With Rift's sixth beta event set to begin this Friday, the team over at Trion Worlds hasn't been slacking. In a recent post to the official Rift forums, Assistant Community Manager Erick "Zann" Adams posted the latest changes for the next beta, which includes a series of PvE/PvP activity overlapping changes. For starters, Wardstones of the opposing factions can no longer be attacked. Instead, players will begin to find new faction specific PvP objective Wardsones starting in the newest area, the Scarlet Gorge.

Additionally, the quest camp guards have been buffed up and made a bit smarter, while the previously weak and defenseless Porticulum Masters, who found himself camped and murdered mercilessly last beta, has been given some back up to ensure that he can hang around and give players their needed ports.

• Wardstones in Quest Camps aren't supposed to be attackable targets, or provide rewards for defeating them. The rewards on those were a bug that's been addressed. Those are part of the PvE land control game of rifts and invasions.



• Guard AI behavior was a little less smart than it should have been. We're improving it such that guards behave much more like an NPC bearing that name would be expected to.



• Guards in PvE areas will prove to be considerably more challenging vs. player targets. They still provide a similar challenge to PvE invasions, but now will be much harder in PvP. We'll be tuning this over time. Expect to see some first balance out during the next beta.



• The Porticulum Masters in particular have enlisted the help of the Portal Defense Force. When they're attacked in PvP, you can expect them to put out a call for help over the planar Porticulum network.

The latest changes are aimed at providing viable PvP options to PvE severs without intruding on normal PvE objectives. Check out the full post on the official Rift forums for all the details.