I’m still waiting for GU61 to go live in EQ2, so I’ve been spending a lot more time then normal in Rift. Their 6 month anniversary kicks off tomorrow and yesterday evening was filled with so much in-game goodness that I almost forgot that’s how games are supposed to be. To start things off I decided that I would drop mining and pick up a second ‘main’ craft instead of having two harvesting classes. I went with Runecrafting, because I tend to win purples in dungeons a lot that I have no use for. I’d like to be able to break those down into useful bits. I spent the evening working on the craft, and found myself at 300 with very little trouble. Now my cleric has 300 Artifice / 300 Foraging / 300 Runecrafting. It also means that I can gain a second lure weekly, and opening more crafting rifts is always a good thing. Speaking of which, those re-set today, and I’m looking forward to spending my day hunting down crafting materials.
The second half of my evening was spent doing world PvP – in specific PvP Rifts located in Stillmoor. I decided against going with a pvp specific spec, and have been using my duracell spec + pvp gear. I seem to be handling myself just fine in world PvP, in Warfronts it’s hit and miss. I picked up three pieces of Cavalier gear yesterday which is T1 PvP gear basically, giving me some valor in order to be a little more resistant to player attacks. I earned 25,000 lifetime favour, which was a nice feat for myself, and gathered a few more achievements. I had forgotten to do my DRR, but I did my daily PvP quests which were quite fun.
I’m enjoying the way faction (notoriety) works in Rift. There are a LOT of factions and each one has a number of merchants who want to sell you goods based on how well known you are to them. Some of the major ones include Icewatch – they sell a head adornment I’m trying to get. There is a room off of the crafting room that includes a handful of faction merchants for each rift type. They sell all sorts of things like recipes, lesser planar essences, and lures to open the DRR. Oh, and of course little cute furry companion pets.
While it’s still true that most of what there is to do in Rift involves killing and slaughtering something, I have found the game at 50 quite a bit more enjoyable then it was grinding to 50. It doesn’t exactly make sense, because technically it is still grinding (faction, dungeons, pvp) but it feels different, a lot more fun – and that’s what matters. Speaking of – I managed another T2 run last night, although I forget which dungeon it was. I believe it was Runic Descent. I didn’t get any upgrades but I won a purple dagger no one wanted (which I broke into bits via runecrafting) and I earned plaques which is always nice. I’m about half way towards my T2 gloves, with any luck I’ll have them by the end of this weekend. I only like doing one or two dungeons at a time before moving on to something else, so it’s a bit of a slow grind for me.
As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!
Glad to hear you’re enjoying Rift. I also love how it feels at 50 vs leveling up — on my cleric, anyway. I’ve got my warrior to 42 now and it still feels like more of the same. Hopefully the last few points being added in to “finish” my current build will make a difference. As it is, I’m loving my cleric to death at 50 — doing T2 runs, expert rifts, and even just heading to Stillmoor and AE grinding through mobs in front of the citadel for the cloth drop (and the faction doesn’t hurt either). My current build does so much dps and still has decent self-heals, so I can pull as much as possible before it leashes and take it all out. Health only actually drops if I accidentally pull an elite mob with it, but that’s not a big deal — I still beat up the elites just fine too. I like this build a lot and am glad I swapped over to it.
Now I’m working on being able to craft the nice new epic pieces for myself. I may just grab all the mats and let a guildie make it, though — I’m still short of the plaques I need to buy the recipes as of yet. But they’re coming. . . . slowly but surely they’re coming.