Ravager

Summary
The Ravager (Previously known as the Hurler) is a medium sized creature of the Dirtbeast class. It is variant of the spitter that uses ranged attacks at a short distance. It is the toughest of the medium sized creatures.

Description
The ravager is a variant of the spitter. The ravager's skin is furless and green, dotted by dark spots on its back. The ravager's head is completely black, with the exception of green glowing markings on its skin. It has green spit sacks, covered in a thick webbing on its throat. This dirtbeast also has dark spinal plates running from the base of the neck to the tip of the tail. The ravager's back is covered by long quills and two antennae-like protrusion extending from the shoulders. Like the other medium sized Dirtbeasts, the ravager is a quadrupedal creature, lacking the claw seen on the squatter's front paws. Because of the large spit-sacks, the ravager appears larger than the squatter, and as of Release 15 is physically larger than the spitter, grubling and skulker.

Behaviour
The ravager behaves similar to the spitter, choosing to walk rather than run like the ravager. It prefers to keep it's target at close range, where it can attack with a short-ranged burst attack. It has a strong melee attack that it will also use when the target is in range. It's attacks consist of:


 * Ranged Attack: The hurler will hunch down, and give a low growl to charge it's attack. The charge up period lasts 0.5 second, after which it will hurl 12 balls of spit at the target in a single burst. If the hurler is staggered during the charge up time it will not spit, and will once again have to charge up to use the ranged attack. The hurler will attempt to be within 10 m of the target before spitting. If the target moves away within the charge up time the hurler will still continue its attack. The 12 projectiles are released at the same time in a single blast, but have a very large spread, so it has to be very close to the target for each projectile to hit. If the target moves behind the hurler it will not be able to attack and will then readjust to face the target before charging it's attack up once more.


 * Left Downward Slash: If the target is within close range the hurler will slash down with its left paw.
 * Right Upward Slash: The hurler will swipe its right paw upwards to attack the target if within melee range
 * Combo attack: The hurler will first swipe up with its right paw before slashing downwards with its left paw. The time between attacks is approximately 1 second.

The hurler will occasionally jump from side to side in an attempt to dodge incoming attacks, and will try and re-position frequently in an attempt to avoid damage and attack it's prey

Like other dirtbeasts, the ravager spawn by burrowing up from underneath the ground, either due to the the extraction of minerals, natural spawning, or being forced to spawn by a howler.

Variants
The ravager has 5 variants that appear in game:


 * Standard Ravager: This is the base version of the ravager and appears frequently throughout a match
 * Weak Ravager: This variant is identical to a standard ravager, but has a weaker attack and lower health than a standard ravager. The weak ravager is spawned by a howler.
 * Storm Ravager: The storm ravager is much darker than the standard ravager. The spikes on its back are black, and the spinal plate and glowing markings on its skin are all a bright glowing golden colour. It is stronger than the standard variant.
 * Thunder Ravager: The thunder ravager is grey with black spots. It's quills and spinal plates are completely black. Tiny sparks of lighting arc over its skin. This variant typically spawns in late game, and is stronger and tougher than the standard variant.
 * Mutated Ravager: This variant will drop biospheres for collection for the Hunt contract, and is significantly stronger and tougher than the standard variant. The mutated ravager appears pale with a pink head and back, and brightly coloured quills and shoulder protrusions.

Lore
The Ravager spit is corrosive in itself, but it is so damaging due to 'cycle' energy that is concentrated within it. The 'cycle' energy is gathered and concentrated by the 2 large antennae like protrusions on the shoulder blades.

The Ravager is in fact a mutated grubling, which rapidly evolved due to the Cycle on Fortuna III.