Back to Wizard's Square 101

Introduction

So an old online friend of mine decided to take back up an old MMORPG that we initially met on: Wizard 101; a game, I admit, I had not taken up in eight years. It wasn’t really that I had lost interest in the game; more that college exams were taking up more and more of my free time and I just didn’t have the time to play the game anymore save for maybe a bit of gardening and that was about it. That and some unfortunate events revolving around in forum and in game fights that I am not really proud of. Since then I had delved into Wizard 101’s sister game: Pirate 101. Personally I prefer Pirate 101 most due to combat mechanics being more my playstyle and I enjoyed the story. Honestly I felt like I actually had impact/involvement within the story than just your standard chosen one narrative that Wizard 101 typically employs (at least with the Malistaire arc-the others I don’t know). However, now with a better income and a more manageable time schedule I decided to start back in fresh. I still had all my old account data but I figured it would be easier to ease into the new mechanics from the get go and thus I created a new avatar just for this occasion. The following series of notes or Reports will be about my new experiences with this game: what I remember, what is going on now, thoughts, etc. So feel free to hop onto this journey of Back to Wizard’s Square 101.

Report 1: Here Be a Lot of Tutorials

So for this roundabout I decided to go with the Ice school which is something of a tank class. I found the Buccaneer on Pirate 101 to be by style (and Wall teams in general for Pokémon) so I decided this would be my thing. Of course, I had forgotten about the personality quizzes. When I first came to the game it decided I was suited for the Death class. This round I had to go through the quiz a few times to get that Ice class. Going through the names to choose from I noticed they added quite a few more names than I remembered (either that or I really was not paying attention the first time and just wanted something similar to Gabriel Perire *long story*).

And thus our first slew of tutorials begins. And wow I forgot the age of this game. I guess because I was used to more graphic fidelity of P101 that I forgot this game came out in 2008 (yes it’s about ten years old at the time of this writing). Either way our first set of tutorials is movement and very basic combat. It is pretty straight forward and only takes up maybe ten minutes if you include the dialog. You do have an option to skip this tutorial if you say just wanted to start another wizard in another class. I only went though this because I was curious to see if they had changed anything. Once all that I was done I went and fiddled around with the hotkeys for use of ease. I will say that they greatly improved their UI in P101. But then again P101 does not necessarily have as many menus that W101 does (as crafting, fishing, and Gardening are not in P101). Further tutorials are introduced on the sidebar as character icons that you click and read/listen through. Yeah this was always something of a mess especially if you haven’t logged in a while. They do clog up the screen and sometimes you can’t remember them all. Or if the long list of clicking will end. Plus it does tend to spread out the tutorials throughout the first level so I suppose they want you to play with what you learn before throwing another on in your face. I know this is geared towards kids and all but sometimes…

As you level up a few times, advanced combat mechanics will be another required tutorial. Why didn’t they just put them together hmm?
Now for something I know I hadn’t tried yet in ever: Fishing. I’m somewhat still on the fence on this; but I might write more of this as I level up my fishing level. The mechanics are pretty simple: you pick a lure and drop it where there is fish. Then you have to the wait until the bobber submerges. But not all fish will bite or get caught as there are different Class lures for you to buy and master. That is all fine and dandy but there is a bit of an issue I have. It takes up your Energy points. This would be fine but Gardening and Pet Training also take up those same Energy points. And if I remember correctly, just gardening alone can take up a lot of those points. The Energy gauge does fil up over time, or you use actual money to fill it. I dunno, I thought it would use Mana which is easy enough to refill but whatever. So far this feels like the sloggiest side job next to pet leveling.
And speaking of pets: I forgot what a pain it is to experience grind. Seriously, even Pokémon’s IV, EV, and LV training isn’t is much of a headache. But I guess it makes me appreciate P101’s mechanics even if they can clear out your energy faster than W101 and is arguably slower. But at least it runs in the background leaving you time to go on quests, farm, or mess around with your house. And some of the mini-games can be a real pain to master to be worth anything and even then higher scores don’t net you a lot of points. The mini-games get really repetitive as well.

In terms of social environment, it’s pretty much your standard squawkers. I remember there being a lot of petty insults being thrown around (most not even all that clever). Thankfully it is mostly kept to the Commons. Long ago when W101 introduced gifting, I felt back then it was one of the worst mistakes KingsIsle had made. The Commons and Shopping Districts would be infested with beggars and all around you were text balloons demanding gifts (this is increased tenfold during sales and/or new items). Not to mention the constant bothering of people wanting to friend you or for you to take them somewhere especially in areas they have not unlocked themselves. Coming back online I see that it’s pretty died down. So far I haven’t been pestered in any form; though I have kept mostly to myself. It could be that there are not as many new players incoming or the more toxic ones have migrated to other games. When you don’t feed them they crawl somewhere else I’ve noticed.

So yes that is mostly all that I have to say for now. I’ll more likely have more to discuss once I finish the main quest for Wizard City. To the sky, my friends.

Report 2: Team Cyclops, Team Firecat, and Team Triton: aka at Least Pokémon Go Gave Me Some Kind of Reward for all This Backtracking

Hello again fellow wizards. While it has been some time since my last report, I admit a lot of it was wasted getting my owl pet to a decent level (not sure which is more aggravating and time consuming: leveling up your pet in W101 via mini-games or Pokémon candy collecting) as well as completing as many side missions as possible for a completion badge. Our next stop was Olde Town which is divided into three sections: Firecat Alley, Cyclops Lane, and Trition Ave. Each section is composed of mostly one element as their name suggests and are joined in the middle by the Haunted Cave area. Actually you will note that most of Wizard City is divided like this and is possibly one of the better ways to teach players about type matching. Though I have noticed this time around that the enemies carry more Shield spells than before or because I haven’t played in 3,000 years that I just don’t remember. I do recall it happening in later worlds; just not here as much. That is not necessarily a bad thing though even though they do go over Ward spells in the Advanced Dueling tutorials.

A notable feature about these levels is that you will interact a lot with NPC wizard student avatars. Needless to say I’ve always appreciated this touch as it makes you feel more like part of the world as opposed to some kind of outlier. It is a bit of a shame Pirate101 never really did that. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the adult characters which tend to be a little stocky or are little old ladies. Really, now KI. I know this was still early in the game but you did update some of the banshee models that one time. Why not some of these humans eh? Anyway, you can complete these three sections in any order that you wish. The eventual result will be the same. Once you complete the main storyline, you are asked to report to Merle and he will comment on Malstaire’s involvement.
As stated before each area is populated by mostly of two or three element types of enemies. Actually it is interesting that the tutorials never tell you what is super effective against these enemies so they leave it for the players to experiment. Honestly most of the enemies are not even that difficult and you can solo most of these areas. There are some advantages to group battles such as meeting an enemy kill quota or hunting for a specific item. Plus they do tend to go faster if you know how to play with your deck. Interestingly enough there were a couple of really high level players in the area so I got a preview of Shadow magic so I am very eager to play with that whenever that comes into play. From what I understand they are mostly secondary school spells so no one could be a primary Moon magic student or Light magic student for example. Though that would take quite some programming to make that a reality because you need to program teachers and school specific quests and that would take some serious overhauling for a lot of the worlds.

If I do have a bit of a gripe with this game is the backtracking. A lot of the quests make you backtrack often between to sizeable distances in between quests. Utilizing the Mark Location function helps immensely but using it costs mana and at lower levels you cannot really afford to waste your mana points. If there was one actual money item purchase I would say yes to investing in; it is the mount. Even though the lower mounts will only net you a 40% increase in speed, it is one of the most time saving investments you can make. Some mounts you can buy with in game gold but they cost almost 3-4 times the amount of crowns. Not to mention these is a myriad of choices to chose from (even if some are harder to obtain than others) so there isn’t a concern of your wizard looking like everyone else. Just keep in mind they can be somewhat pricey and you can just get rentals if you don’t play the game enough to warrant it. But yes, if you can, get yourself a mount, because ho boy will you be running yourself up and down the streets of Wizard City and there be no Poke Stops here mateys. There are ways of decreasing this such as grouping quests that have similar objectives (like beating the same type of enemy) or are close together. I am just not sure if that was a good design choice though if I remember Mooshu is a lot worse, but we’ll get to that whenever I drag my icy butt over there.

Lastly was my excursion into Crab Alley which I remember having a different storyline than before…with Selena Gomez. I do actually remember doing that quest when it was first new and was pretty easy to complete. Then again I was a level 50 wizard and the area was designed for players around level 12-15. Unfortunately the quest with the Gomez is no longer available which is strange because she IS a main quest objective in the sister game Pirate 101. I still possess her statue and painting on my older wizard and I may drag it over to my haunted mansion if I so please. The storyline down here is more straight forward where you must go underwater to investigate the crab kingdom under Triton Ave. This is your first underwater level and I do appreciate that they give your avatar a swimming animation. Side note any organic mounts that you have will also “swim” as opposed to flying or walking. On skates you do this swim skate movement which is kinda cute in its own dumb awkward way. This quest is noticeably longer than the Gomez one with stronger enemies that will combat you with a 1:2 ratio as opposed to the 1:1 that Wizard City does. You are also easier to be caught by enemies and with all the back and forthing that you do, it can be a hassle for a single player. At best for your little side storyline you are rewarded a hoodie with the crab king’s face on it. It does not have any stats but I believe it was meant to be stitched with other items.
Once you complete these three streets you move on to Colossus Boulevard that I will be tackling on later once I get some of these little side quests out of the way. Until then, take to the sky, my friends!

Report 3: We Craft Wizard City on Jewels, Fish, Animus

This will be my final report on Wizard City for the time being. This time around I will be tackling the side activities of Crafting, Jewels, Fishing, and Monsterology. I actually do remember when Crafting was added to the additional activities you could do in the game along with the additional world of Celestia. I also remember that it took almost three hours to download the patch because everyone and their ancestor was downloading the new content at the same time. And boy was crafting not one of the funest things to do as Regents were scarce and you were competing with a million other players to get them. And it did NOT help when some of these recipes required like 12 of that items and some were only obtainable by chance alongside common regents (flashbacks of Blood Moss). Since then Regents have become plentiful and you can transmute other Regents into the rarer ones. And boy were the forums filled with spite when that happened-like people were mad that all their obsessive hours were suddenly moot because it was made easier. And as far as I was concerned it made the crafting questing tutorials easier to clear, but from that point on-a lot of recipes can be…a bit of a challenge and an annoyance to work with. Yes, yes I know; it is something of a Skinner Box to extend a game past the point of actually being fun (I never did get around to making those crafting mannequins…). However, by making the additional features easier to unlock it does encourage more people to use the feature and encourage Kingsile to continue to invest in it. At current I just cleared the Novice lesson in Wizard City and slowly working on the Krokotopia stage (now could someone please drop some damn parchment already?).

Jewel crafting was something added long after I had stopped initially playing. From what I could gather by the descriptions, it is basically making gems that augment your equipment with additional stats from accuracy boosts to defense increase. Of course not all items have a slot for jewels and not all jewels can fit into those slots. Jewels can either be found by enemies or crafting them. So far none of the enemy drops have been a boon for me (curse you triangles!). Still, it’s quite an interesting feature to have I think. One of the things that often bugged me back in the old days of W101 (and what drew me to Pirate101) was the lack of customization for your avatar. Like you couldn’t really feel too individual in your playstyle. Well, looks like we’re heading that way so I hope to experiment with this later on. Also why isn’t this feature in Pirate101, huh? Heeelllooo, jewels, pirates…kinda a big glaring obvious why not here, don’t you think?
And finally the last new feature to toy around with was Monsterology. Basically it’s the gathering of digimon data…er I mean enemy animus with the proper type spells. From there it shows up in your Monster Tome with it’s school, rank, and a small bio. Collect enough of it’s animus and you can either a) make a Treasure Card (basically a one time use spell) or a House Guest that acts as a minion you can use in House Battles. You are given a Collect Undead Animus spell to start with which is a handy way of early ranking up because there are a lot of various Undead around Wizard City. Also the higher your Monsterology Rank, the higher change that your collection spell succeeds. However, I do have one big issue with this; the additional spells are far too expensive especially the early spells. Each enemy type spell, say Gobbler, is about 10,000 pieces of gold. And you might not think it’s that big of a deal right? Well, gathering gold in this game is an absolute chore. Most battles will only net you maybe 3-10 pieces depending on the size of the enemy battles. And since a lot of battles can take place from anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, you would be spending hours to get that gold. Even selling unneeded items from your inventory won’t net you much either. On that note, fishing and gardening spells are about 1,000 gold pieces each as well. Honestly only the equipment crafting recipes are still the least expensive with the lowest amount I’ve seen so far to be about 400 gold. Hell often the only thing I buy from shops is an upgraded Spell Deck because you can spend your gold out very easily. I do hope there are Krok Animus spells somewhere. I’ve always had a thing for Kroks.

Anyway that is more or less what I have to report on for the time being. Oh and just a side note I will not be tackling Grizzleheim until I’ve finished Dragonspyre as I do want to tackle these worlds in the order they were released. I only did Crab Alley earlier because I was a birdbrain and had more of less put that side quest out of my head for the longest time and forgotten that I had not been a part of the original game. Take to the sky, my friends.

Report 4: Krok Like an Egyptian

I’ll admit that Krokotopia has always been one of my personal favorite worlds from the original set before Celestia. I really liked the variances of the Krok race especially. Sadly, if memory serves that was perhaps the last time we really had that much variance in enemies of a particular race with the exception maybe being the pigs, though that may change once I actually get to Mooshu.
The world is set between three areas: The Fire Pyramid, the Krokosphinx, and the Tomb of Storms. Much like Wizard City; these areas are each prominently populated by the three Primordial Elements as I like to call them: fire, ice, and storm and oh is it far too easy to make a Instinct, Valor, and Mystic joke in there. Balancing it out are the Balance type enemies with the other types sprinkled here and there. Needless to say that if you are one of the three teams, you are going to struggle a little in one of the three areas. My initial run all those years ago was the Death school so I was a bit of a breeze for me. Come to think of it, this world, even now, did feel a bit easier than Wizard City. Or it could be that I utilize the Team Up function in some of the dungeons more than City. It is not that the Dungeons (with the exception of maybe the optional Tomb of the Beguiler) are necessarily hard, but lengthy especially if you are soloing the place.

The storyline is pretty straight forward. Marleybonian explorers have unintentially awaken the Tuts from a magical sleep and they are now gathering to create an army to invade other worlds. It is suggested that the Marleybone soldiers have at best been able to keep them at bay and that’s all. It is rather a shame that they don’t actually join you in combat akin to what Pirate101 does. Some battle in P101 have NPC characters join you in combat though granted this was typically reserved for Instance battles. I always thought it was a nice touch. Heck it’s a shame young Falmea isn’t join you in the B.O.X.E.S event when you are supposed to be helping her pass her exam. Then again it might be because W101’s combat system isn’t designed for that sort of thing. After all there are only eight spaces (four for players and four for enemies) so I guess programming an additional space for an NCP wouldn’t work. Plus P101’s battle grid is determined by the area you’re standing in.
Much like Wizard City, a good portion of the battle areas are basically the same setting but with pallet swaps and a few minor changes; such as the pyramid having more fire elements and a big sandy area while the Krokosphinx has a large icy area aka the Arena. Aside from the Sunken City, this is where we get our first real taste of dungeons. Most take about half an hour to forty-five minutes to complete while the optional dungeon can take almost over an hour (and that is not the longest dungeon to memory). And I’ll admit the Krok themed housing is rather…meh. There just really isn’t much to the place unlike what Wizard City and Marleybone offer. I had hoped for like a tomb like space or something. And no the Balance School themed house does not satisfy my needs either. Oh well.

Incidentally this is the area where I wished Stitching existed. At the same time also where we could, if we so chose, to grind for say Krokopatra’s headdress or Krokotep’s garb or something. I know technically there are items that say that BUT they look nothing like what the character is wearing which is a real shame. Then again perhaps I have been spoiled by Pirate101 for that reason. Though if memory serves, Stitching was not a mechanic introduced until sometime between the Dragonspyre and Celestia updates if my memory has not failed me, but I could be like 80% wrong. Though it is very likely that this was just not something that Kings Isle thought of when they initially conceived the game to begin with and decided to put these things in with the sister game from the get go.

There is one more thing I wanted to mention here and that was the new dungeon area that they implemented since I’ve been gone. Basically it’s a side quest that lets you get your first taste in the world of Mooshu. The basic idea is that you need to find a lost explorer who went searching for Shangri-Baa (this world’s version of Shangri-Bah). Assisting you is the monk Dali Llama and you learn that a cult is intending to release a demon called Hamakala using the explorer’s body. Also the demon makes a Ghostbusters 2 reference by quoting Vigor’s speech. Neat. By the way, this is a very difficult dungeon to pass through alone. And even with Team up function is is a very challenging area for players who are between 15-25 which is the rough level area of Krokotopia. I think it is rather interesting that they are including these additional dungeons at lower levels. In some way I guess it is to increase playtime while they work on other stuff (or like the Moo Manchu tower waste your bloody time). In the end it was a nice little break and I was lucky enough to get a sweet hat out of the deal. I don’t really farm for gear anymore since by drop luck is atrocious. Oh and you get a nifty badge to show completion.
I suppose that is really all I have to say for now about this world. Marleybone is going to take some additional time since it was one of the larger worlds to memory. But I could be wrong. Still, until then-take to the sky, my friends!

Report 5: Gone to the Dogs

I have a love/hate relationship with Marleybone. On one hand, I love the clothing styles and the housing. Even the central hub of the world is very nicely designed. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the battle areas or even the quests. Unlike the previous two worlds, Marleybone’s quests feel stagnant and droll. I mean there is an entire chain of quests just centered around the Policeman’s Ball and you don’t even get to enjoy the fruits of your ever backtracking labor. Honestly to memory, it feels the least rewarding of levels, but we will get into that later.

Basically Marleybone is this game’s version of Victorain England; populated by cats, rats, and dogs with the dogs basically on top. In fact, the Dogs have quite the imperialist attitude about themselves although it is much more evident in the sister game, Pirate 101. Indeed, the Dogs make settlements in the Cool Ranch area with their railroad systems, but later abandon it when things go south. Heck, in that version there are also Foxes and the game makes them an allegory for how the British treated the Irish during that time. But even in this game, W101, we see it in the books we collect for a level wide quest and just the general way the ladies refer the cats and sweepers. Heck there are a series of quests where a Mime Cat and a Sweeper Frog are imprisoned falsely accused of crimes and they remark how they look like all other Cats and Frogs. And nope, it doesn’t bother me at all. Honestly I applaud King’s Isle for not shying away from it, especially in this time of sanitation. Plus, the target audience; kids, are not going to catch it right away unless pointed out to them. A part of me thinks this was something more for the adult audiences though I still think at this time P101 feels more adult than W101.

If there is one thing that I want to get out of the way, it’s this: newer players; you have NO idea how much easier you have it traversing this world. So Marleybone is where we start to get into larger worlds with a lot more traversing involved. By the Spiral, in my day (heh my day-what an old hound I am) we didn’t have teleporters or mounts. So imagine traversing back and forth on those quests at basic run speed. Also, we got caught a lot by the enemies because they were fairly close to the “safe areas”. I’m not going to lie and say I did not use the teleporters to my full advantage. Though if memory serves, when the teleporter first came out (I had some back quests I hadn’t finished) you had to find the teleporter spots and activate them in order to use them. Now I could very much be wrong, it has been a good nine years since I was last in Marleybone (don’t ask how I remember that date-it’s a very odd date for me) barring the Spiral Geographic tower quest.

I am a bit sad to say that it’s not much fun either in the battle areas. Most of the locations are on rooftops or inside warehouses. Say what you will about how the different areas of Wizard City and Krokotopia are basically the same areas but pallet-swapped, at least they look distinct enough. I could show you a picture of say Hyde Park, Chelsea Court, and Knight’s Court and you really couldn’t tell me what area is what. Sure there are minor differences here and there like pathway and ramp placement; maybe a few towers, but it is one of the blander worlds of the Spiral to memory (maybe Dragonspyre but I’ll have to get there and refresh my remembrance to be sure). I suppose I shouldn’t be as harsh on it since it was one of the original four worlds that when KI launched the game in 2008. The best way to look at the Pirate101 version that launched in 2013 as a remake (a remake that is actually fun). As I’ve stated before, most of the quests don’t feel like they really add much. Sure a few insights into the culture, but most of the storyline quests feel disjointed. Okay so have to get into the museum to get the Krokonomicon before Malistaire does; the curator won’t let you in and thinks it’s safe because of some kind of anti-magic defense system. So you need the mayor’s permission, but he’s busy dealing with a crime wave. So if you want permission you need to deal with the crime wave. And to do that you need to help Sherlock Bones and do to that you have to deal with minor crimes in Hyde Park and Chelsea court. Then save an informant. Then deal with a prison break, Jacques the Scratcher, and only then Meowiarty. And you hardly have any encounters with Meowiarty save for the final boss fight. Maybe I’m wrong but shouldn’t Meowiarty like a criminal mastermind or something? Like maybe you investigate odd thefts or strange attacks or something instead of “oh Meowarity is free, how terrible. Oh why don’t you saunter off and deal with Jacques or AWOL clockworks or something?” Sure you could say that the storyline in Wizard City does something similar, but I am more forgiving of that because that whole story was basically one big tutorial of the game mechanics and type matching. At least with Krokotopia the plot beats were Stem Back the Tide of Kroks while We Find a Solution, Locate Order of Fang, Bring Order of Fang Back Together, Stop Krokopatra. Overall, the storyline feels very disjointed which is a real shame because all the pieces are there to make an interesting narrative and have it actually be fun to play in and explore. Unfortunately Marleybone just doesn’t for me. Overall, it’s not a complete waste of time; it’s just not one of the best worlds of the game to memory (keep in mind, I’ve only been halfway through Celestia so I cannot say for any worlds beyond that).

So that’s my impression of Marleybone. It’s just okay, but I still like the housing and clothing styles so I might still be stitching in the future. Who knows?
Take to the sky, my friends!

Report 6: Moo Shu Fighting

I apologize for not having any recent reports of late. I have been working on some other projects recently and I haven’t been able to play the game as much as I had been before; at best maybe an hour a day. So from here on out, I will try to keep up something of regular reports but they will be smaller and will mostly cover the various areas of that particular world. I thank you for your patience.
And so our next stop is the land of Mooshu based off ancient China. Now this is also a world that has been redone also in Pirate101, though unlike Marleybone there isn’t as much of a noticeable difference between the two. In fact, the only area the two games share is Hametsu and while the graphic fidelity is noticeably greater and it has a more varied color palette, it’s not as big of a difference between the two games. What is more interesting is that the story of Wizard 101 and Pirate 101 parallel to each other. In Pirate101 we are given a cutscene where the monk is telling us that a wizard came to Mooshu and put the Emperor to sleep. With the Emperor under slumber, new forces are taking advantage of the situation to further their own evil ends. In Wizard101’s case it is the quartet of Onis while in Pirate, it is the sorcerer Moo Manchu. This little hint here is that the stories of both games are in a way running alongside each other and one could argue that each game is a little side story. Thankfully, you don’t need to have played the other game to know the situation as an NPC will give you all the information you need. We’ll see if this happens in further levels such as Aquilla and Polaris if that trend continues. One a side rambling note, I really hope that we get to maybe visit Skull Island or at least a level in the Skull Island Skyway and vise verse have Pirates come to Wizard City though I’m not entirely sure how you’d incorporate that. It’s still a nice thought.

So this lovely world is inhabited by goats, sheep, cows, and pigs as this levels unique enemies. Aside from the Kroks, the pigs have some of a largest variance between designs and they are custom to each section. For example, the Pigs in Hametsu Village are brightly colored in reds and purples; Shoshun Village Pigs are dull greens and browns, and Sorrow Village oinkers are pale purple, green, and black each representing the theme of each section.

So for this round let us take a look at Hametsu Village and Tatakai Outpost. Our mission here is to restore the sleeping Emperor’s mind in a manner of speaking. In this section, the Warlord Katsumori has taken the Emperor’s Sword which I guess is the metaphor for his Mind. I’m still processing that to be perfectly honest. Or I could have actually payed attention to the text. Anyway, apparently our War Pig had felt slighted in the Festival of Lights and with the sword has declared war on Mooshu. Our mission is to fight back his army and quell the invasion. Simple and to the point. And like before, they have implemented the teleport system and thank the gods does make traveling easier. Of course, unlike Marleybone we don’t have to do nearly as much pointless tracking. Even the side quests feel like they actually have a purpose to the main story. For this area the side missions have to do with allying ourselves with the earth spirits for support or getting passes to continue fighting.

I’ll go into more detail in my final thoughts but this world does feel like a nice refresher after the slog that was Marleybone. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find 20 Black Lotus flowers for those confounded rings…
To the Sky, my friends!

Report 7: Go Mooshu, Go Mooshu, GO!

There really isn’t much more I can add to this second half than what I have stated before; such as how it is structured narratively a great deal better than Marleybone with each area feeling unique even if it does somewhat use recolored assets for each section. Even still, that small bit of effort helps give each area its own unique feel and story.
Our next trip is to Shoshun Village to purify the water needed to heal the Emperor’s Body. The waterways have become diseased causing problems such an infecting villages and making them violent zombie goats and making water spirits aggressive. Most of your quests are creating medicines and restoring the Jade Scepter to cleanse the protective shrines. All of this is to weaken the Plague Oni just enough that we can fight him. I also wanted to make note of the color choices in this section as well. While the Hammetsu area has vibrant yellows and greens; the Shoshun Village and Kishibe Village are done in olive and other drab and digesting colors that give the impression of disease and unwellness. Again, a minor touch since pretty much all the areas use the same bamboo walls and village assets; but it’s still a nice detail. Funny enough, the final dungeon area, Shirataki Temple, is the largest dungeon in Mooshu and has the most tasks you need to complete before reaching the final boss. None of the onis are really that difficult of bosses though so most of the Instances can be done solo. It’s just noticeably faster with larger parties.
Our next section is the Yoshihito Temple and the surrounding ghost areas. From here the Death Oni rules about; making the undead Samooari his servants and terrorizing good souls with wraiths. From here, the palette changes to more pallid reds and greens which is opposite from the first areas. From here we gain assistance from various souls who have taken death in various ways and will either need your help to rest or will give you information to fight your battles. Our mission here is to obtain the ability to cross the death river to the Tree of Life where the Death Oni is hiding; mostly done by capturing and enslaving an evil spirit. Kinda ironic, but whatever.
There is one more special mission I forgot to mention. There are two missions, not counting Zeke’s collecting quest, that span the entirely of the level. Similar to Wellingbrook’s mission to read and gather all the history books of Marleybone, a monk will ask you to gather all the books on Mooshu’s legacy. I rather like this touch since it gives us lore to play with without having to bog us down with exposition that we don’t really need for the main storyline. Most of the original worlds save for Krokotopia (shame since there are Krok history texts that we have to retrieve such as the Mander Scrolls). Oh well.


Right, the other mission. The mission spanning the whole level is the Elemental Spirits quest tree. Starting from the Tatakai Outpost, an earth golem by the name of Mossback will ask you to help in healing his fellow earth spirits that have been corrupted by the rising Oni forces. From there you really have to search around and pay attention to your surroundings since he is the start of a very long quest tree to gain favor from them. Mossback is also in the Shirataki Temple instance so you have to keep an eye out for him after you assist him in Kishibe Village. From there you have to head to help him again in the Ancient Burial Grounds and then help Wavebringer in the Village of Sorrow before finally getting quests from Oakheart in the Tree of Life. From there you speak to all three spirits in the Jade Palace garden shrine to get your rewards. Unfortunately aside from the two badges you get for 100% completion of the areas, the rewards items aren’t that great. Or it would be because I gotten better gear by that time.
Once you have the Sword, Water, and Fruit, your processed to heal the Emperor which in turn drives out the boss oni Jade. This fight is well different than what I remember. See I played it in the earlier years where you actually had to fight all four onis at once. And back the I had to get a full party to beat them. Since then the final battle has been changed to just the Jade, which is an honest shame because I remember that it was basically a second chance to get some of the oni gear without having to go through all the dungeons again. Sure it made soloing harder, I’ll admit, but it really felt like a final boss fight that felt both challenging and rewarding when completed. I don’t know why it was changed, my google search yielding nothing, but I guess I can understand why it would happen if solo players felt cheated. Not to mention getting a full party was not as easy as is now with the queue system in place.
So, that’s Mooshu. Hopefully, I’ll have a better posting schedule in a little while. Till then, take to the sky my friends!