Taking the Spiral by Storm: The Pyramid of the Sun

Hey everyone!

Wow, I am on a roll with the posts lately!  I hope you all aren't getting tired of reading them.  I have been so busy with questing and want to keep my posts up to date, so I don't get too far behind and forget what happened while questing.

In my last post, Autumn Rain was ready to enter Krokotopia, having finished all her quests in Wizard City.  Ambrose had discovered that Malistaire was going there to track down the Order of the Fang.  I entered Krokotopia at level 17.5 and by the time I finished all the side quests I could access, I was ready to begin the main story quests at level 19.5.

The Royal Hall
My first task was to track down and obelisk that Professor Winthrop had just uncovered and take rubbings so he could read the inscriptions. The inscriptions detailed the Krokonomicon, which was a powerful book of magic.  To find out more about the Krokonomicon and the Order of the Fang, I needed to get an ancient tablet back from Biti Nirini by defeating him. This led Professor Winthrop to believe the Order of the Fang is still around and hiding somewhere.

Chamber of Fire
I headed to the Chamber of Fire to help Professor Danforth get into the Palace, where there is a Map Room that would help find out the location of the Order of the Fang.  There was a stone key that had been split into 2 pieces.  The first half was easy to recover by digging it up.  To obtain the second half, I needed to defeat the Nirini Qurtermaster and take the key from him.

Palace of Fire
Inside the Palace of Fire, I needed to help hold back the Kroks from escaping the pyramid and then defeat the four Nirini leaders so that the barrier into the Throne Room and Map Room would be broken.

Throne Room of Fire
Once inside the Throne Room of Fire, I met up with Professor Winthrop in the Map Room.  He told me we needed a powerful magical artifact, the serpent staff, to locate the Order of the Fang.  I had to defeat Prince Manu Nirini to get the staff.  Then we needed the Eye of the Krok, which had been stolen by Krokenkahmen. I defeated him and then we were ready to locate the Order of the Fang.

A note about the above image: No, I do not have Stormzilla yet.  That is a treasure card I received as a drop.  It was a huge help with defeating Krokenkahmen though!  Anyway, we found out the Order of the Fang is hiding out on the Krokosphinx, so that's where I am headed next.  I am currently level 22.  Being ahead level-wise is extremely helpful, because I can get better gear and have trained more spells.

I should have my next post in a few days, so be sure to watch for it!  Until then, have fun and thanks for reading!

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Taking the Spiral by Storm: Wizard City Side Areas

Hello magical people!

When I last posted, I had just finished defeating Lord Nightshade and received the spiral key to Krokotopia so I could track down Malistaire and the Order of the Fang.  However, before I entered the new world, I wanted to finish up all the side quests in Wizard City.  I did many as I was questing, but quite a few kept opening up.  This post won't talk about all of them, but I did want to make a post about the major side areas in Wizard City.

Crab Alley

Sohomer Sunblade asked me to see what was going on with the storm mill's batteries in Crab Alley.  I went down into Crab Alley and found out that King Thermidor has been acting weird. He had locked up his adviser Thomas Cromshell and the riverclaws were taking over.  After some investigating, I found out the current king as actually an impostor.  After many battles, I managed to track down King Thermidor, fix the storm batteries and save Crab Alley!

Colossus Boulevard
After that, I found out that Gobblers had taken over Colossus Boulevard.  After fighting a few, I went to talk to Professor Greyrose who suggested a potion made out of stinkweed.  The potion didn't work, so I went to talk to the Gobbler King. He wanted to take over Wizard City, so I went to talk to Ambrose to get more suggestions.  After going back and defeating a bunch of gobblers to test their strength, Ambrose suggested defeating the Gobbler Kings closest advisers, Barons Greebly and Rotunda.  After that, the Gobbler King relented, but Ambrose agreed to let them keep Colossus Boulevard.

Sunken City
The last area I went to complete was a dungeon, and it was a little different, because I did not do it solo.  Since this is a hard dungeon for the level I was (14ish), I decided to bring along my life wizard.  Edward Lifegem also came along on his new wizard, Suri Skullshard, so he could get more xp for her.

Anyway, we had to help Marla Stinger prove to Cyrus Drake that Grubb actually exists and wasnt just a myth.  We fought a couple bosses and did a tower before we actually discovered and fought Grubb.  Since we had a level 120 life wizard with us, this actually went very quickly, but it was still a lot of fun!

So I finished every single side quest in Wizard City, except the fishing stuff, mainly because I need more gold to buy fishing spells.  I will be starting Krokotopia at level 17.5, so I will be very far ahead.  That should help my questing go faster.  Anyway, thanks for reading and I will be back in a couple days with a post about the first part of Krokotopia.  Have fun!

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Merciless Jennifer: The Bunny, the Rat, and the Volcano

Ahoy Pirates!

At the end of my last Merciless Jennifer post, I left off right as I was about to seek out One Eyed Jack so he could help me find Ratbeard.

I headed over to The Block Spot and talked to the barkeep.  He told me Jack may be collecting rent from Sally.  When my crew and I got to Sally's place, she was being attacked by some scoundrels set on her by Ratbeard!  Luckily my job was to just get rid of the bad guys and not protect her, because one critical hit and she was dead.  However, I did manage to get rid of them with no other problems.

Anyway, Sally hadn't seen Jack, but she sent me to talk to Ned who told me......that the barkeep IS Jack.  That rascally rabbit!  So I headed back to Jack and he told me he had promised Ratbeard to let him know if anyone was looking for him.  However, he did tell me where I could find him if I hurried.

I got to Ratbeard's hideout too late! Right as I arrived, he jumped out the window and left a burning paper, which turned out to be Captain Gunn's will.  We saved it, but the last part that told us the location of the treasure was burned, so Ratbeard had a head start.  Instead we headed to Gunn's Refuge in Corsair's Channel where we found another clue that told us to find Honest Ned's grave in Shady Hollow.  Once at Shady Hollow, my crew and I had to fight some undead to reach Old Scratch, before we had a showdown with him.

The battle with Old Scratch was pretty easy.  Two rounds and it was over.  After the battle, Old Scratch joined my crew at level 13!

Old Scratch told me where to find Honest Ned's grave and there was another clue there, saying to go to Bounty Island.  So off we sailed.  When we got there, there was an old Crab named Squinty who said he had been digging there and searching for the treasure for years, with no luck.  However, he did let us onto the island, where a series of clues had us rig a cannon to blow open the gate to the entrance of the tomb.

We entered the tomb and found that the treasure had already been stolen!  Squinty had also followed us down and was mad we found the tomb first, so he set his crabs on us!  We fought them off with no issues and then Squinty realized the treasure was already gone anyway.

After that, Old Scratch used some hoodoo to make Captain Gunn talk to us and tell us where his treasure went.  He said Ratbeard sent in some water moles to steal the treasure and that they were gving it as a sacrifice to their fire god on Waponi Wu.  So that's where we headed next! First we had to fight our way through several water moles and then headed up to the volcano.

At this point I took a detour and revisited all the previous areas I had completed in search of side quests.  I was still level 12 and knew I was about to recruit Ratbeard, so I wanted to level up if possible, so that Ratbeard would be a higher level when I recruited him.  However, nothing new had opened up, except one small quest that didn't offer enough xp to help me level up.  I did it anyway and then headed into the volcano.

The first battle was against a couple fish.  I only had one companion, so it took a few rounds, but still went well.  The second battle was against a bunch of water moles, which also went well.

After that, we reached the top of the volcano, where Ratbeard was captured and the water moles were throwing all the treasure into the fire!

So to stop the water moles and save Ratbeard, we had to defeat Chumba Wumba.  During this battle, Mormo ended up dying, but Dead Mike and Old Scratch were a lot of help!

After Chumba Wumba was defeated, he came back to life! There were 3 totems giving him his power that needed to be destroyed.  I sent my pirate, Dead Mike, and Old Scratch each to destroy one of the totems and Chumba Wumba was defeated for good!

After discussing it with my crew, we decided to let Ratbeard join up with us.  He is also level 13, so I am currently using Ratbeard (13), Old Scratch (13), and Dead Mike (12).

Kan Po (2), Bonnie Anne (3), and Mormo (5) have all been pretty much retired.  Unfortunately I can't set them to get NXP or anything for me, because that feature isn't available for companions under level 8.  I may just put them in my house or something.  I haven't decided yet.  Also, I am hoping some side quests that offer companions will open up soon, just in case.  I honestly forget when I recruit my next main quest companion.  However, I do still have Grimtooth waiting in the wings, just in case.

Next up Avery wants me to bring the Chalice I recovered from Captain Gunn's treasure to Puerto Mico as a gift to help set up a treaty.  So we'll see how that goes.  I also leveled up to level 13 when I went to talk to Avery.  I am hoping to have time to quest and make another post during the week, so be sure to watch for it! Until then, thanks for reading and have fun!

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Wizard City: History of Magic Book Locations

Hello young wizards!

While leveling Autumn Rain through Wizard City, I realized I have never made guides for the various book quests throughout the spiral.  This is something I always meant to do, so I figured why not start now?  I will be making a guide for each world that has one of these quests as my storm wizard, Autumn Rain, discovers them.  Here is the first, for Wizard City.

There are six books hidden throughout Wizard City, one in each of the Main areas/streets.  All of them are inside boss towers.  You can get the quest to find all the books from Boris Tallstaff in the Wizard City Library.

History of Life Magic

Unicorn Way, Lady Blackhope's Tower

History of Myth Magic

Cyclops Lane, Akilles' Tower

History of Storm Magic

Triton Avenue, The Harvest Lord Tower

History of Fire Magic

Firecat Alley, Fireglobe Theater

History of Death Magic

The Haunted Cave, Stormdrain Tower

History of Ice Magic

Colossus Boulevard, Gobblestone Castle

So those are the locations of all six of the History of Magic books.  It will probably be awhile before I have another one of these guides, since the next world that has one of these quests is Marleybone.  Anyway, I hope this helps for anyone who is trying to track these books down! Good luck and have fun! Thanks for reading!

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