Look, I am having fun here. After playing another game for almost 10 years, my wife and I made 101 accounts to get crowns for our son. We toyed around with the game and got into it. We've always been casual players, and while we have bought crowns for our son, we have not (and probably won't) buy any for ourselves. It's just been a nice distraction, easy fun that we can play with our son and without all the guild/game drama we left behind.
Again, we don't buy crowns, and I am not freaking out when I see some of the stuff other characters are wearing/using. And honestly, I've gone through the game fairly easily without crown-bought gear. At the same time, getting a usable (ie upgrade) drop once in a while is, well, kinda nice. With the (seemingly) completely random loot tables, this seems to be a rare occurrence in 101 and I've been reasonably content to buy bazaar upgrades (though, bazaar bought gear after 35 or so is pretty horrible). I've also worked tradeskills to master artisan, and have found no upgrades there either (so make that a second complaint lol).
However, that reasonable contentedness ended today. I got my necro to the final fight with Malistaire in Dragonspire and upon defeating him, received...pretty much nothing. At least, nothing I could use. Not even something I could sell, even for the slightest profit (and so perhaps turn it into something I could use). I mean, as of a few short months ago, this was THE fight. This was the endgame. And aside from getting a corner wall ruin and a shiny new title from Merle, it was as anti-climactic as I could describe within the context of the game. And when I stop to think about it, I'm fairly certain I did not get a single upgrade throughout the entire Dragonspire arc.
All the schools have 'best' gear for those in the 40s and 50s, but as you have found, very rare drops. Most people end up 'farming' for them. The biggies for me, at your level, is the clothes given by Mal and the ring/althame from the Gurtoks (sp?).
I find Mal and the Gurtoks give a special item about every other drop, but with 7 schools, that will mean on avg over a dozen fights for your gear. This can be better for 'younger' characters as you can pass to them thru the shared bank.
Wizard101 Central has lists of where to find the best gear to farm for each school...
As far as crafting, until level 55 I didn't find anything to wear worth crafting.
However, that reasonable contentedness ended today. I got my necro to the final fight with Malistaire in Dragonspire and upon defeating him, received...pretty much nothing. At least, nothing I could use. Not even something I could sell, even for the slightest profit (and so perhaps turn it into something I could use or sell). I mean, as of a few short months ago, this was THE fight. This was the endgame. And aside from getting a corner wall ruin and a shiny new title from Merle, it was as anti-climactic as I could describe within the context of the game. And when I stop to think about it, I'm fairly certain I did not get a single upgrade throughout the entire Dragonspire arc.
Pretty disappointing really.
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IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK, my idea is, say you fight malistaire... right? You can: 1. No loot you can't auction 2. Every time you do a dungeon over, it inceases the amount of loot you get 3. things you fight can drop like a bag or something and it will contain one item of loot in it and you pick it up and you get a piece of loot in a specific category called: 'loot' in your equipment section of your spellbook/backpack/inventory and you can sell the loot for money but you can;t buy it back if you decide to sell it or auction it. it will disappear and say "bye bye." lol. But it would be an improvement. Thanks KI. Proffessors, if you have an input on my suggestions, please tell me. Thanks, Kelly SoulBlossom level 58 theurgist.
There are some special pieces of gear, usually high-powered and hard to get, that cannot be sold to the bazaar. The reasoning behind this mentality is that you should be forced to work for some pieces of gear - such as the rare Malistaire armors that are, as far as I remember, THE only piece of non-crown, non-necklace gear that comes with a card.
While, yes, it stinks that these pieces of gear cannot be sold to the bazaar (you can, however, sell it to a normal shopkeeper in the Spiral), it is better than having everyone running around in these uber pieces of gear that they didn't lift a finger to get (or at least entered a dungeon to get).
That was why, back in the day, people weren't keen on running that final dungeon in Dragonspyre in order to obtain massive amounts of loot to sell for money - most of the pieces could just not be sold, making it a null-profit adventure (unless you were specifically going in to get one of the pieces of gear). However, with Celestia, there's a LOT of areas you can hunt in for even better gear - which, yes, can be sold and bought in the bazaar.
I'm fine with not being able to sell the loot. And I am fine with the loot tables being random in most (almost all) cases. I just think that there needs to be a way to make certain fights give class specific or caster-all gear. Say, end-of-world fights, or at the very least Malistaire. I'm an adult, I can deal with farming Malistaire to get the necro piece to drop (though, with my limited time to play, running a 2 hour dungeon multiple times is not really what I consider farming). My 10-year old was lucky: he was SO excited to finally fight Malistaire and got his ice robe drop the first time. But I can imagine his disappointment had he not, and he is not the youngest nor the least patient kid out there playing.
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