Spring Update Highlights

Greetings, Wizards of the Spiral. As we prepare for the Summer here at Ravenwood Academy, we’d like to highlight some of our favorite changes from the Spring 2021 Test Realm. Without further delay, let’s begin!

New Skeleton Key Bosses

Two new Skeleton key bosses have arrived in Grizzleheim and Karamelle. The first boss, King Borr, resides in Savarstaad Pass. Meanwhile, the Stay-Puffed Marshfellow dwells in the Nibbleheim Mines.

The Stay-Puffed Marshfellow requires a Gold Skeleton key. At the same time, King Borr has variants for all three keys. The Nibbleheim Key Boss drops new unique Marshmallow Wands. Meanwhile, King Borr drops Spellements for the Grizzleheim Lore Spells. Life Wizards rejoice as there’s now another method to get Ratatoskr’s Spin!

New Social Feature

Recently added in the Spring Update was the new Social feature. Clicking the icon beneath your Friend’s List will bring up a list of all nearby Wizards. This list will show you all the Wizards currently in your same zone and their current quest.

Friendly Wizards are okay with other people joining them in combat. You can also chat and teleport to any nearby Wizard who has marked themselves as Friendly.

Finding a questing buddy is now easier than ever! Even better, we no longer must sacrifice those on our Friends List to make room. Finally, we can see if a player is fine with another person joining their PVE duel. No more awkward conversations when you enter a fight that was almost over.

Team up VolUnteering

The Join a Team Kiosk has received an update in the form of Volunteering! Volunteering allows you to help other players without having to stay put. You can select the world and types of instances you want to volunteer for at the Kiosk outside the Bazaar. Here you can choose from any world you’ve unlocked to volunteer. From there, you can choose to volunteer to assist with farming or longer dungeons.

The teams who’ve been waiting the longest time for help will receive volunteers first. After you’ve helped your team complete the instance, your Health and Mana are replenished. From there, you’ll return to your previous location. This system allows players to help other players without selecting a new team to help each time. Excellent for any Wizard seeking to get the illustrious Team Champion Badge.

New Spell Animations

Many AOE animations were updated to hit all enemies, making them faster. Below is the list of AOE’s whose animations were updated. You can also check out the video below to see the changes made to them.

Fire: Meteor Strike, Fire Dragon, Rain of Fire

Ice: Blizzard, Frost Giant

Storm: Tempest, Storm Lord, Sirens

Myth: Humungofrog, Orthrus, Mystic Colossus

Life: Forest Lord, Rebirth

Death: Deer Knight, Scarecrow

Balance: Sandstorm, Ra

New Spells

It’s time to visit your professors because sixteen new spells have arrived in the game! There are two new spells for every school. But Life and Death received an extra, each in the form of damage boosting Globals. All these spells are available from the respective trainers in Ravenwood. You must be level forty-two to learn these spells. You’ll also need the prerequisites in your Spellbook.

Many of these spells were once popular treasure cards used in PVP. Their popularity has brought them to be permanent additions to our Professors’ curriculum. Don’t worry non PVP players; the Developers kept PVE in mind too for these spells. You might find them helpful outside the arena.

New Quest

“Old is New Again” is a new quest available in the Arcanum for Wizards who have completed “Everything and Nothing.” For those who don’t want any spoilers look away now. For those who don’t mind spoilers, the video below covers the entire quest.

Spoilers Ahead!

To summarize the quest. We receive a message from the Old One, who is seeking to recover a memory of a world called Lemuria. Scholar Zander helps us discover Lemuria is little more than a fairytale.
The Old One insists the world exists, and so we venture to Mirage to find proof. After some snakey-shenanigans, we realize we are the only ones who can see the Old One. From there, we recover a piece of a mosaic depicting the Lemurians kneeling beneath him.

The Old One reveals himself as an aspect of the Nothing. Exhausted, the he tells us we must find Lemuria before vanishing. Finally, we return to Bartleby for more information. The Grandfather Tree gazes back through history only to inform us that Lemuria disappeared centuries ago. 

We’re too late.

Food for Thought

The quest takes us to Mirage, which houses the Sands of Time. According to Librarian Fitzhume on the Message Boards, we know time within the Spiral is governed by the flow of magic. Meaning time within the Spiral is flexible and subject to manipulation. We’ve seen it in Dragonspyre, the Five BOXES event, and Mirage. Does our return to Mirage hint at us going back in time to stop Lemuria’s disappearance?

We also know worlds can become disconnected from the Spiral and reconnected to it. We’re told about this in the level twenty quest “Grizzleheim.” Merle Ambrose tells us, “The Grizzleheim world-tree was once linked to the rest of the Spiral, but the contact was lost…. we thought it was destroyed. Bartelby now informs me that the portal to Grizzlehiem is now active, and travel there is possible.” This begs the question of how does a world lose its connection to the Spiral? How does it regain contact? Going a step further, how many worlds are floating undiscovered within the Void?

Regarding the Void

Which brings us to another question what exactly is the Void? In the Storytime posts from 2013 and 2014, King Artorius spoke about the “Outer Void.” The most we can glean from his responses is that the Outer Void fills the space between the Spiral’s worlds. It’s a dangerous, inhospitable place, and little is known about it. In Pirate101, when we sail from one world to another, one could claim we are traversing the Void, albeit not as empty as the name implies. Artorius does use the words “Outer Void” when he mentions it; this means, to me at least, that the Void has depth. 

Could it be what we see in Pirate101 and the Arcanum is partly a product of being so close to the Spiral? Are other fragments of the First World being pulled closer to the Spiral by the same magic used to create it? Who is to say the Void doesn’t grow darker and quieter the farther out you go? But to our knowledge, no one has ever traveled so far and returned to talk about it.

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Again, according to Librarian Fitzhume in the 2016 Storytime on the Wizard101 Message Boards, it doesn’t appear that the Void is the end. According to Fitzhume’s responses, there is still something beyond the Spiral. Whatever it might be is beyond our understanding. It is worth noting there is no mention of the Outer Void here. 

Meaning the theoretical ‘something’ excludes the Void. Based upon this information, I’d like to think of the Void as a kind of padding. It surrounds and guards the Spiral, somehow part of the Spiral, and apart from it, like armor or a shell. It is keeping things that don’t belong in it out while also containing everything within. A fascinating subject, to be sure. I am interested in seeing how it develops going forward.

Thanks for Reading!

With that, I will draw this to a close. Thank you all so much for reading this article; I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to browse the other guides and pieces here. Leave a comment below on what you think will happen as the Fourth Arc continues.

If you want to stay up to date on our most recent releases, you can follow us on social media. Ravenwood Academy has started creating YouTube videos for the Community. Check it out!

Until we meet again, I hope to see you in the Spiral!

-Morgan Shade

Fall 2019 Test Realm: PvP Update

The Fall 2019 Test Realm has been out for a couple weeks with many exciting new features and changes!

We now have a new dungeon in Wizard City for Gear Farming!

A new Backpack Butler (to help us find items)!

Upgrades to the Pet Hatching Kiosk!

Spellwrighting is a new option for your spells!

New Castle Magic spells have arrived!

They have also done expansions to Beastmoon Hunt and the Deckathalons!

(You can read all about these updates on RA right here)

November 2019 Update Notes Wizard101

Fall 2019 PvP Updates

In the Fall 2019 Test Realm PvP Update, there are some changes made to several spells in an attempt to rebalance PvP. In this article, we will look at the proposed changes to the spells. I’ll be talking about how they will impact PvP, if they go live, and my personal thoughts on these changes.

Guardian Spirit

Guardian Spirit is one of the most powerful and controversial utility spells for the Life school. The way it works is, you cast it on yourself or an ally. When you die, you come back with 15% of your health.

You can increase how much health you come back with, in many ways. You can have it boosted by landing a critical when you cast it, by having a Sanctuary dome up when you die, by having a high healing boost on the gear you’re wearing, or having an aura that increases outgoing heal. All of these will boost the healing percentage of Guardian Spirit. This spell can be cast an infinite amount of times during a battle. When you die with a Guardian Spirit up, you will come back to life. Then you can cast another one so you come back to life again, and again.

For schools other than Life, you can receive 1 Guardian Spirit card from the Mandolin of Evermore.  This wand is available in the Hoard of the Hydra Pack, in the crown shop. The Mandolin of Evermore is a popular wand for low level defensive setups in PvP.

There are no changes to the mechanics of Guardian Spirit in the test realm as of right now. However, the card is now flagged with a no-PvP symbol.

Many higher rank PvPers, between the levels of 50-90, resort to Turtling with Guardian Spirit. That’s because they can’t survive long enough to kill due to the significantly higher pierce, damage, and health of their opponent. It’s an uneven match-up in these situations, and taking away Guardian Spirit would cap these players at a lower rank.

In PvP, at level 100 and beyond, players can get high amounts of pierce in addition to shrike and shadow spells. This makes high level PvP extremely fast-paced and offensive. The removal of Guardian Spirit would perpetuate the high amount of offense in high level PvP even more.

We must take into account that aggressive Life at higher levels isn’t in the best place because Scion of Life is a healing spell, and the last particularly strong hitting spell the Life school has had is Hungry Caterpillar.

Guardian Spirit is a bandaid to these issues. In no way am I saying it’s fair and balanced, because it’s not. The main problem with Guardian Spirit, are the massive resists and heal boosts that are available for the caster. To address that issue, I would change the amount of healing boosts and resists that you can get in PvP.  I would then buff Guardian Spirit to a revival of 25% of your health regardless of stats, aura, or bubble. You would also not be able to land a critical on a Guardian Spirit. To ensure an even amount of offense and defense in PvP, there would also need to be an update on pierce.

Loremaster

Loremaster is one of the strongest spells available in PvP. According to game developer and designer, Matt, Loremaster is the second most used spell in PvP. The first being Tower Shield! Loremaster costs 4 pips, deals 390-470 damage, and leaves both a -20% Weakness and a -35% Black Mantle. That makes it a decent move in almost any situation, at all levels of PvP, Magus and beyond.

In the test realm, Loremasters damage is lower at 235-315 with the Weakness reduced to 15%, and the Black Mantle reduced to 25%. Higher-level Balance Wizards will now become more dependent on reacting to their opponent with Mana Burn or Supernova. (excluding shadow hits)

Balance at Grandmaster and below will be using more strategies that involve masteries for secondary schools.

Legendary balance will feel the effects of this change. They will have to level to Transcendent for trained Mana Burn and Supernova. Even with the trained spells they will still face defeat by Exalteds with Shadow Magic at a lower rank. This may seem like a significant damage nerf, but KingsIsle did it that way to maintain it as a two-utility hit. But, I would have gone about it differently and lowered the damage to 395 (balance damage per pip is, on average <100, so I’ve lowered it to that amount to be consistent with that), removed the mantle, but kept the weakness the way it is at -20%.

Burning Rampage

Burning Rampage is one of the strongest PvP spells, available to the Fire school today. It’s a 5-pip DOT (damage over time) spell that does 70 damage for the initial hit, then 700 base damage on the ticks for two rounds after it’s cast.

Burning Rampage is especially strong in PvP below level 100 because it can easily one-shot your opponents with all the damage the ticks do. You can follow it up with other spells, including a Fire Beetle or two, a Brimstone Revenant, or you can summon the Fire Elemental Minion and cast Burning Rampage the same round the minion casts a DOT (damage over time) spell .

In high level PvP, it’s more situational, but it can be strong when you pull off combos like Rampage then Fire from Above, which is one of the most difficult combos to counter.

In the test realm right now, Burning Rampage does 70 for the initial hit then does 700 base damage after three rounds instead of two. Fire may become even more powerful with this spell, because it gives you more time to stack two traps before the tick goes off, or to cast a Fire Elf or a Link to prevent the opponent from reacting.

I would suggest making the DOT (damage over time) spell go off after two rounds, but redistribute the damage to be close to even, but still a bit on the back-loaded side.

What do you think?

These spells may change, because as the Test Realm notes state, they have them this way for now for testing purposes and to see what the community thinks. With that said, what do you think of the Fall 2019 Test Realm PvP Update? Do you have any alternative ideas you would do with these spells? Let me know in the comments!