Faerie Abilities Guide Series: Level 100

Hello again, and welcome to our series of guides on the new Faerie abilities! In this series, we not only describe the Faerie abilities released in Y15 for the new Battledome, but we also analyze the abilities for you, providing advantages and disadvantages of each ability, comparisons with the other abilities in that tier, and suggestions for how to best use the abilities to your advantage in the Battledome. This week, we are discussing the Level 100 abilities. Each ability in this tier costs 6 blessings of two elements and 8 blessings of a third element. For instance, Shroud costs 6 earth blessings, 6 fire blessings, and 8 dark blessings. After you purchase one ability, you can switch abilities in the tier for half of the original cost of your new ability. For example, if you purchased Shroud and then decided you wanted to switch to Float, it would cost 3 air, 3 water, and 4 light blessings.

The Abilities

Shroud

Cost: Earth, Fire, and Dark Blessings

Shroud is so shrouded in mystery that nobody is really sure what it does. Fan Sites and other popular faerie ability petpage guides still don't list any effects for Shroud. According to Aethia's Ability Academy, Shroud will "increase your resistance to dark, fire, and earth," implying that this will block some percentage or amount of dark, fire and earth icons. To our knowledge, though, nobody in Neopia has been able to find any effects of this ability. Thus, we suggest that you consider the other two abilities in this tier and, once Shroud has been shown to have some effect, consider switching to it for the half-price cost if you think it may be useful for you.

Float

Cost: Air, Water, and Light Blessings

Float, like Shroud, increases resistance to certain icon types, but for this ability the affected icon types are air, water, and light. Float will block approximately 20% of the icons received of each type, and it can be used once per day. While at first the 20% block may seem like a lot, consider if you are attacked with Sword of Ari, which deals 15 icons of air damage. Float will block approximately 3 icons of that damage, meaning you're still subject to 12 icons worth of air damage.

Float doesn't help protect against earth, fire, dark, or physical icons, so if you want to be prepared for those attacks, you can pair Float with shields that block those icon types such as Sophies Magic Hat, which provides 5 icons of defence against earth and 3 icons of defence against each of fire, dark, and physical. Other options include Leaf Shield, which protects with 5 earth icons and 3 physical icons (as well as 5 water icons), or Patched Magic Hat, which also protects with 5 earth icons and 3 physical icons (as well as 3 light icons), and has a chance to provide 3 extra physical defensive icons if you receive an air attack.

Burrow

Cost: Light, Dark, and Earth Blessings

Like the other two abilities in this tier, Burrow provides additional defence to the user, but unlike the other two abilities, Burrow includes an element of randomness! This ability, which you can use once per day, blocks 100% of the damage you receive of 3 random icon types. The icon types can change every time you use it!

The randomness can make Burrow a little hard to plan with, but it's still a useful ability. Out of 7 possible icon types, Burrow will save you from receiving damage from 3 of them. However, you have no way to predict which icon types Burrow will protect you from, so you could use Burrow while your opponent attacks you with a Dr. Sloths Personal Bath Buddy for example and if Burrow defends against light, earth, and air, you'll still take the full 14-icons worth of damage. On the other hand, you could get lucky and have Burrow defend dark, water, and fire, in which case you wouldn't take any damage from that weapon! Burrow's unpredictability can lead to some frustration on the user's part, but it can also frustrate an opponent for similar reasons.

Because of its unpredictability, one might be tempted to use shields with Burrow, but you don't (and can't) know which icons Burrow will defend against, so you don't know which shields to use to supplement your defence. Thus, Burrow is best used with attack weapons. Leave your defence to chance and focus on causing damage to your opponent. This strategy is best for risk-takers. If you're entering into a particularly important battle, and especially if you only get one chance to win, you might want to choose a different strategy and different ability.

Note: As of writing this, Burrow does not block dark icons. The log in the Battledome will indicate that dark icons are blocked, but the damage is still dealt.

Recommendation

Overall, we recommend Burrow in this tier. From the little we know about all three abilities in this tier, it appears Shroud and Float only allow partial blocking, while Burrow offers full blocking of three random icon types, excluding physical due to the ability and dark. It is still unclear if the inability to block dark icons is intentional or a glitch, so this may change in the future. Though the types of icons Burrow affects are random, and there is the chance that you could wind up fully blocking only two abilities if dark happens to be your third random icon type, a 100% blocker for 2-3 icons is usually still more beneficial than a partial blocker of 3 icons. This is especially true when it comes to 2-player fights where you don't know your opponent's set ahead of time to tailor your defence icon type. The one possible exception to this recommendation is if you find yourself frequently in 1-player fights with the same opponents. Because you can find out what weapons they use, you can tailor your ability to their attack strengths. For example, if you find yourself fighting challengers who have weapons that mostly do dark, light and air icons such as the Giant Ghostkerchief or Plumbeard, you might be better off opting for Float, as you'd be guaranteed partial blocking of 2 of that challenger's most used icons. If you opted for Burrow, you'd have a chance to block 2 out of 3 icons fully (remember, Burrow has trouble with dark icons). But there's also a chance that you could block nothing, if the random icons Burrow defends against for the turns are the other 3 possible icon types that can be blocked by the ability. However, because the types Burrow blocks change randomly with each use, there is a good chance that on many occasions, you'll be able to fully block at least one icon type, which can be fantastic when battling opponents with high strength boosts. Because Burrow is the most versatile, we are giving it our overall recommendation.

Conclusion

Once again, the best ability in the tier depends on your prefered strategy. You can choose your ability based on whether you like randomness or predictability. Luckily, few abilities are as unpredictable as those in this level! Next time we'll be discussing the Level 200 abilities, each of which deal with freezing or weapon disabling. Come on back to learn more!

Because these abilities are still in Beta and potentially suffering from glitches, it's possible their effects could change, with or without notification. Please keep this in mind when choosing to purchase any of these abilities.