Vulture Mask



The vulture mask's purpose is to protect the weak spot of the vulture: its face. It can be obtained by hitting the vulture's face with a spear, or knocking it off with a powerful explosive. Unmasked vultures are persistent and will pursue whatever removed their mask across multiple cycles.

After it's knocked off the vulture (or looted off its corpse), the mask can be worn in order to frighten off lizards. A countdown timer is started when a lizard sees Slugcat wearing the mask, after which the lizard will no longer run away, and will return to trying to hunt the player. The countdown length is 17.5 seconds for regular masks and 30 seconds for king vulture masks. Slugcat will wear the mask when not otherwise occupied with the hand holding it (i.e. while climbing, crawling, swimming). The mask has no collision with projectiles. The mask cannot be thrown, and can only be dropped. As with other items, a lizard's tongue is capable of ripping the mask from Slugcat's hand.

Most lizards will react to Slugcat with great fear while they are wearing a vulture mask. While they may still bite Slugcat if they are close, they will typically make every effort to run away. Black, Green, and Red lizards are exceptions to this. Black Lizards are blind, and so do not even notice that Slugcat is wearing a mask. Greens are temporarily pacified around vulture masks, rather than scared. King Vulture masks frighten lizards much more than a normal mask, and are capable of scaring away even a green lizard. This is because normal vultures are unable to eat them and ignore them, while king vultures do target greens. Red lizards ignore both the vulture and king vulture mask when worn by Slugcat and pursue them as normal, just as they would vultures.

Vulture masks are prized by Scavengers, who will typically trade most weapons and resources for them, though they are not as highly valued as data pearls. King vulture masks are valued even more highly, as high as pearls even, and scavengers will trade any object for them.

Trivia

 * While eating or swallowing an object, Slugcat will lift the mask off of their face.
 * Masks need to be held in Slugcat's hands and cannot be swallowed for storage.
 * Red lizards are the only lizard capable of taking down a vulture or king vulture. It is possible that they will de-mask them too, which can lead to easy pickings for Slugcat.
 * Maskless Vultures are attacked by other vultures with masks, suggesting some sort of status lost when de-masked.