Wizard Friends and LittleBigPlanet Mazes

I was going to title this, “Friends don’t let friends play Wizard 101” because it’s so addictive, but I couldn’t. I really, really enjoyed playing my current crush with friends this weekend.

I have this dream… that someday, I will fight through the Master’s Tower in Ravenwood and at the end of the battles, when I meet the final boss, Pumpkin Head, he will look at me in his terror, and just before I play that final card that will call down a centaur from the heavenly plains upon which he runs to split the villain’s vegetable head with a fierce arrow, he will say… Pumpkin Head will say…
“Damn. How many times are you going to KILL me?”
“Just until you cough up that Clockwork Spider.”
“Well… if I knew it meant so much to you… here, and good riddance!”
Yeah, then I wake up and run the instance again and no spider. I have a dozen little imp pets from it now. I’ve seen low level people running around with the spider so I know people do get it. I don’t NEED the pet, but once I heard that this was the uber-rare prize of the Halloween festivities, I wanted it.
Sigh. I even made an alt to help run the instances faster — that’s her in the picture. She’s a Balance/Death mage, which is a pretty awesome combo, actually. Not a huge DPS machine, but better than Life. I have her there to shut down the enemies with Weakness, boost my elemental shields so they can’t hurt me much, and to help with the killing. Plus, I figured, twice the chance that a character of mine gets the spider!
No luck so far.
I was SO THRILLED, though, when Stargrace and Cownose made characters and dropped by. I was two boxing at the time; running through the Plague Oni instance with my friend Keelan AND leveling my alt via the low level quests (while the Master’s Tower is great for loot, the experience for an entire run of Rank 4-5 monsters is less than 100 xp, so can’t be used for leveling).
Wasn’t too long before I suggested a perfect group opportunity for us all — the Master’s Tower!
Oh well 🙂
These last weeks before all the new expansions and games seem to be giving people an excuse to try out newer, indie games. And though I didn’t see him online, Hudson was also running around, crisping ghosts and skeletons.
Wizard 101 is taking over the blogosphere by Storm, Fire, and Ice… 🙂

I spent several hours working on Yet Another LittleBigPlanet level. One thing that is clear in all the best LBP levels is that they are GAMES. Befallen is a level I do want to finish, but the slow, steady, spooky pace that seems best for Befallen is opposite of the frenetic action and over-the-top puzzles of the typical LBP level.
Yesterday I started work on a level I’ll likely call The Ironworks, which is a sky-scraper sized open framework of girders which give lots of spaces for puzzles and being shot at high speed through all manner of things. As well as being a maze.
For all its size, I’d like to keep the player generally moving fast enough so that you could clear the thing in five to ten minutes. Medium danger. High speed. Some tricky puzzles.
It took a really long time to build the building, so much so that I only had time for one puzzle — using the rocket sled I built in Tanglewood Labs. Here’s the video of that first puzzle. (The sound for some reason doesn’t seem to have been captured).

22 thoughts on “Wizard Friends and LittleBigPlanet Mazes”

  1. I blame you and Hudson both for making an entire Sunday (minus a couple hours’ work) disappear. I am shocked at how much uncomplicated fun that Wizard 101 is. An MMO without 8 days worth of patching to do before you can play? How novel!

  2. I am trying to convince myself that I don’t *need* the life time subscription to W101, but the more I play, the more I think to myself “hey, it’s not THAT expensive, and I’ll be able to play FOREVER!” (I cackle a little, too). The price is pretty good (close to the average price of a video game) and I’m level 8 and slowly running out of quests in zones I can actually access. So. Much. Fun. My life / storm combo seems to suit me fine so far. Not that I’m taking on anything huge. Need to get your main added to friends some time so I can at least send you text messages! (So glad they have text messages to friends on your list, handy!)

  3. I actually hopped back into Wizard 101 this weekend. I had a great time and got a myth/life wizard to level 9 at which point I found myself basically stuck, debating on whether to subscribe or not. I had a blast and I think I would enjoy it a lot if I continue on, I just can’t decide whether I have too much going on already or not. I’ll probably end up doing it tonight when I get home, though 🙂 What are your toons names Tipa? I’ll see if I can track you down later if I do indeed subscribe.

  4. My main’s name is Tara Mythcrafter, but you can’t search for people by name (names are not guaranteed to be unique). The only way is to make arrangements out of game to meet up. Stargrace and I met up in our guild’s Ventrilo server, and she gave Cownose the Vent info while I was giving Keelan my email address in code, in game (first letter of every word combines was my email address), from there I got him in Vent as well and there we all were 🙂
    If you’re on Xfire, just ping me when I’m online there. My email and Xfire IDs are over there on the right.
    As games go, it’s pretty cheap. Cownose paid crowns to get access to the rest of Wizard City; he found that kind of expensive (it cost 750 Crowns).

  5. Picked up LBP yesterday on your recommendation. Dear god is this game fun so far! On the surface, totally not the sort of thing I’d find myself addicted to but boy is this a cool, inventive title.

  6. No comments from you :/ Aside from that one. (Edit: Found it in the spam folder).
    Game Pet always rips me off. It’s just one of about a dozen blogs that copy everything I write. You’ll probably be getting pingbacks from a few of them.

  7. When I worked at Massively, they spent a lot of time tracking these people down and serving them with DMCA warnings. Which would have to be my route. If I thought a lot of people were reading my stuff in spam blogs, I’d be upset enough to worry about it. Massively has started putting footers on all their posts letting people know where the article came from. That would be the other thing I could do.
    The third thing would be to excerpt my posts so you’d have to hit “More…” to get to the article after a quick summary. So that would be the third thing.
    But I write this blog for my own enjoyment and that of my friends, not for money (total amount made from WK since inception: $0.00), and if you stop one spam blog another three pop up to take its place. Worst are the days I mention World of Warcraft in a post. On those days, I can easily get thirty WoW spam blogs reposting the article.
    I might post links back to the original article in the feed after all.

  8. So I did it Tipa. I subscribed earlier today. I don’t know if I’ll get to play much over the next few days, but I can’t wait to really dig in and get a little further in the game and see what it has to offer! I only ever got as far as firecat alley in beta, so most of it will be new for me.

  9. Cool! Look me up some time. It’s hard to talk to people not on your friends list by design, but we’re resourceful, we can think something up.

  10. That’s never worked for me, and after a trip to the forums, I discovered why. True Friend codes are meant to validate the people on your friends list. It lets you know someone is who they say they are.
    Here’s how it works. You and I both generate and exchange True Friend codes.
    We then enter the game.
    I click on your name in my friends list and enter the True Friend code you gave me.
    You click on my name in your friends list and enter the code I gave you.
    If they match, we can now use Text Chat to talk with each other… which, as adults, we already CAN do.
    But for children forced to use Menu Chat, this gives them a vetted way to confirm the person they are talking to is really someone they know, and lets them chat (mostly) freely with those people.
    It won’t help at all for us. And it won’t do what I thought it did (and you did, too), and let us add friends without having to find them in game.

  11. *crosses fingers*
    Hope you get that clockwork spider, Tipa!
    My daughter just got a rare pet for winning the pumpkin carving contest. I have a pic up over on my blog. It rocks. (thanks for your vote!)
    Pet farming is in the air, I got myself a sunbird pet tonight! 🙂
    peace.

  12. Woot! Thanks!
    I was working on new stuff until I fell asleep last night. I fell asleep as hordes of enemies stalked my sackgirl but poofed before they got to her because I had my settings wrong.
    I’m almost up to the Dippy Bird cranes!

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