Traveling Spirits

## Spirit Page

A **Traveling Spirit** is a Seasonal Spirit from a past Season who appears in Home for a few days. These visits are the only way for players to purchase Expression upgrades, cosmetics, and a Wing Buff from past-Season Spirits, alongside Returning Spirits. One randomly-selected Traveling Spirit returns every two weeks, arriving on Thursday and departing 96 hours later on Sunday.

## Overview

Traveling Spirits were introduced to provide players with an opportunity to trade with Seasonal Spirits from past Seasons and acquire Expression upgrades and cosmetics they may have previously missed. Even players who completed the Spirit's Season can benefit from Traveling Spirits, because one Wing Buff is available from each new Traveling Spirit. Also, new items are occasionally added to a Spirit's offerings; in particular, several new Props for Shared Spaces have been introduced.

Traveling Spirits provide an opportunity for new players to (eventually) acquire all of the collectibles offered by Seasonal Spirits. None of the Ultimate Gifts from past Seasons are available (all of which were offered by the Season Guides, not the Seasonal Spirits).

Only players who have completed Valley of Triumph can see the Traveling Spirit at Home. This means you must have been to the Valley Temple and must have meditated at its altar; you do **not** have to find any Spirits, unlock any Expressions, or buy any cosmetics. Players will see the Traveling Spirit even if they have never relived the Spirit's memory, however if they try to interact with the Spirit, new players are told "This Traveling Spirit is passing through the Realms of Sky. Find their lost memories and become their friend before they leave!" Meaning that in order to access their Friendship Tree, the player must find and relive the Spirit's memory and collect their Expression.

Players must have started the fourth Quest from Season of Revival to be able to see the Traveling Spirit at Aviary Village. This means you must have unlocked the Map Shrine there to find any Spirits, unlock any Expressions, or buy any cosmetics in Aviary Village.

Players who have previously purchased items from the Traveling Spirit (whether in-Season or on a previous visit) will see those as unlocked items in the Spirit's Friendship Tree. This includes cosmetics, higher Level Expressions, Hearts, Wing Buffs, and some Blessings.

Only Seasonal Spirits return as Traveling Spirits, but TGC has mentioned that Season Guides and the Shattering Light and Darkness will return in some form, bringing their cosmetics. The latter two were included in the Steam Wishlist Goal vote for a future visit, but TGC has yet to confirm if they will function as typical Traveling Spirits like all other standard Seasonal Spirits.

## Schedule

One Traveling Spirit appears every two weeks (even when there is no active Seasonal Event). The Traveling Spirit appears at Home, standing on the small island in the middle of the koi pond (near the closets), or in Aviary Village, standing behind the friendship constellation statue in the village plaza area. They appear at server reset Thursday morning, stay for 96 hours, and leave at Sunday night's reset. More specifically:

* The Spirit appears **Thursday at 00:00 PST/UTC-8** (during Standard Time) or at **00:00 PDT/UTC-7** (during Daylight Saving Time).
* The Spirit leaves **Sunday at 23:59 PST/UTC-8** (during Standard Time) or at **23:59 PDT/UTC-7** (during Daylight Saving Time)
* The next Traveling Spirit will arrive two weeks later at the same times above (depending on your time zone: e.g. For London, server reset is at 07:00 PST/UTC-8 or 08:00 PDT/UTC-7).

During their visit, clicking on the Spirit in Home or Aviary Village will always show a countdown with the remaining time before their departure.

The order used for Traveling Spirits is randomized. There is no way to know which Spirit will appear next, nor to know when a specific Spirit will appear. Guidelines provided by thatgamecompany are:

* The same Traveling Spirits can, and will, appear more than once.
* Spirits from the current Season and previous Season are not eligible to be Traveling Spirits: "Spirits are tired after a particular Season has passed, and will not return as Travelers until another Season is over." **Therefore, Season of Revival** **cosmetics won't be available as Traveling Spirits until Season of the Nine-Colored Deer** **concludes.**
* Traveling Spirits appearing in the Mainland China server (NetEase) differ from those in the global release.

Inferences based on past patterns are detailed below.

thatgamecompany starts to release information about the identity of the next Traveling Spirit a few days before the Spirit arrives.

* Hints are released in the #general-sky-discussion channel of the official Discord server. Typically, one hint is released on Monday (three days before the arrival), and several more early on Tuesday.
	+ The complied list of all the Traveling Spirit hints can be found on a subpage, Traveling Spirits/Hints.
	+ All of the hints provided to date, categorized by Season, have been complied by Koame. (Note: This site can occasionally be out-of-date.)
* A teaser image (silhouette only) is released roughly 36 hours before the Spirit arrives (i.e., midday Tuesday server time). This image is released in the #news channel of the official Discord server, Sky Facebook page, Twitter page and Instagram profile.

## Friendship Tree Information

When a Spirit first returns as a Traveling/Returning Spirit they always offer all the same items as they did during the Season. Any previously Season Pass exclusive items become available to all players. Relative to the in-Season Tree, the items are completely reorganized and their costs are all changed (into non-Seasonal currencies and also more expensive). In addition a few new items are added -- a Wing Buff (cost 2 ) is always added, but new cosmetics may also appear (new placeable Props are particularly likely). Anything bought from a Traveling Spirit shop will also reflect on what's sold on a Returning Spirit's shop.

To read more about the Friendship Tree, visit the Seasonal Spirits page.

## Historical Appearances

See Spirit Visits for all Spirit appearances and statistics based on them.

## Visit Randomness

Although the "order Traveling Spirits appear in is random," older Spirits tend to visit before newer Spirits, and Spirits that have just visited wait a while before they visit again.

Never in the history of Traveling Spirits has a Spirit from a newer Season visited before at least one Spirit from each of the past Seasons has visited, even with the growing number of new Seasons with Spirits that 'could visit' because "another Season is over", and usually more than one. This means that as Spirits that haven't visited before a certain Season decrease it becomes more likely for a Spirit from that Season to visit because a Spirit from after it won't until one from that previous Season has. I.E. a Spirit from AURORA won't visit until one from Performance has, so as Spirits that haven't visited from before Performance approach 0 it will become much more likely for one from it to visit, since one from AURORA won't before then, but a Spirit from Performance could still visit any time.

Never in the history of Traveling Spirits has a Spirit visited twice in the same Season and usually not without a whole individual Season between. Also, even though Spirits that have already visited make up a large portion of the total Spirits, a disproportionate number of new Spirits appear. This is seemingly a necessary deviation from randomness to slow the increase in the growing number of new Spirits that haven’t visited in coordination with the addition of Seasons with only 4 Spirits.

Traveling Spirits do appear randomly, but there are limitations and precedents that inform this randomness. It is not 100% random. There are patterns that haven’t been broken for a long time.

## Notes

* Traveling Spirits were first introduced with the Season of Rhythm update (Patch 0.8.0) in January 2020.
* The first two Traveling Spirits were from noon on Friday to the end of Sunday and visited for 60 hours. The duration was extended to 96 hours in Patch 0.8.4, starting with the third Traveling Spirit, they visited from Thursday through Sunday.
* On May 27, 2020, thatgamecompany announced a change in future pricing for Traveling Spirits' Friendship Trees to balance the pricing of items. All Traveling Spirits affected by this change have since returned at least once.
* The very first Traveling Spirit to receive a hint was Provoking Performer, for their second appearance on October 1, 2020

## References

1. ↑ thatgamecompany official Support website: “What is a Traveling Spirit?”
2. ↑ Sky News - System Update: Traveling Spirits (July 9 2021)
3. ↑ thatgamecompany has mentioned future plans to bring Ultimate Gifts using some other mechanism, but details have not been announced.