So far I’ve talked about some of the most popular charms, what they do, and how to add them spells that aren’t in your primary school to your spell deck through equipment, pets and training points. Now it’s time to take a step back and talk about the “nuts and bolts” of charms. Then we will move on to more advanced charms, stacking charms, and more goodies.

1. Top Rows of Your Spell Deck. When looking at your spell deck, the spell cards at the top of the box are cards you have selected yourself to put in your deck. If you have trained in a charm from your primary school or used training points on charms, and moved them into your spell deck, this is where you will see them.
2. Bottom Rows of Your Spell Deck. The spells in the bottom two rows are spells from any equipment and pets you have equipped. If you have equipped with items that include charms, you will find the spell cards in the bottom two rows.
3. Blue Cards. Spells that come from equipment and pets present as blue spell cards.
4. Blue Card Attributes. Some, but not all, blue cards cast spells with more accuracy or power than the spells wizards train in via their primary school or the use of training points. The Weakness charm from Balance instructors reduces the damage of the next spell by 25%; the Weakness charm from Nightshade’s Choker reduces damage by 30%.
5. No Enhancing Blue Cards. Wizards cannot enhance blue spell cards in their decks with treasure cards (i.e., increase accuracy or damage via combing them with treasure cards). This is for all use of blue spell cards, not just the Winter Smash & Bash.
6. Center of the Universe. Charms typically spin around their head of the person they have been cast upon. Thanks to Sierra StarSong for posting this tip on the wall of my ConnectX page. The tutorial from Diego attempts to illustrate where charms revolve versus wards/traps and evidence of Damage Over Time (DOT) spells.
7. A little help for your friends. Wizards can cast helpful charms on themselves or friends. Try casting your one-pip Spirit blade on a friend from the Life school to stack with her zero-pip Life blade.
8. Those meddlesome Ravenwood students! Wizards can cast negative charms on enemies. If you see that an enemy seems to be storing up pips (say for the dreaded damage-all Tempest) try casting a Weakness blade on that enemy to minimize the damage. There are other charms that you can cast on enemies to spoil their carefully-laid plans. These will be detailed in an upcoming column.
9. Order, please! Charms provide their “boost or bust” in the order they were cast. I will be gathering some friends for a few Practice PvP rounds in the next day or so to gather some anecdotal information on this, with special focus on boosting Guiding Light (health boosting) charms in the face of Infection charms. Yes, damage is important. But a few extra life points can be the difference between a victorious match and seeing your favorite wizard with heels tucked together and stars around her head.
10. Merlin’s Beard! Positive AND negative charms can be stolen, cleansed, broken, and otherwise drop out of orbit around wizards’ heads. Same goes for enemies. Remember this is a family game and try to keep your language kid-friendly when this happens. Especially if you are a kid. Anyway, details on how to remove charms for fun and gain will be provided in a column published later this week.

• PvP Prep: Charming Tidbits for Wizard101 Part 9
• PvP Prep: Charming Tidbits for Wizard101 Part 8
• PvP Prep: Charming Tidbits for Wizard101 Part 7
• PvP Prep: Charming Tidbits for Wizard101 Part 5
• PvP Prep: Charming Tidbits for Wizard101 Part 2