The Vagabond Ras Skin – Why It’s Not a Spec Change, and Why Meru Is Different

Another topic that crept up and has had wavering attention in the E7 Global community since its “suggested” appearance has been Vagabond Ras. This is the version of Ras we see in the Unrecorded History portion of the game, the post-Ritania story of Ras’s travels back through Reingar, Ezera, Solayuu and the rest of the first 10 locales we visit, during his quest to rid Mercedes of the Archdemon’s taint.

At this time there were many fans who thought this was a sign of an upcoming specialty change. Well, as of this writing, that never happened. And it likely won’t.

It Simply Wouldn’t Make Sense

Every Specialty Change has one thing in common – it is a quest to make the original character stronger. Vagabond Ras is the opposite.

According to the story, Ras has tired after the battle with the Archdemon. He is weaker. And by the end of the trip, having convinced Diche, the Goddess that empowered him and gave him his immortality, to leave the world to its own devices, he is little more than an experienced human in terms of power. In fact, much of the dialogue in the Cidonia story has been his reflecting and/or lamenting the fact that he’s not as strong as he used to be since he no longer has the Goddess’ protection.

Based on that story, there is no way that Ras, as his vagabond self, could be a Specialty Change. He hasn’t gotten any stronger. It’s the opposite; he’s weaker. Given that, there’s simply no rationale to have a specialty change.

That Leaves A Skin

So, if not a Specialty Change, that pretty much leaves two options – a new character, or a skin. But, as we just established that Vagabond Ras is a weaker version of regular Ras, at best only as strong, a new character wouldn’t make much sense. Strength and ability wise you wouldn’t be able to justify him being 4 or 5 stars, and there isn’t even a reason to assume he’d change from a fire elemental. Creating a brand new 3* Ras doesn’t make much sense at all, not in the way something like Seaside Bellona made some specious sense.

Instead, Ras would be more likely to go the route of Sez – he’d just get a skin, probably as an Epic Pass like the other skins we’ve had thus far.

This potential didn’t really exist when Vagabond Ras first appeared in the story because there hadn’t been any skins yet. But, that clearly isn’t the case now. There are only 2 examples; Sez’s summer outfit, and Angelica’s schoolgirl outfit. One is connected to their appearance in an in-game event, the other isn’t. The thing about skins is that they can be connected to a story or event, or not. The developers have so much freedom with how to handle skins, they can do almost anything they want with little regard to the details of the game or anything like that.

Why Not Arch Meru?

If Vagabond Ras is suitable for a skin, why not Archdemon Mercedes? Well, I think that is actually very plausible. If you’re looking for a way to get that aesthetic in the game the way many fans seem to want, but don’t want to go down the complex road of how to balance her as a hero, how to make her available enough for folks to get while suitably difficult for a prized unit, just making her a skin for regular Mercedes or Celestial Mercedes makes a lot of sense. You would even like to do it for Halloween.

But, this option isn’t without its own issues too.

For one, that would not likely satisfy most folks. Unlike Vagabond Ras, we already know what a full kit of abilities and attacks looks like for Arch Meru. There is already a ton of built up expectation for her being a playable character. For her to then end up being just a skin would most certainly be a letdown. How much of one? Who knows? Many people will still jump at getting her as a skin anyway, so from a pure profit motive standpoint, there likely isn’t any reason not to just make her a skin; make the same or more money, save about half the headaches.

Another consideration, however, would be the character the skin works on. Like most things involving Meru, they would likely make it as applicable to regular Meru as they do to Celestial Meru, so the likelihood would be that you can just run an Arch Meru skin on whichever Mercedes you want (read as: Celestial Mercedes). Let’s face it though, other than newbies or weirdos like me, most folks are going to want to put it on Celestial Mercedes since they likely haven’t even had a set of gear on regular Mercedes since clearing Chapter 1. It wouldn’t make a ton of sense to make it available only for Celestial Mercedes – unless you have some side story to explain that decision. And I don’t know that a lot of people will care that Celestial Mercedes would get the skin and not regular Mercedes. But again, story wise, it would make sense for either regular Mercedes or both regular and Celestial, not Celestial alone.

In the end, I do think they could go the route of having Arch Meru as a skin, but it’s not likely they will want to do that and then have to deal with a bunch of folks complaining incessantly about not making her a character. I don’t know that is necessarily the case for Vagabond Ras. I’m sure Ras receives just as little, if not less, use than regular Meru, but Vagabond Ras is not the cure to that. All the “hope” and “power of friendship” speeches are not going to make Ras stronger now than he was before. A future version of Ras maybe – the Ras that will likely emerge towards the end of the Cidonia story – but not the Vagabond version. Vagabond Ras is an easy target to pin hope of a buffed Ras that players can use for content, but he’s not a real, honest to goodness, proper vehicle. We probably need to wait until we get closer to the end of the Cidonia story for Ras to get some sort of powerup – however Smilegate makes room for that in the story. I think that around this time would also be the best bet for a Ras release - probably somewhere near next anniversary.