The Animal Cove team is incredibly excited to bring you a brand-new way to socialize and connect with your friends in-game: Clubs. Joining a Club will allow you to chat with your fellow club members, work together with them to unlock special Club items, and much more! We’ve created this handy guide to help you get the most out of Clubs.
Joining or Creating a Club
In order to join a club, you must set up your Player ID if you have not already done so and beat level 50. Once you unlock clubs, you’ll get a special pop up that will take you to the Club menu.
This menu is where you can create a club of your own or simply join an existing club. Clubs currently have a max limit of 25 members. Once that limit is reached, no new members can join the Club until someone leaves or is removed from the club.
Joining a Club
To join a club, tap the club icon in the top left corner of the main game screen.
That will bring up this menu:
If you haven’t set up your Player ID, you will be prompted to set your Player ID when you click the Club icon. You cannot join a club until you set your Player ID.
The menu will show all of the Clubs that have at least one slot open for New Members. Want more options? Just hit the Refresh Button in the top left corner of that menu. You can also search for Clubs if you know the specific name of the Club you want to join. Simply hit the “Search” button at the bottom of the list.
Once you’ve found the club you want to join, hit the view button to see details about the club like the Club Leader, Club Officers, and Members.
Hit the join button at the bottom of that page to join the club.
Creating a Club
Starting a Club of your own is simple. Tap the club icon at the top left corner of the main game screen, then hit the Create button at the bottom of the club list.
From there, you’ll be able to choose a Club Avatar and a Club name. Clubs default to “open” membership, which means anyone can join your club.
Creating a club has no cost but you can only own one Club at a time.
Club Leadership
Clubs have two levels of leadership: Club Leader and Club Officers. Club Leaders and Officers have options that are unavailable to the other members of their club:
- Club Bulletin: Club Leaders can set a message for the Club that will appear at the top of the Club Chat.
- Club Options: This menu allows the Club Leader and officers to control and edit Club Access. They can promote, demote, and kick out other members and Officers. The Club Leader also has the ability to promote a new Club Leader, which Club Officers cannot.
Club Chat
General Chat Options
The Club Chat is our new way of connecting you with your fellow club members. To open the club chat, tap the Club icon. The Club chat is the first tab of the Club menu and looks like this:
Players can requests lives using the heart button (more on that later) or send a message by clicking on the button with the speech bubble, both at the bottom of the club chat screen.
Weekly Club Challenge
The second tab of the club menu is where the Weekly Club Challenge lives. Tapping on the second tab will open this menu:
Club Tickets
Every day you play during the weekly Club Event, you get a club ticket to play a special level that will help you earn those club points. VIPs get two daily club tickets instead of one, which is just one of the many benefits of VIP status.
One important thing to note: these tickets do not stack. That means that you have to use the daily club tickets you earn before you can get another daily ticket rewarded to you.
Are you out of daily club tickets but want to keep helping your club earn rewards? You can play more special Club levels by paying coins.
Special Levels
To redeem your daily Club Ticket and play special new Club Levels, click the Play button at the bottom of the Weekly Club Challenge screen:
In the Weekly Club Challenge levels you’ll be given a certain number of turns to collect as many Club Gems as possible. Collecting Club Gems is just like collecting coconuts: making a match next to the Club Gem pieces will collect them.
One Club Gem collected equals one club point earned that will count towards your club’s weekly event total. You will not be able to extend the number of turns at the end of the level like you normally can, so make the most out of the moves you have!
Event Progress
During the weekly club challenge, every Club Point that members of a Club earn are tracked and unlock prizes for the entire club. To see both the time remaining in the event and your Club’s progress, navigate to the Weekly event menu, then check out the progress bar at the top of the screen:
Tapping on any of the present icons in the progress bar will show you the prizes your Club will receive once your club collects that many Club Gems.
Leveling Up Your Club
How to Level Up Your Club
Players who are in a Club can help level up their Club by donating coins. To donate coins to your club, tap on the 3rd tab of the Club Menu, then hit the Donate button at the bottom of the page:
Benefits of Leveling Up
Leveling up your Club unlocks two main benefits: new and better Club prizes in the weekly Club events and the ability to purchase new and exclusive items in the Club Shop.
The Club Shop
What is the Club Shop?
The Club Shop is a new store with exclusive items that you can only purchase with a new currency: Social Points (more on those in just a bit). The Club Shop is on the 4th tab of the Club Menu:
Social Points
Social Points are the new currency to buy items in the Club Shop. There are 3 main ways to earn social points that you can spend in the Club Shop:
- Collecting Club Gems: For every Club Gem you collect in your daily Club Level(s), you earn a social point.
- Responding to Club Requests: Club members can now directly request Hearts every 6 hours from their fellow Club Members. This will send a message to the club chat that will disappear once three club members have responded. Responding to these messages will give you social points. You can only send one heart per each request.
- Purchasing Certain Items from the Coin Shop: This update brings a brand new item to the Coin Shop: the Club Gift. When you purchase a Club Gift through the Coin Shop, you get the items included and every other member of your club will also receive some items. If a member of your club buys a Club Gift, you’ll get a pop-up where you can see who bought it and redeem your items. As an added bonus, you also receive social points for purchasing Club Gifts!
If you leave a club, the social points you’ve earned stay with you; however, you cannot spend your social points until you join another club.
There are a lot of new aspects to the Club system and we hope that this makes things a bit clearer for you. What part of the new update are you most excited about?
Here at KingsIsle we love Baby Animals. In fact, we love them so much that we updated Animal Cove’s Baby Animal system and added a brand new Baby Animal Challenge! This update is pretty different from the Baby Animal events you’re used to seeing, so we’ve created this handy guide to all things Baby Animal!
Baby Animal Rescue Event
Baby Animal Rescue is a weekly event that you can play if you’ve reached level 45 in the game.
Completing each level in the event will award you one, two, or three tokens of the Baby Animal you’ll be rescuing. Once you reach 10 tokens, you’ll be able to rescue the Baby Animal if you’ve unlocked the biome that the Baby Animal lives in.
One important thing to note: getting all of the tokens doesn’t automatically rescue the Baby Animal. You’ll need to open the collectibles menu at the bottom left side of your screen.
Next, navigate to the Baby Animal tab. If you have a Baby Animal that’s eligible for rescue, the Baby Animal tab will have an exclamation point to notify you. The baby Animal that you can rescue will also have an exclamation point indicator by their icon.
Click the Baby Animal with the exclamation point by its icon. That will bring up this menu:
Hit the large green Rescue! Button and you’ll unlock the rescue cutscene for that Baby Animal. After that, you can find your Baby Animal wandering around in their associated biome.
You may have noticed that the Baby Animals are now grouped into sets. There are currently four sets of Baby Animals: the Farm Set, the Woodland Set, the Safari Set, and the Mythical Set. We’ll explain why that’s important later in this blog post when we dive deeper into the Baby Animal Challenge Event.
One important thing to note: each Baby Animal lives in a specific biome. If you haven’t unlocked that biome yet by playing through the story, your new Baby Animal won’t have anywhere to live! You can still earn tokens from the Baby Animal Rescue Event, but you won’t be able to actually rescue them until you unlock their biome.
Already rescued all the Baby Animals? You can still earn tokens during Rescue Events for the Baby Animals you’ve previously rescued that you can use to power them up!
Star Power
Powering up your Baby Animals gives you Star Power for that animal’s set. For example, I rescued Fluffy (the adorable kitten) during the last Rescue Event. As you can see, Fluffy’s got one star power:
Star Power is what helps you unlock levels in the brand new Baby Animal Challenge. For more on that, read on!
The Baby Animal Challenge
When a new Baby Animal Challenge begins, you’ll see this icon on the left side of your screen if you’ve reached level 45 or higher:
When you click it, it will take you to the main Baby Animal Challenge screen:
At the top of the screen, you’ll see which challenge you have (Farm, Woodland, or Safari). Those little floating call outs tell you how much Star Power you need to play the level and how many Baby Animal Tokens you’ll earn when you complete the level.
You may have noticed that some of the levels are greyed out. That means that I don’t have enough Star Power to play them since I’ve only got Fluffy and Fluffy only has one Star Power. Now, say I had two Baby Animals in the Farm Set (Fluffy and Billy), both with one Star Power each. I’d be able to access the first 4 levels of the Baby Animal Challenge, not just the first 3. If I powered up Fluffy to two Star Power and had Billy with one Star Power, I would have access to the first five Baby Animal Challenge levels.
Each Baby Animal Challenge has 15 levels in total for you to complete, and you can swipe left to scroll through them and see the rewards that await you in the later levels.
If you don’t have enough star power to get all the way to level 15, don’t worry! It’s not a bug or a glitch. The more Baby Animals you rescue and power up in Rescue Events, the further you’ll be able to get in the new Challenge Event. As an added bonus, playing the Baby Animal Challenge levels reward you with tokens that you can use to increase your Star Power. The later levels reward you with special tokens to help you unlock a Mythical Baby Animal, so you’ll definitely want to play through all 15 levels!
Don’t want to wait until the next Rescue Event to be able to complete the Baby Animal Challenge? You can visit the Island Shop and purchase Baby Animal tokens to unlock the next levels.
Purchasing Baby Animal Tokens
During Baby Animal Rescue and Baby Animal Challenge events, there are new Token Bags available for purchase in the Island Shop.
Here are a few important things to note about these Token Bags:
- All Token Bags are randomized. There is no guarantee that you will get the exact tokens that you need to increase your star power and unlock more levels of the Baby Animal Challenge.
- The Small, Medium, and Large Token Bags will give you random tokens from all sets. That means you have the chance to get tokens for Baby Animals in the Farm, Woodland, AND Safari sets.
- There are set-specific Token Bags available for purchase that will ONLY give you tokens for Baby Animals in that set. This is a great way to increase your chances at getting a specific Baby Animal’s token; however, these bags are also randomized. They do not guarantee you will get the exact tokens that you need to increase your star power and unlock more levels of the Baby Animal Challenge.
Mythical Baby Animals
Meet Twinkle Star, our first Mythical Baby Animal!
Pretty cute right?
To unlock Twinkle Star, you can only earn tokens through the Baby Animal Challenge. Mythical Baby Animals will NOT appear in the Baby Animal Rescue Events. To power up these Mythical Baby Animals, you’ll need to earn a certain number of tokens AND rainbow crystals, a special new currency that you also earn by completing Baby Animal Challenge levels.
Phew! There are a lot of new aspects to the Baby Animal system and we hope that this makes things a bit clearer for you. What part of the new update are you most excited about?
The Spiral is a magical place with Wizard City at the center of all the worlds that are or could be. But, the Spiral had to come from somewhere. Who conjured Merle Ambrose? How did Ravenwood School come to be? What evil genius summoned the diabolical Malistaire and Morganthe? It all began with an idea, but that idea was brought to life by our talented KingsIsle team.
In the last KI Live, we brought in some members who have been with the team throughout Wizard101’s development to reminisce about their favorite moments and to reveal some interesting development trivia. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we’re updating and expanding this post to bring you 10 things that you might not know about the creation of Wizard101!
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It started out as a real card game
Believe it or not, the premise behind the game didn’t magically appear. The team spent a long time physically playing with a deck of character cards, some dice, and beads that symbolized the power-up and other boosts. They scribbled down rules, ideas, and notes about what worked and didn’t. They knew that the core of any good game, no matter how amazing the graphics and effects, is that it is fun to play. Fun fact: our design team still uses this strategy today for designing new mini games! You can see more in this video:
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Wizard101 Wasn’t meant to fit in with other MMOs
When the heroes mentioned above came together, they thought about all the other games out there, like World of Warcraft, and realized there were not many games designed for parents and kids to play together. Quests in most MMOs are filled with violent battles and weapons that are not appropriate for children, so the creators wanted to come up with a game that was suitable for the whole family. In addition, the chat feature within the game is filtered to be safe for players of all ages.
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Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Wizard101
Turns out Pixar’s model played into the inspiration behind Wizard101. Like the team behind Pixar, the heads at KingsIsle wanted to create a world that would be engaging and safe for children, but still interesting and challenging for adults.
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It was made in record time
The team of heroes had an ambitious goal: They wanted to launch their new game within three years, which is a pretty short video game development time in the gaming industry. By keeping the initial features compact and focused, they imagined, designed, tested and programmed the game on time!
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Built with Grandma’s computer in mind
The creators realized that many kids and families don’t have the latest technology, so the game was meticulously designed to run well and look great on any system, even the older systems. The specs that this game requires were actually thought out with a purpose. The designers knew casual users without huge gaming rigs and kids on hand-me-down computers would be playing Wizard101, so the focus needed to be on the game being easily accessible and able to run on minimal RAM and processing power.
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Wizard City’s design came from multiple concepts.
The team reached out to a variety of artists with the same ask: a floating city with a huge tree in the middle and a crystal incorporated somewhere within. Each artist came up with a unique piece of concept art, which we’ve compiled here:
There are details from each of these concepts that you’ll find in the final version of Wizard City. Which ones can you spot?
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The First Worlds Were Built With “Lego Pieces”
When building the first worlds, the design team used a system referred to internally as “Lego pieces.” Worlds like Krokotopia and Marleybone were built using a series of straight, corner and T-shaped modular pieces that they could snap together. Grizzleheim was the first world built without the “Lego pieces” where all the maps were custom built.
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The World Moves Around You
One landmark of Wizard101’s development was creating the boat ride in Krokotopia. The team wanted to give players the experience of being on a boat, being able to walk around on the boat, and actually seeing the world move as your boat moved. That task proved more difficult than expected, which led to a creative solution from the team. Instead of having the boat move, they kept the boat stationary and instead animated the world around the boat to simulate movement. You can see a similar effect with the balloon cars of Marleybone and the dragon ride in Dragonspyre!
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Celestia Was the Biggest, Most Ambitious World (At the Time of Development)
Celestia’s introduced a new type of magic, 27 large zones, a ton of gameplay hours, and a high level of difficulty that was eventually adjusted. The most ambitious part of building Celestia was creating underwater tech like light refracting and swimming mechanics.
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You Can Hear KingsIsle Employee Voices In-Game
KingsIsle doesn’t just bring in the pros for voice acting. While many of our main characters are voiced by professional voice actors, our sound department will often ask KingsIsle employees to voice background and smaller characters. Sometimes they even let us voice main characters! Mike Sears, a Senior Narrative Game Designer, voices a LOT of characters including Sparck, Empyrea’s highly logical Science Officer!
Wizard101 is constantly evolving, bringing about new spells, characters, and technology. The creators of the game frequently refer to it as the best project they’ve ever worked on, and you can see why!
Were you surprised by any of these facts? Let us know in the comments section below!
We are so excited about our 10th Anniversary that we created an infographic to share some fun stats with you all! Ever wondered how much gold is in the Spiral or what the most common Wizard name is? Now you know!
Which fact was most surprising to you? Let us know in the comments!
Hey all! It’s Nalia Dunestrider (AKA Mallie, KingsIsle Marketing Coordinator), here to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Wizard101 with another top 10 blog post. There’s a lot to love about Wizard101, but one of my favorite parts is catching the references that our writing and design teams include.
The KingsIsle team references everything from music, movies, and TV shows to real life people, places, and events in Wizard101. Some are obvious, while others are a little trickier to find. There are huge lists on our official forums and fansites of all the Easter Eggs and references in the game, but I’ve put together my personal top ten.
- This one may be cheating since it’s got so many, but I love the Accursed Play Gauntlet! It’s packed with references to Shakespeare, from his plays to famous Shakespearian actors like Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh.
- As someone who’s originally from Kansas, I’m a sucker for a good Wizard of Oz reference. The “Not in Kansas Anymore” side quest line brings the magic of Oz to the streets of Unicorn Way. The quest reward is even a pair of ruby slippers! It may be an obvious reference, but it’s one of my favorites since it reminds me of where I grew up.
- If you look closely at the crates in Belloq’s tent in Zafaria, you might notice a familiar looking gold statue. It’s a nearly identical replica of the idol in the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that Belloq (the movie version) steals from Indiana Jones.
- In Vestrilund, you’ll find a pair of brothers name Urt and Berni who ask you to rescue Berni’s prized possession: a yellow wooden duck. This one’s a reference to the famous sesame street characters Bert and Ernie and their song “Rubber Ducky.”
- Avalon heavily references the legend of King Arthur, and you can’t reference that without including a few references to the greatest King Arthur parody of all time: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Roger the Shrubber (the Avalon gardening vendor) is named after a character in the movie and you may recognize a line from the movie when completing the quest “There’s the Shrub.” Of course, there are many more Holy Grail references throughout Avalon, but I’ll leave you to discover them.
- Dancing Queen is my go-to karaoke song, so you know I’m a fan of the Zafaria boat “The Dancing Queen.” The boatman gives you a quest called “You can Jive” which is a direct reference to the lyrics in Dancing Queen.
- In the Pet Pavilion, there’s a double reference to the same band. There’s the “Pet Shoppe Boys Pet Shop,” named after famed British pop duo the Pet Shop Boys. The “West Ende Girls Snack Shop” is named after one of that band’s most famous songs, West End Girls.
- The Labyrinth Fish in Dragonspyre is modeled after David Bowie’s costume in the 1986 movie Labyrinth. The description even references the famous line “You have no power over me!”
- Horror fans with a keen eye might notice that the hybrid pet quest you get from your professor at level 78 references a Stephen King novel, novella, or short story depending on your school. Each school gets a different quest/Stephen King title:
- Balance – “It”
- Death – “Bag of Bones”
- Fire – “Firestarter”
- Ice – “Misery”
- Life – “The Green Mile”
- Myth – “Eyes of the Dragon”
- Storm – “Hearts in Atlantis”
- There’s a Marleybone quest called “Reckless Necklace” that has you visting Jared Banks, a jeweler. When you deliver the repaired necklace to Ms. Marphely, she exclaims “You went to Jared’s?” which is the tagline of a series of ads for Jared’s jewelers.
As I mentioned earlier, this is just a small list of my favorite references. There are hundreds if not thousands more for you to find as you explore the Spiral. I’d love to hear your favorite in-game pop culture references in the comments below!
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