Karamelle Cheating Bosses: Treemugger, Jamburglar, and Quake Charmer

Let's get started with some of the first cheating bosses you'll meet. The very first is in a side quest. Meet Treemugger.

This little pugilist has no minions with him. He's a life boss with a unique cheat (until Jamburglar). Wizards will get stunned on the first turn and have their pips reduced to 0. They will have a special no-pip-generation aura that lasts 99 turns. After every turn, all pips wizards have get wiped out and replaced with a set number of pips according to the number of active wizard turns played so far (from the second turn onward). So, on the second turn, wizards will start with 1 pip, on the third turn, 2 pips, on the fourth, 3 pips, etc. Spending these pips doesn't change how many pips you will have on the following turn. After the eighth turn, the wizards will start experiencing power pips. 

Here is an elaboration of the fight and cheats for Treemugger on Wiz Central: http://www.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:Treemugger

It doesn't appear there is any penalty for latecomer wizards, besides that initial stun.

How I soloed - I planned for a fast big hit while dropping sideboard life shields. He does have pierce, and he does like to Wings of Fate, but slowing up his damage enough allows you to take him out in pretty short order. Three blades and a strong attack may be enough, or you can stack some feints. The good thing about the pip mechanic is heals aren't going to hurt your potential to hit on the next turn should you want to. You can keep casting ever increasing heals without penalty.

The next cheating boss is The Quake Charmer.

He's also got a page on Wizard101 Central: http://www.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:The_Quake_Charmer

At the time I started making notes on these bosses, there were no pages up yet, so me adding the cheats here is redundant. But to reduce your click-throughs on my links, the important two cheats are that Quake Charmer frequently free casts Earthquake, and that he will cheat cast a special "bomb" dot that does around 2,000 balance damage when it goes off after the third turn it's on a wizard. It is an AOE dot that does no damage until it expires, and it can be removed via Triage.

Quake Charmer isn't too hard with multiple wizards battling him, but does a good amount of damage for a solo wizard to deal with. Because of his frequent use of Earthquake  and tendency to cast big spells, such as Orthrus, Adapt is a very nice aura here. You can opt to spam damage on him, but it is a race against time to hold up against his damage. He can Earthquake two turns in a row, but doesn't do this frequently, so you might try to time your blade casts. Shielding isn't going to do any good, so you can try to stack feints and throw a strong 7 or 8 pip spell on him. Triage in your sideboard can give you an extra turn or 2 of health enough to ensure you can get off your spell. You also still have to deal with his minion so you have to think about how fast you take out Quake Charmer and have enough health to also get his minion.

Next, let's get to the fun little guy known as Jamburglar.

Yes, he's just like that other robble robble guy. He is a shadow school boss, and he has no minions.

It would seem the link for him is only a stub (http://www.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:Jamburglar), so let me write out what I know of his cheats.

He has a similar mechanic to Treemugger, but in this case, you start with maximum pips that never get replenished (the Impede spell aura). You are also stunned on the first round. Easy to deal with as a full group of wizards, but as solo, there are some tricky elements to him.

The biggest besides the finite pips for your battle is that he cheat casts a shadow version of Power Nova every turn, and its damage is a percentage of your total health (between 18% and 20%? maybe?). This wound up dealing around a thousand damage to me every turn. It also strikes him! I think this kills universal traps like Feint that may be on him, but I'm not super positive about that. Trial and error. (edit, see below) Being that he's shadow, shielding isn't going to do much good, and on a Reddit forum, I read that he has strong pierce, so resistance gear won't do much good. However, from play, my resist did help me out, so having resist isn't bad. Tower Shields are likely a waste of time unless you go in with super high universal resist. Huh. Just a thought. High resist, Brace to reduce damage, Tower Shield spam... well, the Towers may not work, because I just playtested the fight, and Feint's were not used up on his self-strike from Power Nova.

This is how I beat him solo during my playtest. I went in with various Fireblades and Feints to see if he dispelled the blades (he did not) and if Feints got used on the self-strikes (edit: they were not). I finished with only a hundred health, so be prepared for lots of damage. I had in Fire Dragon, S'More Machine, and Scion of Fire, and threw in a couple Fuel to trigger the Scion. The Fuels and Feints were a mistake, because that took me under the pip threshold to cast Scion. Loading up enough traps to trigger the Scion special critical is a waste of time, as you'll die before you can get your cast off. Double Feint will also take you out of Scion casting, since none of your pips regenerate. Double or even triple Feint is a viable strategy if you are casting an 8 pip spell. Shadow spells, however, are likely not going to save you unless you generate those shadow pips fast. What I eventually wound up with was a regular Feint, a Potent Fuel, as Sharpened Fireblade, a regular Fireblade, and hit with an Epic Fire Dragon. Jamburglar had already take around 4k damage from self-inflicted Power Novas, and my hit did not outright kill him, but he died on the dragon's dot, which is good, because I wouldn't have survived another hit.

There's the first three cheating Karamelle bosses. More to soon follow.

New World Karamelle! Thoughts after a week

 So the new world is out, and... I like it! Yes, it's short. Part of that may be the way the critical system seems to have changed. Wizards critical much more often with lower threshold scores, but the damage isn't a full doubling. It's still great enough that many of my wizards are doing phenomenal damage to the creature mobs and bosses throughout the world. However, the mobs are doing strong damage in return, even on weak hits. This means play is sped up. I personally like this at least in regards to the world mobs, as long battles over collection quests are a real pain. Speaking of, the collection quest drop rates are good. There's no endless battling to complete a single collection quest.

In subsequent posts, I'll note boss battles and their cheats. IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE: some of these boss battles have an instant death cheat mechanic to late arrivals! 

One big factor for why I like Karamelle is that the story is strong, and the music and graphics harken to a wonderful Swiss candy amusement park theme. Some of the scores are variations on older music pieces, but one in particular, the Karamelle City Combat theme, is what I imagine to hear in a Bavarian brew house and really cements the feel of the new world. It's a world filled with Gnomes, Fairies, moles, and hamsters, plus a sundry of cute confections as critters. And a series of mysteries that all share some common threads!

Avoiding spoilers, I will say that I was quite surprised to see Karamelle's end quest and battle, and I can't wait to see where this continues!

Though there are no real gear upgrades, the gear drops are fairly solid and can backfill equipment for wizards who hadn't bothered farming Wizard City's catacombs.

Thoughts on the Ice Deckathalon, now that I've done it

First, I didn't see in the rules about tc that you make using things like Monstrous/Gargantuan/Unstoppable, etc. Don't do this. They won't appear in your deck during the event, even though you can see them in your sideboard outside of the event. My very first fight, and I had to flee (sad trombone).


Second, the difficulty is good. I've noticed some winning strategies out of this. The may-cast healing pets are a big help. Also, hint hint, lots of Snow Shields, some Fireblades, and several Fire Dragons will help you get through the fourth tier. If you don't have the higher crafted decks, you may want to have some other blades in as well, like Balance Blade, or Elemental Blade (though that extends the fight a turn).

Third, so far, the event progress bar has barely filled and it's the second day into the event. I will be surprised if the bar crosses the half-way mark by the end of the week. It could be the initial difficulty of the event, or the gold sink aspect (continually buying treasure cards will drain your coffers quick), but it just doesn't look like that many people are participating. I'm ranked 700ish with only 140 points. The top ten (as of midnight central time 5/15) was a range of 1800 points to 3300. That's a steep drop off in points in the first ten. A dedicated few are spending all day racking up points, but where does that leave the rest of the player community?

Which brings me to my fourth point. I'm not one to complain too much about the game, but... this post will be one such rarity. The mechanics are great, the prizes stink. Well, that's a bit harsh. Let me rephrase. The prizes stink for the amount of effort those top 10 guys are putting into it. Breaking down the things you can get from the event:
- a variety of treasure cards that can only be crafted using the reagents you get from the event itself
- 3 different wands that look like oversized fists that give no stat bonuses, but rather a single gear spell (good for stitching if you are into the big hands thing)
- 4 specialized decks of which the last is powerful, but of a very specific and limited use
- players who fall between the ranks of 25 and 2500 get a cool-looking pet that has unknown stats (sort of a tawny hamster)
- players in the first 25 rankings get an ice version of that hamster
- the top 10 also get a perm gobbler mount and a special booster pack

Now that booster pack may be AMAZING, especially since they are so limited, they can be specifically packaged instead of random, the cards carefully chosen by the devs for the event. But if you're not going to earn several thousand points in the next five days... there's not too much to look forward to for burning through your time and gold. The costs to craft those fists and decks are quite high with the amount of farming you have to do to get the reagents (random drops, I could do the math, but you need a LOT of fire runes to craft the final deck). And all those cool treasure cards you can craft, like Power Link, Scald, and some high damage low-pip spells, those all require the same fire runes that you need for the equipment.

The incentives just don't seem to be great to want to farm through this. I had THOUGHT from the description that the wands that resemble hands would be very powerful, as that was in the description of the event before it came out. But it doesn't look to be that way from the crafting recipes. Plus you get the first one automatically from one of the stage rewards. And it has no stats. That puts me in a quandary. Do I try and farm through and craft the final Ice Glove (that gives an Ice Blade gear card), hoping that KingsIsle soups it up during/after the event? Or just forget it? I've already beat tier 4. I've bought the recipe for the Treasure Card display. What else is there, besides lost time and gold?

ADDENDUM: I looked over my last post, and I'm sure most already know by now, the cost of additional plays is not bad at all. You get four more attempts per 1000 gold. Ad infinitum.

Upcoming Deckathalon in Wizard101

It was announced in the Spring Update for 2019 that the Deckathalon would be coming to the spiral. Since I don't play on the test server, I don't have any first hand knowledge of the event. However, I have read the rules and looked over some videos of people who have played it.

Here's what I know.
- The first deckathalon event will be ice based. That means you will want to use fire spells for best effect.
- Everyone will automatically convert to a low level wizard and none of your gear will count toward your stats during play EXCEPT your deck.
- Your pets stats will be discarded, and I think so will any cards that the pet normally gives EXCEPT all of your pet's may-cast abilities will count.
- There seems to be four stages per event, with each stage consisting of three rounds.
- You will have no normal spells in your spellbook, being only able to cast what Treasure Cards you put into your deck.
- You will not regain any health or mana after a round is done until the end of a stage.
- You will not be able to alter your deck after a round is done until the end of a stage. This means you will need to have enough Treasure Cards to last through 3 rounds.
- At the end of each stage, a vendor offers a deck recipe. They will help versus the school you are fighting (in this case, the crafted decks will boost fire). You will also get special reagents pertaining to the specific deck crafting as drops from the round victories.
- You will be able to play the event twice per day for free. Thereafter, you will need to spend 1000 gold for subsequent event playthroughs for that day. (I do know it starts at 1000, I don't know if it stays at a thousand. The cost may rise with additional plays).
- You won't generate power pips. I noticed in a video that shadow pips can appear, but I don't know if this was a fluke.

So, without having played yet, a good strategy seems to be working toward one of these crafted decks, which will require multiple playthroughs of the event to get enough drops. If you're fire, using tc enchants for your known spells can help you craft good tc's for the event. You'll need to craft the spells before hand.

Additionally, monstrology can be a tremendous boon here. Good summons will overpower the enemy and will only cost you two pips.

Another pre-deckathalon strategy is to get a specialized may-cast pet setup beforehand. The kiosk is super helpful here, since you're gonna have an easier time to browse through the pets looking for one with a lot of may-cast talents to hatch with. Talents that would appear to be good fits would be: Guardian Wall (tower shields), Charm Chopper (for their blades), Ward Wrecker (for their shields), Fairy Friend, Spritely, Energizing Battery, (for self-heals), and Incredibly Infallible (to boost accuracy and blunt enemy shields). This is what I am currently doing on my wizards to prep for the event.

Finally, constructing your sideboard right is really going to be the key to doing well in the event. Too many cards, and you'll potentially fail to draw the right cards in time. Too few cards, and you won't make it throught all 3 rounds. Shields will be helpful until they start casting a lot of dot spells

Empyrea introduces expanded inventory for backpack and bank

In case you were wondering, your wizards all automatically get an additional 50 item space to their personal banks, raising the maximum from 100 slots to 150. As well, you can purchase an elixir from the crown shop for an additional 50 slots to your backpack. This only applies to one of your wizards, though.

The elixir costs 2500 crowns AND it is repeatable (you can continue to increase your maximum by 50 item slots for every 2500 crown purchase). 2500 crowns isn't cheap, but if you're constantly bumping into the maximum because you're farming dungeons or just forgetting, this could be a big help.

Wizard101 Hovering to See What Blades and Traps a Player Has

Sometimes in battle with friends, you get distracted and don't know which blades have already been cast on your hammer (player designated to hit). You have a Sharpened Blade spell and a regular Elemental Blade in your hand, and you can see that your target already has one Elemental Blade cast on them. You can chat and ask. That works. But sometimes, chatting can take too long and the turn might end before you get the answer with enough time to cast.

Some players already know this, but not everyone... You can check yourself! If you take your wand cursor and move it over the left side of their nameplates (where the symbol in the diamond is), a box with stats will appear. Programmers call that a tooltip. As long as your wand cursor is hovering over that spot, the tooltip will stay up. As soon as you move it, the tooltip will go away. The part of your wand cursor that needs to hover over the diamond symbol is the star atop the wand. It can be picky, so you will want to move the star of your wand completely inside the diamond area.

I took some screenshots to help visualize this. I can't show the wand cursor in my screenshots, because the cursor always disappears from the screenshot. You won't see the wand in any of the following pictures.



You can see the sun from the starting position on the combat circle. I highlighted the area where you want the star part of your wand to hover over. You can hover over any other player's diamond symbol, as well as the symbols of the enemies.



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Let's take a look at what traps and shields look like in the tooltip.



I placed a regular Fire Trap and a Potent Fire Trap on this hall servant. On the tooltip, you will see the Wards symbols at the top (one Positive which designates shields and one Negative which designates traps). Traps will show up as a positive number, because you will be boosting your damage when you hit them. In this case, any fire spell this enemy is hit with will get a boost of +25% and then +35%. Note that the +35% is shown in purple, since it is a spell that has been modified with an enchantment.



This is what it looks like on the tooltip for an enemy with a pair of Fire Shields. The number is negative, since any fire spell that hits this hall servant will be reduced in power by 80%. The reduction will not stack, and that is depicted with the (x2) symbol.

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Blades show up in the Charms section. The top line shows the symbols for positive charms (blades) and negative charms (weaknesses). Here I have a couple of Fireblades on myself. They are Sharpened Fireblades; and since they are enchanted, they show in the tooltip as purple. So why don't they show as (x2)? This is because the source of the enchants. One Sharpened Blade is my trained spell, and one is an item card from my amulet. Since the same spell from different sources stack (usually), they show up on the tooltip on separate lines.



In the above picture, you can see I have all sorts of blades cast upon myself. The top blade in the tooltip is a Fireblade from a pet card. Pet card blades show up in blue. Next, the tooltip shows two Sharpened Fireblades. I chose the wrong Sharpened Blade card, so they didn't stack. That's one downside of the system... you can't tell the source of the enchantment. This is why it's a good idea when playing with others to call out what your casting if it's from an unusual source. It helps players keep straight what's been cast. The one that looks like there is no symbol for damage type is actually a Shadow Blade. The shadow symbol is there but very faint. Finally, I have three regular Fireblades cast upon myself, all duplicates, so none of them stack. The very top blade in the picture is a Fireblade protected with Aegis. It will show up on the actual blade graphic surrounded with a light blue highlight, but that will not show up in the tooltip. It will just count as another regular Fireblade in the tooltip to determine what stacks and doesn't stack.

One final picture... what does it look like when hovering over a player or enemy that doesn't have any wards or charms on it?



There you go. A shark in Celestia in a fresh battle.

There are other effects that are represented in the toolip that I didn't get screenshots of. One big one is from global circle effects.

So the next time you're playing, move your wand cursor around the battlefield to discover what everyone's tooltips look like during play. It's a good thing to know for those times you need to make a decision on what to cast. It can also be useful if you didn't notice a shield up on an enemy or a weakness on yourself, and you need to know how bad it is.

Fire Soloing Eerkala in Eerem Gardens

I teamed up for Eerem Gardens, with the hope of doing it fast. As is the usual, something goes wrong, and it takes three times as long to get through it. On the second battle (the one with the Life djinn Nashkurgal), I received a critical hit from the Balance minion on the same turn my ally was set to kill the boss and minion with a Raging Bull. I died, didn't get credit for the kill, and would have to start the dungeon all over again. I decided to help my fellow wizard finish the dungeon, and then join again. We finished the fight, stacking a couple Feints, a Backdraft, a Fire Trap, and an Elemental Trap, finished off by Fire From Above (I think). Oh yeah, I put down Wyldfire which prompted Eerkala's blade cheat, so I got the Curse and big Weakness. Luckily, I wasn't hitting.

I joined another Eerem Gardens group that was already in progress, and unfortunately, they were past Nashkurgal, so again, I got no credit for completing the quest.

I finally just did it solo. Being lazy, I did it the hard way. That is so counterproductive. Each of the bosses before Eerkala only cast from one school. I could have tweaked my simple boss deck with the appropriate TC shields in the sideboard and coasted along, but instead, I went with the Power Link deck. I had some very unlucky rounds doing that.

My Powerlink deck is set up as follows:
6 x Powerlink
1 x Fire From Above
1 x Efreet
4 x Epic
4 x Colossal
4 x Empowerment
2 x Reshuffle
2 x Fireblade
2 x Feint
1 x Potent Trap

Yes, it's sloppy. The problems arise when you decide you don't want to drop cards when you have cards in hand you don't want to get rid of. My plan was to use the Powerlinks on the minion and boss until I had the Feints and Fire From Above in hand. Kill the minion down, while maintaining my health, then quickly hit the boss with the FFA and stacked Feints. It eventually worked out.

When I got to Eerkala, this was a GREAT deck setup. Well, except for the blades which I pitched when they showed up in hand. By not bothering to lay down any traps (until near the end), Eerkala wasn't able to boost her damage. Since I was solo, her fifth turn cycle cheat cast Diablo Qarin didn't do much damage to me. My health was constantly being refreshed by my heal dots, and the critical hits were a good bonus for those heals. I whittled her down until I got my Feints and Fire From Above in hand. The Empowerments really kept my pips full, so I was able to attack Eerkala either every turn or every other turn.

I did make a mistake in this battle. Which seems to be a theme for me...
I forgot to change my pet. My pet has may cast blades and traps. Ya, that's not good to have when fighting a boss that punishes you for casting blades and traps. The may-cast spells from your pet DO trigger the cheats here.