Okay, I have to lodge a complaint about these final quests in Marleybone. I have enjoyed playing solo in the game; as a mom I don't really want to start chatting with players I don't know since I don't want my kids making friends with strange adults in the game either. Now it's really close to impossible to make it through this point solo. Thankfully I am a life wizard so I can get pretty darn far. I've successfully soloed through both Counterweight East and West; I made it all the way to the top of Big Ben...took me three hours!...only to get clobbered at the end when my minion card wouldn't turn up.
First of all, I am not a fan of the instanced dungeons. I don't like having to commit such a large block of time in one shot, afraid to leave my computer for any reason. I can appreciate some might like it, but for me I would like the option of having other quests that are more manageable in their time demands in order to proceed through the game.
I also think there should be a lower degree of difficulty in those final quests. I mean, you make it through that cat with 3500 life PLUS two potbellies helping him out and then you have to tackle Meowiarty?
Finally, if these dungeons have to be so hard please tweak that Life minion so it doesn't spend so much time casting worthless spells on itself. I mean, how many times does it need to cast a Sprite on itself when I'm getting clobbered??
I agree....if you don't like the outcome of the towers in Marleybone, your really gonna hate DragonSpyre. This is a game to encourage people to help each other out and parts of it, you just HAVE to have help, that's all there is to it.
I would say it's possible to beat the game solo but highly unlikely. But for those of you who are going to read this and know that you made it on your own....BRAVO....because I can't do it. I am almost a level 50 now and I'm in DS and it's almost like starting all over. Try thinking about how your at 3,000 health (if your lucky) and ALL the enemies are at 800 health and above. Heck, some of the bosses are well over 5,000 health.
So, continue doing what your doing on being solo but all I can tell ya is.....GOOD LUCK!! Your gonna need it.....
Okay as a mom i can appreciate your concern but you can NOT solo the game.
Period. I am a relatively great fighter and better then most folks i know on the game (with a huge ego) but even i need to get help from time to time and the game is set up so that you learn teamwork.
As a mom you should be able to appreciate your kids learning to work together with others to get a job done. It is a lesson that life is going to teach them soon than later. So while i would watch while they play not just let them have the computer. I would let them play in teams and you should learn to do the same.
Because as the previous poster just said Big Ben is the first of MANY towers and they get harder and if you are a life wiz you only have ONE really powerful damage card. While Life can be a force in wizard can finish the game with them and a minion.
Not to mention that it take FOUR masters to complete the last quest to malistaire. You can not do it with less, don't even try. So you are going to need to find friends NOW because it won't be easy to find them that late in the game and hope to win.
Sorry, the harsh truth is if you don't want your kids to play with others then maybe you should by them a video game that does need to log on and they can play alone or with each other.
Maybe one day Wizard 101 will have some gameboy version that they can do just that.
I agree that these dungeons taking hours to complete are quite frustrating, especially for moms. Perhaps if there was a save point halfway or something, that you could log out and come back to. It took over three hours for me to do Katzenstein's Lab.
I hope the next world that comes out takes these sort of things into account. I don't care if we have to do 52 quests to finish the area as long as each one would only take about an hour to accomplish.
I agree. Instanced zones are a pain in the. However, I found that if you are defeated in one of them, you can come back and, if you didn't spend 30+ minutes, the dungeon will not reset. I daresay I was scarfing down dinner so I could get back to bb. The lag ddn't help either....
Anyway the trick works because, as a pyromancer/diviner, I have little healing spells, so i died easy. I went to newgate prison and restored my health and went back. easy as that :D
I feel sorry for you. bb was the hardest thing in the game so far, so now you just have to do it again. It took me three different battles to take down Meowiarty. Oh, and for your kids, there is always TextChat, or whatever its called. If that is set, then you don't see other people's menu chat.
I agree.... sort of. I did DS alone.... right now all I have left is to fight Malastare! I was so happy.... till i found out you need a total of 4 ppl to get through the doors to get to him at the end!!!!!!!!!! whats up with that. So ive been doing other things instead till im ready and my fiance' gets to that point. Maybe!
I agree with the checkpoint idea with the longer connections, mostly because I lose connection ALOT (i live in a condo building with wirless networks bouncing all around) so maybe on the longer ones they might be able to add some?
But as far as soloing goes(to the OP), I have done it on some stuff(I am Ice/Storm, so I have high life and some strong spells), but what I have done is made a few good friends who have helped me on the longer stuff. (I even ran into someone doing Crimson Fields in Mooshu that I didn't know, but we did it together because we were on the same quest) I have one friend who brought two other friends and we did Counterweight East,West and Big Ben all in one night, and believe me with four people it went pretty quickly!
But once I got to DS I realized on some things I HAVE to have help. I managed to make it to the last fight in Sylvia Drake's tomb alone, only to die, but I had a friend online who came and helped me out and we knocked it out.
Maybe you could make the time to do the longer Dungeon's when your kids go to bed? I know I have one friend who is a mom who plays once her kids are asleep (she is a Grandmaster Pyromancer) and she helps me all the time when she is on (if she isn't helping someone else.)
As someone else said, maybe put your kids on Menu Chat so that they can't see the Text Chat, and that way it might be a bit safer to chat with other players. I see MANY Menu Chatters running around so I am sure they would be able to make some good friends. And if you didn't want to restrict them in that way, maybe you could sit there and play with them and help them with strategy and getting the big guys! :D
Another thing about DS, if I die in a fight and realize I can't do it alone, then sometimes I go back to Mooshu or somewhere and farm for stuff I don't have yet, which takes up time until a friend that can help gets online.
Thats just my two cents. Hope some of these suggestions work.
Wow, lots of good ideas here. Thanks. I can see I'll have to make a few friends quickly once I get to Mooshu because the hard thing is finding people who can play at my level now. It's not like I can corral some friend or my kids into playing with me, because they are way behind me and it would take forever to catch up to me.
I did just learn about that reset option, thanks for posting it. Next time I'll be ready!
I'm always willing to help to. I too like to farm the bosses and help others catch up. Let me know if your interested in my help and I'll post when and where I can be on what day. I don't know if you know about the REALMS but in order to meet we'll have to meet in a specific Realm at a specific time. The chances of just bumping into each other along the way is almost impossible.
Suggestion for the original poster. If you don't want to chat with strangers, then change your chat ability to only use the menu chat function. Can't really chat too much using that during battles, so that way you, and your children, aren't being subjected to strangers wanting to chat.
As for the Malistaire battle? You do NOT need 4 masters for it. I have a level 50 life wizard, and completed it with 2 others, neither were over 40. Yes, it was very long and hard, but we did it. It just took a lot of planning.
I do agree with everyone though. Unforunately, if you want to solo this game, it's going to be very difficult. Sometimes it's ok to get some help here or there. No one will think you are weak for it :)
As for the Malistaire battle? You do NOT need 4 masters for it. I have a level 50 life wizard, and completed it with 2 others, neither were over 40. Yes, it was very long and hard, but we did it. It just took a lot of planning.
Yea okay so you did it with three instead of 4 people and it was hard but you did it. Your point? Mine was that she could not do it alone. Not that she had tbe a grandmaster to get through and you need AT THE VERY LEAST two immensely skilled players to finish malistaire.
IMO, Wizard101 should put in a quest list page of all the wizards who need help with 'dungeon quests' in each world. It would make is so much easer to find help. Some easer way to let others know that you need help.
Maybe there could be a small 'help' circle or spot where you can stand and have your name put on a list, then later once there are others you are all ported back to that circle so that you can do that dungeon instance.
As for the Malistaire battle? You do NOT need 4 masters for it. I have a level 50 life wizard, and completed it with 2 others, neither were over 40. Yes, it was very long and hard, but we did it. It just took a lot of planning.
Yea okay so you did it with three instead of 4 people and it was hard but you did it. Your point? Mine was that she could not do it alone. Not that she had tbe a grandmaster to get through and you need AT THE VERY LEAST two immensely skilled players to finish malistaire.
Actually, I'm glad he/she made that point. I am working through Dragonspyre, and after reading your post, I had begun to think that it really did REQUIRE four people to do it together. I was wondering how I was going to find a fourth person to do it with me and my two kids. (I tend to avoid making other friends, because it made it hard to leave another kids game after playing for a long time--missed my friends, but my kids had quit that game long before I did.)
Granted, I haven't read anything else about it yet, since I have a ways to go (I don't particularly care for Dragonspyre in general). I probably would have done a bit of research to confirm what I thought you meant before I got there, but I'm glad they responded to your post.
*EDIT* Oops. Reading the post that made me think it required 4, I realized that you did not post that one. But still, I'm glad someone said it did not require four.
The problem with Big Ben isn't that it's an instance. The problem is that it takes about two hours, and you can't do half of it, leave, come back the next day, and do the other half.
If you can solo Counterweight West, you should easily be able to solo Big Ben. Mobs don't respawn once dead in Big Ben, unlike Counterweight West, so if you kill something and die, you can run back and try again with fewer mobs remaining.
Okay, I have to lodge a complaint about these final quests in Marleybone. I have enjoyed playing solo in the game; as a mom I don't really want to start chatting with players I don't know since I don't want my kids making friends with strange adults in the game either. Now it's really close to impossible to make it through this point solo. Thankfully I am a life wizard so I can get pretty darn far. I've successfully soloed through both Counterweight East and West; I made it all the way to the top of Big Ben...took me three hours!...only to get clobbered at the end when my minion card wouldn't turn up. 
