So my friend and I were joking around about how shankles are "living traps" and all that, but what if they got a little scarier? To me, it looks like they lift up to "look" around, searching for food. Sensing potential, they recede into their invulnerable form and continue patrolling that area, blindly bumping into obstacles and changing direction. Of course, they'd recede anyway to avoid exposing themselves too long, that's dangerous for a shankle to do. But they stay in that area because of...game logic...but also I like to think they patrol in one area because they're sensing something, probably the equivalent of "air plankton," and trying to find it there.

I propose the Sighted Shankle. This rare shankle has a chance to replace any shankle, as with other rare monsters, though it will only deal normal damage, no matter which type of shankle it replaces. It has an eye on top and an appetite for bigger things - you, as well as other monsters (I would like to see more enemies going after each other, I mean, chromalisks seem way to chummy around slimes, despite that the lore says they love to eat 'em...anyway). As soon as something gets in range, you can see the eye focus on, dilate, and follow it, and the shankle will take the shortest path to its target. Of course, it couldn't go along the diagonal, but would move perpendicularly along the tiles of its own volition. The eye can look along the diagonal, of course. This makes it more terrifying IMO.

Since it has that eye on top, it never has to get up to look around...but there are still gold versions. Why?

Knights will have the second strongest aggro pull. We're so deliciously full of energy! It will follow us to the ends of the earth! The horror! The strongest pull is a dead body...I imagine shankles are scavengers by nature, and besides, most creatures don't want to spend energy chasing prey when there's something to eat in front of them. Wait...what?

The shankle has to get up to eat. If something "dies" as a result of its attacks or other damage, it will get up like a regular shankle to consume it. It will stay "up" until the body poofs (a bit difficult to work with if the target was a gremlin and there's a mender nearby, but yeah). For the sake of sanity and the children, we could say it's up to gloat over its victory. Wait, that's worse. Nevermind. Just...shield bump the body away. To make it less gross. Yes.

You can destroy the Sighted Shankle when it's...gloating. The gold ones you can't. Either way, it is advised that you distract the sighted shankle by defeating a nearby monster and having the shankle go to it, then defeating it. Or if it's gold, RUN.

Defeated Sighted Shankles will always drop one of the spark tokens (forge, grim, or primal) as well as a fat heart. Just cause it's special. Or it could drop nothing/hearts only like other shankles, and just be something we run screaming from and see in our nightmares.

Hey, when you think about that knights stuff their faces with the beating hearts of defeated creatures (art from Three Panel Sou), suddenly scavenger shankles with big appetites don't seem so bad.

Thoughts: should they be restricted to an area, or able to follow knights anywhere? Ramps would be kind of funny. Since they're drones, they probably wouldn't have an effect on areas that require the defeat of all monsters in the area to progress, if one follows a player into such a place. IDK exactly how that code works, it seems to flub up royally in C42 with toxoils spawned by turrets. *mumbles off*