Twelve Wizard101 Wishes for 2022

The new year is here and 2022 should bring with it plenty of exciting new Wizard101 updates. But, there are some specific things that I'll be on the lookout for this year! While there's no indication that we have any of these things on the horizon, I'd like to see these 12 things in the game this year! Hey, a wizard can dream! In no particular order...

Spells

Let's break some trends and explore new options with existing magic types. Here are some things I'd like in the world of spell casting.

#1 Non-Shadow Attack Spells

There's a theme in this category: let's take a break from shadow magic. Look, I get it, arc 3 introduced this great new kind of magic which is now every spell that we get. With the recent change of having the shadow gauge, shadow pips don't tend to come up often enough to actually ever get used in battle. I've done hundreds of battles throughout Lemuria and I've done dozens of runs of some of its premier fights, including the last battle. I don't know if I've seen anyone using shadow spells anymore. It's a shame. 

I would like to see attack spells that are not shadow-based. Different schools have had different "holes" in their capabilities. I actually thought this was kind of interesting, and a little bummed when all of the rank 7, level 48 spells became super-powered AoEs that made any other spells seem weak by comparison. KingsIsle has chosen to fill some of these holes (such as some schools' need for a 4-pip AoE) with pack spells. I would have preferred high-level wizards receiving these spells as trained goodies. There's nothing wrong with giving a Life wizard at level 150 a 4-pip spell - if they don't have one, that's as powerful (and much more useful) than anything that costs shadow pips (or a 12-pip Scion). Bring back some non-shadow attack spells!

#2 Astral Mastery / Astral Spell Expansion

We got astral magic primarily for one arc - arc 2. After that, arc 3 gave us shadow magic. Auras and some of the damage and single-spell enchants have kept up because they're useful. However, I would like to see some of the Sun enchants for converting spells of one school into another and some of the Moon attacks expanded upon. I wrote an extended Feedback Friday answer with some Astral Spell Ideas back in 2016. There are some spells now that are pretty close to some of what I recommended, including negative damage auras used by enemies in Lemuria and increased enchants.

The reason no one uses the Moon shift spells, though, as cool as they are, is the pip inefficiency. What if we had Astral Mastery Amulets for new astral spells? Suppose that sun converts turned spells into a Sun version of that spell, and one could use power pips with a Sun Mastery Amulet. And look, if everything needs to be shadow-related, how about a crossover between astral magic and shadow? I think there are a lot of unexplored possibilities here.

#3 Dedicated Utility Spells

If there's one thing nobody seems to like, it's a combo spell. Typically when you order a meal, you get a discount. If your fries cost $1 and your burger costs $2, then a meal should cost less than $3, right? You get a deal! Not so with Wizard101 spells! There are no deals - at best you'll break even, and sometimes it seems that you're paying $4 for that same meal! The only reason that people use spells that combine attacks and effects is if they're powerful enough to use purely for the damage. No one uses other spells (at least not in PvE). That's the battle system that is set up - power up and attack and kill. So instead of tacking our utilities onto the latest damage spell and removing damage as a result, keep the damage on our damage spells and give us some dedicated utilities! Let's spice it up!

Side Activities

Some of our side activities could use a little love. Here are a few things I'd like to see for fishing, skeleton key bosses, crafting, etc.

#4 Polaris Fishing

It's been a while since we've had a fishing update, and I'm ready for some new ones! Khrysalis was great but the third arc is calling! There aren't a ton of great fishing spots in Polaris, but it's time to break the ice and give us some fish to catch. We didn't get any fishing updates for Wizard in 2021. Maybe it's time for a new twist... ice fishing, anybody? Suppose we could use a "drill hole" spell on the ice in Walruskberg harbor and catch fish that way.

#5 More Seasonal Skeleton Key Bosses & Chest Rooms

We've been getting a fair number of skeleton key bosses throughout the Spiral, and Krampus comes around once or twice a year for the holidays. I'd like to see some additional seasonal skeleton key bosses, though. A Halloween skeleton key boss seems like an easy one for sure, but even a rogue wizard rejected by his love interest could become a Valentine's Day skeleton key boss. Let's get a few more into the rotation!

I also miss chest rooms. I know that there's not a real abundance of skeleton keys around these days, certainly not wooden and stone ones. And that makes folks less inclined to use their valuable keys on a chest room versus a boss, but chest rooms dropped pretty good items, too. If future chest rooms dropped items that were as good as some of the bosses or previous chest rooms, they could be worth visiting too. The Darkmoor chest room dropped mastery amulets! And they're a lot easier for KingsIsle to make than creating a cheating boss.

#6 Crafting Options for Celestian Pack Spells

Sometimes, crafting options for pack spells show up as soon as 6 months after the release of the pack, which still feels like an eternity. And yet here we are, a year and a half later, with no crafting option for the spells. Ship of Fools in particular is a spell that Death wizards would love to have in their arsenal as a 4-pip AoE with options for pure damage or stealing health. It's time to add crafting options for these spells, add them as drops to Loremaster, or both!

Quality of Life / User Interface

Perfect for a spring update, quality of life improvements don't always translate to direct profits for KingsIsle, but they do keep players happy and continuing on through the game.

#7 Expanded Badge Info

This is something that folks have been talking about a lot and I think there have been some plans in place for it. We need expanded badge info - that means more detailed explanations on how to obtain certain badges. In particular, the past few worlds have introduced badges for major bosses that involve soloing the boss or completing the battle quickly, etc., but the specifics of obtaining those badges are vague. And even after getting them, there's no way to tell exactly what you did, so it's difficult to explain to other players or put info on a Wiki or website about how to obtain them. Additional info could clarify these cases.

#8 Hide Friendly Player Names

One of the updates last April introduced "friendly players," or players willing to help others quest and win battles. This turns on their overhead name with emojis on either side. While this is a great feature and a good way to find other players, it's particularly annoying for players who like to play with no overhead names visible, including taking scenic screenshots or shots of large groups without having to show everyone's name in a mess of text.

Under the options for "Show overhead names," Wizard101 should add "Friendly players" as an option along with "None" which should turn all overhead names, including friendly players, off.

#9 Team-Up Revisions

Team-Up has a couple of bugs to work out. Not necessarily errors, but troublesome mechanics. Currently, the way team-up measures whether or not you've participated in a dungeon is whether or not you entered a fight. I had an instance where I was farming the Scion of the Old One and my game lagged such that I could not enter and the other players finished the battle in two rounds. Now, under the current mechanics, I am forced to exit without battling and thus kicked out of team-up for 10 minutes. 

There's a similar problem that occurs when players enter a dungeon with a battle that really needs all four of them, and one leaves. Now the other three players are faced with a tough choice: try the battle themselves and perhaps waste time and fail, or leave and suffer the ten-minute penalty. Perhaps only the first player to leave a team should suffer such a penalty in these scenarios, or maybe completion should be measured by an instance-based quest and not by entry into a battle.

Additionally, players have reported some bugs. For example, teaming up for the final fight in Lemuria and leaving and teleporting back would sometimes result in entering a different version of the dungeon than the rest of the group.

Crown Shop & Gifting

The Crown Shop has been getting a lot of love the past couple of years. Microtransactions for the win? Either way, here are a few things in the world of gifts, crowns, and packs that I'd like to see changes to this year.

#10 Gift Item Management

Gifts are getting tough to manage! The way the current gift redemption system works in-game is that it only shows the ten most recent pages of gifts, and any items from bundles automatically default to the most recent slots. That's all fine, except if you want to save gear and bundle items for later, it means you'll no longer be able to access any gift you receive - no promotional codes, no KI Live goodies, nothing... until you redeem the bundle items. It would be great if we could take a more detailed look at the gifts in our gift box, and sort and redeem things as we please without this hindrance. 

#11 Pack Drop Rate Disclosures

I wrote in 2019 about the possibility of a pack problem in Wizard101, and one of the solutions I proposed was to disclose pack drop rates. This is something that a number of large gaming companies have committed to doing with regard to loot boxes. This, I think, would provide a more fair idea of what exactly the chance is that wizards will receive the items in new packs. This level of transparency might not be profitable, but it would definitely be a move in the right direction for KingsIsle.

Bonus

This one is extra...

#12 Stop the Seeds

For some reason, a gardening plague has spread across these most recent worlds and enemies drop an absurd number of seeds. I'm perfectly happy with particular enemies dropping so many, but this is getting ridiculous. I'll suddenly have ten pages of seeds as I'm questing. My backpack will be made of a vast majority of seeds. They don't even sell for that much gold. Take them away, please!

What do you want to see in Wizard101 in 2022?

Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral!