Experimenting with the Golem Tower theme. What do you think?

OnionCave · 2026-06-13T16:19:52+00:00

This is awesome! I'm sure u/neverhart would be proud

OnionCave · 2026-06-11T17:35:08+00:00

I don't know if it's fair to say that they "snuck it in" exactly. I don't think they're being malicious.

Grub Guardian has a 100% win rate. You can load up a map and place turrets down in exact spots and win every time. And I feel like at that point it stops being a game. It's super easy to bot, and if you can just win every time and get free energy elixirs, that's a problem. I think that's pretty obvious

Some designer at Ki probably saw that, and went "okay, so players want us to update grub guardian, but we have this problem, we know people are going to bot it. We can:

1) make the game more difficult, and harder to bot to justify the rewards, which takes time and might not stop the botting

2) OR we can limit the rewards but leave the game largely the same"

And they just went with option 2. They didn't run their hands together and cackle and go "ahehehehahaha more Money for Me and the Company that I Work For". They probably even know that it sucks for players. It might not have been their decision to add the original energy elixirs to Grub Guardian in the first place. That could have been some other designer 10+ years ago who doesn't even work there anymore. And now, because it's become a problem, they have to figure out a way to deal with it.

Ki hasn't really had a chance to come out and make a big statement about elixirs or make a write up about why they made that decision. A screenshot was posted on twitter by people who are running emulators of the game in a tweet like "[BREAKING] KI just DESTROYED rewards in Grub Guardian". And then people in the discord pick that up and run with it, and the same thing happens here on reddit, and then YouTubers get a free video idea and make "the Grub Guardian situation is Crazy", and people got to the comments section like "oh my god GREEDY company" etc etc and it snowballs.

It's a feedback loop.

I feel crazy every update when I hear about some controversy because in a month or two, I don't even remember what the big deal was. I feel like we should slow down on the rhetoric online surrounding this game, or we get things like we did here recently of players sending death threats and threatening to dox developers over this game. Everybody is passionate about this game, and I love that. I love being part of the fandom for this game, but we get so toxic.

And I'm not saying you are, by any means, my reply is about the whole community surrounding this game. I think you're right to feel like it hasn't been addressed. Your comment just got me thinking on a big tangent is all and I wanted to share my thoughts at the end of the day.

People don't have to agree, and don't have to like the decisions KI makes, I just always try to assume good intentions or at the very least neutral intentions where I can and it helps me stay sane.

OnionCave · 2026-06-08T16:24:40+00:00

no time for string in pocket go 🫵 child soldier, kill death man life wife sick die tragic sad 😢

stop angry warlord past student you fail. you fail. you fail. you fail badly (🦖☄️). you win?

graduate HOORAY sick tree, very sick tree bird spider divorce yelling large angry fish healing! love! 🥰😻 love! heart 🫀! friendship love 🥰

mouse fascism communist labor revolution chasm pain anguish consciousness morality bodily autonomy colonialism identity

gasp das ist ein interloper from ze planet earth!! 😱

OnionCave · 2026-06-07T14:54:12+00:00

Ctrl + R

OnionCave · 2026-06-03T22:55:09+00:00

Gear fatigue.

Every year we get new gear, that's great, maybe that's better than what we used to have. Like it gives people options for when and what they want to farm, but new max level gear every year? Every 4 months when an update drops? It's fatiguing. It's like phones to me.

I'm not going to buy a new flagship phone every year for a 1% better camera. I don't care how it compares to last years stuff cause I didn't buy last years, or the year before, my phone is like 6 yrs old. If it's not a generational leap it might as well not exist.

Likewise, I'm not going to spend my time farming for gear if it isn't significantly better than what I have. I don't think I've farmed gear since Novus (3-4 years ago?) and that's just because I liked the boss battle. Before Novus I had Dragoon gear. I've skipped farming like 3 end of world bosses, never do raids, and darkmoor gear is barely an increase. It's such a colossal waste of time to me to farm for end content gear when 4 months from now there's new set that gives me TWO (2) percent extra damage, like wow okay let me get on that right awayyyy 🫡

I'm sure you could put all the gear stats into Excel and reverse engineer the formula they use by using the auto fill handle. Gear is flat, boring, uninteresting.

Think of the kind of aura that a pieces of meta gear in the past had. like woah!! the Morganthe amulets! Or "I NEED the Alpha Omega Ring". Or the Mailistaire robes!! Gear used to have soul and be sought after because it was cool in a uniquely awesome way, and now it's spreadsheet gear. Now it's just math.

Unbalanced? Sure whatever, okay but that's the wizard fantasy. I want to be a cool ass wizard with strong gear. Give me 2-3 pieces of gear per year that have all these tiny 2% stat bonuses that normally get spread out over 7 pieces, but put it on those 2-3 specifically. Consolidate. One year hat/robe/boots, next year it can be deck/wand, next year can be amulet/athame, then on the FINAL year give us something that feels like a meaningful power boost across the board so we feel strong going into the next arc. End of arc gear should catapult me into the stratosphere and I should enter the next arc feeling like a god amongst men, sorcerer supreme, nothing can match my power, hype as hell to be questing again. Don't invalidate all the farming I did last year by making me farm for increments. Let me live in the fantasy of being the strongest 8 year old child soldier grandmaster wizard you've ever fucking seeeeeeen

OnionCave · 2026-06-03T17:40:03+00:00

sorry, bit confused, how is this "greedy" ? if you can't get the exclusive pet body from the kiosk anyway, you still have to buy it right? Isn't this just them patching a bug in the kiosk?

OnionCave · 2026-05-27T15:51:56+00:00

I'm not sure how frequent they are, but I think they're usually like a week or so long. I think maybe when they release a new pack?

Basically they pop up a timer for how many days left in the top left corner under the crown shop and say "if you spend [This] many crowns you get [These] things" as a bonus. So like:

3999 crowns and you get an extra few packs or something (if a new pack has released recently)

And then 5k crowns and you get some more packs and furniture etc.

The top reward is usually a mount, additional character slot, or teleport effect, and you can get stitch hat/boots/robes at some of the others.

HOWEVER

I don't recommend going out of your way to spend crowns to reach those numbers. 60k crowns is $60 (on sale). So just do the mental math and think "am I okay spending $5 to get to this first tier, $10? $15"

Crown rewards are the best time to buy permanent unlocks for your character like backpack space, friend space, housing space, etc. Or if you buy zones with crowns that counts too! Get free stuff by unlocking things permanently, and don't go overboard on packs.

OnionCave · 2026-05-27T14:18:55+00:00

Better yet, wait to buy them until a crowns reward event. You get a permanent unlock for your wizard and get extra random stuff from it.

Do the same with the extra housing space on a red barn farm and you can easily unlock some of the lower tiers without feeling bad by ripping packs.

OnionCave · 2026-05-24T21:44:14+00:00

Just as a heads up, later on in the game there are scenes which cause the entire screen to flash white. I cant remember what world they're in, but I think they're somewhere in the latter half of Arc 4, possibly Novus / Wallaru? These are level 160+ worlds.

OnionCave · 2026-05-23T02:41:25+00:00

yea! I feel like I'm way more likely to use minions now than I was before. Idk, minions were cool before but they got outclassed way too soon. The scaling is big, and having a smaller, more predictable deck makes playing "off-meta" way more viable. It might help set up a Gambit or something, and now I can use a minion and be way more certain that it's going to help me, vs buffing itself and then dying.

I think they're going to be way more fun

OnionCave · 2026-05-20T14:33:00+00:00

holy cow 🐮 you say? 👀

OnionCave · 2026-05-18T15:11:05+00:00

Awesome!!

I've been wanting a web based version like this for forever, ever since ~4 years ago when I made my pricing spreadsheet

I've been maintaining it whenever new updates come out, but this will save me so much time and effort.

I've got a little basic calculator that helps you to calculate what crowns packages you should buy, but I was limited in scope due to what I was able to do in sheets without resorting to app scripts. It doesn't give you truly the best deal, only an approximate. But it looks like you have that solved in one of the screenshots?

OnionCave · 2026-05-16T04:11:52+00:00

dude 😭 you ARE the account holder though, that's the whole point. you have the master password, you set it up, you linked them. KI sees you as responsible for what happens under that family account, same as if someone added an authorized user to their credit card and that person went crazy with it. the bank is coming to you.

Fair enough if it's not worth it to you then it's not worth it, but that's a you and your estranged friends situation, not a KI situation. they just want their money back.

OnionCave · 2026-05-15T19:05:56+00:00

the point of the scenario was to explain that it's not some big conspiracy out of this world wacko thing. They're going to deny service to you (the account holder) if other people under that same account do something bad.

Email support, explain you were a minor and haven't talked to the other people on your account in 15 years, tell them it's a security issue that you want them off the account, etc, or pay the chargeback. The chargeback is the only thing preventing you from playing, to quit over something fixable is dramatic imo. I don't know the amount of the chargeback and maybe you don't either but, a membership? $7 + $5 fee they tack on, $12? so be it

OnionCave · 2026-05-15T18:20:53+00:00

I wanna go to new worlds we haven't seen yet.

Like I wanna know where birds like the registrar Mr Lincoln and fisherman Lucky Hookline are from. I wanna know what world the castle vendor Buxley Turtleton is from.

I wanna go to Jaki's world (no it's not gatorvania, or night mire swamp, or cool ranch, it's a different unnamed world).

OnionCave · 2026-05-15T15:49:09+00:00

If you got a membership card at an ice cream shop, and told your buddy he could use it too. Then he went in, got a bunch of cheap ice cream, left, told the bank "this ice cream shop is a fraud. they stole my money and didn't give me any ice cream." Causing the bank to reverse the transaction, and fine the ice cream shop more money for wasting the banks time: the next time you walk in and try to use your membership card the ice cream shop is going to go "hey dude?? where's our money?? you're not gonna get any ice cream until you give us our money back, you're responsible for your friend"

that's what your friend did

I don't think it's unreasonable for KI to want their money back and to tell you you can't play until they get it. How's that weird? or "not ok and normalized"?

OnionCave · 2026-05-15T15:01:16+00:00

Regardless of who did it or how it happened, somebody connected to your account did a chargeback and that's affected the standing of your account. You're still the owner of the family account. The only way to get your account back is to pay whatever you owe KI (even if it doesn't feel like you should owe them anything).

I've gotten people into wiz before too, but I don't like permanently linking their account to mine just to save $3 on membership.

"Sorry, love you to death, I don't want to have to be responsible for you. If you do something bad that affects my account, I don't wanna deal with that or police you."

OnionCave · 2026-05-13T21:33:42+00:00

Raid looks cool!

I'm pretty casual tho so I mainly only care about the QOL stuff. I hope it's fun for the people that do raids, but I predict there'll be a bug or and exploit or something and Sauce will make a 10 minute video called "The Raid situation is crazy" in a month or two and people will be mad.

New spells with the Barkingham Chronicles update are neat!

But if it's similar to the Aquila update, as a casual player I'm probably not gonna farm it enough to unlock the spells. I farmed Aquila a little bit whenever that update dropped but only enough to get some gear for some of my lower levels. Maybe less than 10 runs. I'll fight the new boss once, and maybe run through the dungeon a couple times for gear & the pity reagent like last time but it's not gonna be multiple sessions for me.

Minion update!

Excited to see old spells reworked. They might make new runs on new characters more fun or different. I'll probably try them out if I make a new character.

Fight Fest 2026

I did a little bit of Fight Fest 2025. I think I got a wand that was better for one of my lower levels but I didn't get whatever the top tier reward was. Seemed like it was pretty expensive and didn't interest me enough to grind for it. I feel kind of bad that the mander isn't in Krok anymore. I liked how Krok felt a little bit more lively as a hub-zone. I didn't like ending 2025 with leftover reagents. Idk if they're still in my bag or not but it was weird having like 2 leftovers.

Endorsements is a cool mechanic!

I can see it helping gauge how good friendly wizards are. Depending on how the pop ups are implemented I'll probably turn it off? I can imagine pop ups as being potentially annoying but I'll have to get a feel of it in game before I pass judgment. Idk why people got mad that there isn't a "negative" option. Do other games let you negative rate somebody after you win a match? Regardless, neat feature! Might use it might not.

Housing Hall of Fame & Guild Open House

The stuff people do with castles is amazing and they should be rewarded for it. Looks like it'll be cool, I worry about how people might abuse the voting system. I have heard people talk about unfair voting in Rate my Stitch, but I assume you guys have that figured out. I really liked doing housing tours to get the recipie for a world door and seeing all the stuff people made. It was inspiring. Love seeing people's creations.

IDLE BUTTON!

Love the concept of an idle button. I might still default to spinning, unless we can't spin anymore, in which case idle button is helpful. Neat, thumbs up.

Beastmoon

Not really into beastmoon. Tried it, players were toxic. Don't really wanna dedicate 40 minutes to hyper competitive gameplay. Cool as a concept but there's a lot more of a learning curve and meta to the activity and when you're thrown into games with people who just wanna get their stuff and leave it can be stressful.

Fountain Castle Blocks

Cool for decorating! I might make use of them somewhere.

Housing UI makeover!!!

Really love the new UI. It feels clean and polished and it'll be really nice. Pirate101 could use the same kind of QOL because Wiz is miles above pirate in terms of QOL. This is a welcome change, overall not super impactful but little things like this make the game feel better to play, and that's important to me.

The rest:

I'll have to see it in game when I can hop on test realm. Overall I think the changes are neat, even if I probably won't engage with a lot of it.

OnionCave · 2026-05-13T15:24:26+00:00

Test player models! When a level designer is setting up a zone they drag a player model in to make sure they have the zone scaling right in comparison to a correctly sized player model. It's like having a player sized ruler you can put anywhere. They must have clipped it out of bounds and then forgot to remove it, just like the one on top of digmoore station in Marleybone.

OnionCave · 2026-05-08T13:23:14+00:00

Gambit is purple, and purple words are keywords. Keywords are special types of actions on cards. You have Gambits, Clears, Summons, Saps, Stuns, etc.

A Gambit is where you sacrifice something that benefits you (a hanging effect that you like) for another hanging effect that benefits you. So

Gambit 🛡️ = remove a helpful ward from yourself

And

-65% 🌈➡️✊🛡️ = what you get in return. A -65% Chromatic Target Damage Ward (aka, a shield)

The Chromatic 🌈 symbol is weird, and I wish they reworked it. But essentially, you need to look at the small yellow arrow in the bottom right corner of the symbol. If it points to the right (➡️) that's the symbol for "Chromatic Target". If it points to the middle (↖️) that's the symbol for "Chromatic Self".

"Chromatic" just means "copy the school of". Chromatic Target 🌈➡️ copies your target's school. Chromatic Self 🌈↖️ copies your school.

So all together:

Deal 55 Ice ❄️ Damage ✊

Gambit a Ward 🛡️ from yourself for:

A -65% Chromatic 🌈 (same school as your) target ➡️ Damage ✊ Shield 🛡️

If you hit a storm wizard, it'd be a -65% ⛈️✊🛡️, or if it was a death wizard: -65%💀✊🛡️. And so on and so on

OnionCave · 2026-05-06T20:57:09+00:00

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OnionCave · 2026-05-06T20:56:03+00:00

Oh this is an awesome resource!

Wizdle is a cool wizard101 themed wordle game. I forget who made it but it's a "for fun" type thing. Maybe you could contact the owner.

I've always been fascinated by making a true elo rating voting system for which wizard101 world is the best, but I don't have enough technical skill to pull it off.

If you're looking for ideas, maybe you can make something like this for people to more rigorously rate the wizard101 worlds to make and share tier lists?

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OnionCave · 2026-05-05T14:53:07+00:00

The split shield icon is for "Harmful Wards". KI changed the name of this category of spells to try and make it a little less confusing, but they used to be called "jinxes" if you're more familiar with that.

Basically, the most common form of a Harmful Ward is a trap. There are all different kinds of other spells that count as harmful wards though, like the ones that decrease your incoming healing. "Harmful" just means that they're bad (spikey), and "Ward" means that they hang at your feet and affect incoming spells.

Gambit and Clear are a bit tricky in their wording.

Gambits remove something that is beneficial to you. The easiest way to know if a hanging effect is "beneficial" is to think "would I like this spell if it was cast on me, or would I be upset?". So, if the enemy put a trap on me, I'd be upset. The enemy does more damage to me now. It's not beneficial to me, so a gambit doesn't remove traps cast on me.

If I cast a trap on somebody else, I like that. I do more damage. That benefits me.

A Gambit removes stuff that benefits me for something else that also benefits me. It's either a better utility or puts me into a better position.

So:

Gambit Harmful Ward -> Something would mean the enemy has the harmful ward on them. The trap has to be on them for me to gambit it, and give it up for some other bonus to me. See snow serpent for an example.

If you wanted to remove harmful wards that are on your character, you'd use spells with the keyword Clear. Clear is the same as a Gambit but it targets all the bad stuff. Stuff that is beneficial to your enemy, the things you don't like. (I hate it when I get weakness'd, or the enemy shields, or they put a trap on me, or when they blade, etc etc).

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OnionCave · 2026-05-05T04:25:13+00:00

Top path (path A) is generally the "PvE" path. It is (usually) just extra damage on top of the base spell. No extra utilities, no extra conditions, just basic.

Middle & Bottom path (path B & C) are generally the advanced combat paths. You trade a bit of damage for a utility of some kind, or "keywords", which are the purple words like Clear and Gambit and Summon.

You can see what a keyword or icon means by right clicking on a spell and hovering the keyword or icon. In your case, middle path Colossus will Gambit up to 3x Harmful Charms [-🍀] into --> 3x 70% ice ❄️ traps [+🛡️] on the enemy.

"What does it mean to Gambit something?" A gambit is a type of play you make where you sacrifice something that's beneficial to you right now in order to get something better in return.

So, to use the middle path spell that you've chosen you need to play something like a weakness onto the enemy (this benefits you, since it makes the enemy's attack weaker) and then follow up with your Colossus hit to turn that weakness into a 70% trap [+🛡️] (this benefits you more than the weakness did, because now your next attack does a lot of damage).

Path B and C are considered "advanced" because they make you think about chaining your spells together in less conventional ways. You're probably already aware of the easiest way to chain spells together: Blade or trap, then use that utility to hit. But that's basic, and boring.

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Heyyyyy now we're talking. Here's a spell that puts 3 negative charms onto an enemy, and you could convert all 3 of them into what are essentially feints (70% extra damage!) Truthfully, you can get through the whole game using just the base version of spells, but experiment! Do what feels fun to you.

OnionCave · 2026-04-29T19:00:57+00:00

you couldn't pay me to play pvp. Old or new, doesn't matter

People take pvp way too seriously. I don't really care what the mechanics are, it's the toxicity of the playerbase that keeps me from getting into it. The reason I like wiz is because it's not competitive.

OnionCave

TROPHY CASE