Castle Tours Improvements 2020

The castle tours headquarters has long been a staple of the Wizard City commons! Can you believe it’s already been 7 whole years since the feature first arrived in live realm? Yet despite being around for such a long time, there haven’t been that many castle tours improvements – in fact the only addition it’s ever received was Eliza Windspar joining the business to provide players with access to ongoing castle games being hosted in tour-able homes. However, much like castle games themselves, this feature lost most of its popularity over time and has become much less utilized than the touring feature.

It’s certainly one of the side systems most in need of some love and this year it’s finally getting it. The Castle Tours are being renewed and improved! Let’s take a look at what’s new and ponder a bit over what it might mean for housing enthusiasts.

Castle Tours, revised!

Badges

• Players will now be able to earn new badges for having their houses appear in the touring leaderboards.
• There are also badges for visiting and rating houses.

This is a small but nice incentive for decorators to share their houses in the touring system. I’m sure a lot of players know the only thing more satisfying than completing a wondrous house is sharing this wonder with others. And by making badges for rating other houses, KI also gives an incentive to visit new houses.

Earning these badges will also enable you to purchase special new decorations which we’ll get into  later.

Of course with there being a leaderboard and some kind of reward in it there’s also the risk some players will try to cheat, “boosting” themselves higher up the leaderboard  by using alts to vote for themselves while more deserving houses stay behind.

Fortunately you only earn a badge for the first time your house is top-rated in each category, therefore it’s fairly easy to get all badges without boosting. There are no rewards dependent on leaderboard badges, so you don’t have to worry about missing out if your houses aren’t getting into the leaderboard.

Added housing categories

• Dorms – self-explanatory I’d imagine.
• Collections – for houses that showcase your collection of fishes, pets, primordial beings or whatever it is players like to hoard these days.
• Gauntlets – a default category for any houses with a gauntlet in it.

It’s been a few years since decorators first demanded dorms and apartments to be tour-able, so while simple, this is undoubtedly the most requested update we’ll talk about in this article. Likewise, given how common collection houses are, it was long overdue to have its own category, even if no one bothered to organize protests to demand it be implemented.

As for the gauntlet category, this might be the true blessing of this update. With the addition of this category, we will hopefully be able to browse top-rated castles without constantly stumbling upon sub-par homes that earned their rank solely on the presence of a farmable gauntlet.

Touring updates

• When visiting a house, there’s now a button to teleport you to the entrance.
• You can now favorite castles so we can revisit them later.

These are simple but very important updates. In case you haven’t realized, this teleport button will function as a way to unstuck yourself should you get glitched inside an object or teleported to a room suffering from a peculiar scarcity of doorways.

Favoriting castles is also an extremely convenient feature, I lost count of how many times a friend of mine wanted to show me a house they saw but couldn’t find it again – in fact this seems to happen almost every time I’m touring castles in a group – but with this favorite list: never again! And of course this could be used to return to a house with a certain gauntlet, eliminating the need to make it top-rated in order to be easily accessible. However, old habits die hard, so I’m not sure if this will become the standard way to access gauntlets.

Rating requirements

• Before rating a house you must now visit both inside and outside.
• You must wait 30 seconds before the rate button becomes available.

Evidently these two changes are meant to ensure you’ve actually seen the house before giving it a score. It’s usually not fair to rate a house that you have only seen the entrance of. On the other hand, if the house doesn’t look appalling to you, you can still leave it without waiting the 30 seconds to rate.

As for requiring we visit both inside and outside, this will become a problem if it goes live. Any house with a blocked entrance won’t be able to get rating, and a great deal of decorators do block the entrances because that part of the castle isn’t part of the experience they built in that house. Indeed, many famous decorators are known to build structures nowhere close to the entrances, or even in the ground.

Decorators will need to start finding ways to incorporate those inside and outside into their designs, otherwise this little change will prevent them from gaining any rating in Tours no matter how amazing their houses might be.

New Housing Items !

It’s not just changes to how castle tours work, oh no! A new vendor has just moved in to the castle tours headquarters and she’s selling recipes for some very interesting items – and a new apartment!

Keep in mind these recipes require you earn certain touring badges before you can purchase them, and the crafting itself also require a new reagent called Blueprint Token which you can earn from the new Spiral Scene event.

More types of Banks !

These placeable banks should allow you to access your bank from anywhere in the house. Naturally the contents will still be the same regardless of where you use it.

Living in Wizard City!

Your own Wizard City apartment, located in the Commons’ fairgrounds near the tunnel to Golem Court. At last you can be a private citizen of Wizard City; and unlike with the Olde Town Apartment you won’t need to help 2,000 teams to do it.

Castle Tours Apartment

Spiral Scene Event

The new event coming to Wizard101 is the Spiral Scene. The tasks are focused on castle tours but also incorporate some elements from the Spiral Showcase event.

Is this is the only way to earn Blueprint Tokens??

Currently yes. The update notes mention there will be other ways too, this is similar to what we were told regarding other event-specific reagents and spellements which likely means the Blueprints will also be available from the Scroll of Fortune and select CCG packs from the Crown Shop.

More castle magic!

This update is also bringing a few castle magic items and spells available from Babbage Basset in Marleybone’s Regents Square or from the castle tours office. These include:

Castle Magic Items:

• Invisible Magic Button, a magic button, but invisible.
• Magic Any Item Player Detector, a magic item to enchant another item to act as a magic player detector. This may read as gibberish to the uninitiated.

Castle Magic Spells:

• Stop Pet – Stops a pet from being able to wander.
• Pet Wander – Enables the wandering ability for a pet
• Walk to Item (Pet)– Summons the Pet to a specific Item.
• Pet [Emotion] – Allows the Pet to either dance or use an emote.
• Silence Item – Silences an Item.
• Restore Object– Reverses the effect of Silence Item and unmutes an object.

I can definitely see a lot of use for this Silence Item. Anyone who’s ever tried to use a fireplace’s backside as a wall knows how annoying it is to hear, as its fire keeps crackling, breaking the ruse that it’s now a wall – not a fireplace.

Miscellaneous miscellany…

What are your thoughts on the castle tours improvements?
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