Wizard101 Castle Darkmoor
Graveyard Solo

After getting all of my Darkmoor gear, I was curious to see if it was possible to solo Castle Darkmoor Graveyard (i.e., no henchmen).  After discovering some strategies that seemed workable, I had someone show me how to record it and was able to capture the successful attempts on video.

As with most farming and PvP strategies, there were a lot of lessons learned from failed attempts.  It’s a good thing that Wizard101 doesn’t display a PvB section (Player vs Bob), as my record was close to 1-100 and probably worse than Private (maybe “Public”, if that’s possible?).

I’ve posted the videos below, along with strategy, gear and deck setups, in case anyone is interested to see how it was done.  I think it could be possible with Death and Balance, so if you have a max wizard and can tear yourself away from mote farming, go for it!

Yevgeny “Bob” Nightcreeper

Bob turned out to be the hardest one to solo.  The challenge is he spikes a TON of damage every 5 rounds (round 10 is over 4000 damage between the Blackwater and Myth shadow spell cheats).

From a gear standpoint, I had to maximize both critical and healing boost in order to keep up with all the damage (primarily at the expense of critical block and some damage boost). Given all the things that can go wrong, I used a Vengeful Elixir to make sure I always got a Critical on the heals.

I found the best way to survive was to cast a regenerate treasure card 2-3 rounds (ideally 2) before the cheat.  If all goes well, it will give you full health before the cheat and then maintain your health after.  I also tried to keep conviction up at all times to stop the stuns and try to block the hits.

While maintaining health, I was able to stack 3 feints, 3 blades and shrike for a Catepillar to take out Bob.  Once he was out, the minions were relatively easy to take out with some blades and forest lords (glitches and all), especially if you can get a Sanctuary up to make it easier to maintain health.

Note that plenty of things can still go wrong, even with this strategy, so the success rate is probably only 20% or so.  Typical problems included:

• Losing a lot of health from Bob and minion attacks on the round before the cheat, sometimes helped by a critical
• Having a minion cast Lord of Winter, taking away precious pips when I needed them
• Getting stunned the round I needed to use regenerate
• Not having a buff when I had a free round for it or a heal when I needed it

On the flip side, occasionally some good luck would come along when Bob would beguile me before one of his cheat hits.  While not necessary, it does help a lot!

Bob Video (45:51)

 

Gear, Deck and Stats for Bob

RoboShane

Honestly, I was shocked that Shane turned out to be easier to solo than Bob, as it only took a few tries.

It was interesting that his beguile cheat triggers every other round when you are solo.  On the plus side, this allows you to trap Shane, cast a heal without his vampire, and skip his cheat attack every other round.  On the negative side, you have to endure attacks every other round.  I was lucky that I discovered that you could cast an AoE attack when you beguiled at it would hit them — I assume the Beguile cheat ends after their turn.

From a gear standpoint, the objective was to maximize critical, death resist, heal boost and damage — Life is fortunate to have some gear that does this well.  Given how the cheat works, perhaps the death resist may not be so important.

My biggest fear was receiving a massive hit or having my blades removed from Shane.  I was surprised that he didn’t attack very much during my testing.  Perhaps he didn’t think that it vas vorth it to vaste pips on a single vizard?

The overall strategy was to stay alive, cast 10 buffs, amplify, shrike and hit with a Forest Lord.

RoboShane Video (26:18)

 

Gear, Deck and Stats for RoboShane

Malistaire

I used the same gear setup for Malistaire as Shane, and it ended up working well from the start.  It only took a few tries.

From a strategy standpoint, the initial objective was to stay alive (again Sanctuary is quite helpful) and get rid of the minions as soon as possible (similar to our Darkmoor Graveyard speed run strategy).  Their attacks can hurt, especially since we don’t have critical block against most schools and the side effects / cheats can wreak a little havoc.

Given that the dragon cheat will remove blades every four rounds, the ideal hit sequence would consistent of a regenerate the turn before the dragon, followed by 3 blades and a hit.  If I wasn’t setup for that sequence, I would try to trap and shield and setup for the next dragon cycle.

Once the minions are down, the objective was to buff for a big hit on Malistaire.  Since Life boosts on the first one, I chose not to use prisms or shrike.  I did play around with having a doom available before killing him on previous tries, but it was hard to be sure about the damage and to build a “perfect” shot, so it made more sense not to use Doom and grin & bear it when he came back with 100,000 health.

On the second one, he resists Life, so I stacked traps and used a life prism and shrike.  In hindsight, it might make sense to have a couple King Artorius in case shadow pips were scarce for a Shrike and Catepillar combo.  His cheat shadow hit does a significant amount of damage so it’s important keep your health up or have a guardian spirit on to revive you if needed.

Note that I was lucky to have my critical attacks sneak through in this video, making the fight shorter than usual.  The battle can be done without critical attacks, as the first time I beat him was a two hour marathon without any unblocked hits.  Unfortunately the video didn’t save, although I did learn that it would be helpful to have shrike in deck!

Malistaire Video (51:55)

 

Gear, Deck and Stats for Malistaire

 

Who’s Next for Castle Darkmoor Solo?

As I mentioned above, I think someone may be able to solo with Death or Balance, although they each have their challenges.  Or possibly life with different gear or strategy?  Maybe a ice-resist approach could work on Bob?  Maybe other schools could work (although it would seem hard to get sufficient boost to your heals)?

We’d look forward to hearing about any successful attempts or letting us know any thoughts that you might have!

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