Hello, I'm Ian Darkstrider, a new author on this blog with this being this my very first article! Hope you enjoy this post!
As October rolls around, it’s a favorite time of year in the Spiral for many wizards, and this year has been no exception! There was also an unanticipated surprise when rather than waiting late into the month as they have done in the past, KingsIsle decided to begin the Halloween celebration on the first of October. The holiday packs we have grown to love along with the other Halloween items were added into the crown shop early. In particular the: 2017 Gloomthorn Nightmare Pack, The Harrowing Nightmare Pack, the Original Nightmare Pack, and the New Elven Pack. There are also the traditional events that KI hosts. I, with my collaborators will be reviewing these packs for this article.
Let’s get started. You’ve all probably seen the reviews by many of the leaders in our community and as you know we have a new pack in the Crown shop this year - the Elven Nightmare Pack. This pack offers some new pets like the Dark Merryonette and Light Merryonette as well as two new mounts: the Hart of Darkness Mount and the Light Hart Mount. This pack will be covered on another blog on SOTS, so I’ll just briefly say that I bought about 13,000 crowns and had just about every item from this pack dropped to me, and still had crowns left over. In my opinion, this pack is not dropping gear that is suitable for PvP/PvE. The gear seems to be designed more so for wizards who enjoy fishing, pet training, and gardening, as they offer some of the highest energy in the game so far.
To get a more informed opinion about the new pets, I reached out to my fellow Wizard player and Expert Pet Kyle Firehammer about what he thought of the new pets from the newest Halloween pack, the Elven Nightmare Pack.
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**From The Desk of Kyle Firehammer**
The Elven Nightmare Pack
We’ve all seen the new pets from the Elven Nightmare Pack; the new Dark Scaryonette and Light Merryonette add a new definition to the word “creepy” and Halloween for the game. These two pets are a brand new style of pet within the game a puppet implemented in the game not that long after the Accursed Play Gauntlet was released and put into the game, makes you wonder just a little bit. I personally love the colors that were given to these two pets, that and the eyes really say a lot about them, they’re completely awesome and you can see the two different designs that they have on their chests, a spiral and a star.
Now on a personal note the cards of these two at Baby seem very decent with the Dark version giving a Firetrap since it is a fire pet and the Light version giving a Gnomes since it’s a life pet. As they level up though the cards seem to get a little sketchy, at epic they start to give different school cards that don’t really benefit the user that much. We know that the first two cards that the Dark Scaryonette has are very nice for a fire wizard but the last card that it gives at epic just seems very underwhelming and makes absolutely no sense to use, an ice beetle item card? From a first gen fire pet? Does not make any sense at all, we’re used to a pet getting a different school card if it’s a hybrid but not when it’s a first generation pet with multiple cards.
And the same case for the Light Version at adult however it gives a Elemental Shield item card which obviously could help in some scenarios but being a life pet that just doesn’t fit the trend. Thinking about it now I wish that the first card that it gave was a discounted Sabertooth card because that spell gives a Spirit Shield after it’s attack. Which in turn technically balances out the two cards.
The Dark Scaryonette
This pet has 3 Epics, 3 Ultra-Rares, 3 Rares, 1 Uncommon and 0 Common talents which isn’t bad, but the semi-questionable and standout talent that we see is an Ice Ward talent which obviously is “in-line” with the epic card that it gives, but is not very well understood. Along with that it appears to have a couple of selfish talents which is usually the case for first generation pets these ones do appear to be slightly higher in rarity then some of the ones we’ve seen in the past but not super uncommon. And then perhaps the weirdest talent of them all; Epic Fishing Luck which both of these new pets share.
The Light Marionette
This pet has 5 Epics, 2 Ultra-Rares, 1 Rare, 0 Uncommons and 1 Common talent, with a surprising new talent called Mega Soothe which I’m excited to see what that really is. But one of the most iconic talents is in this pool and everyone that has made a pet surely knows it by now, Spell-Proof! One of the best talents in the game giving the wizard anywhere from 1-14% more resist depending on stats of course. This talent has been out since the beginning but I doubt it’ll be going anywhere anytime soon! Another interesting talent that we see on this pet is Armor Breaker, not incredibly well known but definitely out there if you’re into making a lot of pets to acquire the maximum amount of versatility that this game has to offer. And very helpful in PvP but most people tend to go towards the resist side of things. But probably the most interesting thing about this talent list is that the majority of the talents that this pet has to offer are stat boosting talents, whether that be resist, pierce or healing the rest seem to be idle talents or may cast talents.
Thank you, Kyle for your wonderful input!
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The 2017 Gloomhorn Pack
Now to some of my personal favorites, beginning with the 2017 Gloomthorn Pack. This is one of my favorites since I love collecting mounts & pets. This still offers the All Souls Pegasus and the Jack O Lantern pet. This pack has pretty much stayed true to what it has had in the past, the only change being the update to include level 120+ gear and wands. If you’re creating a new build or just trying to squeeze out every percent of stats you can, this years pack offers some items you may want to pursue. This pack is definitely giving us something for the PvP side with the maycast wands and critical stats wands.
This pack also has the Headless Horseman Card! So for those of you that cannot get the drop from Loremaster this season you can still try to acquire the card from this pack. We want to thank
Zanzidia for this clean gif of the Headless Horseman. If you want to see more of her amazing work, check her out at:
https://twitter.com/Zanzidia
Headless Horseman gif from Zanzidia
The max wands are giving a 1% increase in damage and a 4% increase in block however so personally I’m not sure I would spend a lot of crowns trying to upgrade from my level 110+ gear I currently equip, for that.
As for the wands in this pack I’d personally want to go after the Blood Moon Staff, Blue Moon Staff & Hunters Moon staff, aside from the obvious increased level 120+ stats that you can get and may cast card. If you have a revered wand you’ve crafted, but don’t want to lug that huge two handed beauty around, these staffs are nice looking and are great for stitching.
Blood Moon Staff at Level 120 gives +48 Universal Stun Block, +12% Death and Ice Damage and May Cast Shift Grey Wolf. This staff also has death and ice wand cards as well as gives 1 golden pip and a square socket.
Blue Moon Staff at Level 120 gives +44 Universal Stun Block, +15% Fire and +14% Storm Damage and May Cast Shift Grey Wolf. This staff also has fire and storm wand cards as well as gives 1 golden pip and a square socket.
Hunter Moon Staff at Level 120 gives +46 Universal Stun Block, +12% Balance, +12% Life and +13% Myth Damage and May Cast Shift Grey Wolf. This staff also has myth and life wand cards as well as gives 1 golden pip and a square socket.
The Harrowing Nightmare Pack
Another favorite pack I always spend some crowns on every year is the Harrowing Nightmare Pack. One of the must haves in this pack are the critical wands and those have been upgraded to level 120+. Unfortunately wiki is not showing the stats on many of the level 110+ and 120+ wands so we cannot give you a good idea of the increases.
The only wands I can offer as an example are the Death Tormentor’s Shredder level 100+ wand vs the level 120+ wand, the increase is only the incoming heal with an increase of 1%. For me, this is not a big enough deal to dip into my cash card and spend crowns on. However, if you’re shopping for the first time for your critical wand and your max, that’s what you will get. The same goes for the increase on the Life critical wand, Tormentor’s Skullsplitter. These are the only two at this point this time that are available for comparison.
There are some cool mounts in this pack, but there haven’t been any new additions. The Midnight Owl is my favorite.
The Original Nightmare Pack
The Original Nightmare Pack is back again this year and still has some of the coolest most desired mounts that offer +40% Speed Boost.
Cloudstrider Pegasus
Shadowsteed
Nightrunner
Nightmare
This is one pack I always spend crowns on! You will also find some pets you cannot get any other way besides finding someone to hatch with you like the Red Ghost, Vampire, Gob-O-lantern and so many more.
Hope we have helped you decide what is best for your wizard!
Happy Halloween
From Kyle Firehammer, Christina Summerheart and Ian Darkstrider
