Rift

Event Stuff (Or Not) #Rift

stargrace April 17, 2011 1 Comment

It was just by luck that I heard about phase 2 beginning at all on Saturday, I was convinced the date was set for the 17th (Sunday) – but I happened to tab over to the Rift forums where they announced that the EU event had already taken place, and that the next events would be staged between 1pm-3pm PST. I quickly let friends know, and watched as many of them attempted to log in (and met up with horrible queues). Myself? I decided not to log in at all. I heard that phase three would be taking place in a higher-level zone, a place I would have no access to port to, and I wasn’t about to walk there at level 25. I also didn’t really want to deal with masses of angry players all trying to figure out what was going on.

I happily watched friends participate, take their videos, and it did look like a neat event for those who managed to make it in game and participate. It opened up a new raid rift, which is pretty awesome. After a two week phase one I felt a little let down by the 30 minute phase two and then the nearly instant phase three.

It didn’t take long before the forums were filled with outcries of players who were all upset about how things had run. Trion decided to compensate everyone by making a post stating that if you have an active account, they are going to assume that you meant to take part in the event, and will be mailing you your goodies. These goodies include achievements (minus the final phase three achievement because you can currently go out and bow to the npc required still), goodies ranging from common to ultra rare, and some sort of quest satchel with enough time to complete it – as well as 250 shards, and the shards shall continue to drop for a bit for those players who wanted to collect more items from the vendors (myself, I’d like the companion pets at least. I own one but there’s still three more to collect).

Congratulations, you didn’t even have to log in or do anything (except complete phase one?) in order to end up with a mail box full of goodies. It’s a learning experience, and I appreciate the effort that went into putting on an event like this, but I think simply handing out rewards diminishes the importance of the event to begin with – whether Trion considers portions of it a mistake or not. It may also come to be something players expect, to be handed out free goodies when things don’t go their way.

While it would have been neat to have been involved in something on that large of a scale, I just didn’t want to deal with all of the other headaches that went along with it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Cleric Finally Hits Stonefield #Rift

stargrace April 15, 2011 5 Comments

I’ve been leveling really slow. I mean, REALLY slow. It’s for a few reasons, the main one being that I haven’t actually played Rift a great amount in any one sitting. It’s a few hours here and there in between playing a lot of EverQuest. As such, I just hit level 25 last night, and myself and Ogur (pictured above) just hit Stonefield when I reached 24. Someone asked me how I managed to stay in Freemarch for so long, and it was quite simple. I did a LOT of rift fights when the game first released. Now they’ve slowed down a considerable amount, I haven’t seen the map crowded like I once did and I find the large invasions have become a bit rare. Whether this is due to my server specifically (I play on Deepwood) or because everyone is crowding the higher level zones thus leaving mine barren, I’ve no idea.

I wanted to make sure I finished all of the quests in Freemarch before I moved on, and I think I managed to complete all of them but two. Those I deleted because I was tired of the same zone, I’ve been there since release, after all. Stonefield is pretty and the quests I’ve done so far are enjoyable. One had me battling gigantic trolls, which really made me feel incredibly small and powerless – which was great. In the same chain I then had to turn myself into a troll and read some glyphs scattered throughout the area – towering above everyone else was a fantastic feeling (until an invasion landed on my head, combat morphs you out of the transformation). Crafting supplies seem a bit sparse compared to Freemarch, but it could be that everyone else has been collecting (except plants, those I found in abundance). I’m finding a new difficulty with playing a priest in Rift fights. When everyone first started the game this wasn’t an issue, because there were no level 50’s running around completing level 20 rifts. I was healing a LOT, and there for contributing a lot. As time goes on I see more and more players above the level of the rift participating in the events – which is fine except that my personal contribution goes WAY down because no one is taking any damage for me to heal.

My only solution has been to switch to my DPS spec (Justicar / Druid / Shaman) and wail away at the mobs. Then when the invasions are over I switch back to my heal spec so that I can keep my tank alive as we plow through our quests. I’m not really surprised at healers having a harder time, the same happens in EQ2 public quests as well, healers are second rate citizens (especially lately, there have been major issues with heals not counting towards contribution) and making a contribution to what is going on always seems hard. My tank friends on the other hand is always way up there in contribution. I would really love to see some sort of magical ‘easy answer’ to this problem but I doubt very highly that one will come.

In the mean time I just try to participate in every single rift and invasion that I see. I’m toying with changing my spec’s around a lot. I find myself not using warden (thinking of switching to druid for the pet but I’m unsure) and on that same note, I’m not fond of the shaman build either. Perhaps that’s a goal for today, to play around with my builds some what and see what appeals to me on a greater level. I love playing justicar for DPS, and I love sentinel for healing but I would enjoy branching out a bit. Then there’s also my 10 scout and 10 mage to level up eventually. For now they’re acting as crafters, I have Stargrace (25 cleric) who is my Artificer / mining / forager – then Kameeko (10 scout) is my Outfitter / butcher / armorer, and Velours (10 mage) is my apothecary / runecrafter / misc (I haven’t decided yet). It’s one more thing that makes me truly appreciate EverQuest where I can focus on ONE character, and work on aa to unlock every craft that I’d like to work on. I wouldn’t have the alts if I could do it all on one.

P.S. WRU player housing. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Rift: Hotfix #15: 7:00am PDT 4/10/11 – #Rift

stargrace April 10, 2011 No Comments

WORLD EVENT
* Phase 2 of the World Event has been rescheduled for April 16 at 12:00pm server time, due to the stability issues discovered this morning. The World Event UI now shows the updated date.
* For Phase 1, new Trinket items, Lesser Essences, and weapon glow effect items have been added to the World Event merchants.
* Minor Death Rifts now all drop 4 Otherworldly Sourcestone. Major Death Rifts drop 8. Death Zone Events and River of Souls daily quests now award 15 Otherworldly Sourcestone.

GENERAL
* Re-added the ability to promote guild members who are not online.
* Fixed a bug with taunts not always working correctly, especially on initial pulls.
* Audio: Corrected the repeating buff sound from Beastmaster’s Protective Companion.
* Fixed a chat bug that allowed sending of fake server messages.

ZONES

GREENSCALE’S BLIGHT [Raid]
* Players can no longer enter the Hylas arena without being teleported during the critter phase.
* Life Aura should spawn more reliably.

IRON PINE PEAK
* Telara On the Brink: Fixed a bug that would often cause this quest to not function properly.

SHIMMERSAND
* Sight Unseen: Players who die in Farsight Tower should now be able to resurrect at their corpse if they choose to respawn.

MOONSHADE HIGHLANDS
* Increased the respawn time on some named faeries in Faering Woods if no players are nearby who need them for quests.

Sentinel / Warden / Purifier Mix #Rift

stargrace March 4, 2011 6 Comments

I’ve been splitting my time between EverQuest and Rift, which may seem like an odd combination because they’re both your basic fantasy MMO and one is coming up on its 12th birthday but they each offer me a slightly different feeling. In Rift I have been playing my (now) 20 healer – I’m spec’d Sentinel / Warden / Purifier with 20 points into the sentinel tree and the rest into warden for heals over time. I debated going 20 points into purifier which is a ‘single target’ heal spec, but I spend too much time healing in rifts to devote myself to one player, I really need to be able to heal a crowd all at once. As you can see above, this spec really pays off (finally). When I first started out with this spec, around level 13-14 it was incredibly hard for me to rank anywhere at all on the leaderboard. I just couldn’t compete with other players so I made myself a dps heal build which involved the justicar and with that build I was scoring MUCH higher on the leaderboard. As I leveled up I grew frustrated with the lack of healers – or to be blunt, the lack of clerics spec’d as actual healers. So I switched back to my trusty sentinel and took it upon my self to do nothing but heal. I do tab the main bosses and throw my three instant cast nukes out there just so I have a little damage to go along with my heals, but for the most part I’m targeting all of the other players, all of the time.

Last night was my first adventure into Iron Tomb, and I knew little to nothing about the zone but found it quite fun. The group was made up of our warrior tank (level 17), two rogues, and a tank / dps spec’d cleric along with myself. One of the rogues decided mid-instance to randomly go AFK. After about 10 minutes they returned, claiming that they had to have an important conversation about college with a friend, and it was much more important then the video game. I replied that perhaps they could have at least taken 2 seconds to let the group know what was going on since we had been waiting, unsure of what was happening. They said that their priorities were far more important. Thanks. I understand real life happens but honestly when you do have four other people waiting (even if they are strangers) it’s just polite to let them know you’ve got to go AFK. Needless to say I won’t be inviting Tosh to any more groups.

There was only one death in the zone and it was my own. We had to destroy three mounds of dirt in the zone and during the destruction swarms of mobs spawn. They don’t hit particularly hard until you have 20 of them all hacking away at you – and I had aggro from all of them due to healing. My self shield wasn’t enough to keep them off of me. I really wish Rift had an aggro meter, I think the game could benefit from one. I won myself a pair of blue shoes, and completed quests that seem to only reward weapons. Why so many weapon rewards! I’d love to see a shield reward (I know a tank one drops within the zone).

It seems that every time I level, I happen to be dead. I hit 20 within the zone, the one time I died. 19 was when a Rift spawned and killed me. Ah well.

All in all I’m having a lot of fun. I’ve been working on my crafting, and I’m in the 23+ range now. Until I leave Freemarch supplies are getting sent to alts since I am on a higher tier. My main (the cleric) is an Artificer, making jewelery, wands, and other caster weapons. My alt (a bard / ranger / marksman combination) is my outfitter, making cloth and leather gear and most importantly – bags. Bag space is ever an issue in Rift. My 3rd character is a mage (dominator, necromancer, chloromancer combination) and is an alchemist, making potions to use. I really needed mana potions on the cleric.

It’s nice to see all of my friends all playing the same game even if we’re not all on the same servers. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!