January 12, 2017 April 8, 2023

Ways to Increase Spell Variety

In Wizard101, we’ve seen some great spells over the years, and fortunately we can learn most of them. But what about the others? By others, I am talking about every other non-trainable spell! Ok, maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but just take a quick look at the treasure card section in the bazaar. There is a wide spell variety, and half of them are only available to us as treasure cards only.

Think of the treasure card spells with Marleybonian and Krokotopian themes you can find in the bazaar. For fire, for example, there are O’Leary Swindler and Mander. Both found in the Bazaar. Both only deal some damage without any additional effects.

Personally, I never use them because they lack purpose. Their idea and concept is nice, but I can’t think of a situation where I’d use them. However, if they were to be revisited and changed in a way they could be of use in either PvP or PvE? Then I would highly consider carrying them in my deck. Loremaster’s spells are famous all over the Spiral, so what if KI introduced a loremaster 2.0 (by carefully making sure they carry the appropriate amount of power).

Let’s take a look at PvE! How many times did you feel you are repeating the same thing? Using the same spells to defeat a creature for a D&C quest in lower level worlds. What if Kingsisle introduced new trainable/learn-able spells that don’t necessarily have different effects, but different animations instead? I think more people would be attracted to the gameplay. However, this has to happen from the very beginning: all the way from Unicorn way, when your wizard is just level 2. At that level you start with a deck just carrying ice beetles, thunder snakes, and other whatnots. If there were to be different spells with nearly similar effects (so there isn’t a favorite), the feeling of repetition might be felt less often.

Later, in Firecat Alley, we face mobs that carry spells such as Fire Serpent. Even later on, we see random mobs using more spell variations such as Rat Illusionist and Bonetree Lord. All those spells should be available for a wizard to use while questing in order to increase variety and enrich your gaming experience.

Different variations of Forest Lord have been sighted all over the Spiral. So what if they could be drops from school specific bosses? Or maybe they could be available to craft? Or even given as a reward from certain side quests that don’t necessarily have to be given from your professors? Most of us will always remember the first time we entered Darkmoor in test realm and got hit by Lord of Atonement!

Also, how many times have you PvPers out there been able to predict your opponent’s next move or strategy? That is definitely an advantage so you can think of a counter move ahead, but it could be made more fun with cards with similar effects but different animations. Eric had some amazing spell ideas in his articles, but what if some of them were actually implemented on spells that already exist instead?

Current Situation

In recent updates we’ve seen more implementation of these spells. With ultra jewels came a lot of treasure cards such as Bonetree Lord and the Oni No Death/Jade/War/Plague variations. The Polaris update brought a bunch of mutate spell treasure cards and the cool Baddle of the Bands’ spells such as Punklops. There is also the Yeti pets that give the ice and death Forest Lord variations.

Let’s not forget Korsten Bloodscorn down in Stormriven Hall, Celestia! He sells a set of mutate spell variations. We’ve been seeing more mutate spells recently. Mainly because some are dropped from Polaris, and others are being sold from treasure card vendors around the Spiral. Some mutate spells such as Midnight Sprite might be a good asset for PvP (if you play your cards right ;)).

There is still the issue of not being able to enchant a mutated spell. However, they can open the door to a new set of mutate spells that can have some cool and maybe useful effects. Take into consideration the Fire Beetle many fire wizards like to use for the tri traps. If it was available to us as a mutate spell, I’m sure many would go for it! Same thing goes for other spells such as Storm Beetle and Life Scarab. These spells can be dangerous indeed, but if they are limited to no enchant, they might not effect PvP in general in a bad way.

These are all great ways to be able to use different spells:

treasure cards
pets
mutate spells

But none of these can be enchanted (which can be a huge disadvantage). You also have a very limited way to cast them due to their nature. On the other hand, we are beginning to see more spells available from our friends in the Arcanum, so there is hope for the future!