, and before you say anything, it’s not the hourglass secret island).
The Bazaar is not an Auction House, like WoW, or a broker, like in EverQuest II. You don’t get to choose a price for your item. To find a similar scheme, you have to go all the way back to the original EverQuest, where people would sell things to NPC merchants, which other players could then examine and buy from the merchant’s inventory. You sell an item and get the cash, and your part in this is done. Your item appears immediately in the Bazaar and can be bought at that fixed price like anything else.
Can you buy something at an NPC store and then place it in the Bazaar? Sure, all but one of the pets for sale in the Bazaar when I looked could be bought in shops. Buyer beware.
Those hoping to avoid camping bosses for the best dropped gear will be disappointed – the very best gear cannot be sold in the Bazaar, thanks to the new “No Auction” tag. However, the Bazaar is an excellent place for finding crafting reagents.
**Crafting lets players create their own equipment and Treasure Cards. **
MMOs tend to go one of two ways when they add crafting. Either the crafted gear is superior to that found in boss drops, or it isn’t. Wizard 101 has gone this second way.
Crafted items require recipes (bought from various vendors throughout the world, including in dungeons (there is a Myth robe pattern vendor in Krokosphinx’ Hall of Champions, for instance)), reagents (some bought, most harvested in various places throughout the game), a crafting station and a crafting time slot.
Eudora Tangletree in Olde Town will have your very first crafting station for you once you bring her three Mistwoods, a fairly rare harvest. Find a place for the crafting station in your home, then return to Eudora for her very first crafting assignment: Five athames. This will require an astonishing amount of harvesting both the mist woods and cattails (found near water), and for all that work, the athames you make are nearly useless. In fact, as you look through her recipe book in despair, will it be worth the grind to become a master craftsman for this?
Well, hold on, Bucky. After you get your novice crafters badge (and here I was helped by a GM who was dumping crafting reagents on the Bazaar), you’re sent to Krokotopia for whole new quest, where you make five really disappointing rings, which for some reason, take large quantities of parchment and stone blocks. Parchment seemed fairly common in the dungeons, but stone blocks – seen only as a blue sparkle – were somewhat more rare. Crafters had cleared out all the GM-given items from the Bazaar, and an hour or so doing quests in the Krokosphinx only yielded enough blocks to make two of the five rings.
Why level? Well, crafted items are made instantly – click and done. To slow you down, your crafting station has a small number of “crafting time slots”. Your first athame takes up a slot for an entire minute. You earn additional time slots as you finish each tier of crafting – the Krokotopia ring takes up a slot for seven minutes. So mostly, while crafting, you’ll be waiting for a time slot to open. You can see your time slots via a new tab in your character window.
Eventually, you’ll be able to craft furniture and other house items, and I’m hoping that will make the grind worthwhile. I’m hoping, in fact, that top crafters will be able to make Grizzleheim homes, since Grizzleheim doesn’t appear to have a builder turtle of its own.
We’ve added Grouping that allows players to team up with friends.
Grouping is pretty clever. You get a group-only chat channel and a group list, and that’s handy stuff just by itself. But you also get a reserved spot in a dueling circle. You can make out a red sparkly person next to the wizard in the dueling ring above – nobody but a group member can take that spot. If you have a group of four wizards and one of them starts an encounter, no wizard not in your group will be able to join.
This is a godsend for people with full friend lists – people popping in all the time could ruin encounters. Now they can only take up spots on the duel circle that are left over after your group gets theirs.
And last but not least the introduction of Chat Channels and Open Chat.
Along with the group chat comes the dread General Chat (“All”), where wizards anywhere in the game can chat with each other. Since this chat channel follows the same rules as the existing Dictionary Chat, you can’t be too explicit, and the chat was fairly helpful – but we’ll see how it is in the live game. There’s a limit to how many people can be in a chat channel at the same time, and the chat system will start new general chat channels as needed.
I don’t know if the chat channels are cross realms yet.
If you have a wizard leveling through the Spiral, you are going to want to be spending a lot of time in Grizzleheim. If you are a max level wizard, now’s the time to start an alt – the Bazaar makes alts easy to gear up, and Grizzleheim is full of things you’ve never seen before. Grouping is a huge win, and chat channels should build the elusive Wizard 101 community we’ve been wanting.
Crafting, as far as I have seen it, is somewhat of a disappointment. Huge costs in time and gold to make garbage items, and the Bazaar, which doesn’t take scarcity into account when setting prices, won’t let reagent prices rise to a level where they would be attractive for wizards to harvest for sale at premium rates to crafters. I have no idea at this time if crafting will ever be worth it, but I’ll give it a shot when the game goes live.