Category:Flares

Flares are a common attribute that armor, shields, and weapons throughout Elanthia possess. They can cause between 1 to 60 damage, averaging about 20 damage per flare. Common flares have a standard rate of 1 per 5 (20%) for weapons and 1 per 8 (12.5%) for runestaffs.

Standard flares operate on an internal "counter" system to prevent streaks of good or bad luck in triggering them. When triggered, flares that deal damage deliver a single random critical from the relevant critical table of a rank between 1 and 5 inclusive. (Note that later critical randomization may cause the observed critical rank to be as low as 0 or as high as 6.) Some flares may have some other effect instead of, or in addition to, dealing damage.

Note that many scripts are colloquially referred to as being flares, having flares or providing flares because they randomly deal criticals during combat. Despite this, they are internally distinct from flares, are not affected by things that boost flares and do not prevent items from acquiring flares. For more information, see item properties.

Flare effectiveness may be boosted by Flare Affinity or by supercharging.

Types of Flares

Flares are often categorized into three groups: common, uncommon, and rare flares. Rare flares are typically only offered through special merchant services, rather than through the treasure system. Flares can be determined empirically or through a bard loresong.

Common Flares

• Acuity flares 1x-4x - Runestaff-only flares that give temporary bonuses of 5 AS/3 CS per X (up to 10X) upon triggering.
• Cold flares - Also known as "ice" flares, these flares are effective on fire-type creatures.
• Heat flares - Also known as "fire" flares, effective on cold-type or water-type creatures, as well as trolls. Most forms of trolls take double damage.
• Lightning flares - Effective on most creatures, but when used in water-filled rooms, may conduct back to the user.
• Mana flares +1(20%) to +3(60%) - Runestaff-only flares that return a percentage of mana of casting a spell depending on how potent the flares are. Mana-flaring runestaves will flare regardless of the type of spell cast (i.e., defensive spells may beget flares).
• Vacuum flares - Also known as "void" or "air" flares, these flares are found on coraesine weapons.
• Vibration flares - Also known as "impact" or "earth" flares, these flares are effective on earth-type creatures, such as pyrothags.

Uncommon Flares

• Acid flares
• Acuity flares 5x-6x
• Air flares - fluffy white EG token - Unbalance critical table.
• Disintegration flares - Similar to the Sorcerer spell Disintegrate (705).
• Dispel flares - resolves before the attack and do disruption damage if there’s nothing to dispel
• Disruption flares - Can be found in black ora weapons.
• Grapple flares - Have a high potential to knockdown/stun targets with very little likelihood of fatal criticals.
• Mana flares +3-+4
• Plasma flares - Effective on undead. Also, Consecrate (1604) bestows plasma flares called Guiding Light flares on non-flaring non-weighted weapons.
• Sonic flares - Sometimes also referred to as "air" flares but is distinct from vacuum flares, using impact criticals instead. Can be found naturally on the Bard spell Sonic Weapon Song (1012), alone, or as a part of Coraesine weapon flares (however coraesine weapons have been seen with other critical tables as well, including the Slash critical table).
• Steam flares - Not heavily sought after due to an overall inferior critical table. Effective on undead.
• Unbalance flares - Have a very high likelihood of knocking down a target. Some "floating" creatures are immune to unbalancing.
• Water flares - Deals water themed crush damage to a target.

Rare Flares

• Acuity flares 7x-10x
• Death flares from weapons forged from the rare metal Xazkruvrixis
• Ghezyte - "Intimidation" flare that does not deal raw damage but decreases the target's defenses. Effect is inherent to the material and can coexist with standard or scripted flares.
• Magma flares - Inflicts RT on the target in addition to fire damage
• Mana flares +5
• Mechanical flares - These flares do slashing, piercing, and crushing damage, depending on if they are blades, spikes, or rods, respectively.
• Terror flares - Special merchant flares that terrorize living opponents into immobilization and forces them to drop their held equipment

Blessing Flares

Flares created by the Cleric spells Bless (304) and Sanctify (330) only affect undead. They can coexist with any other flares or scripts on the item.

• Holy Water flares - Available only through Bless (304), these flares behave as acid on undead and (harmless but visible) water on living creatures.
• Holy Fire flares - Available only through the final tier of Sanctify (330) as an upgrade to Holy Water. Only effective on undead, deals massive raw damage and a fire critical.

Script Flares

These flares occupy the script slot on an item. Some of them enhance the existing flare slot, while others can coexist with a normal flare.

• Animalistic Spirit - Highly customizable flares that scale with affinity from prolonged use, grapple by default
• Banshee flare - Bestows added target defense (TD) and bolt defensive strength (DS) to the wielder when the flare is activated, usually an amount ranging between 10 and 50. It can be applied to shields.
• Blink weapon - Allows the wielder to infuse a spell they are capable of learning into the weapon. Flares cast the spell for no mana.
• Briar flares - Grapple-based flares that grow in strength based on influence and weapon tier
• Bubble flares - Provide the wielder with temporary damage padding for approximately one minute. Padding levels range from heavy to phenomenal.
• Chronomage flares - Chance of a triple strike
• Daybringer - Script-based fire flare on living and plasma on undead, with a chance of a double flare.
• Ethereal Flares - piercing-based flares found only on Ethereal Weapons from Reim
• Globus Elanthias - Runestaff only. Stores spirit energy from defeated enemies, chance to release energy with a double flare. Cold/steam/vacuum depending on the specific weapon.
• Greater elemental flares - Script, adds a chance for an additional double-flare to certain types of flaring weapons. Weapon has the chance to flare naturally, flare the special scripted double-flare, or both at once. Also a few flashy verb traps and can change eye color temporarily for an hour with a two-hour cooldown.
• Iasha white ora weapon - Enhanced fire flares, occupies both script and flare slot
• Ironwright's holy flares - Ironwright's script gives holy flares when an item is blessed (no matter the profession) as well as a selection of two or three other flares (for example, acid/impact/web). The other flares are activated by casting a related spell at the weapon after it has been blessed (e.g. Hurl Boulder for impact). The flares last until the bless wears off. This flare occupies the script slot, not the flare slot.
• Knockout flares -
• Nerve staff flares - Impact/electrical/paralysis flares, requires affinity from striking foes. Chance of backlash until wielder has full affinity.
• Parasitic Weapon Flares - Specialized Slash flares that drain the blood of the wielder and can occur more frequently than the standard flare rate based on the tier of the weapon and the affinity with the user.
• Poison flares - Temporary poison flares, which flare occasionally, and the kind of poison flares that flare every hit. Also, there are serpent flares that can have special effects when poisoning the target.
• Polearm rebalancing flares - Also known a "poleaxe flares." They inflict a critical from the crush table as damage when they flare, and have the potential for a second "flare" which trips the target. If you have 50 ranks of MOC and the flare activates, you have a 33% chance of also doing the second "flare". If you have 100 ranks of MOC and the flare activates, you have a 66% chance of also doing the second "flare". It is possible to bless weapons with this flare (that would be blessable without it).
• Realm flares - Special merchant flares that change based on where the wielder is hunting.
• Rotating flares - Special merchant flares that give the wielder a choice of whatever flares are built into the weapon.
• Rotflares
• Shadowdeath flares - These flares do only blood-loss type damage, no wounds. Only found on "black alloy" weapons.
• Sprite flares - Customizable, crush criticals by default, scales with affinity
• Vial flares - Produces a vial that returns a small amount of mana, health, or spirit (depending on the type) when triggered.

Feras Weapons

Main article: Feras

Often found on various creatures throughout Elanthia, feras weapons are often deadly weapons that almost always flare when striking. The flares are lightning based and generally start at very high damage and degrade after each use. A feras weapon has several levels of flares and the user can tell what level the weapon is on when the weapon is used.

Methods of Obtaining Flares

Flares can be added to weapons that do not previously have flares by a variety of methods. There are some methods that do not require a merchant, such as the paladin spell Sanctify (1625), the cleric spell Bless (304) (when cast by a cleric with 40 or more ranks in the Cleric Base), or the minor elemental spell Elemental Blade (411). Each of these spells have restrictions on which weapons they can be cast on and still add the flares. To add flares to a weapon that is magical or non-blessable, one would require the services of a special merchant. A merchant might add standard flares (which would be heat, cold, vibration, lightning, or acid flares). Very rarely will they add other, non-standard flares.

Premium subscribers can add one standard flare from awarded Premium points at a cost of 300 points + 300 points per item enchant. For example, the cost to add acid flares to a 5x (+25) longsword would be 300 + (300 * 5 ) = 1800 premium points.

Armor Flares

Flares can be added to armor, often referred to as reactive flares. Generally, these flares are considered defensive in nature, as they only react when the character is struck by an attacker. However, certain combat maneuvers will implement these flares in an offensive manner, such as sweep, bearhug, and shield bash. Reactive flares can be added to full armor, shields, and piece armor (leg greaves, helmets, etc.). It is believed that all armor flares are both reactive and offensive in nature, in that they may flare when the wearer of flared armor is struck, and they may flare when a combat maneuver that can use armor flares is used. Piece armors will only flare when the body part they cover is struck or the combat maneuver makes contact with the covered body part -- for example, when a character uses Sweep, the legs make contact with the enemy, and therefore if the character is wearing flaring leg greaves, it has a chance to flare.

Flares can be added to shields and armor, but not piece armor, through the Premium points system.

Flares added to shields will trigger when used offensively; e.g, shield bash, shield strike, etc. They may also flare when an attack is blocked in an aggressive stance (anything forward or higher).

A character with a spiked + flared shield will see the flares activate on a defensive block when in an aggressive stance but will need knowledge of the Shield Spike Mastery shield maneuver to also enable spikes to flare on a block.

An offensive shield maneuver with a spiked + flared shield can trigger the spike, flare, or both simultaneously.

Warriors with Shield Riposte Martial Stance will see shield flares trigger as this is an offensive maneuver (shield bash). It adds the offensive RT and requires the warrior to be hit for Shield Riposte to activate.

Flare Identification

Many flares can be identified either through Loresinging, RECALLing loresongs, or INSPECTing at the pawnshop. The following is a list of the flare and message combinations produced through loresinging, most of which match the abbreviated recall or inspect output (but not all):

Fourth Verse of the item's Loresong:

Resources

• Item properties
• Flare messaging seen in loresongs
• Armor and Weapon Moods (saved post)
• Snake flare
• Runestaff saved posts
• Briar flares info on Players' Corner
• Tykus's Flare Research
• Player research