Wizard101 Mirage Test Realm Bugs, Feedback, and Suggestions

This has been one of the larger updates Wizard101 has done in awhile, and it's taken quite some time to play through the content. Having now experienced just about everything, I'm ready to share some bugs I've come across, my feedback, and other suggestions. I hope you join in!

Mirage Story & World

• It's exciting that the Eye of History is finally being addressed!
• The Sand Sea is beautiful. It's a shame some of the locations in Mirage don't use the sky box there.
• Mirage has some of the greatest characters of any world. Burdie, Ozzy, Swan, Sultana, and Istar are some favorites.
• The idle expressions and animations of characters added in this world, including those during dialogue, are really fantastic.
• The Mirage world map is still missing.
• All of the Mirage models have blown me away - hardly any reuses and great looks.
• The fact that side quests provide little or no experience is troubling. Though I'm sure it'll be easy to reach 120 with the final quest, there are lots of individuals who love to pick up side quests and use those to increase their level by one or two to gain an advantage in a world of increasing difficulty.
• The "Overlords Ossurary" needs an apostrophe.
• Overlord Xerxes during his first appearance starts with only 5,000 of 15,800 health. Is this a bug?
• The Feral Felons that Istar turns into beetles are bugged - the beetles show with the Feral Felons before the transformation.
• The area in Aggrobah is labeled both Arcade District and Arcades District between quests, quest helper, the map, and the compass.
• In terms of models, for future reference, the always-forward-facing 2D textures are not on par with other graphics. Particularly in the snakes' wands and the Djinn's smoke.
• All of Mirage's locations are beautiful. The expanses of dessert to explore are great.
• The Melanj puzzle is a little confusing. It would be helpful in the morse code message was split up into six clear sections rather than trying to decipher which pieces go with which parts.
• Are the Sand Swirlers part of a main quest? They could certainly be added in for one fight if not.
• What is with the bread vendor Ramin, whose bread gives no bonuses?
• The Ozzy reveal was a great side note under Xerxes.
• The Ali Baboon carpet chase is probably one of my favorite moments in the game.
• When dancing for Ali Baboon, the floor is already gone. There is no trap door shown.
• The Djinn conspiracy is probably one of your best plot twists in the game, and best single-world story elements.
• It would be nice if Eerkala, being such a major character, used a different model than Istar.
• The story of the Arcanum is great - the Cabal backstory and other aspects really sell this arc. The structure is a little off, with all of the reveals being in the back half. There's not a lot to be excited about in the first half.
• The Chaos Heart and love affair reveals at the Chronocle were obviously huge. I hope you've got some big cards left to play!
• The Eeerem Palace carpet teleports you to the opposite side of the palace than the carpet.
• Can we get the floating bubbles with location images above the teleporting carpets like in Polaris to distinguish what goes where more easily?
• Clicking through the dialogue too fast after the Scorpion battle causes you to become stuck on a camera angle but having finished the dialogue.
• Does the Scorpion really not have any unique loot?
• The different music themes in dialogue and different parts of the same zone are a wonderful addition.
• The positioning of some of your alleywall instances with the sigils on different areas of the same physical alleyway was pretty clever.
• Kasra Palace has blue lights on even with no quest goal inside.
• It's a shame the palace is so large on the exterior and has only one small interior room.
• Many of the mobs have health that is simply too high. It's not that they're too tough to defeat (though for many that is the case), they are out of proportion with your bosses and difficulty within Mirage. I'd either adjust the difficulty of the rest of the world, or bring down the health of some of these mobs.

Voiceovers / Dialogue

• Swan's line, "Exactly. A group of Fangs Street Snakes..." reads that they've "cornered the Ferals leader," which should probably read "cornered the Ferals' leader."
• Istar's line, "Eww. I can't believe all the Sisters..." doesn't match the VO.
• Ozzy's line, "Does that means they made off with Istar's lamp? ..." doesn't match the VO.
• I love that there are a couple of purely dialogue-driven sigil areas. This is a great surprise when a fight is expected.
• The voice actors for some of the primary characters (Burdie, Ozzy, Swan, Sultana, Istar, etc.) are wonderful.
• Overall a lot fewer errors than in past worlds - good work!

Arcanum Apartment & Legendary Weapons

• Without critical or critical block, the legendary weapons, for me at least, are totally counted out as viable options. The damage makes them a close choice, but critical and block is, well... critical, and having one of the biggest sources of these stats counted out hurts.
• Why is Fire all of the sudden getting a higher percentage of damage than Storm?
• On the legendary crafting quest, we are given no recipe by Ignus and simply using the forge completes the quest. If this is not a bug, it's extremely confusing at least.
• I like the Arcanum Apartment is integrated into the story. It's a cool addition. The idea of getting new houses or dwellings throughout the story is exciting.
• Is the Arcanum Apartment in its own dimension or should we see part of the Arcanum somewhere out the windows?

Level 118 Spells

• I really love the new divide mechanic, which allows for flexibility within spells. Also, four pips is very efficient for wizards to use.
• I think the divide mechanic is going to struggle between being a realistic and viable AoE and being an overpowered single hit.
• For more extensive thoughts, see my analysis here.

Faction Vendors

• I think there was some misunderstanding here, or maybe there still is. I took these to be quests to earn a sort of faction points, but really Faction Vendors are just badge-unlocked shops.
• The uniquely-textured outfits and carpets at each vendor are great.
• It looks like the vendors have a wand slot open but no wands for sale.
• The faction apartments are a really unique idea. In the future, I'd love to see some more detail in these, even if it's as small as a second tier or different room.

Sands of Time / Ending

• I'm really loving the three boss instance and final boss instance structure you've implemented since Khrysalis. This time especially I think it really worked well to split them up into four separate dungeons.
• The three bosses before Grandfather Spider aren't my favorite choices, but I must say, I'm glad they're not Malistaire or Morganthe. I think Rattlebones has been stretched just about as far as he'll go now.
• The Shadowwock is the worst of all four bosses, including Grandfather Spider. He is too difficult when you cannot dispel him. The late cheat in addition to the meteor are really tough to cope with, which, like the mob health, is fine, but is not in line with the rest of Mirage or the final bosses. It almost feels like the Shaddowwock is the big bad guy. Either reduce the frequency of his meteor to something like 5 rounds or reduce its damage to something like 1500-2000 per strike.
• I like the difficult in the Grandfather Spider battle. Not overly difficult, doable, but still a challenge that takes some significant time. He'll be more and more manageable as we adjust to the cheats. I also like that for as tough as he is, the whole battle is framed as being trivial, spinning the turn order and such. I can't wait to fight the Spider later on when he's serious.
• Thanks for making the final boss his own dungeon.
• The appearance of the Sands of Time to me is very underwhelming. It's almost entirely one color and doesn't quite feel as epic as it should. I think that's a major contributing factor to some of the disappointment with this fight.

Castle Magic

• This is one of the more unique features I've seen in Wizard101. I feel like a developer.
• The possibilities here are really fun, but the operation of everything is overwhelming at first. The tutorial is helpful and the tome is nice. It might be handy to have additional tutorials for different pieces.
• Restoring an object's position does not appear to be working. I had set spells for restoring when Signal 1 was inactive, when Signal 2 was inactive, or when both signals were inactive, yet none of those actions caused the object's position to restore.
• It would be nice to have a non-wall button option for outdoors.
• I would like to see the ability to choose an object's starting state. I might want some of my objects to start out invisible and be turned on by a magic button, which has only one setting.

Pip Conversion

• I think there has been a little bit too much emphasis placed on this stat. A lot of the new gear isn't very appealing in terms of stats. Pip conversion is nice, but it's not a supplement for so many of the key stats we rely on now. 
• Will there be any variation in pip conversion between schools, or will this be universally the same?

What bugs have you come across in the Test Realm? What do you like, and what would you change?

Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral!