Lich:Introduction to Spirit Beasts

The official GemStone IV encyclopedia.
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Introductory Guide to Spirit Beasts

Author: Tatterclaws, Special thanks: Locksmith (Shattered), Obelin

Spirit Beasts are special pets which can be leveled up and fought against others owned by players or NPCs in Talondown Arena, which is accessible from most towns. Spirit Beasts are the ghosts of creatures who resided in a particular locale, and many have historical connections in GemStone lore.

Mechanically, Spirit Beasts offer a significant amount of experience for daily training (up to 10 fights, 75 XP per loss, 150 XP per win), and weekly fights (Challenge and Listed matches). Completing your 10 daily matches can take as little as 20-25 minutes, can be completely scripted, and can leave you with over 2,000 Saturated field experience. This fits well into a routine of becoming Saturated from a bounty quest, then completing your daily training fights to further increase your Saturated field XP.

Overview

There are three tiers of Spirit Beasts: Common, Uncommon, and Legendary. While you can begin learning the leveling and customization system with Common beasts, I recommend skipping straight to Legendary. This is because Common and Uncommon beasts have inferior statistics, so time spent leveling them up is somewhat wasted. Instead, you can find a complete list of Spirit Beasts here. If you click “Rarity”, you can sort by legendary and start thinking about ones you might want to try.

With that in mind, our first goal is to capture 25 total beasts, which is the requirement before you can capture Legendaries. They do not need to be unique, so you can stay in one area (in fact, even in one room), capture a beast, release it, and capture the same one again. You can own up to 100 Spirit Beasts simultaneously, but if you want to get to 25 without releasing any, you’ll need to travel to a few different towns to do it. You must be outside of town to capture them, and not every area has them available.

In addition to the three tiers above, Spirit Beasts also have quality, which can be Unimpressive, Average, Robust, Perfect, or Extraordinary. The best you can capture in the wild is Perfect, and this is also usually the only quality worth leveling. Thus, when reaching the first 25, one strategy is to keep only Perfect quality ones and release the rest. This should keep travel needs reasonable, allow you to reach 25 beasts relatively quickly, and give you a few Perfect ones for your collection. This will be our strategy for this guide.

After you have captured 25 total Spirit Beasts, you’ll then be able to capture a Legendary. You’ll use the link above to determine which one you want, travel to the listed location, and capture them in the same manner as the others, in most cases releasing and recapturing until you obtain a Perfect quality version. Then, we’ll begin leveling and customizing your Spirit Beast in Talondown Arena, which will be described at the end of this guide.

Getting Started

All Spirit Beast actions are managed under the BEAST verb. You can type BEAST on its own to see the choices, and you should spend a minute reading them just for familiarity, even if you don’t understand them all yet.

The steps to getting started are easy:

  1. Withdraw 30,000 silver from your bank
  2. ;go2 talondown
  3. North, go door
  4. Look in bowl, choose a talisman (aesthetic choice), buy <your choice of metal> talisman, buy vial, buy syringe
  5. ;go2 town
  6. Walk just outside of town
  7. Download and run ;tatterbeast, and consider adding it to your scripts that start when you log in by typing: ;autostart add tatterbeast

Capturing a Spirit Beast has a 15-minute cooldown and involves several commands with long round time. The ;tatterbeast script is intended to expedite the process of capturing your first 25 beasts by automating this process as much as possible, which it does via the following:

  • Uses BEAST SENSE to determine whether there any spirit beasts in the area
  • If there are, it will determine whether you already have them
  • If you have all the ones listed, it’ll run again and try to find one that you don’t have
  • If it sees one that you don’t have, it will BEAST ATTUNE to select it, then BEAST CAPTURE to capture it
  • It will then wait 15 minutes before cycling again

It’s meant to be left running while you play, but beware that if you’re in combat, it’ll throw you into 15-20 seconds of round time when it runs again, so exercise caution.

After you capture a beast, unless it’s Perfect quality, type BEAST EX twice to release it.

Some related handy commands:

  • What Spirit Beasts have I captured? -> BEAST LIST ALL
  • How do I equip one? -> BEAST SELECT <BEAST>
  • How do I check to see if it’s Perfect? -> BEAST INFO
  • How do I see how many I’ve captured total? -> BEAST STATUS

If you can’t find any new beasts in your area, go to a nearby town and run ;tatterbeast again.

Capturing Your First Legendary

You can capture your first Legendary! Check the list to see which one you want and where it lives, go there, and use:

  • BEAST SENSE to find it
  • BEAST ATTUNE <BEAST> to attune to it
  • BEAST CAPTURE
  • If it’s not Perfect, BEAST EX twice, then repeat until you have a Perfect

You no longer need ;tatterbeast, so you can ;autostart remove tatterbeast. Instead, you’ll need a new script: ;spiritbeast. You should download this, but you don’t need to add it to your autostart scripts.

Now that you have a Perfect Legendary of your choice, let’s make sure he’s loyal. We’ll do this by feeding him blood. The process is as follows:

  • Put your blood vial in your syringe:
    • GET SYRINGE
    • GET VIAL
    • PUT VIAL IN SYRINGE
  • Find a creature to hunt (any level, but make sure it’s the same noun each time)
  • Kill it
  • Do the following:
    • KNEEL
    • DRAW <creature> WITH SYRINGE (N.B. You must type out “syringe”)
    • Repeat 5 times until the vial is full
  • Turn syringe
  • BEAST SELECT <BEAST> to make sure you have the right one selected
  • BEAST OFFER VIAL
  • Repeat until its Loyalty is maxed out

Now we can move on to the main attraction: training your Spirit Beast, and getting some XP on the way!

Leveling Your Spirit Beast

There are four areas in Talondown arena with which you should familiarize yourself:

Key Locations in Talondown Arena
Location Description
The leaderboard (entrance) READ LEADERBOARD to see who’s leading Listed Fights this week!
The arena (NW) This is where you’ll fight your beast to level it up, get rewards to upgrade it, and also get experience for your character.
The shop (NE) This is where you’ll buy items and upgrades for your beast, repair or sell equipment, and receive rewards for your fights.
Basic items (N, GO DOOR) This is the room we went to before, where you bought your talisman. If your beast’s loyalty wanes and you need to feed it more blood vials, this is where you’ll buy them (1000 silver each).

Before you begin fighting, you may wish to read this separate strategy guide which was written by the best Spirit Beast players in the game.

To begin training your beast, you can go to the arena and then:

  • INQ TRAINING
  • GO GRATE
  • BEAST CHALLENGE ACCEPT

I recommend turning the clickable hyperlinks on (Alt-L in Wrayth, by default). As a very basic starting strategy:

  • LASH until you have 3 points
  • SPECIAL
  • Repeat
  • When your Spirit Beast is “in bad shape,” use HEAL

When you’re ready to begin scripting your training, you can:

  • ;spiritbeast training 10
  • You may need to run this twice to get it to start

Once your beast is level 20 (some start as early as 16, but this will likely be difficult for a new player), you can try the Challenge matches. These are level 20 opponents who grant bonus XP. There are 7 different challengers, and they reset weekly:

  • INQ CHALLENGE
  • GO GRATE
  • BEAST CHALLENGE ACCEPT
  • You can also do ;spiritbeast challenge 7

When you have rewards, you can go to the shop, then REDEEM. You’ll be given a sack with ampoules, armaments, or other items.

Ampoules

  • +1 bonus to a beast’s statistic
  • You can only have +10 max in any statistic from ampoules, so plan ahead
  • Emphasize your beast’s strengths rather than shoring up weaknesses
  • Power is probably best, Defense is the weakest, Speed is also good

Armaments

  • You can CLEAN ARM to reveal your armament, which is an item you can equip on your Spirit Beast
  • The armament type you get is based on the Spirit Beast you have equipped
  • You can BEAST EQUIP <ITEM> to put it on your Beast
  • Beasts can only have one armament equipped at a time
  • Armaments get damaged over time
  • They can be repaired in the shop with INQ REPAIR, but their durability decreases
  • The Rebirth status (Phoenix Hatchling) / Troll's Tenacity (armaments) are very strong early on
  • You can sell extras in the shop via INQ SELL

Soulstones

  • Use these carefully, they’re currently worth about 2-5 million silver
  • You may wish to save them for beasts that are difficult to catch Perfect versions of, or ones which are only sold at events

Other Spirit Beast Facts

  • Soulstones set the beast’s quality to Exceptional
  • Spirit Beasts can be altered at special merchants
  • There are limitations, including that:
    • The noun may not be fully alterable
    • The Special ability cannot be changed at all
    • The service typically costs 1 million silvers