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.

Soloing Trial of the Spheres, Part 1

This will be silly, as I'm "too high of level" for this dungeon. But soloing with the wrong deck might get you killed quick! I went in a bit back thinking I could breeze through, and Astraeus stopped me cold. Rather than my usual lengthy discussion... on with the dungeon!

Three physical puzzles in first room, plus wandering monsters. Don't touch the monsters.

Puzzle with the heads: click until each head faces the center giant stone vase structure.

Puzzle with the stars: click each remote panel once (it is usually set that way), or until all the stars are in line on one axis from small stone pod thing to center stone vase structure.

The hard puzzle: four stone pods around center stone vase structure... this is from memory, so I may get this wrong, but here goes. If you visualize the outer stone pods as points on a clock: 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 9 o'clock... with you approaching the puzzle from between the 3 and 6 o'clock pods, then click each stone in this order: . I'll edit this later if I find I'm wrong. This puzzle is a bit irritating as when you click on a pod, some of the pods light up, and others when lit may go dark. Each has it's own combination of what lights up and what doesn't, but it also depends on which ones you already lit up first so... this puzzle is a trial and error one.

EDIT: Mr. Sarcastic wrote on http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113152 to start with closest stone pod, activating that, then moving counter clockwise to all the other stone pods, activating each one. I confirmed this.

Avoid monsters, go toward teleport base area.

Astraeus will be in his own room. He frequently pops up a 90% tower shield, and he has 7000 health. That means if you just try and muscle through with damage, you will be needing to do around 70,000 damage to take him down. Since you're soloing, this would take quite some doing. Also, he will every couple of rounds summon three near copies of himself if there aren't any up. They do life damage, but have far less health. There are a variety of ways you may want to tackle this guy... one of which might be minotaur treasure cards. That just made me snicker. I opted for a bunch of damage over time spells.

Here's my deck for this fight (keep in mind that I currently have a minion that does spritely! If you don't have something like this, think about shields and heavier heals in your deck).

Deck of the Lotus:
4 Gargantuan
2 Monstrous
4 Pixie
2 Fire Dragon
2 Rain of Fire
1 Fire Prism (what was that doing in there!?)
4 Fire Blade
4 Link
4 Power Link
2 Fire Elemental (very nice for putting down additional Link and Fire Elf spells)
4 Scald
4 Empowerment
2 Wyldfire
2 Fortify

I had no sideboard equipped  :O You may want to do various things, like sideboard the double hit myth spells, or put some buffed up 'dot' spells in there. Or big heals.

The keys to this were constantly laying down damage over time spells as I got them. His shield might soak the damage from one, but if there were 2 or even 3 more burning dots on him, he would take the full brunt of those. It might be helpful to save up a bunch of pips so you cast two or three of these kinds of damage over time spells back to back, rather than having to wait a couple of rounds between. That means loading up nothing but Rain of Fire is going to backfire on you. The empowerment is nice for getting stuff out quicker, and the Link/Power Link spells were good for the double effect of keeping those 'dot' (damage over time) spells on him and keeping your life juiced. By doing Scald/Fire Dragon/Rain of Fire, you get to effect his copies if they are out.

Took awhile, but cruised past Astraeus pretty easy with this.

SECOND EDIT: Forget the Links and Power Links on him. He will shield each time one of those damages him on subsequent turns. The damage-all-enemy spells is the way to go. I'd get rid of the links, and power links maybe (though if you have your empowerment up, you'll get a pip back, be working on an enemy, and getting a small heal out of it). That also means... don't do any double hit spells, like those from myth or balance. The fire elemental is a waste of time. It must have been late when I did this.
Here's my new modified deck:
4 Gargantuan
2 Monstrous
4 Pixie
4 Fire Dragon
2 Rain of Fire
4 Fire Blade
4 Scald
4 Empowerment
2 Wyldfire
2 Fortify
4 Fire Shield

Sideboard in heals if needed. Sprites probably a good choice. Or if that's eating too many of your pips. Try some Life Shields.