Category:Flares

Flares are a common property that many weapons throughout Elanthia possess. Generally, flares occur when striking the opponent about 25% of the time depending on the type and potency of the flare. They can do from 1 to 60 damage, averaging about 20 damage per flare, depending upon a random selection.

Types of Flares

There are five common types of flares, three uncommon types, and a number of flares that are only seen on special weapons.

Common Flares

• Heat flares - effective on cold-type or water-type creatures, as well as trolls and most undead. Most forms of trolls take double damage.
• Cold flares - effective on fire-type creatures.
• Vibration flares - effective on earth-type creatures, such as pyrothags.
• Lightning flares - effective on most creatures, but when used in water-filled rooms, may conduct back to the user.
• Acid flares

Uncommon Flares

• Plasma flares - effective on undead. Also, sanctify bestows plasma flares on non-flaring non-weighted weapons.
• Holy Water flares - available only through Holy Blade and behaves as acid on undead and (harmless but visible) water on living creatures.
• Steam flares
• Vacuum flares - These are often found on sonic weapons or coraesine weapons.

Special Flares

• 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.
• Jovn's mechanical flares - These do slashing, piercing, and crushing damage, depending on if they're blades, spikes, or rods, respectively.
• Shadowdeath flares - These do only blood-loss type damage. No wounds. Only found on "black alloy" weapons.
• Disruption flares - Seen on Tsanah's black ora weapons.
• Bubble flares - newly released at Ebon Gate 2008 by the merchant Slawgruf they offer a protective bubble about the wielder for a minute or so similar to stone skin from what the merchant said at the time

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; the cleric spell, Holy Blade (when cast by a cleric with 40 or more ranks in the Cleric Circle); or the minor elemental spell, Elemental Blade. 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.

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, etcetera). 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.

Reactive flares can be added to shields and armor, but not piece armor, through the Premium Points system.