RIFT MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Thirty days into one of the smoothest launches in MMOG history, the team at Trion ups the ante with the first major content patch of their new title. Rift launched with more content than any other new game ever had, and the content team flexed its collective muscle by introducing The River of Souls patch so quickly. With such an ambitious and robust amount of additions, tweaks and fixes we will spend the next few weeks looking at the major points of the patch. We start our overview of patch 1.1 with some of the biggest additions and fixes, next week we will continue with a look at the changes made to the souls of Rift.

WORLD EVENT

The most dynamic of the content unveiled in the patch, The River of Souls helps to flesh out the story of Alsbeth; a formerly highly revered Guardian Ascended who’s betrayal helped sow permanent discord between the factions and made her one of the most important players among those loyal to Regulos. Not content to rest on her laurels, Alsbeth is up to even more nefarious work with her group: the Endless Court.

•  The Endless Court invades Telara! This worldwide event for all present-day Telara zones and level ranges culminates in the opening of the River of Souls raid zone.
  

The invasion is taking place in stages and revolves around Alsbeth’s desire to somehow corrupt or capture energies from the pipeline that carries the fallen souls of Telara. The first stage was unlocked the patch was released, with subsequent stages set to roll out over the next few weeks.

•  Events and rewards are available for characters of all levels!
  

Even players as low as level seven can conceivably earn rewards and help to turn the tide against Alsbeth, with rift events and invasions occurring in every zone.

•  The new World Event UI keeps you up-to-date on current and future event progress. Check it out to see where your server stands in the fight against the Plane of Death.
  

Appearing just above your quest tracker, and with a similar look and feel, this interface device works well to help sever as a visual guide to the current state of affairs. It would be nice to see a bit  more detail here, but given the nature of the invasions and the desire of most players to keep their interface uncluttered, it works pretty well.

•  Quest starters in Meridian and Sanctum offer currency rewards for special vendors, including limited-time items only available during this event.

Located near the porticulum are several NPCs that give single and daily quests, as well as a vendor that offers some vanity pets and class specific rings. You will need a special currency known as Otherworldly Sourcestone to purchase these items. Completing the daily quests, in addition to participating in the world events will net you plenty over the course of the event.

VIDEO CAPTURE

The inclusion of in-game Twitter feeds and screenshots for achievements helped tie the game well to the social media aspect of MMOGs, but the addition of in-game YouTube functionality takes it to a whole new level. Spurred on mainly by meme creators, the number of game related videos on the popular video site has gone through the roof in recent years. Adding this aspect to the game really puts Trion on the cutting edge of community builders in the genre.

•  You can record video through RIFT up to 3 minutes in length. If you add a YouTube account through the Settings menu, RIFT will automatically upload videos to that account!
•  Type /record or press CTRL+Y to start recording. Use it again to stop!
•  Small icons next to the minimap show when video is recording and encoding.
•  Once encoding is complete, you will have the option to upload if you have attached a YouTube account.

GENERAL

•  After merging your group with another public group, you can now un-merge it! Look for the menu option to Unmerge Group if you were the party leader of a group that has been merged.
•  Fixed the loot bug where only the tank could get mob loot.
•  All artifact nodes now have a consistent 1.5 second gathering time.
•  You can now accept a quest on behalf of your guild even if your personal quest log is full.
•  Guild members cannot be promoted while offline.
•  If a group disbands after killing a mob with loot that would otherwise trigger a roll, that loot is now free-for-all.
•  Fix for quickly opening a series of clickable loot (such as geodes for gems) with auto-loot that would occasionally result in lost items.
•  Server Announcements now stay on-screen for twice as long.

• There are now Raid Rift daily quests! See Abbess Katia in Sanctum or Raj Tahleed in Meridian. These award Inscribed Sourcestone which you can use to buy all sorts of cool things.
  

Having tons of content is a good thing, having tons of content with dangling carrots of tangible rewards is a *great* thing. While some players may decry any sort of currency based vendor loot as “welfare epics”, they allow goal oriented gamers the ability to prioritize their playtime and set attainable goals for themselves.

•  Angelic Flight and Mighty Leap will not interrupt movement when used (auto-run or holding down a movement key).

 One of those trivial things that bothered me, and while I know minor issues shouldn’t be major complaints – the devil is in the details.

•  Fixed multiple status updates going to Twitter during important discoveries.

Once again Trion fights spam at its source – oh the irony.