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Summoning Familiar Details - Spirit Wolf Summoning Familiar Details - Spirit Spider

Have you ever wished that the oh-so-annoying evil chicken would be on your side for a change, helping you in combat instead of trying to kill you? Well, you can’t have that most foul of fowls as a familiar, but his little brother is available for duty: the dreadfowl. This fine specimen of pugnacious poultry is just itching for a fight, and brings with him an attack very similar to that of the infamous bane of Dharokers everywhere.

The dreadfowl looks like, well, an oversized chicken. It is mostly tan colored, with white markings on its chest, wingtips and tail, and striking red plumage around its face (Figure 262). It’s a low level familiar, requiring just level 4 Summoning, and so easy to both summon and chat with: you only need a Summoning level of 14 to understand it. The dreadfowl doesn’t really have much to say, mind you; all it wants to do is get into combat. But hey, chickens never have been known as great conversationalists. J

The dreadfowl has a combat level of 17 and just 12 HP, but despite those limitations, it can do a decent amount of damage on lower-leveled monsters. It combines a standard melee attack with a magic attack that you can initiate with scrolls or a right-click option.

The dreadfowl has the ability to temporarily raise your Farming skill by one level. Note that this does allow you to plant seeds and harvest crops one level above what you normally could.

The essential information for the dreadfowl can be found in Table 55; for a discussion of the table’s entries, see the topic Explanation of the Familiar Summary Tables.

* Note that rancid (green) raw chickens obtained from undead chickens near Port Phasmatys will not work.

The dreadfowl is the lowest level familiar providing a non-combat benefit: using the “Interact” option, you can select “Farming boost” to get a temporary +1 bonus to your Farming level. This is useful, but not a lot—consider that a cheap, easily obtainable garden pie gives a +3 bonus with a lot less hassle. The dreadfowl’s bonus doesn’t stack with other Farming boosts, either.

Still, if you are only one level away from something you plant often, and you have a bunch of these scrolls around anyway, it’s a nice way to use some of them up. For example, I am currently level 78 Farming, and so I could bring a dreadfowl with me on Farming runs if I wanted to plant several loads of dwarf weed seeds.

As a low-level familiar, the dreadfowl is obviously not a force to be reckoned with in combat. That said, it can sometimes land hits on surprisingly high-level opponents, even if those hits do max out at around 3 HP of damage. I have seen it do a pretty steady amount of damage even against enemies like warped tortoises (which, incidentally, it can damage even if you haven’t chimed the beast and it is “immune to your damage”).

The dreadfowl’s main attack is a melee “peck”, while its special move is a magic attack very reminiscent of that of the infamous evil chicken I mentioned earlier. Interestingly, it will often generate that magic attack automatically, by itself, without using any scrolls—sometimes in addition to its melee attack. This mix of attacks means that it will quite often do at least some damage to many monsters.

The dreadfowl also has a rather confusing right-click ability—it is just called “Special”, and isn’t documented in the RuneScape knowledge base. Using this seems to cause the bird to make one of its magic attacks, just like the scroll move, but without using a scroll. I have no idea why Jagex implemented this redundant feature, but hey, a free attack without using up a scroll is nice. It is limited to about one activation every 30 seconds or so, and doesn’t cost any Summoning points.

One creative use for this familiar is to initiate combat using its special move, which you can launch from a distance. Doing this lets you get the first hit, and also saves you from having to run after the monster. You can also use this to gather monsters around you for doing group attacks with Ancient Magicks or chinchompas (see Figure 263 for an example). You can find a full explanation of this in the section “Initiating Combat and ‘Gathering’ NPCs using Special Moves”.

The biggest problem with the dreadfowl, like many familiars, is keeping it alive. It has just 12 HP and basically no defence, so once it comes under attack, it won’t last long when fighting any worthwhile monster. The pouches are cheap, and you probably have a bunch of them from leveling the skill, so that’s not a big concern. The problem is that there’s only so many you can carry, which limits the usefulness of the familiar.

This is a cute little familiar; it’s not really that great, with both limited combat and non-combat abilities, but what do you expect for level 4 Summoning? Heck, given that, its ability to initiate combat from a distance for a player who is meleeing looks pretty nice. And the Farming boost, while nothing to write home about, could be handy especially for lower-level players.

Millions of dreadfowl pouches have been made since Summoning came out, because it’s the one everyone makes between level 4 and level 10. Yet despite this glut, dreadfowl pouches are locked at a floor price of 312 gp each on the Grand Exchange. If you don’t have any and want to buy some, you can easily get a good deal well below the “market price” (cough) by posting a buy offer on the RuneScape forums (Summoning board).

The same goes as well for Dreadfowl Strike scrolls.

Summoning Familiar Details - Spirit Wolf Summoning Familiar Details - Spirit Spider