We are excited to see so many players on Test Realm for the Spring Update! There’s a fresh spring energy in the air, and it’s not just Nana baking cookies in Karamelle.
The Spring Update introduces new items, events and event rewards, and improvements on many adventure systems. A couple of new skeleton key bosses also await if you are up to the challenge. Need a friendly guide to explore it all? We’ve also added new social systems (with more to come) to help you connect with fellow wizards.
As always, we appreciate your feedback on all the new content. Please read through the Test Realm Update Notes and report bugs via the in-game interface and in the Community Forums. You can also post any feature suggestions and any other ideas you may have in the forums as well.
A few words from our sponsors...
“I’m so excited for so many things this Spring, but I’m especially excited about starting our initiative to improving grouping and socializing in this update! My favorite is the “friendly flag” feature, which allows you to basically tell the Spiral that you want to make new friends. I know I can be a little socially awkward in games about asking if someone wants to group up and play together, not wanting to bother them, and this eliminates that entirely!” - Professor Falmea
"The team is excited to see how the community likes next gauntlet. The process for creating housing gauntlets is streamlined and hyper-focused, which often gives the smaller group of devs involved a bit more “skin in the game”, as they say. This latest gauntlet is particularly special as it gave us an opportunity to dip back into the Pirate101 corner of the Spiral for inspiration. We hope the Pirate players amongst the Wizard community enjoy this nostalgic one too!" - Mike Sears
“For about a year now, we’ve been working on rebalancing PvP (and to an extent, PvE). This next update has a TON of changes – the meta is going to be crazy! So we’re definitely hoping to get quality feedback from Test Realm.” - Ratbeard
"Every Test Realm gets me excited to see players checking out new content and helping us to discover the kinks and quirks before it lands on the live realms. Most of all, I take every chance I can get to hang out with players and each Test Realm feels like a big party. Thanks community for helping us to make another great update to Wizard101!" - Sparck
"Long Live the Spiral! The Wizard community has always, at its core, been about cooperation, companionship, and helping other Wizards save the Spiral. This Spring update introduces some new systems to help players help others. It is one step we take to help give the community the tools to help each other and discover new friends! Let us know what you think about what we have in spring and what you’d like to see in the future!" - Artie Rogers
"New ways to put things on sale in the crown shop are coming soon! I can’t wait to be able to use things like account age to give special items to our long term players, and discounts for those that have never made a purchase before!" - Decius
"Happy Spring adventuring from the Cinematics/FX team. See you in game!"
Thank you, Wizards!
Before diving into the newsletter, a quick review of what’s happened recently in the news:
MAR 1: Spring Scroll of Fortune returns
MAR 8: Happy International Womens Day
MAR 10: New Empyrean Airship House
MAR 11: Abracadoodle returns with #206
MAR 11: First ever Housing Roundtable livestream
MAR 17: New featured community guide
MAR 20: St. Patty’s weekend community events
MAR 22: Spring Festival begins
MAR 25: KI Live – Springtime is in the Air
APR 1: New Couch Potato Mount
APR 5: Spring Update on Test Realm
Keep updated on the latest news for next month on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, including special announcements from community fansites! Read on for more fun happenings with the community and their Spiral activities.
NEW SKELETON KEY BOSSES
Clipped from March's KI Live, we showcased two new Skeleton Key Bosses coming soon and already available to check out on Test Realm:
Throughout the show we answered your questions, Decius had several in-game points of interest to reveal, and we showed some of your St Patty's contest screenshots. We also showed off sneak peeks of the exciting content coming to the Spring Update!
If you missed the livestream, watch it now on YouTube:
Secret Reader Bonus - As of this newsletter's announcement, for those who didn't get a chance to redeem the KI Live giveaway code yet, we opened it up again (W101SPRINGSHOWERS) for another 500 redemptions!
A great gameplay tip submitted to KI Live comes from Richard Lionheart:
"Grow Beastmoon (and Spirit moon, Elemental moon and school specific) seeds for coins moonstones and idols. With coins you can buy treasure cards within the events. With moonstones and idols you can upgrade your Beastmoon forms." - Richard Lionheart
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
Just a few days after Employee Appreciation Day, our team celebrated International Women’s Day! Here are some of their stories as posted on KingsIsle's Twitter and Facebook pages between March 8th and March 12th.
NEW CONCEPT ART FROM ADAM ROUSH
Adam has been busy creating more cool new art! From the cutest backpack rats this side of the Spiral to the fancy of fancy outfits, he draws it all. Check out his latest concepts:
“Here's the Couch Potato mount. Silly things like this are easily the most fun art I get to do at KI :).” - Adam Roush
“Here's the Astronomer Rat concept, and the color variations of its backpack. I even changed the color of the star maps to match the crystal.” - Adam Roush
“Here's the Astronomer Gear. This was really fun, mixing a little steampunk with fantasy space themes, and used star charts on the clothing. One of my favorite sets to design :).” - Adam Roush
“Here's the Floral Raiment gear. I really enjoyed designing this set, looking for interesting plant and flower shapes that resemble armor and cloth.” - Adam Roush
“Here's the Rocket Ship mount. It was really fun mixing bits of steampunk, atompunk, and fantasy together for this design.” - Adam Roush
HOUSING ROUNDTABLE LIVESTREAM CHAT
We had a ton of fun chatting with the community about all things housing on last month’s Housing Roundtable livestream, hosted by the community itself. Listen in below:
On the show, we had from our team Professor Falmea, Decius, Arthur Wethersfield, and Sparck. Thanks Daniel Sunsword for hosting!
COMMUNITY VIDEO SPOTLIGHT
By: ValkoorDrakeRider
ValkoorDrakeRider spent hours with Castle Magic to make a Pong game in Wizard101 that you can play. We checked it out and it really works. Fantastic design Valkoor DrakeRider!
COMMUNITY BULLETIN
Community art by: Swordroll
Keep updated on what’s happening in the community right here in our Community News section! For every newsletter, we receive direct from the community links to new gameplay guides, exciting upcoming contests, and much more. Thanks to the following fansites and other community leaders for their contributions this month!
The 7th annual Wizard101 and Pirate101 Fansite Festival is set for April 17-18th! This is naturally one of our favorite events of the year as it brings together so many fansites, including of course all those that participate in our official fansite program.
Keep watch for more from the Fansite Festival and how our team may be participating!
More News From The Community
Edward Lifegem is hosting this year's Bunny Run as part of the Fansite Festival festivities!
For more guides be sure to visit the official Community Guides page!
The unaffiliated-with-KingsIsle “Community Newsletter” had a great selection of Wizard101 links this month from around the web. NOTE: Follow their Twitter page for more information. To subscribe to their newsletter, send a DM to their Twitter asking to be added or email them at community.newsletter.101@gmail.com. You can unsubscribe at any time by sending them an email with the phrase “UNSUB”
FOLLOW WIZARD101
Question for our readers - is there a section we should add? Tweet your suggestion to @Wizard101 and we’ll select the top idea we can implement to win 5,000 Crowns!
Be sure to follow the game and its community on social media!
If you didn’t yet read our article on online safety, please take a moment to stop by our KingsIsle Blog and read the post titled Account Security Best Practices. There’s important information in the article to manage and protect your entire family’s accounts.
