Note: A lovely PDF of this guide is available right here.
Like the title says, this is a general guide to successful PvE combat in Wizard 101. PvP — player vs. player — is a whole other animal and these rules suggestions may not apply. But they’re pretty good for PvE.
That’s pretty good. They may not work for you. You may not want to use them because of your play style. Heck, they may just be wrong. But they certainly seem to work.
No combat tutorials here. I assume you know the basics of how duels work.
Definitions
You are the good guys. The mobs you fight (mobs; generic term for NPCs) are the bad guys. The strongest bad guy in any fight is the boss, even if he’s not called that.
Blades are put on you and make your outgoing attacks stronger. Traps are put on the bad guys and make incoming attacks stronger. Weaknesses are put on either side, and reduce the effect of (or even prevent) spells.
Wand spells are the zero-pip spells that your wand gives you. Prisms convert one kind of spell to another, e.g., Death spells to Life.
Basics
When possible, attack from your school. If you’re Ice, use Ice spells, and so on. This is especially important at higher levels. Power Pips give extra strength to spells from your school, and your equipment will also give your school spells a boost.
When in a group, coordinate your attack. Note what spells others are going to use, and be sure not to interfere. For example, if the person before you in rotation is casting a trap, don’t follow up with a low-power spell that will break it.
Take advantage of your position. In a group fight, bad guys will tend to attack the first player (in the sun position) unless another player attacks. If you’re not the sun, use those early safe rounds to buff up: Give yourself and others blades, heal if necessary, and build up pips.
Preparation
You will almost always have an opportunity to prepare for a fight: You’ll either see the bad guys walking around, or you’ll enter a room to hear them taunt you before the fight.
That’s the time to prepare. Note what school of magic they’re from. You need to take that into account and equip the proper wands and spells to fight.
Make sure your wand is not from the same or opposite school as the bad guys. (Yes, you should have more than one wand. See “Wands” below.)
If there’s a bad guy from your school, either make sure there are prisms in your deck, or use a deck with more non-school spells. (See “Decks” below.)
Why?
Every school resists magic from that same school. E.g., Death spells are weak against Death bad guys. Further, certain types of magic are stronger against specific schools.
- Death, Myth, and Life spells are stronger against Balance.
- Fire is stronger against Ice, and vice-versa.
- Storm is stronger against Myth, and vice-versa.
- Death is stronger against Life, and vice-versa.
Further still, bad guys often put up shields opposite their school; Fire bad guys will put up Ice shields. They know their weaknesses. Thus one of the other four schools is most likely to do the most damage.
The last thing you want to see is “Resist” appearing with all your attacks — or shields blocking them. Prepare.
Concentration
Aky’s Rule #1: When facing more than one bad guy, always attack the weakest enemy.
Put another way: Ignore the boss. Attack the weakest enemy. That includes damage, traps, and weaknesses.
Why?
Every bad guy does equal damage. So it’s more important to reduce the number of bad guys, not a particular one. A minion with 1 HP does as much damage as a boss with 10,000 HP.
Concentrated attacks are more effective. The faster the kill, the less damage you take. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use multi-enemy attacks such as Tempest or Sandstorm — just keep the main objective in mind.
You have to kill everyone anyway. Even if killing the boss is the quest objective, you don’t get credit for it unless you defeat all his minions too.
Exceptions to this rule:
If you’re hit with a weakness, you can use a wand spell to “break” it on the boss or another bad guy. This way you don’t waste any traps on the bad guy you’re focusing on.
If someone is particularly strong against the boss, or weak against any minions, e.g., a Storm player vs. a Myth boss with Storm minions.
Yes, there’s always someone who wants to attack the boss. That’s human nature. Don’t.
Decks
Deck building is an art, and there’s plenty of reading to be done about it. Thus these are only basic — but crucial — tips.
Smaller is better.
Do not fill your deck with three or four copies of every spell you think you might use, or with every spell that’s really cool. The best players tend to carry between a dozen and 20 cards into combat.
Equip higher level spells; ignore low-power ones. Those one- and two-pip attacks you started out with were great, but they have no place in your deck once you have something stronger. So Frost Beetle makes way for Evil Snowman; Kraken replaces Storm Shark, and so on.
Possible exception: Fire Elf. For two pips, it's a useful spell for keeping Tower Shields off the bad guys — and does decent damage to boot. No matter what your school, it’s not a bad one to have in your deck.
Smaller is better.
You only see seven cards at a time. Having a big deck means a much, much smaller chance of getting the cards you want when you want them. A small deck means you’re almost always going to have at least on card you want or need.
Smaller is better.
Everyone has a different opinion about what should be in your main deck. A decent starting point you can tweak to match your playing style is
- 1/3 shields and heals
- 1/3 traps and blades
- 1/3 damage, not counting wand spells.
(These refers to the number of cards, not their strength.)
Discard.
If cards appear in your hand that you’re fairly sure you won’t need in the fight (e.g., three pixies for a non-boss fight), discard them, don’t ignore them. That gives you an extra space for a potentially useful card to show up next round.
Discarding is especially important if you have the Reshuffle card, which can bring those discarded cards back into your deck.
Have multiple decks.
You will face different kinds of enemies (see “Preparation” above), and you need to change your cards to face them. You can have one deck that you adjust on the fly, but decks are cheap — it may be easier to have several that you switch between.
Possible decks in an arsenal:
- General/solo deck (for most bad guys)
- Boss deck (more heals, slightly larger)
- Group deck (more spells that can be used on teammates, e.g., Bladestorm)
- Deck-for-fighting-bad-guys-from-your-school (includes prisms)
Tweak and tweak. Learn from fights and change what you have. And keep it small.
Wands
You should have at least two if not three wands.
Your main wand should be from another school (see “Preparation” above).
Why?
Using a wand from your school will trigger any traps or blades you have cast. You don’t want to do that; you want to save traps and blades for more powerful spells, not the low-power wand.
There is one exception: You want your own school’s wand when facing the opposite school. Why? The bad guy will shield your school. Use your wand spells to break the shields so your powerful spells can get through.
A wand from your opposite school is a good choice. Just be sure not to use it if you’re fighting a bad guy from that opposite school.
Balance is also nice to have because it won’t trigger any specific traps or blades. For those times you find yourself facing a Balance bad guy, you’ll also want a second wand that’s from a completely different school, e.g., Myth wand for a Death wizard, Ice wand for a Storm wizard, etc.
To recap:
Generally: Wand from any school not your own.
Facing your own school (e.g., Fire vs. Fire): Wand from the opposite school to break shields before using a prism.
Facing the opposite school (e.g., Storm vs. Myth): Wand from your school to break shields before using powerful spells.
Wand spells are weak, but they have specific purposes. To wit:
- To finish off a bad guy without wasting pips
- To do some damage to a bad guy, rather than simply passing, while you’re waiting for pips or spells
- To break a weakness — wouldn’t you rather lose 25% of a wand spell than
25% of something more powerful?
- Similarly, if you happen to have the right wand equipped, to break a bad
guy’s shield
These are only the basics, and there are probably some basics I missed, got wrong, or need to clarify. So it goes. Drop me a line if you think something deserves mention.
Till then, good hunting.
