Wizard101

Prerelease Info Bugs Unused GUIGUI that never saw the light of day. Retired SpellsSpells that were once obtainable in the game, but have since been removed. Retired ItemsItems that were once obtainable in the game, but have since been removed. Retired QuestsQuests that were once available in the game, but have since been removed. Unused Text

Developer Notes#

_Shared-WorldData.wad\GUI contains a small note left by a developer about the Character Creator.

CharCreationReadme.txt#

Note: CreateCharacter contains art for the older character creation screen, soon to be phased out.

Create_Character contains art for the new screens.

Root.wad\ChatFilter\CharacterReplacementMap.txt contains notes about the chat filter, specifically about a prevention measure to prevent players from using letter lookalikes to circumvent the chat filter.

CharacterReplacementMap.txt#

#
# This file maps extended characters/symbols to their english alphabet look alikes.
# This is used to filter out bad words where people have used symbols/alt codes in place of letters
#
# the format is:
# replacement Character(s) or Symbol(s) = List of characters to replace
#
# examples:
# c = ¢Çç©
# changes the input string '¢runÇhy çra©kers' to 'crunchy crackers'
# 
# characters can be mapped to a multi character replacement:
# no = №
# changes the string '№se' to 'nose'
#
# Limitations:
# An extended character can only appear in one list at a time
# Whitespace is ignored
#
#
# used by wizard, but not in list: Œ
#

a = ÀÁÂÃÄÅàáâãäåªĄąΆΑάΛΔαλ
b = ßΒβ
c = ¢Çç©ĆćĈĉĊċČčς
d = ðÐĎďδ
e = ÈÉÊËèéêëĘęĚěΈΕΞΣέεξ
f = Γ
g = Ğğ
h = ΉΗ
i = ÌÍÎÏìíîİıΊΙΪίϊΐιł
k = Κκ
l = £Ł
m = Μ
n = ÑñŃńŇňΝηήπΠ
o = ÒÓÔÕÖØòóôõöøºΌΘΟΦθοσφόΏΩœ
p = ÞþΡρ
q = ¶
r = ®Řř
s = §ŚśŞşŠšζ
t = ŤťΤτ
u = ÙÚÛÜùúûüµŮůυϋύΰμΨψ
v = ν
w = ωώ
x = פΧχ
y = ¥ýÿÝŸΎΥΫγ
z = ŹźŻżŽžΖ
2 = ²
3 = ³

A short summary of this file is that it shows handling for if someone tries saying a word that's normally banned by using a different letter that looks the same, it will handle it as if it was the regular letter. So for example, if TCRF was banned, then ŤCRF would be banned too. Curiously, ² is mapped to 2, even though nothing in the chat filter specifically prohibits anything involving the number 2.

Oddities#

Ice School#

Internally, the schools at Ravenwood are named like "WC_SchoolLife" (WC stands for Wizard City) or "WC_SchoolFire". Oddly, the ice school is named "WC_SchoolFrost", likely a relic from before the developers decided on the school to be referred to as Ice. In the Wysteria expansion, there is a school referred to as Frost (PA_Classroom_Frost, PA stands for Pigswick Academy, potentially the name of the world before Wysteria was chosen), which is their equivalent of Ice.

Merle Ambrose's House#

Originally, the Headmaster of Ravenwood would have been Lydia Greyrose, as the internal name says "WC_Headmistress_House". According to a post by J Todd:

in my original draft, Lydia Greyrose was the Headmistress of Ravenwood! Merle Ambrose was the Ice Professor. After doing an early round of focus testing, we found that Ambrose was much more popular and so the two were swapped-- and Greyrose was given wings and made into a faerie godmother!

which shows that Ambrose would have been the Ice teacher and Lydia would have been the Headmistress instead. Curiously, this was corrected in his tower, with the name being "WC_Headmaster_Tower". A proper Headmistress would appear in Wysteria named Belladonna Crisp running Pigswick Academy.

Deckathalon Towers#

Internally, the Deckathalon is referred to as TreasureTower, likely referring to the fact that it is a solo dungeon where players fight their way up a tower while only being allowed to use treasure cards. This may have been the original name before "Deckathalon" was decided on.

Great Sky Train Robbery Gauntlet#

Curiously, with this housing dungeon, there are 6 areas, labeled between HG_Gauntlet_Train_Int01 to 07. However, there is no 6. Near the end of the dungeon normally, the player passes through the train cars to get back to the train station, which the return to the car area is 04 and the return to the train station is 07. 05 is used for a secret area where the player can discover a reward for finding it. Because the player goes over 3 cars, it could have been the case that the player would have needed to go through 3 cars in order to get back to the station, which ultimately was scrapped (probably because it would have been needlessly repetitive), but in the final game, only one train car needed to be passed through.

Malistaire Rematch#

When the ability to rematch certain final bosses was introduced, an oddity came with the name of the Malistaire one specifically, being named Dungeon_Rematch_DM_Malistaire. DM stands for Darkmoor (referencing the Castle Darkmoor expension), except this is a fight with the version fought in Dragonspyre, not the one from Darkmoor. Other rematches do not have this same mistake such as Lord Nightshade's rematch located at Dungeon_Rematch_WC_LordNightshade which correctly identifies it as being from Wizard City.

AccessPass.XML oddities#

Whether the player has access to certain areas is determined by the AccessPass.xml file. Areas accessible to free players are defined in the AccessPass FreeToPlay. ThePhantomZoneWorld is a black area that is normally unseen unless the player presses Ctrl+G (which removes all interface elements from the screen). This is used whenever instead of an area, there's something to be interacted with, usually a minigame.

Unused Areas#

ThePhantomZoneWorld/WebGameLobby

Some text files do demonstrate an intention to have possibly given the players the ability to play multiplayer games. This is backed up by a text file referencing playing games that typically would be played by 2 people like Chess, Checkers and Tic Tac Toe. This may have been a lobby to matchmake with other players.

ThePhantomZoneWorld/WebGameGrubGuardian

This looks like players would have been allowed to play Grub Guardian in the actual game itself. Grub Guardian was a game that could be played in Flash on Kingsisle's former flash game website FreeKIGames, advertised to players who didn't have a membership by opening a browser to that page whenever Wizard101 was closed. Grub Guardian could be played there. It looks like there were plans to allow players to play Grub Guardian in game, rather than only in a browser or the mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Chat filter oddities#

Although documenting filters is outside of TCRF's scope, there are some oddities in the filters that are obscure or otherwise redundant/unused. Notably, in the blacklist (the file that determines what words are exclusive to open chat), there is a line of text that reads

i gave it to you have last time why can not it be gently this time

Putting aside the pretty bad grammar, it's highly unlikely a player would ever see this unless they knew it was already placed there.

Another oddity is with the CarlinList text file (regulates what is banned in all forms of chat, even in open chat). Some words have a redundant ban which makes some bans unneeded. For example, "uu" is wildcard blocked (to specify a wildcard block, the game surrounds text with a - character on each side), among other letters. This is obviously meant to address circumventions by just including an extra letter (IE getting around the word "butt" by saying "buutt"). Despite that, a comically absurd number of derivatives of the word "cunt" exist in the filter that solely consists of variations with extra letters, including but not limited to the following:

ccunnnttt
ccunnttt
ccunttt
ccuunnnt
ccuunnntt
ccuunnnttt
ccuunnt
ccuunntt
ccuunnttt
ccuunt
ccuuntt
ccuunttt
ccuuunnnt
ccuuunnntt
ccuuunnnttt
ccuuunnt
ccuuunntt
ccuuunnttt
ccuuunt
ccuuuntt
ccuuunttt

These variations are never actually checked for because they are covered by a different entry in the filter, rendering them to be redundant.

Revisional Differences#

Wallaru Expansion#

Stagger Joining trick#

This update fixed a glitch known as stagger joining. Around early 2022, players were given the ability to join a battle during the card selection phase instead of waiting for the next round before being able to participate in the duel. The problem is that this messed up scripts with cheating boss fights that rely on scripts. For example, the final boss of Darkmoor, Malistaire the Undying, would not resurrect when he's supposed to, resulting in the battle ending prematurely. This did get fixed for certain individual fights before Wallaru (notably bosses like Aeon of Atavus in Novus and Rententen), but this update fixed all issues related to stagger joining. Interestingly, no one got banned for this because it's a bug that's easily done on accident.

Fire Shark item card exploit#

An infamous bug showcased in PvP involved the Raging Shark pet released in January 2024. Due to a bug with the programming of the item card, it hit 5 times instead of only once, doing far more damage than players were supposed to be able to do. When this bug was discovered, many people started to use this pet because it couldn't easily be countered because of how many times it did damage, so players looking for easy wins just kept fighting people using that pet.

Crystal Caves quest softlock#

At the same time as the above bug, players questing in Avalon got stuck in the Crystal Caves area because they were unable to fight enemies required for questing. This happened because a developer turned it into an advanced combat area and disabled fights when using it for testing and forgot to change it back when pushed to the live game. This later was fixed to allow players to continue the quest by reenabling fights.

Selenopolis Expansion#

Tutorial escape with Friendly Players#

This update fixed a bug where players on fresh accounts were able to use the social tab during the tutorial (normally not accessible during the tutorial but could have been invoked by pressing Ctrl+A) in order to leave it prematurely, resulting in odd behavior like the player getting stuck if they pick up a reagent and not being given spells to use in combat. The problem resolved itself upon restarting the game, properly assigning a deck and spells. However, because people used the escape to bypass softlocks in the tutorial, the developers added a skip tutorial button for new accounts.

Khonsu challenge mode adorable creatures#

In the challenge mode instance of Khonsu, the player normally gets turned into different versions of creatures than what the standard mode gets. There was a bug where players were able to turn into the standard mode creatures which were a lot easier to work with. A patch later addressed this.

June 2025 update#

Unicorn Way accuracy buff#

Untold to players, Unicorn Way was updated to give all players a 100% accuracy buff while in the area (including any interiors such as Rattlebones' Tower). This is likely to help players progress through battles faster by essentially making them immune to fizzling.