But Where is the Gardening?

     What is the hub bub about the new "revered" crafting level? Let me help you understand the new reagents, where to find them, and how to get them.

Squid Ink

     Squid ink can be dropped after battles - in Empyrea. So, after all your hard work of saving the spiral and making your way to Empyrea, MAYBE you'll be lucky enough to get squid ink dropped. Sadly, this is probably the easiest new reagent to get.

Shiny Scales

     Shiny scales come from fishing chests. The trick to fishing is to ask yourself what kind of person are you? Have you been blessed in life with extraordinary luck? Can you buy one hoard pack and get either the mount or pet - or even both? If you are lucky, then you'll love fishing. The spiral is the only world that I have found in the universe where fishing is all about luck instead of skill. There is absolutely no skill required, at all. Cast that spell with all your might and it is still only going to go the same distance as it did with no effort at all. And if you are one of those people, like me, who make their way through life honing skills because the only luck you have is bad luck, that spell is going to be several feet short of wherever the fish are congregating when you can't wade into the water to get closer.

     There might be just a tiny bit of skill in trying to maneuver yourself around until you find just the right location to stand to get your spell where you want it. Of course your target fish has moved on by then, possibly he's rolling on the bottom of the river laughing at you because you look like you're doing the hokey pokey.

Shocked Key

     So I guess that the powers that be are tired of tripping over all those silver chests that nobody bothers to do since they added the Catch a Key game. But they came up with a way to get people to do them again. Nooo they didn't fix it so that Catch a Key isn't just a waste of our time with randomly spawned numbers that often never spits out the numbers that you need to win, that would just be silly. No, instead, they added the Shocked Key reagent that could POSSIBLY be found in silver chests IF you win, maybe, sorta, if you're lucky. But yeah, we've already covered my opinion of stuff that requires luck.

Aethyr Dust

     These are reported as being found as a ground spawn, like Ore or Stone Block, in the Spiral, but I'm fairly sure they are only in Empyrea. I haven't managed to either confirm nor deny that fact yet. And I may have to correct myself and say this would be the easiest new reagent to collect. IF you've remembered to lock your realm so that you aren't being pushed into Ambrose or Baelstrom cuz good luck finding any spawned reagents in those realms. Oops, there's that luck thing again.

Participation Trophy

     Last and certainly least we have the Participation Trophy. You can buy these with arena tickets. And how do you get arena tickets you ask? Well, first you have to be a member so that you can participate in either Pet Derby or PVP. Nonmembers do have the option of doing your daily activities for ohhh about a year before you might have enough tickets accumulated. To buy ONE trophy. I think you need 3 trophies to start with. It could have been 5. That red writing is really hard to read sometimes. Seriously. You can collect a total of 30 Arena Tickets every 15 days, which is approximately 60 tickets in a month. It will take 14 months to collect 800 Arena Tickets.

     On a good note, if you're a tiny wizard, in Krokotopia or Marleybone you have plenty of time to accumulate Arena tickets through Daily Activities before you'll actually need them.

     So basically you need luck, and luck, and more luck, and membership. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Or can you? We are being encouraged to fish, open chests, and buy membership - err I mean participate in Pet Derby or PVP. All of these are kind of side hobbies in the spiral. But where is the gardening?? Why was this important hobby left out of this new crafting level? There should SO be a reagent that comes only from harvesting your plants. I feel gypped, forgotten and neglected. But maybe it's because gardening already has it's own rewards and isn't nearly as annoying as those other activities that people have decided to just do without rather than suffer through them anymore. Of course gardening also requires luck as well *sigh*.