League of Legends Throwback Thursday: Feral Flare

In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we take a look at an item not seen in a League of Legends game for over two years, Feral Flare.

Let me take you folks back to a simpler time: League of Legends Season 4. Doublelift was still on CLG, Vel’Koz was the most recently-released champion in the game, and yours truly was just discovering how much fun the game that would dominate the next half-decade of his life would be.

Back then, the jungle was a completely different place. The Red and Blue buffs had their own little buddies watching their backs – the Cinderlings and Sentries, respectively. Scuttle Crab hadn’t been introduced yet. Where the Gromp camp now stands, there was a Wight and the Ancient Golem and his brethren occupied the area where the Krugs now live.

It was a fun time to learn jungle in the early days of Season 4. You could easily run through the jungle with champions like Vi, Udyr, Amumu, and Shyvana thanks to the simplicity of the newly-introduced jungle items. But one stood out, for better or worse, among the rest.

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In Patch 4.5, Riot introduced a jungle item called Feral Flare, and it would change the way the jungle was viewed forever. You see, originally the jungle item Hunter’s Machete could build into one of two items: Madred’s Razor or Spirit Stone.

While Spirit Stone could be upgraded to one of three spirit enchantments – Spirit of the Ancient Golem, Spirit of the Elder Lizard, or Spirit of the Spectral Wraith – Madred’s Razor was only upgradeable to one item, Wriggle’s Lantern. Wriggles not only gave its user bonus damage and attack speed, extra damage and gold from monsters, and a free stealth ward, it introduced a unique concept to the jungle.

You see, each time a champion with Wriggle’s Lantern secures 30 champions kills, assists, epic monster kills, or even large monster kills, the item upgrades to the fabled Feral Flare. Feral Flare was an infinitely scaling jungle item that granted its user bonus damage that increased with each stack!

And remember, you could get these stacks just by killing camps! That means, each time you went into the jungle and did a full clear with Feral Flare, you were adding a permanent six to eight damage to your basic attacks!