Animalistic Spirit

The Animalistic Spirit Weapons and Shields, also known as Animalistic Fury, were first released at pay event Duskruin in August 2020 at the Untamed Spirit shop.

Overview

Off the shelf, these items were sold at +20 enchants and contained offensive script flares called Animalistic Fury which were grapple criticals by default. On top of that, individuals could add the more typical flares.

Available Spirit Types and Allowed Alteration Nouns

Large feline	lion, lioness, panther, tiger, puma, catamount, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard, cheetah
Small feline	cat, kitten, bobcat, lynx, serval, caracal, margay, ocelot, jaguarundi, snowcat
Canine	wolf, jackal, fox, fennec fox, hyena, dhole, coyote, dog, bush dog, foxhound, bloodhound, wolfhound, mastiff
Avian (predatory)	hawk, falcon, eagle, owl, barn owl, snow owl, screech owl, gyrefalcon, peregrine falcon, kestrel, osprey, goshawk, kite
Horned and hooved mammal	stag, deer, goat, antelope, buffalo, bison, bull, oryx, wildebeest
Equine	horse, pony, stallion, mare, zebra, donkey, mule
Snake	snake, serpent, cobra, asp, adder, boa, boa constrictor, rattlesnake, corn snake, mamba, eel
Aquatic mammal (with flippers)	dolphin, whale, orca, seal, sea lion, walrus
Small rodent	mouse, dormouse, rat, squirrel, chinchilla, hamster, cavy, gopher, groundhog, lemming
Ursine	bear, grizzly bear, polar bear, black bear, brown bear, cave bear, red bear
Rabbit/hare	hare, rabbit, jackrabbit, cottontail, arctic hare, snowshoe hare
Porcine	boar, iron boar, pig, hog, warthog

Each weapon or shield has a slightly different ANALYZE depending on its base.

Example Shield Analyze

---- Animalistic Spirit Shields ----
-General Script Information-
This is a shield with the spirit of an animal trapped within it.
The spirit is wild and must be tamed by unleashing it against like-level foes, or successfully blocking against them during combat.
If not fully tame, the spirit within can backlash upon the owner.
Allegiance can be changed, but the new owner must work off the trust gained by the previous owner.
When striking, there is a chance the spirit will unleash Animalistic Fury flares.
-Alteration Guidelines-
* Alterations to the 15/15/15, long and show of this shield are fine.
* Some merchants can change the spirit color, spirit call or how the spirit looks.
NOTE: You cannot change the general type of animal, such as changing a large feline to be a canine, except using certificates.
As well, each spirit type only has certain pre-approved nouns allowed.
-Features-
* Animalistic Fury Flares (Tier 1 of 4)
The spirit within lashes out with a stampede. (Damage Type: Grapple)
Flares are currently: ON [RUB to toggle]
* Revenge Flares = Locked
On a successful block, there is a chance to unleash Animalistic Fury flares. You must be in a forward or greater stance and be an active combatant in combat for the spirit to react.
NOTE: Power of this ability is tied to the Flare tier.
* Wild Backlash = Locked
When Animalistic Fury flares hit, the spirit within lashes out with its untamed anger, causing a momentary reduction in the target's DS and TD.
NOTE: Power of this ability is tied to the Flare tier.
* Savage Power = Locked
Once an hour, draw on the power of the spirit within your weapon for an increase in AS, CS and critical padding by CLENCHing the aegis.
* Flavor Actions (Tier 1 of 3)
At this tier, this shield captures the following:WEAR, REMOVE, RUB (Flares On/Off), WHISTLE.
* Tameness/Affinity
Tame the spirit to prevent it enacting its rage upon you.
Only one person can have allegiance to this shield's spirit at a time.
The feeling of this spirit toward no one is wild (Level 0 of 12).
NOTE: To start taming this shield, damage a like-level foe with it or block a like-level foe's incoming attack while in combat.
-Current Settings-
* Spirit: bear (Type: Ursine)
Available nouns for this type are: bear, grizzly bear, polar bear, black bear, brown bear, cave bear, red bear.
* Spirit Descriptor: burly
* Spirit Color: misty green
* Spirit Call: growl

Example Weapon Analyze

---- Animalistic Spirit Weapons ----
-General Script Information-
This is a weapon with the spirit of an animal trapped within it.
The spirit is wild and must be tamed by unleashing it against like-level foes (successful hits), as well as successful parries (melee/runestaves) or evades (UCS/ranged) from like-level foes during combat.
If not fully tame, the spirit within can backlash upon the owner.
Allegiance can be changed, but the new owner must work off the trust gained by the previous owner.
When striking, there is a chance the spirit will unleash Animalistic Fury flares.
-Alteration Guidelines-
* Alterations to the 15/15/15, long and show of this weapon are fine.
* Some merchants can change the spirit color, spirit call or how the spirit looks.
NOTE: You cannot change the general type of animal, such as changing a large feline to be a canine, except using certificates.
As well, each spirit type only has certain pre-approved nouns allowed.
-Features-
* Animalistic Fury Flares (Tier 1 of 4)
The spirit within lashes out with a stampede. (Damage Type: Grapple)
Flares are currently: ON [RUB to toggle]
* Revenge Flares = Locked
On a successful parry (melee/runestaves) or evade (UCS/ranged), there is a chance to unleash Animalistic Fury flares. You must be in a forward or greater stance and be an active combatant in combat for the spirit to react.
NOTE: Power of this ability is tied to the Flare tier.
* Wild Backlash = Locked
When Animalistic Fury flares hit, the spirit within lashes out with its untamed anger, causing a momentary reduction in the target's DS and TD.
NOTE: Power of this ability is tied to the Flare tier.
* Savage Power = Locked
Once an hour, draw on the power of the spirit within your weapon for an increase in AS, CS and critical padding by CLENCHING the bow.
* Flavor Actions (Tier 1 of 3)
At this tier, this weapon captures the following:WEAR, REMOVE, RUB (Flares On/Off), WHISTLE.
* Tameness/Affinity
Tame the spirit to prevent it enacting its rage upon you.
Only one person can have allegiance to this weapon's spirit at a time.
The feeling of this spirit toward no one is wild (Level 0 of 12).
NOTE: To start taming this weapon, damage a like-level creature with it or successfully parrying (melee/runestaff) or evading (UCS/ranged) attacks from a like-level foe while in active combat.
-Current Settings-
* Spirit: hawk (Type: Predatory Avian)
Available nouns for this type are: hawk, falcon, eagle, owl, barn owl, snow owl, screech owl, gyrefalcon, peregrine falcon, kestrel, osprey, goshawk, kite.
* Spirit Descriptor: angular
* Spirit Color: misty green
* Spirit Call: screech

Affinity/Taming

As the spirits within the items are wild and untamed, you must tame the spirit to prevent them from backlashing on you. The backlash happens if you are wielding the weapon/shield (i.e., held in hand or worn in the case of UCS gloves/boots). The backlash is different depending on the weapon or shield type - melee weapons and runestaves will make it so you cannot parry, UCS gloves/boots and ranged will give you a DS/TD debuff, while shields will make it so you cannot block. NOTE: This is only a very short effect and does not happen all the time. The more tame the spirit is, the less chance it will backlash and the shorter the backlash will last. When fully tame, the spirit will not backlash on you at all.

To tame the spirit, you must successfully hit like-level foes with the weapon/shield, or successfully parry(melee/runestaves), evade (UCS/ranged), or block (shield) attacks from like-level foes while you are in a forward or greater stance and actively participating in combat.

The spirits will only trust one person at a time - if you want to pass this weapon/shield off to someone else, the new owner will have to work off the trust gained by the previous owner before gaining trust of their own.

The more tame the spirit is, the more powerful the Animalistic Fury flares will become. You can unlock the ceiling/potential top end of the flare strength by unlocking the flare tier. Off the shelf, the flares will max out at regular flare strength.

Unlockable Features

Unlockable Extra Features

Animalistic Fury Flares	While these weapons/shields come with this grapple-based offensive script flare off-the-shelf, you can unlock the ceiling of the flare's potential power even more. (NOTE: The flare power scales based on your affinity with the spirit, the flare tier only raises how high the flare's power can go when the spirit is fully tame.)
Revenge flares	Unlock this to have a chance to unleash Animalistic Fury flares upon a successful parry (melee/runestaves), evade (UCS/ranged) or block (shields). NOTE: You must be in forward or greater stance and be an active participant in combat recently for the spirit to be roused into responding. IE, you can't just stand in defensive in front of a creature and let the flares kill things for you. As well, UCS gloves/boots reactive flares will NOT proc if your hands are full. You should NOT expect these to work unless you actually use UCS open-handed Brawling - no casters wearing these for an extra reactive flare chance. In addition, only one piece of equipment will reactively flare on each successful evade, so you will not be able to get multiple flares from gloves/boots on the same evade.
Wild Backlash	Unlock this to add a DS/TD debuff to your target when Animalistic Fury flares hit. The stronger your Fury flares, the stronger this debuff becomes. NOTE: This is essentially a -5 DS/-3 TD debuff per flare tier. Unlocking this will add the debuff to the flare itself, so consider it a boost to the flare itself with the power tied to the flare tier. At max flare tier, the debuff is -20 DS/-12 TD.
Savage Power	Unlock this to be able to draw upon the strength of the spirit within your weapon/shield once every 60 minutes to increase your AS, CS and critical padding for 2 minutes. Each unlock adds equivalent to 1x accuity (+5 AS/+3 CS) up to +25 AS/+15 CS at Tier 5. You need to CLENCH the weapon/shield to activate this, and the cooldown is applied to your character itself. (IE, you will not be able to activate a weapon and a shield in the same 60 minute period.)
Damage Type Change	If you are unhappy with the default Grapple damage of the Animalistic Fury flares, you can change the damage type to something else (either a common damage type or uncommon damage type). Please be sure to READ the vouchers to see what types are available.
Fluff Action unlocks	There are 2 unlocks available to add more verbs/actions to your weapons/shields that are pure fluff. These are completely separate from the flare tier unlocks to allow you to expand the fluff actions without having to pay a premium price if you do not want the extra power.
Spirit Change	If you want to change the type of spirit in your weapon/shield (IE changing a feline to a canine), you can use this certificate. All GALD merchants should be able to change the color of the spirit, but only limited merchants can change how the spirit looks in general, while only certificates can change the overall "type" of the spirit. Each "type" of spirit has a limited list of pre-approved nouns/species that will work for that type in alterations.

Questions and Answers

GM Avaluka provided these potential questions and answers in the release post.

- Does this work with Ranged?
Yes, the flares do fire with Ranged, but they do NOT fire with every shot. The flare chance is equivalent to if you were swinging a weapon.

This also works with UCS, runestaves and all shields. Armor is not available at this time.

- Can I add this to an existing weapon/shield?
Not at this time unfortunately. There will be a small selection of some weapon bases this run, as well as all sizes of shields, but you will not find every single weapon base available off-the-shelf. I tried to cover the more popular bases this run to try to appeal to most.

- How long will it take to fully tame the spirit?
Hard to say - it depends on how much you use it. The spirit is tamed by successful hits with the weapon/shield, and successful parry/evade/block while in forward+ stance and actively participating in combat (depending on the weapon/shield you have- these must be done with a like-level foe that you can gain experience from. You do not need to kill the creatures to get credit for taming - they only care about whether you do damage, bloodthirsty spirits that they are.

Due to shield maneuvers not being used as much, shields can also gain affinity from any successful physical attack if the shield is being wielded in the left hand.

- How does the flare tier affect the flares?
The flare tier only affects the potential power of the flare, /not/ the flare rate. The flare rate of Animalistic Fury flares is always a base flare rate that you'd see with any flare. The flare power is dependent on the flare tier, but this is a ceiling of how high the power will go. The power itself scales based on your affinity with the spirit. OTS weapons/shields have Animalistic Fury flares with the ceiling of normal flare power.

- Do I need to unlock all of these different features in some kind of order?
No, not really. The only ones dependent on "order" are the unlock certificates in the same "feature" (IE, you'd need to unlock the flare tiers in order from T2 up to T4.) However, you can easily unlock Wild Backlash and Revenge flares on something without even unlocking the flare power beyond the first tier. If you do not think you want Savage Power, you do not need to unlock it at all. If you are more interstsed in the fluff verbs, you can just grab those. It is a mix and match approach.

- How hard are these to enchant/ensorcell?
They do have a difficulty to them on par with similar scripted weapons. The penalty is flat, however, so an OTS weapon/shield will have the same penalty even before it is unlocked, so you do not need to worry about enchanting first before unlocking abilities.

- So the flares will not work on these for UCS gloves/boots at all?
That is /only/ the case for the Revenge/retaliatory flares. Offensive Animalistic Fury script flares will still fire on your UCS gloves/boots with UCS attacks, even if you have Brawling weapons or a shield in your hand. If you plan to try to take advantage of the Revenge flares firing on a successful evade, however, these will /not/ fire if you have anything whatsoever in your hands (both hands must be empty.)

Messaging

Lion spirit flare messaging

You attempt to jab a greater burrow orc!
You have good positioning against a greater burrow orc.
UAF: 537 vs UDF: 108 = 2.000 (capped) * MM: 100 + d100: 60 = 260
... and hit for 30 points of damage!
Fast strike jars the spine.
The burrow orc is stunned!
Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup jab attack!
Riotous misty green energy races along the surface of the gloves, slender tendrils rising up to coalesce into the ethereal form of a lithe lion.
Baring its sharp teeth in a snarl, a lithe ghostly lion charges forward with a deafening roar as a stampede of wispy misty green lions roil forward in an angry torrent!
... 25 points of damage!
Solid leg grapple, pulls muscles to their limits!
It is knocked to the ground!
A turbulent cloud of misty green light lashes out from some gloves with an echoing roar!
Rage fills the orc's eyes as her body tenses up.
Roundtime: 2 sec.