I was quite surprised when I logged in early this morning to see fishing quests. What!? What the heck is this!?
So I gave it a whirl. It took a little bit of getting used to, but it isn't too hard. It does however burn through your Energy pretty quick. I also think they added a couple points of energy to everyone's meters for this new Fishing thing. Not sure yet.
I did the introductory fishing quests on several of my wizards, and realized a nifty trick I could do. The first quest is to go catch two different kinds of fish that are behind Zeke in that tiny waterway feeding into the larger lake in the commons. Every successful catch costs 3 energy, and every time a fish gets away, you only lose one energy. The chances are pretty good you will catch both in 3 or 4 casts of your fishing line magic. When you turn in the quest, Lucky Hookline the fishing trainer will refill your energy to full. Knowing this, the second time I did the quest with another wizard, I continued fishing until I depleted all my energy before turning in the quest. The following times I did this quest with other wizards, I did other things with the remainder of my energy, like go do pet training. That energy refill is great!
OK. Some other useful tips.
1. It's explicitly stated that fish of a certain school prefer lures from their own school. This is true, but so far not totally necessary, at least in the early levels. If you want to save your money, you can keep your ice lure for the time being and just fish with that. It will probably take longer to get fish to bite, and you will have more fish escaping (so you will use more energy to catch less fish). That's the trade-off.
2. When you attempt to cast, line up your wizard to where you want your "bobber" to land. You want it to be in front of where the fish is heading. This takes a little bit of practice to get your bobber to land where you want. It costs no energy to do this! The energy is only used up when a fish bites. Practice this a little bit without worry. The better you get at this, the faster fishing will go.
3. It's important to time when to reel in your fish. Spacebar reels in the fish. Do NOT hit the spacebar until you see the bobber go COMPLETELY in the water. Almost always, the bobber will sink partially in the water for a moment. You need to watch for the moment it goes all the way into the water. If you hit the spacebar before this happens, the fish will automatically get away, costing you a point of energy. But once it does, you have only about one full second to hit the spacebar. If you wait too long, the fish will still get away.
4. If you are looking for certain kinds of fish, note in the quest where you should be looking for them. It will also help to know what school those fish are from. The Swordroll site has this page (click here) that lists a lot of fish, what school they're from and where you can catch them. Then, use your Reveal School Fish spell (for 3 energy) to observe the school of the fish in nearby water. You can move while they are tagged, but it wears off pretty quickly. Each fish will project a ray of colored light out of them that will identify what school they belong to. If you know the fish you're trying to get is of a certain school and you are in the right area for it, look for that color and try and fish those out. I wish it stayed up longer, personally, so you can scout around, but you may wind up using the spell several times to narrow down your target.
5. When using Reveal Fish School, these are the colors coming out of the fish, by school.
Light blue ray - Ice
Orange - Fire
Red - Balance
Green - Life
Black - Death
Yellow - Myth
Purple - Storm
Since I just started fishing, I don't yet know why you would hold onto the fish you catch. They may wind up being reagents for something. You can vend them back at Lucky Hookline for a couple hundred gold. Along with with the occasional treasure chests you fish up, fishing appears to be worth it. Fish generally vend for a bit over 100 gold each, and you are bound to fish up at least one treasure chest before using up all your energy. Higher level wizards will find 600 to 1000 gold (or more) in chests. And depending on the world you fish in, you can see some fairly high gear drops in those chests too.
NOTE: Having trouble catching Sharkspeare. Olde Town is fished heavily, and it's a small area.
UPDATE: You may want to turn off friend requests while fishing. I have noticed that some people either intentionally or unknowingly send you random friend requests as your line is cast in the water. The friend request covers the screen area of where your bobber is, so you cannot tell if a fish is hooked. This can be extremely frustrating.
Follow-up link: http://alexanderhexforge.blogspot.com/2016/12/hi-all.html
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Finding the Gauntlet Game Cards
I need to be careful, because this can easily turn into a rant. It took me quite awhile to finally find the game cards I was looking for, and it shouldn't be this hard to willingly spend money on something you want. By the way, if you want the "final answer" instead of reading my struggle to get these cards, scroll to the bottom!
This all started with the Wizard101 Pagoda Gauntlet game card. A year ago, I had decided I didn't just want to run the Pagoda Gauntlet dungeon, I wanted to own it and host other people... as many people as wanted to run the dungeon. I thought, I'll just go to the Wizard101 site and buy it straight from them.
That was my first problem. At the time, Wizard101 didn't offer it. You needed to buy it from the game card that was only available at Walmart. I wrote their customer support asking if it would be possible to buy it directly from them, but they declined. I needed to get it from Walmart. Perhaps it has to do with licensing agreements (you can't sell stuff to a vendor and then turn around and undercut them on your own online store). This I could understand, but no such information was relayed to me.
Now, personally, I'm not much of a fan of Walmart. They offer a lot of stuff at a low price, but they do so utilizing business practices I find discouraging (such as refusing to pay reasonable wages to their employees, and offering few full time hours so they won't be required by law to offer them health insurance benefits, etc.). So though I like Kingsisle and support their business practices (flexible and opt-in payment structures and a firm stance on making a safe play environment for children), I would be forced to deal with Walmart before I could get my Kingsisle in-game item. And it wasn't easy. Walmart's game card aisles are constantly in disarray and their employees are utterly unhelpful. I'm sure it's because they're beleaguered with long hours, forced to answer endless questions, and don't get reasonable pay or benefits from it. But from my end, I get almost no help from Walmart employees (if I can even find one on the floor).
Eventually, I got it. I've ran the dungeon, used the gear on my lower level guys for faster leveling, and I'm happy with the purchase.
Now, one year later, I decided to try and find the Winterbane Gauntlet. I looked at the Wizard101 site for information on it and... available through game card only available at Walmart and this time also Target. Wizard101 also helpfully provides a link to both Walmart's and Target's online stores. However, if you search either, you won't find the card. Well, what does that mean? Is it not available, even though Wizard101 says it is? I physically went into several Target and Walmart stores, looking through their game card selections. Target's game card racks, by the way, are well organized. Walmart's? Not so much. But not only could I not find the Winterbane Gauntlet game card, I couldn't even find a slot for it, no product label or anything. I got frustrated after several searches and went home. I went back online, searching both Target.com and Walmart.com, but the product isn't even listed there. Is it no longer available at the stores? Would Wizard101 start offering it online at that point? I had to find out.
Once again, I emailed Wizard101 customer service. They got back to me and informed me that it won't be available on their website at this time, but maybe in the future. They don't deal with the game cards themselves. That's taken care of by a third party distributor who deals with various stores (like Walmart and Target). They suggested I just keep looking for it at various stores until it gets back in stock. I asked why I couldn't even find the product at all (not that it was out of stock, but simply didn't exist) on either website. They didn't know.
Next, I called Target (actually Target.com, which is an important distinction I was yet to discover). That was hellish. It took forever and a lot of back and forth, but finally I got this answer from Target.com... "We searched for the name and it doesn't exist in our system. That means we no longer offer it. It's been discontinued."
I called the third party distributor, which they found to be HIGHLY unusual for a consumer to do, but they gave me honest (and quick answers). They have the game card products. They haven't been told the product has been discontinued, but they won't ship it out to the stores until more are ordered from them. I knew better than to ask if I could buy it from them (you can't, unless you want to purchase a high volume of cards... like in the thousands). Until the stores say so, a product isn't discontinued. All "discontinued" means is that a store no longer intends to purchase a product and resell it to consumers. "Out of stock" means that the consumers have bought all the product at a particular store, and until the store decides to order more, you won't be able find the product there.
I knew what my next move would have to be. I would have to go into a store, ask for a manager, ask them to look up the game card and tell me if it was in stock, in stock at a different location, discontinued, or if they too would have no record of the game card. Well, I got lucky. I went to a different Target, and it was there, along with the new Spiral Cup Gauntlet. I bought them both today. But as happy as I was about this, I was still frustrated that it took me so long to be able to find them, and no one could give me a straight answer yet as to why. So I asked the department manager. I told him that I couldn't find the product online, like it didn't even exist, and it didn't exist at other stores, and here's the kicker... the Winterbane Gauntlet game card didn't even have a product slot label for the product at the store I found it. His answer? "Well, the game card is probably discontinued at this point, and some stores are selling through their remaining stock." But why couldn't I find it online? TARGET.COM AND TARGET THE STORE USE SEPARATE PRODUCT INVENTORY AND TRACKING SYSTEMS. You can consider Target.com and Target stores to be two separate sister stores. They aren't actually the same store, even though the parent Target company owns both. This is incredibly frustrating, as I like to find a product online and find at what locations it is available. But you cannot do that at Target (and I guess Walmart as well).
In closing (last paragraph), you will need to do as I suggest up above. Go into a store, look through their game cards, and if you don't find it, ask the video game department manager (or store manager) to look it up in their system. Currently, Pagoda Gauntlet card... buy it from Wizard101 online, or Walmart online (for the time being). Winterbane Gauntlet game card or Spiral Cup Gauntlet game card... go into an actual Target or Walmart store, look through their game cards, and if you don't find it, ask a manager to locate it in their system. If they cannot, escalate it to their boss, until you can find it (but be nice about it, ask politely). They should be able to track what stores still have it available. Inventory is tracked electronically, and there are absolute records of this stuff. I would suggest looking at Target first for the Spiral Cup Gauntlet, as that's where I eventually found it, plus they are more organized and a "nicer" business than Walmart. Don't resort to buying it from private online resellers that are basically "scalping"... they are charging at a minimum 20 dollars more for the card, and in some cases are offering "used" cards (which means they've been scratched off). That's just asking for trouble, with no way to get reimbursed.
This all started with the Wizard101 Pagoda Gauntlet game card. A year ago, I had decided I didn't just want to run the Pagoda Gauntlet dungeon, I wanted to own it and host other people... as many people as wanted to run the dungeon. I thought, I'll just go to the Wizard101 site and buy it straight from them.
That was my first problem. At the time, Wizard101 didn't offer it. You needed to buy it from the game card that was only available at Walmart. I wrote their customer support asking if it would be possible to buy it directly from them, but they declined. I needed to get it from Walmart. Perhaps it has to do with licensing agreements (you can't sell stuff to a vendor and then turn around and undercut them on your own online store). This I could understand, but no such information was relayed to me.
Now, personally, I'm not much of a fan of Walmart. They offer a lot of stuff at a low price, but they do so utilizing business practices I find discouraging (such as refusing to pay reasonable wages to their employees, and offering few full time hours so they won't be required by law to offer them health insurance benefits, etc.). So though I like Kingsisle and support their business practices (flexible and opt-in payment structures and a firm stance on making a safe play environment for children), I would be forced to deal with Walmart before I could get my Kingsisle in-game item. And it wasn't easy. Walmart's game card aisles are constantly in disarray and their employees are utterly unhelpful. I'm sure it's because they're beleaguered with long hours, forced to answer endless questions, and don't get reasonable pay or benefits from it. But from my end, I get almost no help from Walmart employees (if I can even find one on the floor).
Eventually, I got it. I've ran the dungeon, used the gear on my lower level guys for faster leveling, and I'm happy with the purchase.
Now, one year later, I decided to try and find the Winterbane Gauntlet. I looked at the Wizard101 site for information on it and... available through game card only available at Walmart and this time also Target. Wizard101 also helpfully provides a link to both Walmart's and Target's online stores. However, if you search either, you won't find the card. Well, what does that mean? Is it not available, even though Wizard101 says it is? I physically went into several Target and Walmart stores, looking through their game card selections. Target's game card racks, by the way, are well organized. Walmart's? Not so much. But not only could I not find the Winterbane Gauntlet game card, I couldn't even find a slot for it, no product label or anything. I got frustrated after several searches and went home. I went back online, searching both Target.com and Walmart.com, but the product isn't even listed there. Is it no longer available at the stores? Would Wizard101 start offering it online at that point? I had to find out.
Once again, I emailed Wizard101 customer service. They got back to me and informed me that it won't be available on their website at this time, but maybe in the future. They don't deal with the game cards themselves. That's taken care of by a third party distributor who deals with various stores (like Walmart and Target). They suggested I just keep looking for it at various stores until it gets back in stock. I asked why I couldn't even find the product at all (not that it was out of stock, but simply didn't exist) on either website. They didn't know.
Next, I called Target (actually Target.com, which is an important distinction I was yet to discover). That was hellish. It took forever and a lot of back and forth, but finally I got this answer from Target.com... "We searched for the name and it doesn't exist in our system. That means we no longer offer it. It's been discontinued."
I called the third party distributor, which they found to be HIGHLY unusual for a consumer to do, but they gave me honest (and quick answers). They have the game card products. They haven't been told the product has been discontinued, but they won't ship it out to the stores until more are ordered from them. I knew better than to ask if I could buy it from them (you can't, unless you want to purchase a high volume of cards... like in the thousands). Until the stores say so, a product isn't discontinued. All "discontinued" means is that a store no longer intends to purchase a product and resell it to consumers. "Out of stock" means that the consumers have bought all the product at a particular store, and until the store decides to order more, you won't be able find the product there.
I knew what my next move would have to be. I would have to go into a store, ask for a manager, ask them to look up the game card and tell me if it was in stock, in stock at a different location, discontinued, or if they too would have no record of the game card. Well, I got lucky. I went to a different Target, and it was there, along with the new Spiral Cup Gauntlet. I bought them both today. But as happy as I was about this, I was still frustrated that it took me so long to be able to find them, and no one could give me a straight answer yet as to why. So I asked the department manager. I told him that I couldn't find the product online, like it didn't even exist, and it didn't exist at other stores, and here's the kicker... the Winterbane Gauntlet game card didn't even have a product slot label for the product at the store I found it. His answer? "Well, the game card is probably discontinued at this point, and some stores are selling through their remaining stock." But why couldn't I find it online? TARGET.COM AND TARGET THE STORE USE SEPARATE PRODUCT INVENTORY AND TRACKING SYSTEMS. You can consider Target.com and Target stores to be two separate sister stores. They aren't actually the same store, even though the parent Target company owns both. This is incredibly frustrating, as I like to find a product online and find at what locations it is available. But you cannot do that at Target (and I guess Walmart as well).
In closing (last paragraph), you will need to do as I suggest up above. Go into a store, look through their game cards, and if you don't find it, ask the video game department manager (or store manager) to look it up in their system. Currently, Pagoda Gauntlet card... buy it from Wizard101 online, or Walmart online (for the time being). Winterbane Gauntlet game card or Spiral Cup Gauntlet game card... go into an actual Target or Walmart store, look through their game cards, and if you don't find it, ask a manager to locate it in their system. If they cannot, escalate it to their boss, until you can find it (but be nice about it, ask politely). They should be able to track what stores still have it available. Inventory is tracked electronically, and there are absolute records of this stuff. I would suggest looking at Target first for the Spiral Cup Gauntlet, as that's where I eventually found it, plus they are more organized and a "nicer" business than Walmart. Don't resort to buying it from private online resellers that are basically "scalping"... they are charging at a minimum 20 dollars more for the card, and in some cases are offering "used" cards (which means they've been scratched off). That's just asking for trouble, with no way to get reimbursed.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Farming Amber, Farming Sea Dragon
OK. Maybe my life isn't so exciting, since I find myself spending Independence weekend playing Wiz101 instead of getting out. What do I have to show for that time?
1. Two pieces of Amber. Where did I get those? I beat the Sand Squid encounter twice. It took me between an 90 minutes to 2 hours per battle. Those are long battles, but I soloed them. If there were more people on the team, it might be a shorter battle. But each battle I got one Amber drop, along with some components to make more Amber after crafting conversion. Two hours for a fight might seem like a point of diminishing return, but also think how long it takes to farm other bosses for the components to craft one piece of Amber, or how long you have to garden for to get a chance at Amber. I don't know the drop rate for this... I might have gotten incredibly lucky, but this may be a very good way to farm it. If you get a dedicated farming team, this could wind up being an excellent farming mechanism.
2. I got no Sea Dragon (yet). What I did get was a better understanding of Trial of the Spheres, and a faster way to farm the bosses (solo). And in the end, that meant a good amount of gold after heading back to the Bazaar.
Contrary to what I previously wrote, doing damage every turn to Astreaus won't prevent him from resummoning his minions. It just seems to be random. What I did figure out is that what you intend to do after the fight shapes how your deck should be built. Are you going to only farm Astraeus over and over? Stack your deck with Colossal Meteor Strike and pepper it with Fire Blade, Sharpened Blade, and Sir Lamorak. Add in one or two Empowerments to get a bit faster pip generation, and just burn him down. If instead you prefer to do the whole dungeon over and over, since all of the bosses have a chance to drop the Sea Dragon, Power Link and Pixie should be in the rotation along with more Empowerment to maximize the pip. Power Link gets you a pip back with Empowerment, and Pixie is going to be off school casting for most of you. So I have three pre-made decks for Trial of the Spheres.
- quick burn Meteor Strike deck (kill Astraeus, port out and replenish health and mana and jump back in)
- slower mass damage over time and heal deck (get through Astraeus and Ptolemos without using a potion and being near full life)
- more typical boss kill deck tailored to the Mithraya fight (Sideboard of one blade and one trap, lots of blades and traps and only a couple of Efreet for the kill, and as many Glacial Shields as I could fit into the deck)
For the entirety of the Trial of the Spheres, I ran with Fire resistant gear. There are far too many Meteor Strikes to run with anything else. At one point, I ran out of space for treasure cards. I had farmed so hard, and already had close to 400 not in decks, I hit the limit and had to throw some out and vend the rest.
1. Two pieces of Amber. Where did I get those? I beat the Sand Squid encounter twice. It took me between an 90 minutes to 2 hours per battle. Those are long battles, but I soloed them. If there were more people on the team, it might be a shorter battle. But each battle I got one Amber drop, along with some components to make more Amber after crafting conversion. Two hours for a fight might seem like a point of diminishing return, but also think how long it takes to farm other bosses for the components to craft one piece of Amber, or how long you have to garden for to get a chance at Amber. I don't know the drop rate for this... I might have gotten incredibly lucky, but this may be a very good way to farm it. If you get a dedicated farming team, this could wind up being an excellent farming mechanism.
2. I got no Sea Dragon (yet). What I did get was a better understanding of Trial of the Spheres, and a faster way to farm the bosses (solo). And in the end, that meant a good amount of gold after heading back to the Bazaar.
Contrary to what I previously wrote, doing damage every turn to Astreaus won't prevent him from resummoning his minions. It just seems to be random. What I did figure out is that what you intend to do after the fight shapes how your deck should be built. Are you going to only farm Astraeus over and over? Stack your deck with Colossal Meteor Strike and pepper it with Fire Blade, Sharpened Blade, and Sir Lamorak. Add in one or two Empowerments to get a bit faster pip generation, and just burn him down. If instead you prefer to do the whole dungeon over and over, since all of the bosses have a chance to drop the Sea Dragon, Power Link and Pixie should be in the rotation along with more Empowerment to maximize the pip. Power Link gets you a pip back with Empowerment, and Pixie is going to be off school casting for most of you. So I have three pre-made decks for Trial of the Spheres.
- quick burn Meteor Strike deck (kill Astraeus, port out and replenish health and mana and jump back in)
- slower mass damage over time and heal deck (get through Astraeus and Ptolemos without using a potion and being near full life)
- more typical boss kill deck tailored to the Mithraya fight (Sideboard of one blade and one trap, lots of blades and traps and only a couple of Efreet for the kill, and as many Glacial Shields as I could fit into the deck)
For the entirety of the Trial of the Spheres, I ran with Fire resistant gear. There are far too many Meteor Strikes to run with anything else. At one point, I ran out of space for treasure cards. I had farmed so hard, and already had close to 400 not in decks, I hit the limit and had to throw some out and vend the rest.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Trial of the Spheres, A Couple of Notes
I've been doing very well soloing Trial of the Spheres with a DOT (damage over time) deck. I've equipped some of my damage over time spells in it: Power Link, Scald, and Fire Dragon. Besides my wand attacks and Sir Lamorak casts, that's it. All dot spells. I also threw in a couple of Pixies and I'm dominating the dungeon. It doesn't hurt that I'm carrying my fire resist armor either. Lots of stellar protectors, and Astraeus likes to cast Meteor Strikes and Spectral Blasts (sometimes Fire). I haven't used a potion yet, and I'm at Mithraya.
I think I've fine-tuned my understanding of the cheats for the first two bosses Astraeus and Ptolemos.
Astraeus
- While any of his minions are up, he will shield after every damaging attack or dot on him. The dots will not clear his shields as long as there is still a minion alive on his part of the turn.
- With his minions dead, as long as you do damage to him in a turn (including any dots on him), he will not start casting his cheat shield.
- Starting the turn after all his minions are dead, your side has three turns to hit him without his special shield coming up. On the fourth turn, he recasts the shield on his turn.
- When he recasts the shield, he will also summon his minions but they will not enter until the next round. You can remove his shield with damage or the ward steal spell on the turn he brings it into play. There is some variance with this, depending if he goes first or not. Maybe.
- The most effective strategy I've come up with is to have Colossal Fire Dragons and a couple blades. Throw in a Wyldfire, your favorite aura spells, and at least one Reshuffle. Blade up until he casts the shield. Pop the shield with a wand shot. When his summons are active, hit with the Fire Dragons. You effectively clear the minions and do a good hit to him at the same time, clearing off his subsequent shields. If you have a summon, like Sir Lamorak, he can help you to get rid of extra shields after the hits. You can also substitute in Meteor Strikes for quicker hits and worry less about clearing the shields. The downside is that he will sometimes hit Astraeus at the wrong time (like with a heck hound dot) and prompt the special shield while the minions are up.
Ptolemos
- Certain global spells (maybe all?) trigger his shield anti-cheat (he removes all wards on him when players cast a charm). That means Wyldfire counts for shield removal.
- He will not trigger the shield cheat unless you attack him while you have no charm on you. The global spell will NOT count as having a charm on you. It only removes his shield once it's on there.
Mithraya
- She may still cast a smokescreen on you on the turn you break her cheat sequence (getting a trap on her and blading yourself), but she won't after that as long as one blade remains on a player and a trap on her.
- I probably already said it, but the balance spells spirit blade, spirit trap, elemental blade, and elemental trap are very useful here, since some of them will never be used up if you're soloing.
- A trap on her minion does not count towards the cheat breaking! Only on her.
I think I've fine-tuned my understanding of the cheats for the first two bosses Astraeus and Ptolemos.
Astraeus
- While any of his minions are up, he will shield after every damaging attack or dot on him. The dots will not clear his shields as long as there is still a minion alive on his part of the turn.
- With his minions dead, as long as you do damage to him in a turn (including any dots on him), he will not start casting his cheat shield.
- Starting the turn after all his minions are dead, your side has three turns to hit him without his special shield coming up. On the fourth turn, he recasts the shield on his turn.
- When he recasts the shield, he will also summon his minions but they will not enter until the next round. You can remove his shield with damage or the ward steal spell on the turn he brings it into play. There is some variance with this, depending if he goes first or not. Maybe.
- The most effective strategy I've come up with is to have Colossal Fire Dragons and a couple blades. Throw in a Wyldfire, your favorite aura spells, and at least one Reshuffle. Blade up until he casts the shield. Pop the shield with a wand shot. When his summons are active, hit with the Fire Dragons. You effectively clear the minions and do a good hit to him at the same time, clearing off his subsequent shields. If you have a summon, like Sir Lamorak, he can help you to get rid of extra shields after the hits. You can also substitute in Meteor Strikes for quicker hits and worry less about clearing the shields. The downside is that he will sometimes hit Astraeus at the wrong time (like with a heck hound dot) and prompt the special shield while the minions are up.
Ptolemos
- Certain global spells (maybe all?) trigger his shield anti-cheat (he removes all wards on him when players cast a charm). That means Wyldfire counts for shield removal.
- He will not trigger the shield cheat unless you attack him while you have no charm on you. The global spell will NOT count as having a charm on you. It only removes his shield once it's on there.
Mithraya
- She may still cast a smokescreen on you on the turn you break her cheat sequence (getting a trap on her and blading yourself), but she won't after that as long as one blade remains on a player and a trap on her.
- I probably already said it, but the balance spells spirit blade, spirit trap, elemental blade, and elemental trap are very useful here, since some of them will never be used up if you're soloing.
- A trap on her minion does not count towards the cheat breaking! Only on her.
Extolling the Virtues of Sir Lamorak Tinder Hart
Now that Alexander is approaching 90, I'm looking through the worlds to find quests I had missed for the little extra bits of experience. To date, I now have gone through every world before Azteca and used the very helpful Quest Finder to make sure I had finished all the quests. I was missing 3 or 4 quests before doing this. One of those quests was for the Fire school minion spell Sir Lamorak.
You need to be level 75 and have done the quest line to learn Power Link, but let me tell you, once you do get it, this guy really shines! He's got 1700 health, which is so much more than your minions of old. You're fighting big hitters so he needs to at least survive a hit or two while he's out. He casts Fire school shields (Glacial Shield and Fire Shield) on both you and himself. He generates yellow pips frequently, so he can be effective nearly every turn. He likes to attack, though he will occasionally blade you or more frequently himself. For attacks, he can cast Heck Hound, Sunbird, Meteor Strike, Brimstone Revenant, Phoenix, and Fire Dragon. His hits are not inconsequential! He is very effective at whittling down either the boss or his minions. He will draw the ire of the enemies, which can give you some relief if you're getting low in health.
Sir Lamorak is like a better attack bot who will sometimes blade or shield you. The 5 pip cost for him has never disappointed me. He will dish out a lot more than 5 pips in damage and has saved me on a few boss encounters.
You need to be level 75 and have done the quest line to learn Power Link, but let me tell you, once you do get it, this guy really shines! He's got 1700 health, which is so much more than your minions of old. You're fighting big hitters so he needs to at least survive a hit or two while he's out. He casts Fire school shields (Glacial Shield and Fire Shield) on both you and himself. He generates yellow pips frequently, so he can be effective nearly every turn. He likes to attack, though he will occasionally blade you or more frequently himself. For attacks, he can cast Heck Hound, Sunbird, Meteor Strike, Brimstone Revenant, Phoenix, and Fire Dragon. His hits are not inconsequential! He is very effective at whittling down either the boss or his minions. He will draw the ire of the enemies, which can give you some relief if you're getting low in health.
Sir Lamorak is like a better attack bot who will sometimes blade or shield you. The 5 pip cost for him has never disappointed me. He will dish out a lot more than 5 pips in damage and has saved me on a few boss encounters.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Soloing the Sand Squid in Atlantea
This was my first test for using my heightened resistance gear. It still took effort. Let me explain. Once I realized I could tailor my gear toward extremely high resistance scores, I realized I could possibly solo bosses that I shouldn't really be able to. However, though it is possible to get a resistance score over a 100 against a certain school of magic, it would be both extremely difficult to achieve that score, and also leave you vulnerable to any other schools used during a fight.
The Sand Squid fight, luckily, is all Myth. The downside is that it features two of Myths big specialties - Blade removal and Stun. My first recommendation is that if you're going to try and solo this, you will want your resistance to be above 90%, and get it to 100% if you possibly can. Unfortunately, the only way that I know of to get your resistance to 100% or greater is to develop a pet that has at least some sort of Myth resistance. Even if you got Spell-Proof and Spell-Defy to give 14% resistance, that will be unlikely to get you to 100%. My Myth resistance with my clothes (Thirteen Death Mask, Secret Surcoat, Woodwarden's Shoes) along with the extra 5 resistance from Heartsteel only brought me to 82% Myth resistance. I've been trying to farm for pets to get the Spell-Proof and Spell-Defy abilities, but have been so far unsuccessful. What I had forgotten was that I had a Minotaur pet I had given to my Conjurer. It's currently at epic and has a Myth-Proof score of 10! I switched over the pet, and now here I am at 92 Myth resistance. You would think at 92 resistance the fight would be easy, right? Take my word for it - if you can get to 100 resistance before fighting the Sand Squid, do it! Then load up your side board with Conviction if you can get the treasure cards of it, and go fight the Sand Squid with little worry.
This guide is for the rest of you. I'll break it down into sections.
1. Make sure you have enough resistance.
2. Be prepared for stuns.
3. Don't bother with Shields or Vaporize.
4. Don't equip your deck with Blades.
5. Fit Conviction into your deck if you can.
6. Use Scarecrow if you can.
7. If you're going to use a healing spell, heal big.
8. Use lots of traps.
9. Put at least two if not more Reshuffles into your deck.
10. Work on the large tentacles first, one at a time.
What is enough Resistance?
Don't fight this boss without at least getting the three pieces of clothing I listed above (or ones that match your particular school). Heartsteel is only 5 universal resistance, but in this case, I decided every little bit counts. You can get Heartsteel by farming Prince Gobblestone in Colossus Boulevard, or if you are like me and not patient enough, you can buy it from the Crown Ship for 263 (I think) crowns. I NEVER buy things with crowns other than unlocking new zones, so this was quite a choice for me. But the price is so small compared to the utility I would get from the piece, I went ahead and did it. I'd rather spend my time farming bigger things that Gobblestone... as fast as he is to kill, the loot fills your inventory quickly, and it doesn't vend for much. Personally, I don't think 82 resistance is enough to win this fight as a Pyromancer, unless you use Death as a secondary school (or at least have the Death Mastery Amulet). You're going to need a pet that offers you at least some resistance to universal or Myth to hope to have a chance. Why do I say this? At 92 Myth resistance, I was typically taking about 50 damage a hit, sometimes as high as 100 or up to 300 from a failed critical block. But all that damage adds up. If you use a standard heal, each enemy gets a free zero pip earthquake on you. At my resistance, that meant I was still taking over 200 damage back per heal I gave myself. If you decide to use Death drains, you don't risk the free earthquakes, but it costs a lot of pips to get those off. If you have less resistance, you will be using all your pips to heal yourself instead of being able to mount an offense.
Stuns. Get used to it.
I did this fight several times last night. Each fight took about 90 minutes to complete. 90 minutes is normally a dungeon. This was one fight. Because stuns. Here are some of the spells that each of the four tentacles can fire off: Blinding Light (stuns all enemies), Legendary Treant (damage and stun for 1 round), Basilisk (damage, damage over time, stun for 1 round), and Medusa (damage and stun for 2 rounds). Now if you have a Conviction aura cast, you are stun immune for 4 turns. But unless you are a regular PvP player, you're not going to have access to it as a spell and will need to use it as a treasure card. You could load up your Sideboard with Scarecrow and Conviction I suppose... You can buy the Conviction TC from Kiliman Copperleaf in the library in Zafaria. You can also garden it from Couch Potatoes, and Sour Fickle Pickles. For me, I had one Conviction item card, so I spent at least every other turn stunned.
Myth Shield and Vaporize
There will be too many Myth spells cast upon you in this battle. You will just waste space you could have been using for traps and possible heals. Your resistance gear is your shield. The amount of damage you block with a shield while you have high resistance is so small as to be a waste of a card.
Blades
I said don't equip them, but you can. The tentacles don't earthquake very often (and even less if you don't heal); but there is nothing more frustrating than having 5 stacked blades on you, Colossal Efreet queued to cast, and one of the tentacles casts Earthquake before you can cast. You will save yourself time and heartache by not even equipping them. It does mean you will need to make sure your traps are effective and you lay enough of them down before your big hits.
Conviction
See section on Stuns.
Death drain spells, including Scarecrow
These drain spells do not trigger the earthquake cheat that other kinds of heals do (including Link and Power Link). Congratulations, Necromancers! The Sand Squid fight was tailor-made for you to solo! I don't mind ripping out a page from their book in this case and loading my sideboard with Scarecrow. The upside is that the tentacles appear to be fairly vulnerable to death magic. I was getting a small boost per hit. Each Scarecrow hit did 600 damage per tentacle. That's 1200 life back if you hit all four. The downside is the number of pips you have to save up to do this. Without a Death Mastery Amulet, this was time consuming. You of course should be utilizing that time by placing traps on your target while generating pips, but in the end, it is worth it. It also stretches the time it takes to finish the battle even more. Believe me, unless you have a Myth Resistance of 98 or higher, you will be needing at least one good heal in your deck. Might as well make it a Scarecrow. The only other heal that would compare to this would be a full pip Dryad. You'd be inviting Earthquakes, but I can see that spell being a good alternative to the Scarecrow. If your Myth Resistance is less than 90, I'd stick with Scarecrow.
Other Healing
See above. All heals a player casts spark the Cheat of the zero-cost out-of-turn Earthquake swarms. Pet heals do not spark this. Pet heals are fantastic for this fight. Unfortunately, I have terrible luck with pet heals, and the Minotaur pet with Myth-Proof doesn't have any healing anyway. If you have a pet with great resistance and healing, you are quite ahead of the game. If you're going to cast heals, they need to be worth it. You don't want to have blades on you when you do it, and the healing you get back needs to be much larger than the damage you're going to receive from each remaining tentacle.
Trapping
The good thing about Pyromancers is that we have lots of traps. Backdraft in particular is going to make a huge difference. The downside to it is that it's going to use up pips and stretch out the game. I haven't mentioned it above, but one great way to speed up your game is to load your deck with Empowerment. You're pip generation will be good, although with all of the stuns in this battle, you're going to wind up sitting on a lot of pips anyways. The only drawback to Empowerment is that for things like Backdraft and high level damage spells, you're going to have mostly white pips. I think it's worth the trade-off, and if you really need more power pips, just regulate when you decide to cast your Empowerment. You will need to remain patient and disciplined while casting traps. The large tentacles have 28000 life. That's a lot of traps in order to get the big numbers. If you don't lay enough traps on before doing a damage spell, it's going to require a lot of damage spells to take down one boss tentacle. There are two to deal with here. The smaller tentacles can be killed in one or two hits with properly augmented spells, but those big ones take nearly an hour a piece to kill. With all of the traps you are casting, you may want to keep note paper handy to write down what you're casting, so you don't waste traps you've already cast! This is especially true if you've learned Potent Trap.
Potent Trap
This spell is enough to warrant it's own discussion. This allows you to stack the same kind of spell, if one of them is affected by Potent Trap. Example: I cast Fire Trap on a tentacle (+25% to fire damage). If I convert a Fire Trap from my hand with the Potent Trap spell, and then cast this augmented Fire trap on the same tentacle (+35% to fire damage), those two spells will stack for an attack! With Potent Trap spells in your deck, you have effectively doubled the number of traps you can cast on enemies. Everyone (and rightfully so) extols the virtues of Sharpened Blades. But this fight renders Sharpened Blades nearly meaningless. Earthquakes don't care. If you learned Death up to Feint, then you now have two Feints to stack. You can stack two Backdrafts (though that will take a lot of time to make effective). Potent trap is awesome. Of course to learn it, you need to have beaten the fire monkey boss I described in an earlier post.
Reshuffle
I had only one Reshuffle in my deck the first time I fought this encounter (well the first time I fought it and hoped to live). I was able to kill both boss tentacles and one of the minion tentacles before I simply ran out of cards. I made a fundamental mistake that probably most of you would not have made - I didn't know that once you use a Reshuffle, that card doesn't reshuffle into your deck. One Reshuffle in your deck means you only get one Reshuffle. I probably would have been able to finish the fight had I loaded more Scarecrows in my deck, but I only had four in my Sideboard. So let that be a triple lesson. Fully equip your Sideboard (with Scarecrow or whatever you did decide to put in there), be patient with your traps so you are maximizing the damage you do per hit, and put more than one Reshuffle in your deck for this fight. Two will likely be enough, but put 3 in if you're paranoid.
Order of Kills
This also dictates the kind of damage you are putting into your deck. I experimented with several battles using different kinds of spells. Attack All spells will get rid of the small tentacles somewhat quickly. And that's when you'll learn of the other cheat in this battle: if there's a boss tentacle still up, after a couple of turns, minion tentacles regenerate. When they fully return to battle, they will have lots of pips, most of them power pips. It is pretty pointless to spend any time worrying about the minion tentacles. I suppose if you are able to rapidly do epic amounts of damage to all enemies at once, that would be way to fight this battle. I didn't find I was doing very much damage to enemies without a lot of traps down, even if my attacks were Colossal. The trade-off to having high resistance is your other stats are going to suffer. Your accuracy, your power pip generation, your critical chance, and your power are all going to be a good bit lower than you're used to. Pick a tentacle. Trap it. Trap it a lot. Make sure you've stacked nearly every kind of trap you can before launching as strong an attack as you can on it. Damage over time spells aren't much effective in this battle. Dragons, elves, scalds, and volcanoes just aren't going to maximize the traps. Which is why you should consider sticking to attacks with single big hits. Pay attention to your health. In the beginning of the battle, you will feel like a boss with all your resistance. But when you drop down to a thousand health, just as you are considering casting a Scarecrow, you just might find yourself locked down by five turns of stuns; and then to make matters worse, you fail a couple of blocks against critical attacks on you. Suddenly you're coasting under 100 life hoping you don't fizzle that Scarecrow. Consider using a Scarecrow as early as the 2000 health mark. Try to maximize your opportunities though. If you have a lot of power pips and a Backdraft in hand, the smart call is going to be using the Backdraft, unless your hovering around 400 life. If you have a lot of white pips, however, just use them up with a Scarecrow. The nice thing about the Scarecrow is it won't be using up your Fire school traps. Also, consider having a couple of Wyldfires in your deck, not just one. They do occasionally cast Time of Legend. Being able to dampen their damage while augmenting your own is a nice thing.
Special Note
If you manage to kill a boss tentacle, but are forced to flee or are killed, when you use the Dungeon Recall, that tentacle will be dead UNLESS there were no remaining boss tentacles left in the battle. In that case, there will be one boss tentacle and at least one minion tentacle (the other minion will respawn in the course of the fight). You should try to get one boss tentacle destroyed if you don't think you will manage to kill both in a single fight. You will still need to be able to down one boss and two minion tentacles in a single encounter though.
So let's recap.
My gear:
Thirteen Death Mask
Secret Surcoat
Woodwarden's Shoes
Heartsteel
Dawnfrost Blade (52 universal block)
Jewel of the Feint
Minotaur Pet with Mythproof
Toasty Band of the Fire Elves (nothing toward resistance or block, but gives me otherwise good stats. Kakenya's Broken Band would be a good alternative. It gives boost to Death power, as well as 30 block against Myth, plus otherwise good boost to health, mana, and power pip generation).
My deck (Codex of the Lost Fire):
Fire Trap x2
Fuel x2
Backdraft x2
Elemental Trap x2
Potent Trap x4
Empowerment x4
Colossal x4
Efreet x4
Reshuffle x2
Sideboard:
Scarecrow x alot
Other useful card types: Feint, Furnace, Conviction, Infallible (for your Scarecrow), Sun Serpent, King Artorius. I haven't learned most of these spells.
The Sand Squid fight, luckily, is all Myth. The downside is that it features two of Myths big specialties - Blade removal and Stun. My first recommendation is that if you're going to try and solo this, you will want your resistance to be above 90%, and get it to 100% if you possibly can. Unfortunately, the only way that I know of to get your resistance to 100% or greater is to develop a pet that has at least some sort of Myth resistance. Even if you got Spell-Proof and Spell-Defy to give 14% resistance, that will be unlikely to get you to 100%. My Myth resistance with my clothes (Thirteen Death Mask, Secret Surcoat, Woodwarden's Shoes) along with the extra 5 resistance from Heartsteel only brought me to 82% Myth resistance. I've been trying to farm for pets to get the Spell-Proof and Spell-Defy abilities, but have been so far unsuccessful. What I had forgotten was that I had a Minotaur pet I had given to my Conjurer. It's currently at epic and has a Myth-Proof score of 10! I switched over the pet, and now here I am at 92 Myth resistance. You would think at 92 resistance the fight would be easy, right? Take my word for it - if you can get to 100 resistance before fighting the Sand Squid, do it! Then load up your side board with Conviction if you can get the treasure cards of it, and go fight the Sand Squid with little worry.
This guide is for the rest of you. I'll break it down into sections.
1. Make sure you have enough resistance.
2. Be prepared for stuns.
3. Don't bother with Shields or Vaporize.
4. Don't equip your deck with Blades.
5. Fit Conviction into your deck if you can.
6. Use Scarecrow if you can.
7. If you're going to use a healing spell, heal big.
8. Use lots of traps.
9. Put at least two if not more Reshuffles into your deck.
10. Work on the large tentacles first, one at a time.
What is enough Resistance?
Don't fight this boss without at least getting the three pieces of clothing I listed above (or ones that match your particular school). Heartsteel is only 5 universal resistance, but in this case, I decided every little bit counts. You can get Heartsteel by farming Prince Gobblestone in Colossus Boulevard, or if you are like me and not patient enough, you can buy it from the Crown Ship for 263 (I think) crowns. I NEVER buy things with crowns other than unlocking new zones, so this was quite a choice for me. But the price is so small compared to the utility I would get from the piece, I went ahead and did it. I'd rather spend my time farming bigger things that Gobblestone... as fast as he is to kill, the loot fills your inventory quickly, and it doesn't vend for much. Personally, I don't think 82 resistance is enough to win this fight as a Pyromancer, unless you use Death as a secondary school (or at least have the Death Mastery Amulet). You're going to need a pet that offers you at least some resistance to universal or Myth to hope to have a chance. Why do I say this? At 92 Myth resistance, I was typically taking about 50 damage a hit, sometimes as high as 100 or up to 300 from a failed critical block. But all that damage adds up. If you use a standard heal, each enemy gets a free zero pip earthquake on you. At my resistance, that meant I was still taking over 200 damage back per heal I gave myself. If you decide to use Death drains, you don't risk the free earthquakes, but it costs a lot of pips to get those off. If you have less resistance, you will be using all your pips to heal yourself instead of being able to mount an offense.
Stuns. Get used to it.
I did this fight several times last night. Each fight took about 90 minutes to complete. 90 minutes is normally a dungeon. This was one fight. Because stuns. Here are some of the spells that each of the four tentacles can fire off: Blinding Light (stuns all enemies), Legendary Treant (damage and stun for 1 round), Basilisk (damage, damage over time, stun for 1 round), and Medusa (damage and stun for 2 rounds). Now if you have a Conviction aura cast, you are stun immune for 4 turns. But unless you are a regular PvP player, you're not going to have access to it as a spell and will need to use it as a treasure card. You could load up your Sideboard with Scarecrow and Conviction I suppose... You can buy the Conviction TC from Kiliman Copperleaf in the library in Zafaria. You can also garden it from Couch Potatoes, and Sour Fickle Pickles. For me, I had one Conviction item card, so I spent at least every other turn stunned.
Myth Shield and Vaporize
There will be too many Myth spells cast upon you in this battle. You will just waste space you could have been using for traps and possible heals. Your resistance gear is your shield. The amount of damage you block with a shield while you have high resistance is so small as to be a waste of a card.
Blades
I said don't equip them, but you can. The tentacles don't earthquake very often (and even less if you don't heal); but there is nothing more frustrating than having 5 stacked blades on you, Colossal Efreet queued to cast, and one of the tentacles casts Earthquake before you can cast. You will save yourself time and heartache by not even equipping them. It does mean you will need to make sure your traps are effective and you lay enough of them down before your big hits.
Conviction
See section on Stuns.
Death drain spells, including Scarecrow
These drain spells do not trigger the earthquake cheat that other kinds of heals do (including Link and Power Link). Congratulations, Necromancers! The Sand Squid fight was tailor-made for you to solo! I don't mind ripping out a page from their book in this case and loading my sideboard with Scarecrow. The upside is that the tentacles appear to be fairly vulnerable to death magic. I was getting a small boost per hit. Each Scarecrow hit did 600 damage per tentacle. That's 1200 life back if you hit all four. The downside is the number of pips you have to save up to do this. Without a Death Mastery Amulet, this was time consuming. You of course should be utilizing that time by placing traps on your target while generating pips, but in the end, it is worth it. It also stretches the time it takes to finish the battle even more. Believe me, unless you have a Myth Resistance of 98 or higher, you will be needing at least one good heal in your deck. Might as well make it a Scarecrow. The only other heal that would compare to this would be a full pip Dryad. You'd be inviting Earthquakes, but I can see that spell being a good alternative to the Scarecrow. If your Myth Resistance is less than 90, I'd stick with Scarecrow.
Other Healing
See above. All heals a player casts spark the Cheat of the zero-cost out-of-turn Earthquake swarms. Pet heals do not spark this. Pet heals are fantastic for this fight. Unfortunately, I have terrible luck with pet heals, and the Minotaur pet with Myth-Proof doesn't have any healing anyway. If you have a pet with great resistance and healing, you are quite ahead of the game. If you're going to cast heals, they need to be worth it. You don't want to have blades on you when you do it, and the healing you get back needs to be much larger than the damage you're going to receive from each remaining tentacle.
Trapping
The good thing about Pyromancers is that we have lots of traps. Backdraft in particular is going to make a huge difference. The downside to it is that it's going to use up pips and stretch out the game. I haven't mentioned it above, but one great way to speed up your game is to load your deck with Empowerment. You're pip generation will be good, although with all of the stuns in this battle, you're going to wind up sitting on a lot of pips anyways. The only drawback to Empowerment is that for things like Backdraft and high level damage spells, you're going to have mostly white pips. I think it's worth the trade-off, and if you really need more power pips, just regulate when you decide to cast your Empowerment. You will need to remain patient and disciplined while casting traps. The large tentacles have 28000 life. That's a lot of traps in order to get the big numbers. If you don't lay enough traps on before doing a damage spell, it's going to require a lot of damage spells to take down one boss tentacle. There are two to deal with here. The smaller tentacles can be killed in one or two hits with properly augmented spells, but those big ones take nearly an hour a piece to kill. With all of the traps you are casting, you may want to keep note paper handy to write down what you're casting, so you don't waste traps you've already cast! This is especially true if you've learned Potent Trap.
Potent Trap
This spell is enough to warrant it's own discussion. This allows you to stack the same kind of spell, if one of them is affected by Potent Trap. Example: I cast Fire Trap on a tentacle (+25% to fire damage). If I convert a Fire Trap from my hand with the Potent Trap spell, and then cast this augmented Fire trap on the same tentacle (+35% to fire damage), those two spells will stack for an attack! With Potent Trap spells in your deck, you have effectively doubled the number of traps you can cast on enemies. Everyone (and rightfully so) extols the virtues of Sharpened Blades. But this fight renders Sharpened Blades nearly meaningless. Earthquakes don't care. If you learned Death up to Feint, then you now have two Feints to stack. You can stack two Backdrafts (though that will take a lot of time to make effective). Potent trap is awesome. Of course to learn it, you need to have beaten the fire monkey boss I described in an earlier post.
Reshuffle
I had only one Reshuffle in my deck the first time I fought this encounter (well the first time I fought it and hoped to live). I was able to kill both boss tentacles and one of the minion tentacles before I simply ran out of cards. I made a fundamental mistake that probably most of you would not have made - I didn't know that once you use a Reshuffle, that card doesn't reshuffle into your deck. One Reshuffle in your deck means you only get one Reshuffle. I probably would have been able to finish the fight had I loaded more Scarecrows in my deck, but I only had four in my Sideboard. So let that be a triple lesson. Fully equip your Sideboard (with Scarecrow or whatever you did decide to put in there), be patient with your traps so you are maximizing the damage you do per hit, and put more than one Reshuffle in your deck for this fight. Two will likely be enough, but put 3 in if you're paranoid.
Order of Kills
This also dictates the kind of damage you are putting into your deck. I experimented with several battles using different kinds of spells. Attack All spells will get rid of the small tentacles somewhat quickly. And that's when you'll learn of the other cheat in this battle: if there's a boss tentacle still up, after a couple of turns, minion tentacles regenerate. When they fully return to battle, they will have lots of pips, most of them power pips. It is pretty pointless to spend any time worrying about the minion tentacles. I suppose if you are able to rapidly do epic amounts of damage to all enemies at once, that would be way to fight this battle. I didn't find I was doing very much damage to enemies without a lot of traps down, even if my attacks were Colossal. The trade-off to having high resistance is your other stats are going to suffer. Your accuracy, your power pip generation, your critical chance, and your power are all going to be a good bit lower than you're used to. Pick a tentacle. Trap it. Trap it a lot. Make sure you've stacked nearly every kind of trap you can before launching as strong an attack as you can on it. Damage over time spells aren't much effective in this battle. Dragons, elves, scalds, and volcanoes just aren't going to maximize the traps. Which is why you should consider sticking to attacks with single big hits. Pay attention to your health. In the beginning of the battle, you will feel like a boss with all your resistance. But when you drop down to a thousand health, just as you are considering casting a Scarecrow, you just might find yourself locked down by five turns of stuns; and then to make matters worse, you fail a couple of blocks against critical attacks on you. Suddenly you're coasting under 100 life hoping you don't fizzle that Scarecrow. Consider using a Scarecrow as early as the 2000 health mark. Try to maximize your opportunities though. If you have a lot of power pips and a Backdraft in hand, the smart call is going to be using the Backdraft, unless your hovering around 400 life. If you have a lot of white pips, however, just use them up with a Scarecrow. The nice thing about the Scarecrow is it won't be using up your Fire school traps. Also, consider having a couple of Wyldfires in your deck, not just one. They do occasionally cast Time of Legend. Being able to dampen their damage while augmenting your own is a nice thing.
Special Note
If you manage to kill a boss tentacle, but are forced to flee or are killed, when you use the Dungeon Recall, that tentacle will be dead UNLESS there were no remaining boss tentacles left in the battle. In that case, there will be one boss tentacle and at least one minion tentacle (the other minion will respawn in the course of the fight). You should try to get one boss tentacle destroyed if you don't think you will manage to kill both in a single fight. You will still need to be able to down one boss and two minion tentacles in a single encounter though.
So let's recap.
My gear:
Thirteen Death Mask
Secret Surcoat
Woodwarden's Shoes
Heartsteel
Dawnfrost Blade (52 universal block)
Jewel of the Feint
Minotaur Pet with Mythproof
Toasty Band of the Fire Elves (nothing toward resistance or block, but gives me otherwise good stats. Kakenya's Broken Band would be a good alternative. It gives boost to Death power, as well as 30 block against Myth, plus otherwise good boost to health, mana, and power pip generation).
My deck (Codex of the Lost Fire):
Fire Trap x2
Fuel x2
Backdraft x2
Elemental Trap x2
Potent Trap x4
Empowerment x4
Colossal x4
Efreet x4
Reshuffle x2
Sideboard:
Scarecrow x alot
Other useful card types: Feint, Furnace, Conviction, Infallible (for your Scarecrow), Sun Serpent, King Artorius. I haven't learned most of these spells.
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