A new gardening system just debuted on the Wizard101 Test Realm, so we went straight to KingsIsle Entertainment to find out what this feature will add to the game.

The Wizard101 Test Realm opened last night to add a surprising new feature to the game: Gardening! Once the update hits the live servers, players will be able to grow plants in their dorm rooms and castles for the chance to harvest all sorts of items, including reagents and gold. Young wizards will need to nurture their plants in order to climb up the 10 ranks of gardening, which will give them access to more gardening equipment and spells.

We wanted to get more details on the new gardening system, so we went straight to Vice President of Marketing Fred Howard and Public Relations Director Benjamin Conrad for some answers. Keep reading after the jump for some in-depth information about gardening in Wizard101!

ZAM: Can you give us some more details on the gardening system that's coming to Wizard101?

Fred Howard: We're pretty excited about the launch of the whole new gardening system. We've looked at the popularity of gardening, whether it's on casual gaming sites or Facebook, and it's certainly something that a lot of casual online gamers really enjoy. We're excited to launch it in Wizard101, but with its own flair and a consistency that fits our brand style, sense of humor and interaction. It's something you really can't do in a 2D game or a casual Flash-based game.

On the simplest level, Wizard101 players will be able to collect seeds and plant them in their castles and dorm rooms. It's actually going to be the first time players can cast spells out of combat because players will use spells to water their plants, draw sunlight to their plants and defend their plants from critters that could attack them.

It's a pretty robust system. The plants all have their own personalities. Our plants represent some unusual characters. We have King Parsley, which is a dancing stack of parsley. We have a wide variety of funny and engaging plants. As you level the plants up and grow them, they actually all have their own personalities. They interact with players and the environment, so plants will behave differently depending on what other plants are around. It's a pretty fun and deep system that players will have to figure out. Do baby carrots like being planted next to King Parsley or not? How do they react to other products and housing items located next to them?

Benjamin Conrad: As Fred mentioned, it's a very deep system. There are 10 different levels of gardening mastery that characters will be able to train up through. Beginning at level 12, players will be able to explore the gardening system and tend to their plants and harvest the results. They will gain experience and work their way up through the beginning levels of gardening all the way up to becoming grand master and earning all of the skills and privileges associated with it. Also, one of the really interesting things about this system is you can grow these amazing gardens in the most epic fantasy castle, but players who don't have an epic castle can buy a pot and grow one or two plants in their dorm rooms. It's a system that's really been designed to be open to all of our players and to give them different ways of exploring Wizard101.

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