Back to Basics: Item Stats

What are Item Stats:
When you first arrive in Wizard City, you are arrayed in the Ravenwood School Robes...which offer no enhancements at all...zip, zero, zilch. On top of offering no enhancements, while you can dye them to colors of your choosing, they are still a school uniform...and who wants to wear a school uniform!?

So you set out on your first quests and discover that as you best those ghouls, pirates and fairies on Unicorn Way, they drop treasure! Not just gold, but new equipment. All right! Now I can run around in Dorothy's Ruby Slippers (suddenly have songs about rainbows and and brains floating in my head). As you examine these new finds, you also notice that they offer enhancements to your abilities...you have officially started down the path of Item Stats.

There are enhancements for Accuracy, Health, Mana, Damage Boost, Damage Resist, Incoming Health, Outgoing Health and Increased Chance of Power Pips. Which of these your wizard seeks out as you progress through the Spiral is a decision that you have to make. However, some of these are best suited for certain schools to acquire. For example, a Storm wizard would most likely be looking for Accuracy and Health, as those are the weakest points for that school, where an Ice wizard would be looking to increase their Damage Boost (because our spells are wimps!).

ironhawk, on Wizard101 Central, has made some excellent guides to the various bosses in the spiral, and what items they drop. I have found this an excellent reference not only while working my way through the worlds, but also when farming for better items. I have linked a couple of them here for reference: Grizzleheim, Marleybone, Mooshu, Dragonspyre

Style vs Stats:

I will be the first to admit some of the best enhancements you can find on gear will make your wizard about as attractive as the cat below.

While it may be against our desires to want to make ourselves look like that, it can be beneficial at times. So if you are one who tends to ensure highest style at all times, it might be a good idea to keep a set of some ugly clothing around for the harder battles. Who knows, maybe if you slip those bits of nastiness on, some of those bosses might just run at the sight of you!

A Quick Look at Each Enhancement:
Lets review each enhancement and what it does for you so that we can all make the best decisions for our wizards. As stated earlier, the enhancements available are: Accuracy, Health, Mana, Damage Boost, Damage Resist, Incoming Health, Outgoing Health and Increased Chance of Power Pips.

Accuracy:
Items that increase your accuracy help you reduce the frequency of fizzling. If you have a storm card that has an accuracy of 75%, and you are wearing items that give you 6% accuracy increase for storm, then when that card is used, the effective accuracy is 81%. You might be surprised how much even that little bit can help.

Health:
Items that increase your health make those oh so important numbers in your health globes go up by that amount. A few extra points of health can be a life saver at times. I don't know how many battles I have fought and ended with under 10 health left. If I hadn't been wearing one of my clothing items at the time that gave this boost, I would have found myself standing in the Commons mumbling a few choice words.

Mana:
Items that increase your mana allow you to go longer between potion uses, and fill ups. In the higher levels of the games these are nice and help limit the amount of times you have to return and play games or chase whisps. These however are useless in PvP and mana is not used in the arena. So if you do a lot of PvP, you might want alternative items to wear while dueling, unless you are getting other stat boosts with the mana.

Damage Boost:
The Damage Boost increases the hit value on your attack cards by the amount specified. For schools with weaker attacks, these can be of great benefit.

Damage Resist:
The Damage Resist, will reduce the strength of attacks against you by the amount specified. For schools with lower health, these can be a much needed addition.

Incoming Health:
The increases to incoming health will give a boost by the amount specified every time you heal yourself, or someone else heals you.

Outgoing Health:
The increases to outgoing health will give a boost by the amount specified every time you use a healing card on yourself or others.

Increased Chance of Power Pips:
These increases can boost your power pip chance. With these changes, especially the higher in level you get, the use of these may see you shift to using your primary school heavily, and may even see you completely remove your secondary school attacks from your deck.

Well, that about covers those. As a further note, you will find some items that have plus(+) increases rather than percentage(%) increases. When in the lower levels of the game, the plus items may give you a better increase than percentage. You will just need to evaluate what the effect will be on the cards you are using at that time, and make your equipment adjustments accordingly.

As always, I hope this was informative for the newer users, and a nice refresher for some of the old dogs around here. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.