Getting the One in the Million Badge Solo

I felt I had got pretty close the other night to hitting for a million damage, so I gave it another shot tonight. I chose the same spot (Lady Blackhope Tower), but bought a few more treasure cards, and crafted one additional item.

First, I did some research on the net. So very many people youtube their million damage shot, but even when they show you their deck setup, it's hard to eyeball what exactly they have in it. Most of them have a lot of spell duplication (since they want to use those to discard to draw their treasure cards). I knew I'd get confused if I did too much of that. Prisms and pixies are easy to figure out, so they and my fortify spells would be the ones I'd discard first. I also noticed most people don't include reshuffle, which for my strategy is nearly mandatory. Since ordering my spells is key, I needed to failsafe my deck drawing.

Here's the best web page I found for describing how to get a million damage in one shot (solo even!). I compared what he had in his lists with what I was running, and as well, how hard it would be to acquire some of those cards. I'll let you look at his stuff yourself. It's going to be more informative than what I have here (unless you are a pyromancer).

http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280871

After reviewing this, I realized I wasn't running optimally with my equipped items. However, I didn't want to go out running dungeons to get better gear for this, since I wanted to do this NOW. The one concession I made was getting a wand item that gave bladestorm. The critical chance I was losing was being made up for in an additional percentage boost. I also noted that he eschewed the use of prisms, feeling that there might be too much room for mistakes or getting caught having to discard before getting all of your post-prism damage cast (which means in our case, getting all your ice damage cast before casting prism). Every single damage buff has to go on for this to work. Well, almost... which I'll mention at the end.

I also discovered an angle that I had not thought of before. While reviewing the treasure cards I already owned when putting in my newly bought cards into the sideboard, I discovered that I owned a Polymorph Colossus treasure card. Hey, don't those things cast ice spells? I looked it up, and sure enough, one of the spells they cast is ice trap (I think the 30% variety). I looked up the other polymorph spells to see what other spells might aid my endeavor. You must note, that these are school cards. If you already cast any of these, the polymorph is a wasted effort... your using up six turns for one spell. This is a desperate wizard's gambit. In my case, the colossus, the ninja pig, and the mander polymorphs all gave good school cards that I couldn't cast (ice trap, feint, and balance blade). I did have versions of ice trap and feint, but as treasure cards, so these spells would be able to stack. I was only able to buy the polymorph ninja pig, unfortunately.

I got my equipment ready. It was nearly the same as before but with the following changes:

· Hammer of the Stone Sky (gives 25% BladeStorm item card)
· some other ring that I forget, but gives 4% fire damage boost instead of general damage, but gives a little extra percentage for incoming heals. I didn't need it at all last time (constantly hovered within 200 of my maximum health, mostly due to pet casting spritely), so whatever.

What was important were the additional spells in my deck. For my main deck setup, I removed one elemental trap and one prism.

For my treasure card sideboard, I added in the following spells:

· 40% Ice Trap (Bartleby Series)
· 35% Fire Trap (Bartleby Series)
· 40% FireBlade
· Polymorph Colossus (for 30% Ice Trap school card)
· Polymorph Ninja Pig (for 70%/30 Feint school card)
· 2 x Reshuffle (added one in, just in case)

I also removed the extra elemental trap. The six additional boost cards should bring me over the top. Right? Well, almost. Everything is working right, and remembering how I kept trying to wait it out for my ice cards before... this time I just aggressively discarded, saving only my reshuffle as it came up, and casting every treasure ice card I got. The first time I tried this, I had ice blasts from my wand, and that is how I took out the minion. This time I did not have them, since my wand had changed to non-damage spells only. I did have an extra Grand Phoenix from my pet, but worried that I'd already have blades on me by the time it would show. I thus planned to use the polymorphs to take out the minion. Well, there was no need for worry. Phoenix came early, and I elected to just send it toward Ms. Blackhope herself. The remainder of the fight would be with her skeletal minion.

A bit later, I drew the polymorph colossus. I had to be very careful, as there is a lot of damage in the colossus arsenal. One mis-click would spoil the whole thing. I got my ice trap cast on my target, and then just passed the rest of the time until the polymorph expired.

A few turns after this, calamity! I did NOT put Polymorph Ninja Pig in my deck. Rather, I had put the Ninja Pig damage spell in. That meant I would be without an extra feint, which is a big damage boost. Oh man! That meant I was really cutting down my numbers. I didn't have time to re-calculate the whole effect, and it didn't matter. Treasure cards had already been cast. I had to see it through. I finished putting all of my ice damage on, not worrying about the in-between cards that wouldn't matter which order they were cast and finished up the battle.

Here was my battle plan, executed about right. I don't know if my Phoenix pet ever cast his fire trap or not... I didn't notice it.


PHASE 1, laying on the ice
30% Ice Trap, colossus spell (and kill minion in colossus form)
35% Ice Trap
40% Ice Trap

PHASE 2, switching damage types
Prism

PHASE 3, the in-between spells... ones that didn't matter if they were cast before or after prism
25% Elemental Trap
30% Elemental Trap
70% Feint, pig spell
70% Feint
75% Feint
35% Elemental Blade
40% Elemental Blade
Gargantuan, stick it on Efreet whenever they are both in hand
35% Fireblade
40% Fireblade
40% Fireblade
25% Curse
35% Wyldfire

PHASE 3, adding fire
25% Fuel
30% Fuel
25% Fire Trap
30% Fire Trap
35% Fire Trap
35% Fire Trap

PHASE 4, draw back and punch
35% Dark Pact (best to have the feint traps on yourself cleared before casting...)
25% BladeStorm (important! must not cast bladestorm before dark pact)
35% Berserk
1145 modified-damage Efreet

Survey says? BOOM! 1,000,000 damage rolled up the screen above the poor skeleton's (once again) lifeless body. Damage displayed is capped at a million, and I'm pretty sure my damage wasn't too much higher than that. Were I to be sure that my pet cast his fire trap, and I had actually gotten the polymorph ninja pig's feint cast, it would have been around 2 million.

I did get a screen grab, but upon reviewing it, I realized that once again, I had left my chat window open. I may post it here eventually, but first I will have to "shop" the names and/or text out of the image. Maybe a blur or strike-through will suffice.

This is how I soloed for a million. To be sure, this is more easily done in a group, as long as communication is clear. You won't need to spend so much gold on treasure cards, and if you review the link I put in earlier, you can see there are a lot of treasure cards possible. Also, no school comes close to storm for the top damage ability. I don't know if fire or death or some other school comes in second, but it's pretty distant from the top. If you're storm, you almost HAVE to get this badge to remain in the club. I just had to see that I could do it, so here you go. I hope this helps anyone else trying to get the badge.

Final advice? Plan it out. Do the math! It will save you some gold. Don't be afraid of prisms, as they give you a pretty cost-effective avenue of boosting your damage. Just make sure you stick with the plan and lay your cards on in the right order. And use Reshuffle! It will help avoid potential mistakes. If you decide not to solo this, be kind and return the favor for your friends. Keep extra treasure cards on hand that you can trade to them or cast on them. Load up shields and heals, and communicate through the whole thing. Everybody loves a winner.

/PS. I didn't critical here either. Counting on a critical might make you sad. You may find yourself attempting the feat over and over hoping for a different result from a critical, which is luck. Plan it out, and you won't need luck. Paying extra gold up front saves you from spending more on retries.

Briskbreeze Tower - Finale

Finally! But not solo. Maybe in another couple of levels and with more resistance gear, maybe I could solo Orrick, but I finally wound up being on a team that got him. Twice.

Team 1: Adrian Lightbringer, a theurgist accompanied me and Rachel Starsong (sorceress) into the tower. We easily ascended to the final boss, and I was explaining the plan when calamity struck. I rushed into combat. Why? I dunno. How often do mistakes like this happen? Probably all the time. I knew the plan, since I orchestrated it, and I even had the correct deck set up! Just not the one I had equipped. Nor had I topped off my life with a potion before starting. All battle long, I complained about screwing up. Eventually, Orrick pounded Adrian into mush, but what a beating he took! I'm sorry, Adrian. But Adrian was a good sport and actually found something out about the Tower which I had not been aware of. He couldn't port back into the battle, but he was able to physically run back in and rejoin our combat. I thought it would be locked out, but it was not! Thus he came back, healing us and allowing us to beat Orrick finally. Actually, Rachel and Adrian had already beaten him. Just not me.

Team 2: Later, when he came online, I told Kevin Bearwalker the news. I told him I was very game to do it again if he wanted, and he was. We raced up the tower easily and made it to Orrick. This time, we both reviewed our decks, talked about the strategy and dove in prepared. Kevin, a robust thaumaturge, has a secondary in Life school, so he had access to Legend Shield, dropping those as often as he could. I was casting  Quench on him, trying to keep two Quenches on at a time. A couple of meteor strikes did land on us. This was because, in part, Orrick went first in the turn, so he would beat me getting another Quench on him, but also, because I thought it would be easier to load Quench into my deck as well as having it in my sideboard. I forgot about the warning I had previously read... normal Quench and treasure card Quench are two different spells - both are consumed when the target casts a single fire spell. This got me the first time it happened, but later, I was juggling putting on one Quench at a time, which left me flat footed on a couple of occasions. Near the end of the fight, we intentionally let two more fire spells through to let me build up my hit. Kevin had gnawed Orrick down to 4100 health and then built up his power pips and blades. He then had to weather another 6 turns until I was ready, so he spent his excess pips on healing. On the designated turn, he cast a Colossus. I followed with my Efreet, and Orrick was done. Besides the minor miscues, we executed the battle exactly to plan, so it was a very big victory.

Kevin and I were pretty exhilerated with the thumping we gave Orrick, so we immediately went on to do the tower in Marleybone for the side quest to recover the Spiral Key (once mandatory to unlock Celestia). This actually was harder and more time consuming, but we downed both cheat encounters as well. Victory! I guess I'll write about that later in a follow-up post. Normally, these fights aren't things that should be a surprise to anyone looking up boss battles for Wizard101. But this Marleybone tower in particular, even after reading other listed exploits, cheats, and behaviors, I STILL don't understand all the mechanics for this tower. Who knows? Some may be scripted bugs that were never fixed, or more likely, implementations that just aren't fully understood by the players. My advice? Shield often, don't wait too long on heals. You never know.

Summary:
- Slot one (Ice wizard) kept shields vs. death up
- Slot one used damage spells to wear down Orrick, but not below 4000 health
- Slot one used excess pips for heals
- Slot one used two blades (frost, elemental), one trap (elemental), one aura (Amplify), and balefrost for final attack with Colossus
- Slot two (Fire wizard) tried to keep two Quench spells on Orrick at all times. If doing this from sideboard, does not need to be a Fire school wizard, just make sure you have enough disposable spells in deck to keep drawing from sideboard. However, will use more pips being off-school. Used no more than 12 Quench.
- Slot two used three blades (fire, elemental, dark pact), two traps (elemental, fuel), and one aura (Amplify) along with a Giant on an Efreet
- Slot two needed to stop casting Quench to generate enough pips for final attack. This allowed Orrick to free cast one Heck Hound and one Meteor Strike.