Happy Leap Day!

Raffle - Last Day!

Frabjous February Fun Raffle!
 at Wizard101 Central ends last day of February.

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"We are giving away 5,000 crowns every single day during the month of Frabjous February!

To enter you will need to grab a free raffle ticket from our "Raffles" section. You can only get one ticket per day, so you will have to visit every day to get your ticket!"

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I wish I had known about this sooner, but here is one last chance for us all.

Good luck!

Tweetle - ee - dee!

Hrmmm, well ... I rarely Tweet, or post on Facebook, but I was reading a post on Swordroll's blog, "Ten Blogger Tips and Tricks, ..." from Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

One of his blog tips is join Facebook and Twitter, and to become friends with others on Facebook and to follow people on Twitter. I have three friends, and follow a baker's dozen on Twitter, but I only have one follower so far. I just added a Facebook and a Twitter widget to my blog. It is a start.

You Can Win a Foo Dog!

Swordroll is offering a contest to win a foo dog! Read Swordroll's post, Win a Foo Dog ... to find out how.

Join his blog, he writes very well, and has a lot of great information on his blog. Part of his contest to win a foo dog has to do with getting people more aware of his blog and all the great information he has there. He has written about many aspects of Wizard101, from pets to housing to pvp to game dynamics, and he has the most amazing and helpful Grub Guardian Guide, which has very detailed information on how to get the most out of playing Grub Guardian, as well as videos of his most successful games played. These help a lot in coming up with your own strategies in winning in Grub Guardian.

I hope you visit Swordroll soon, you will be happy that you did!

Pet Training Grind

Pet Level	Experience Gain	Energy Cost
Baby to Teen	125 exp	2 energy/game
Teen to Adult	250 exp	4 energy/game
Adult to Ancient	500 exp	6 energy/game
Ancient to Epic	1000 exp	8 energy/game

I made up this table, which shows the training progression of pets in Wizard101. I love my pets, I enjoy seeing them progress. If one could train a pet and get just what they wanted in a pet, then I could accept the amount of effort that goes into training. I am happy that pet hatching costs have gone way down since they were first instituted. I still find a cost of 40,000 gold quite a bit for hatching a pet, though. If the success of creating a great pet were more frequent, I could see that 40,000 gold might be a justifiable price - still, I could buy two homes for the same price.

That brings me to the amount of time, energy and experience needed to level a pet. Isn't it enough that the experience needed to get from one level to the next DOUBLES? That in itself is enough of a challenge, in my opinion. To keep increasing the energy needed by 2 for each level is uncalled for, and way too much to ask.

I have hatched 12 pets so far, and of those pets, I have leveled 6 to Epic, and 6 to Ancient. Only 2 of the 6 that I leveled to Epic really had a good pet talent mix. Now I have 4 useless pets just wandering around my homes, never being of use, except for looks. The other 6 Ancient pets might get Spritely, and that is what I hatched them for mainly. Would it be worth it to get them to Epic?

I might never know, because the task seems just too daunting.

With a maximum energy level of 70, and an energy cost of 8 for each game, I can play 9 games (8 times 9 is 72, but you gain 2 more energy while playing the previous games). If I get the top experience of 4 for the game, and then 6 experience for a pet snack, I can gain 10 experience per game. 10 experience times 9 games gives me 90 experience per training session.

Now, this is at level 70! If I had the time to get into the game once in the early morning to train my pet, and then once again in the evening, I would gain 180 experience for my pet. I don't get into the game even once a day lately, never mind trying to get there twice a day. Buying crowns so that I can play another session is not an option I am going to consider, either.

So - at 90 points a day, it will take me 11 days, with one session more to get me to 1000 experience.

Yes, if I wanted to take more costly measures, I could log on twice a day, I could buy mega snacks for crowns, I could spend a lot of time and resources making higher level pet snacks, and I could use crowns to purchase more energy to have more training sessions available.

I have not even touched upon my dissatisfaction with the cost and availability of pet snacks. Suitable pet snacks should give at least 6 experience; they are costly enough in themselves whether you buy or make them, and are sometimes difficult - if not impossible - to get, as not all schools have ALL the snack types at higher levels. Availability of reagents for making pet snack is yet another part of Wizard101 which needs serious reworking. Anyone who attempts to gather reagents knows exactly what I am talking about. I am not even going to discuss mega snacks, because they are just way too costly for a normal game budget to consider having or using on a regular basis.

I don't think that we get back all the effort that we put into pet training to warrant that we spend even more than normal time and effort - that is, one session a day with a pet snack that gives 6 experience when fed to the pet.

And for these reasons, I think that Wizard101 should strongly consider restructuring their pet leveling model.

One Small Step ... for Petnome

I just checked on Petnome, and I DID have the last Derby stat on Duke Blue, my Elemental Foo Dog. I am happy that I could contribute, even in such a small way, to the Petnome Project's database.

The Derby stat that Duke Blue contributed was Oil Slick.

Petnome Project - Elemental Foo Dog

May the Foo Be With You!

Many crowns spent, but I now have at least one of all six new foo dogs. -Happy Dance-

I have only trained one of my foo dogs so far, just to Adult, as I have not been able to be online much. I have been training the Elemental Foo, the Life school pet. I saw today on Friendly Necromancer's blog that Kevin Battleblood at the Petnome Project is looking to fill out the Talents and Derby stats on all the foos, exciting!

My Elemental foo, Duke Blue, is now at the start of Adult. I just took screenshots of his stats and sent them to Petnome. His Talents are already listed on Petnome, but I believe that one of his Derby stats is the final one that was missing. Oooo! We shall see!

Foo Dog!

I just got back into the game after a few weeks of not being able to play. I was at the Bazaar today, and what did I see next to me? A Foo Dog! I love it, I love it, I LOVE IT! I didn't get one yet. I can hardly wait until the new Kirin deck comes out so I can (hopefully) be lucky enough to get one. This little pup that I saw was an Adult, and he had Spritely! He is lavender and is a Storm pet. I think that there are three other Foo Dogs, but I am not sure which schools they are from. There is some information on the Wizard101 forums and Wizard101 Central, I think. I don't have any links yet.

Since I was in the Bazaar with many other people, this was the best picture I could get. I couldn't get the attention of the owner, so that I might get a better view of him. He was probably very tired of all the questions he was getting about his lovely little dog. Can't blame him.

There is a promotion at the Wizard101 site - if you log into your account and use the code "pack" between February 2nd and 6th you will get a free item from one of the card packs in your gifts window ingame next time you log in. Wizard also has daily contests on their Twitter and Facebook pages going right now, I think until February 12th. Check your mail or Twitter account to see if you have won!

And, don't miss Pack-a-Palooza Game Card Pack Sale, going on until February 12th!

Good luck, I hope you will soon be the proud and happy owner of a Foo Dog of your own!