December 22, 2020 January 3, 2021

Reflections on the World Of Karamelle

Overall, Karamelle brought a lot to offer to start off the Fourth Arc of Wizard101. I definitely enjoyed playing through the world, and listening to every bit of dialogue, and each inch of the storyline. Today, I’d like to talk about what I took away from this world- the Good, The Bad, and the Sugary.

What was I expecting?

While we were counting down to the release of Test Realm, I was frequently messaging the wonderful Cody RavenTamer to talk about what we wanted to see in Karamelle. All in all, we talked about the following topics:

Added Monstrology
Photomancy in the Questline
Play as Your Pet in the Questline

New Spells!
New Gear!
Arc 4 and its Questline

New or Enhanced Features

We expected some of the newer features implemented in either the game as a whole or in sidequests to make an appearance in the main questline. Photomancy was used in a Catacombs Sidequest, which started making us think, “What if we could use it in the main storyline?” Play as your pet hasn’t been used at all yet, so what if we could use it in the storyline other than just the introductory quest? We’re entering a brand new world, so there are sure to be a few more Monsters to extract right? For PvE players, we were really looking forward to seeing if gear would improve upon the already insane drops from the Wizard City Catacombs. And of course, we wanted new spells!

We were heavily anticipating the Questline for Karamelle. After the proceedings of the end of Empyrea, which you can find here, we got to hear about a mysterious “Nothing”. I was personally chomping at the bit to explore the next world, and more importantly, find out exactly what “Nothing” was. I also wanted to explore a new world, since we hadn’t had an update in the storyline for 2 years!

And finally, we knew we were heading into a major stat and spell audit. Therefore, we knew that stats were changing, and that critical would be targeted in one of these changes. We wanted to see how gear stats would change. For example, it was only after Arc 3 had officially begun that critical started really showing on boots. You had a few crown boots before that had a little critical, such as the level 60, 70 and 80 Shop Bundle boots. We had a feeling that Karamelle would end up putting a lot less critical rating on gear, and then even adding block, which we hadn’t really seen much of in a while.

What did I get?

I definitely got a lot of what I wanted! KingsIsle did add all of the topics that I had previously mentioned, to my surprise.

New or Enhanced Features

Monstrology reached a new level today. With the addition of all of the Karamelle mobs, as well as the release of other monstrology cards, wizards can finally reach the coveted Rank 25 of Exalted Monstrologist! Say a special congratulations to Cody!

Funnily Enough, Photomancy and Play as your Pet were both critical to completing the main questline! I got a pretty good laugh out of that.

The Spells

For the most part, I was pretty impressed with the spells. All of them were tuned according to the spell audit, which was pretty impressive already. However, they all had spellement tracks, which made them memorable to say the least. Each spell offered a unique mechanic and damage, which you could choose to prioritize via the tracks. The upgraded forms still continued to follow the defined curves and pip values though, which was definitely a first. In addition to that, the spellements aren’t impossible to find or solely available via crowns. They are a reward from every quest in Karamelle, side or main. Bosses also drop them, which is just amazing. I still find Snack Attack disgusting, and will never use it, but other than that, I love these spells.

The Gear

Man, I wanna love this gear so much. Unfortunately, I can’t. Dragoon’s gear is just vastly superior to it in almost every single statistic, mainly due to the set bonuses from the Dragoon Sets. However, this is a budget alternative, since the gear can all be easily farmed for. The main highlight of this gear is, without a doubt, the wands. All of these wands are close alternatives to the Sinbad Wands, or any other type of bundle wand. In addition to that, the Executive Wands offer large amounts of pierce, and are currently frantically being farmed for by PvPers. It does look pretty good too… maybe a stitch?

Arc IV and the Questline

Man, the questline was probably one of the best I have ever seen in Wizard101. I’m not going to get into it too much to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t finished Karamelle yet- never fear! The storyline leaves enough questions unanswered that I want to stay in the game to get those answers, but helps answer enough questions that I’m not too frustrated. Karamelle’s side quests are actually interesting, and provide a lot of insight into this sugary world. The music helps add to the storyline, other than the one infuriating song of “Wilkommen to Karamelle.” The ending was just unreal, this is Pokemon Platinum tier music. There were tons of new types of cheats added in, and the bosses had low health to account for the lowered damage of the spells. Overall, this was a fun world to play through, and it has a lot of replay value!