Wizard101 Cattails - Wizard101 Basics For Beginners

UPDATE:  August 6, 2019.  In an update KI has radically changed Unicorn Way and the whole beginning of the game.  I wrote a post reflecting the updates here.  I decided to leave this old — and now useless — guide just to keep the history.

In the last six months I’ve put something like a dozen wizards through Wizard City — not to mention the dozen-and-a-half or so who completed it earlier.  With that much experience I’ve picked up on a few things that make Unicorn Way easier/faster.

1. When Ambrose first sends you out to get access to Unicorn Way, the arrows point you around the left side of the lake in the commons.  If you go down the right side instead, you’ll pass Prospector Zeke who already has an exclamation point over his head.  Pick up the Smith quest right away so when you get back by the Hedge Maze, where the Unicorn Way Smith is located, you can pick it up.  There’s no point in getting the quest unless you’re planning to level the wizard up past Wizard City as you’ll not need the training point.
2. After you complete Private Connelly’s first quest, he has no exclamation point or question over his head any more.  He sends you to Ceren Nightchant to get a quest.  Once you’ve picked up Ceren’s quest, if you immediately go back to Connelly, he has another quest.
3. As you head back into the mob area of Unicorn Way, Olivia Dawnwillow now has a quest too; defeating Skeletal Pirates.  Private Connelly’s second quest takes you to his friend Private Ryan, who then asks you to defeat Skeletal Pirates.  If you have both quests in your book, every Skeletal Pirate you defeat counts as one on each of the two quests, so you knock both of them off simultaneously.
4. Cattails (reagent) spawn in four or five places in the water in Unicorn Park.  Cattails don’t sell for much but every eight or ten times you click on one, you’ll also get a water lily, which sells at the Bazaar for 180 gold (more than wiki says).  You don’t need water lily for crafting early on, so if you can get a couple and sell them, the gold really helps at this stage.
5. Mist wood spawns in a few places behind the park, in the “yards” around Rattlebones’ house, Lady Blackhope’s house, and outside the Hedge Maze.  Never too early to start collecting reagents.
6. Wooden chests spawn in the park, behind the houses, in a few places along the sidewalk and outside the Hedge Maze.  The gold amounts are pretty tiny but everything helps when you’re ready to buy the best level 5 gear at the Bazaar.
7. You can do Private Connelly’s second and Nightchant’s and Dawnwillow’s first quests all in one trip.  Mark location near Nightchant.  Then when you finish all three you can port back and collect your rewards and next quests from all three NPCs.
8. If this isn’t your first wizard and you have stuff for him/her in the Shared Bank you can use the “home” port button on the compass as soon as you hit level 2, which should happen when you get your first quest from Private Connelly.  You don’t get notified of it until later, but button works that soon.  Then you can port to dorm and get mount, pet, whatever… from Shared Bank.