April 16, 2019 March 28, 2023
Ten Deckathalon Tips
to Beat the Towers
Wizard101’s Test Realm offers a new event: The Deckathalon. This event is packed with unique mechanics including preset stats and spell use limited to treasure cards! This article will focus on 10 tips to help you succeed in this event. Head on over to Wizard City’s Library and test your wits against the creatures lurking within the Deckathalon towers!
1) Use a deck with a tear or square socket to start
In the deckathalon, no gear stats are allowed with one exception: Decks. All deck stats including jewels will be applied to your character. Unfortunately, the ancillary benefits of a triangle slot such as power pips are so small they make little to no impact. Accuracy can make an impact however we have a base universal accuracy boost of 20% in the ice deckathalon making even Storm spells 85%-90% accurate. In the Death Deckathalon we only receive 5% life accuracy but even that is enough to make life spells 95% accurate. As such it is best to equip a deck with either a tear or square socket. Once equipped with said jewel-this will increase your base health or grant you flat resist. If you are a high enough level- make sure you equip a deck that gives an extra pip AND a tear or square socket as this extra pip is applied in battle. Luckily, you can easily find these types of decks in the bazaar and they will serve you well until you can craft the deckathalon decks.
2) Use a pet with “may cast” talents
In the deckathalon, none of your pet’s talents are applied with one exception: may casts. Using a pet with may cast heals or may cast auras can help make your run a lot easier. As such it is really recommended you create one of these pets for use in this event. May cast pets are readily available in the hatchmaking kiosk so get hatching today! If you happen to have the Kroger pet jewels then the may casts on those jewels can also be triggered so be sure to equip said jewel if you have access to it.
3) OUTDATED Use pre-enchanted treasure cards
While this tip may come across as a no brainer to more veteran players, it is still a very important one. You can make pre-enchanted treasure cards of your trained spells by using a treasure card enchant (such as gargantuan or monstrous) on a trained spell and then discarding or not using said spell. This will make an enchanted treasure card copy of your trained spell which will be in the sideboard of your deck after battle. Using pre-enchanted TCs is very important for the deckathalon as it allows you to deal a lot of damage with low pip spells. Best of all gargantuan and monstrous TC can be easily bought from the Archivist in Celestia’s District of the Stars.
4) Focus on one enemy at a time
This may seem counter-intuitive especially since the rest of the game essentially teaches us to buff to an AoE. However, with our low base health and no resist, leaving 2 enemies on the board for any significant amount of time can easily lead to your defeat. As such it is often better to take out one enemy at a time. This will reduce the damage you will be taking and give you time to recover if your health is low. Unless you are storm with pre-enchanted tempest on the lower stages – it is almost always better to hit one enemy at a time.
5) Craft the Deckathalon decks and use them
As you complete the deckathalon stages a vendor will appear once you have beaten the final boss on the third floor of each stage. This vendor will offer you deck recipes which are very helpful for the event. I recommend crafting these decks as soon as possible and to keep crafting the improved versions (better recipes are on higher stages) until you have the final stage deck. This deck will greatly increase your base health and flat resist and will even give you a little extra attack. The Ice/Death Deckathlete’s Deck 4 is currently the best deck to use in the event but even the lower tier decks are handy. Look out for higher tier decks in Live Realm as KI developer Ratbeard has confirmed that 10 Stages are planned for each Deckathalon!
6) Use Fortify as a defensive spell
Fortify is a star aura spell that reduces damage by 20% for 4 rounds. This is essentially a 4 round weakness on your enemy that is particularly effective against DoTs especially when combined with flat resist. A Fortify aura with a deckathletes deck equipped will reduce Frostbite to less than 100 damage a round and against most mobs you wont even take damage from the initial hit of said DoT. Fortify can often be found in the bazaar. However, if none are available visit our old friend the Archivist in Celestia’s District of Stars.
7) Use specific shields instead of tower shields
As it currently stands, monsters in the tower will only use spells corresponding to their schools. Thus, there is no reason to use a tower shield over a school specific shield. Compare Snow Shield to Tower Shield. A Snow Shield TC provides 85% worth of defense while a Tower Shield TC provides 55% of defense; it’s a real no brainer. Of course, this might change as harder towers are added but for now use school specific shields instead of tower shields. School specific shield TCs are available from Harold right there in the Wizard City Library.
8) Use sprite as a heal and fairy as an emergency heal
Using the low pip heals are an essential part of keeping your health up in this tower. While we have been trained by the game to favor higher cost heals such as Pigsie or Satyr, we simply won’t be able to survive long enough to cast these 4 pip spells. Even if we do survive to cast the spells, by the time we build back the pips to attack after casting satyr, we would probably be at low health again.
As such Fairy and Sprite are ideal. Sprite is a great low cost heal giving us almost 400 health for 1 pip. Combine it with fortify and you can completely negate a Frostbite. Fairy (or Pixie) acts as your emergency heal, bringing you back from the brink of defeat or helping you to maintain your health in preparation for the following floors. Both Sprite and Fairy can be bought at the Library from Harold.
9) OUTDATED Consider using the moon shift spells
Ah yes the moon shift spells. Remember those? While they do see a niche use by the PvP community and by our very own moon advocate Timid_Angel (who has written a great guide to moon school spells here), these spells have largely been forgotten. They offer great damage per pip with awesome effects but are too inefficient to use in regular play. Being moon spells, no one can utilize power pips with them, as such they effectively cost 3 power pips (6 pips) to play.
However, power pips are disabled in the deckathalon making these spells absolute powerhouses. Shift Piscean is of particular note. This spell deals more damage on average than Storm Shark and steals a pip from the enemy. Go give Arkyn Moonblade in Khrysalis’ Eclipse Tower (located in the Moon Cliffs) a visit to train any of these awesome spells. (P.S-don’t forget to create pre-enchanted tcs of these spells in order to use them in the deckathalon). These spells are still expensive at 3 pips so save them for Stage 4 and beyond where the enemies have more health.
10) Maintain your health between floors
The Deckathalon Stages are composed of a Stage with 3 floors. While traversing the Stage your health will not regenerate. This makes maintaining your health between floors extremely important. If you beat floor 2 but have only 1 health left it will be much harder to beat floor 3. As such, be sure to time your heals and attacks wisely. I always recommend only moving on to the next floor when your health is at or close to 500.
