Flaming (Item Power)

Flaming
Item Power
Cost	300
Required Spellbooks
Valid Items	Sword Mace Axe Bow Staff Wand
Effect
Sword Mace	+3
Axe	+3  +3
Bow	+3
Wand Staff	+3
Availability
Create Artifact Treasure Merchant The Gift

"Flaming" is an Item Power associated with the Chaos Realm. It is a modest but consistently-useful offensive enhancement which may be added to Magical Weapons created for Heroes via Create Artifact. Some of the 250 premade Items possess this power, and these can be found mainly as Treasure during the campaign.

Effect

A Wizard with a functional understanding of Chaos may conjure an unquenchable, living fire to inhabit an artifact. The fire attunes itself to the nature of the weapon and the intent of the wielder, causing extraordinary damage.

"Flaming" imparts a straight Damage bonus during the type of attack for which the host weapon is designed. These are, respectively:

• Bow:  Ranged Missile Attack
• Staff, Wand:  Ranged Magical Attack
• Mace, Sword:  Melee
• Axe:  Melee and  Thrown Attack (if applicable)

"Flaming" is not, in any of these cases, Fire Damage. This is a good thing; not only does this bonus ignore Fire Immunity, but it also gets bundled with the Hero's raw attack strength for the purposes of overcoming his enemy's  Defense.

For instance, if Gunther the Barbarian is equipped with an "+3 Axe of Flaming" bearing a normal  +3 Attack enhancement plus "Flaming", he achieves a total of  +6 /  +6.

Strategy

This is one of several Powers which may be used to maximize a Hero's potential attack strength. Since it functions as a standard attribute boost, it is not redundant with any spells or abilities and is always helpful— provided you can afford the extra time and cost in creation, and do not need the enchantment space for something more crucial.

Point-for-point, "Flaming" is less mana-efficient than increasing a weapon's attack bonus in the increments from  +0 to 2, but it is more efficient than the increments from  +4 to 6 possible on maces, axes, bows, and staves. Referring to the above example, Gunther's "+3 Axe of Flaming" has a base cost of  600, while a functionally-equivalent "+6 Axe" costs  900.

"Flaming" is thrice as mana-efficient as Nature's Giant Strength Item Power.

Acquisition

Create Artifact

Main article: Item Crafting

With 2, "Flaming" may be added to a Weapon of your own design through Create Artifact. Making strong Items through this spell is an incredibly expensive and time-consuming process. Some recipes are more expensive than the Spell of Mastery. The proposition is made more reasonable by the Artificer and Runemaster Retorts.

Overland

Main article: Magical Items in Treasure

The game data files contain 250 pre-defined Items. Of these, 13 possess the "Flaming" power. While this power does not, of itself, cause a premade Item to demand that the Wizard have any particular Spellbooks in order to appear in a Treasure Hoard, almost all of the other Item Powers do, and their requirements are highly irregular. Six of the "Flaming" items are nonetheless available to the entire spectrum of Wizards.

There are three different ways by which you can acquire one of these pre-defined Items:

• By winning a difficult Encounter.
• By purchasing it from a Merchant, a random petitioner.
• As result of a Random Event called "The Gift".

It is often better to acquire items in this way, as it means you do not need to spend any time or  Mana to create them. Still, Items found through these means are in no way guaranteed to exactly suit your needs.

The table below lists the pre-defined Items with this power.

Premade Items with "Flaming"
	Item	Attributes				Realm Powers		Required Ranks
500	Dragon Slayer	2				Flaming
550	Flaming Sword of Death	1	2			Flaming
750	Flaming Axe	4				Flaming
1400	Hells Bolt	2	2	2		Flaming
1650	Flaming Staff	5	10	-1		Flaming
1750	Double Axe of Pain	4	2	5		Flaming
750	Sword of Medusa	2	2			Stoning	Flaming				2
1000	Elvish Longbow	4	1			Resist Magic	Flaming				2
1050	Wand of Fiery Death	1	1			Water Walking	Flaming				2
1600	Storm Mace	3	5			Lightning	Flaming				5
1900	Little Flicker	2	10			Destruction	Flaming				5
2950	Bow of Hazard	4	3			Destruction	Flaming				5
3050	Chaotic Staff of Fire	4	2			Chaos	Flaming				6