October…

Well, it’s October. So much for regular posting in the summer. My summer didn’t offer me the time I thought it would. Yes,  had the time to sit and blog, but there were so many other things going on that simply were more important. I may never have gotten around to executing my summer plans for my blog, but I want to get into regular blogging again so here I am, four months later. 🙂 Don’t worry. I haven’t completely forgotten about this!

Life Updates

A week after finals, my family and I went on vacation to southern Wyoming to visit family. It was a lot of fun and I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to go with them. A week after we got home, I was off again, but this time to stay. I moved 10 hours away with my boyfriend to live with him (and temporarily his family). It’s definitely been an adventure. And the biggest reason I didn’t blog this summer. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to this new life, but I’m happy here and have mostly adjusted (I think). He’s introduced me to several new games, so I didn’t play Wizard101 as much as I thought I would–too busy enjoying other new games too! Some new favorites include Undertale, Minecraft, The Sims3, Dragomon Hunter, and Dark Souls. He’s also introduced me to D&D and Betrayal in the House on the Hill (board game).

School started again two weeks ago. I’m taking one online class through the college I had been attending prior to moving. So far the work load has been light. Hopefully it’ll stay that way so I can work on the blog projects I REALLY do want to do. I’m also taking two different introduction to traditional animation classes with a retired Disney animator. We’re working on anthropomorphic characters in one of the classes, so you can expect to find me spending a fair amount of time in the Spiral with a sketchbook, drawing NPCs–especially in Marleybone, since the character I’m currently working on is a dog.

Wizard101 Updates

Cam and I did about 50 runs of Tartarus on our four (balance, storm, ice, & fire) and each character ended up with at least one full set of Hades gear–most got both sets! We’ve finished Azteca and started Khrysalis. I’d like to get our four through the end before the next world comes out, but since it’ll probably be the fall/winter update, I doubt we will. We’re eager to reach 100 and farm Darkmoor. Only 5 levels to go!

Blog Updates

I’m still working on Reagent Maps. They’re harder to create than I initially thought. Much more time consuming. And I get bored putting them together really quick. I’ll post them as I finish, but they’ll take time. I have discovered that I need to be in the right mood to work on them or else I get bored after a single realm. Each map section (depending on the size of the map) takes between 15-20 realm loops to make sure I found ever spawn spot.

I still plan to work on Housing Items Made Easy, mostly because it’s something I want to have access too and because Wizard101CentralWiki freezes too easily on my laptop. As much as I love the database, it’s useless on my computer. 😦

I mentioned above that Cam and I did around 50 runs of Tartarus this summer. The majority of those runs took place within about 2 weeks. We would average 2-4 runs a night, each run taking less than an hour. I have plans to put together a guide of how we farmed the dungeon. When we start farming Darkmoor, I plan on putting another guide for it together, though both dungeons are run extremely similarly.

And as for Dorm Rooms with Emma…well it’s something I do want to do, I’m just not sure if I like the formatting of my first two. I’m not sure how I want to run the series yet, but I’ll figure it out. You can expect some form of it sometime fairly soon…I think. I should probably stop promising projects happening “soon”. I haven’t been very good about following up…

So I’m back. I haven’t forgotten about the blog, it’s just been put off. Hopefully, I’ll start being better about writing again. This really is a lot of fun and something I honestly do more for myself than for anyone else, even though knowing other people will occasionally view my blog is nice too!

~Emma

Back to Blogging

Last time I posted was a month ago, right before I started my spring quarter. I’ve had a busy first month of school and have had a lot of big personal issues to deal with. Things feel under control again so I should be back to posting, hopefully at least semi-regularly until summer. 🙂

Last time I posted, I wrote about a new idea I had: exploring the cultures of the Spiral. Joseph Firesword (my first commenter!) alerted me to a project that the Nordic Champion has been working about Spiral History. Cheyenne did a fantastic job on the posts! She put a lot of thought, time, effort, and research into each one and they are incredibly interesting!

My original plan for The Cultures of the Spiral was going to be similar to what Cheyenne has been doing, but I have decided to take the project a slightly different way. While I do plan on exploring the history and cultures of the real life inspirations, I also plan on exploring the history of the Spiral World itself. However, my biggest focus is going to be on the culture of each World from a sociological perspective. I’m taking sociology class right now–it’s interesting, but I’m having a hard time understanding the concepts. I’m hoping that by applying the theories I’m learning about to something I genuinely enjoy, I’ll start to understand and do well in the class. Plus I can count blogging as studying. 😉

I’m still working on Reagent Maps. I have three that are mostly done, but none quite ready to post yet. Hopefully I’ll have one or more ready by the weekend.

Who Drops What and Finding Housing Items Made Easy are both currently on pause. I’m not sure how I’m going to format Housing Items and Who Drops What will be on pause perhaps indefinitely. I haven’t found a way to put it together in a way I like. Dorm Rooms with Emma has been inactive for a while now, but I have plans to bring that one back to life. 🙂

In other news, Natalie participated in more than a dozen tournaments during the member benefit event last week. I’ve been enjoying ranked again on her now that she has all the PvP gear I wanted for her. I’m doing pretty good, considering I thought myself to be terrible at PvP 5 months ago. 🙂

Jenna, Suri, and the Hawks are almost done with Azteca. It’ll probably take us another session or two of questing to finish, depending on how long we have when we’re both on. We’re both excited to get our group of four to 100 and run Darkmoor. Based on this guide from Mercenaries for Hire, we think we can do Graveyard runs in about 20-30 minutes.

I’ve been slowly questing with Kayla and Rachel. I’ve decided Magus Storm and Adept Life make a good team! I finished the first third of MooShu in one sitting, but haven’t gone back to it yet. If I just sit down and quest, it probably wouldn’t take me more than a few days to reach Celestia…I just have to do it…

I think that about caches everything up. 🙂 I’m excited to get back to blogging my adventures in the Spiral.

~Emma

 

A Rough Month

I’ve had a rough month in my real life between losing two pets, difficult college classes and making difficult decisions about the future of my education, and other personal issues. As a result, I haven’t written or posted nearly as much as I had wanted to. I have several posts planned and I’m excited for each one. I just need to find the time–or more accurately, the energy–to sit down, work on the research, and write them.

Thankfully, I’ve still been able to get on Wizard101 and some Pirate101 too and escape into the Spiral for a few hours. It’s a wonderful escape that allows me to forget my worries temporarily and relax and have fun–all things I’m having a hard time doing right now. I recently read a post from Edward Lifegem about anxiety and how Wizard101 and Pirate101 both helped him be able to work around his anxiety. Right now, I feel like I’m in a similar situation. I can’t concentrate on homework, I can’t focus at school, I’d rather be home than out and about (especially rather than being at school)–I’m just generally anxious, stressed, and exhausted. Lately, the only things I’ve been able to get truly excited about without any anxiety, fears, or worries attached to it are Wizard101 related stuff.

Once I get my feet back on the ground in my real life, I plan on being a more active blogger again. I have several posts and projects I want to work on for this blog…when I have the energy it takes to produce…

~Emma