[Opinion]Nightmare Tide First Impressions

Goboro Reef is the zone where the most important faction are the Atragarians.

I've been wanting to finish this post a while now, but I didn't had much time to play so it took a while to actually see enough stuff to form an opinion. At this point my brave warrior is at level 62 and already delving into Draumhein, so I'm finally able to speak my mind about the introductory zone of the new expansion.

First Impressions

Corals! A bunch of them. This zone is supposed to be the sea bottom, but due to evil forces most of the areas are dry and the water is contained in big water walls. This idea is actually good as the transition between dry and water areas is done seamlessly just by crossing those same walls. Still, underwater combat is tricky and generally not fun - good thing that's there isn't a whole lot of it.

Quests

Ysolda awards one of the dailies you can find at Atragarian Well.

Quests are not very different from what we're already used to in Rift. Not that's a bad thing. There actually seems to be a lot of lore going on with the fire plane and all. And it ends up with you celebrating and inflating balloons so... Also you get a cool rare minion for finishing the quest line.

As usual, almost every foe npc has a Carnage Quest associated and there are a bunch of them. Most of them are usually cleared just by doing story quests while others are a little out of the way. There's also a lot that consist in killing only one elite mob, easily soloable anyway.

In the beginning there's only one or two daily quests available but as soon you end the story quest line of Goboro Reef you end up with a couple more. On this zone there are daily quests that award notoriety with the Atragarians, Pelagic Order and Manugo League. In a future post I'll go into more detail about those dailies and ways to get notoriety with the different factions.

Nightmare Rifts

I still didn't had the chance to do a whole lot of these, but they seem nice. They do provide a lot of rewards as you mown down enemies throughout the levels. On higher levels they look like regular rifts on steroids, very fun to play. When you do one for the first time you actually might get overwhelmed by the amount of achievements you unlock but don't start thinking it's all fun and games: it won't be easy to unlock all achievements needed to buy lures for higher rank rifts. I'll add more on Nightmare Rifts later when I've done a couple more, hopefully with my guildies.

Manugo

Manugo "slot machines". It's hard to not get addicted.

I'm not yet quite sure what's this Manugo thing, but for what I've seen it mainly consists in making a "number go up" by using a machine. You don't win, you don't lose, you just make the number go up. The daily quest at Goboro Reef awards 250 notoriety (around five times more if you bought one of the digital editions of Nightmare Tide) for making the number go up 20 times. That's it. In my opinion so far, it's just an humorous feature added by Trion but let's wait and see what goodies you will be able to acquire with full notoriety or if there's something more to it than just making the number go up.

Professions

I was kinda lost when after leveling a bit my professions I noticed that there weren't any dailies at Tempest Bay, but it turns out they moved them to Margle Palace at Draumhein, so there I went, at level 60, running around avoiding mobs to get there. Still about the profession dailies: crafting dailies now cost much more platinum than what they award since you have to buy some expensive goods from the trainers to finish them and receive not even half of what you paid for. For instance, for Armorsmith you have to buy two itens that cost 1 plat each and you receive around 80/90 gold for delivering it, plus you don't get any box with goodies or extra plat as before. On the bright side, all profession dailies seem to award more tokens than before.

As harvesting profs I have Butchering and Mining. Leveling Mining is actually pretty easy as there are lots of Thalasite veins everywhere. On the other hand, skinnable mobs are not very common and as a result leveling Butchering is slower. Also you'll find yourself on a permanent shortage of meat (Briskets) for your daily Survival quest - good think my guild's bank has a lot of it.

Minions

Sending minions on adventures is very easy and many times awards sweet goodies like dimension keys.

I've been having a good time with my minions. At this moment I have 10 little creatures that help me by going on adventures and returning with artifacts, materials or little notoriety rewards. It is a very simple system Trion implemented, where you just have to match your minion skills with the adventure and send them for good results. As you get better minions you can match them with the adventures even better and reap improved rewards. If you end up enjoying this system you'll find yourself just logging to check your minions and send them on new adventures even you don't have much time to play. Maybe some kind of interaction with the minions is coming for the Android/iOS Rift application who knows?


I've been enjoying the game, but the major problem is that these new zones are very demanding and sometimes they lag and stutter a bit specially when there are a lot of people on the same area. Except for that (big) detail I'm really excited about this expansion and I'm looking forward to what Draumhein has to offer.

See you ingame,
Jimmie@Gelidra

[Opinion] Embrace yourselves, RIFT 3.0 is coming

Nightmare Tide is the second expansion of RIFT after Storm Legion was released in 2012.

RIFT 3.0 is coming tomorrow at last. I'm really psyched to see what TRION has cooked up this time since I didn't had the time to try it out on the PTS, but I'm guessing it will be either very good or very disappointing.

OK, now it doesn't make much sense to make conjectures about the xpac right on the eve of launch so I'll only talk about what I'm really looking forward.

Minions

Minions will be implemented as an adventure card game
within the game itself. Image from Massively.

Freaking minions. In my opinion it's a cool idea to place a card game inside RIFT as long as it doesn't make me feel that I have to spend too much time, attention or real cash on that mini-game to be successfull or gain advantages over other players. So I really hope they take it slow and don't end up making a Candy Crush Saga type of life sucking device making you coming back to the game every 15 minutes just because your minion completed the adventure you sent it to. Here is a sum up about the minion feature.

New Zones

Yeah, I'm that guy. Every time I enter a new zone it is a must that I uncover it all as fast as possible so when a new expansion comes out it's really funny checking what the designers had in mind for the mountains, vales, forests and...water! I'm really curious to see how the underwater gameplay will feel like, so two of the first things I'll do will be looking upwards - it is said that every zone sky had some love from the designers - and jumping.

Nightmare Tide zones will have three major zones with a possible
fourth zone being added later at the grey area on the bottom right.
Image from Riftgrate.

As long as I'm on firm ground I'll be fine, the problem is swimming. The Ember Isle quests that went live some weeks ago weren't the most funny thing I've done ingame. Maybe water mounts will make moving around underwater less cumbersome, but anyway Trion assured us that only about 10% of the new content will be like that.

Now, I don't know about you, but I really like snowy areas, Iron Pine Peak was small and with too many mountains and Ardent Domain just didn't feel right but Tarken Glacier - the name of the northern zone of the new xpac - seems flatter and bigger and the new continent as a whole kinda looks likes like WoW's Northrend which was my favorite region.

Professions

We will be given more 75 levels and I'm already guessing it will be a pain to max them - mostly the gathering ones - and not only because there will be a lot of people gathering stuff for crafted gear but also because Trion always makes you do the last 30+ levels of gathering on "yellows" and that sucks.

There will be more 75 profession levels with a lot of new recipes to learn...
and spend loads of platinum on. Image from Riftgrate.

So now the max level will be 450 where you'll be a Savant. It might not be the most badass name ever but what you wanted for a 2 meter tall male Bahmi that spends his time dyeing dresses and knitting backpacks?

Conclusion

So what I'll be doing on Rift starting tomorrow is getting my main to level 65 while also uncovering every zone and upgrading professions. Then it's my alt and his profs. This might take a while but I plan to enjoy every moment of it. After that is the usual deal: stack hit, experts, a couple raids with the guild and of course achievement hunting.

See you ingame,
Jimmie@Gelidra.

[Opinion]The Auto Group Dichotomy

When I found and started playing Rift (which is a funny story I'll write someday) this automatic grouping feature was already in place so I can't talk about how the game was before it was implemented. In spite of that, I can form an opinion based on similar games I used to play back then that didn't have this feature.

What's Auto Group?
In RIFT, auto group is a feature that allows you to join anyone near you during any event/quest by clicking a small pop-up window that appears automatically. For this to happen, the players near you must have their public group enabled.

 The Consequences of Auto Group
As many people that have discussed this matter before, I am also concerned about the long-term consequences this feature (now widely used in MMO's) might bring to the community and it's interactions. First, I agree that the main pro is pretty obvious: seamless dynamic; which is indeed very important in such a dynamic game as Rift. Having to ask for/accept invites for group while doing a rift, which is an heavily timed and dynamic (dynamic is the key word here: dynamics, bitch!) event would be extremely frustrating. And auto group makes it extremely easy: no talk, no questions, no interaction, insta group! Well, that's it: while describing in what this features improves our game experience I just said what is, for me, the main con: lack of interaction. We can roam all around Brevane and Dusken, closing rifts, doing hunts, completing world events and whatnot without ever talking to someone else. 

Is this the game that we want? Some might say "well you can still talk if you want". Ok sure, we can. Those of us old enough to know better might still say something polite everytime we join a group, or even ask before joining but who wants to be the talking parrot in a mute game? And by my books things are very clear: "a mute MMO is a dead MMO".

This has clear consequences and some of those can be noticed right now. Certainly driven by the mute nature of the auto group it's a rare event when someone replies to my greetings when joining a SLE. And any more interaction than that is even rarer. For those of us who have a nice guild it easy to endure this game. For those who don't (as I didn't for some time) playing Rift is like playing hopscotch in an abandoned town. I even dare to say that between troll spammers or a chat box with nothing but "Entering Ashora. Leaving Ashora. Soul damage, blah, blah" I prefer the first. Hands down.

Now on the other hand, some people are too shy to talk (even if they don't have to use their own face or voice) and this is an unvaluable feature that allows them to do group content that they otherwise wouldn't do. But hey, MMO's are social games, get over it.

Happy rifts,
Jimmie@Gelidra
 

[Opinion] Daily Quests Counters and Charges

Doing dailies everyday is close to impossible for those with an unpredictable RL.

Contrary to my last entries this post will be more personal and it's mostly a suggestion of something that could help a lot of Rift (and other MMO's) casual players.

If you are like me then your real life is mostly unpredictable: you don't know when you'll be home tomorrow neither if you'll be able to login and do your dailies and notoriety grinds. Then the day comes when you can't do «that» faction dailies and you think "-Damn it, lost another bazillion notoriety points, I will never have my BiS Cape if I keep going like this"... From this thought to give up on dailies altogether it's just a small step.

It would be awesome if Rift could be more friendly to the casual player. I would love to be able to play on a totally irregular basis and still not lose (well it's not exactly that you lose anything, you just don't earn it) any notoriety or currency. How can Rift achieve this? Daily quest charges.

Daily Quest Charges
Basically this could be done by setting something like 7 charges for each in-game quest that has a repeatable property. Then you could do the same quest 7 times in a row, get your notoriety and currency and be done with it for the week. Of course, for this to work, the daily limit should be set up in a way that it would only limit the number of different quests you can do, otherwise by doing less than three different quests seven times each you would be blocked from doing any more.

Now, this may seem like a good idea, but who wants to do the same quests, sometimes dozens of them, several times in a row? Probably the same people who do seven SLE's in a row (I know, you don't do the «same» expert seven times in a row, but let's be honest: how different from each other are they?). Anyway when I do two or three experts in a row I usually don't do any the next day, so it's just a matter of scheduling and customizing your play time. This "charge" idea is already in place for PvP warfronts and PvE dungeons so why not expand it to dailies?

How to Implement it?
In my opinion it would just be a question of keeping a counter for each daily quest ingame. Each one has an ID that can be used to track this: spend a "charge" everytime you turn in that specific quest; add a "charge" everyday at the reset hour.

The problem with this is that there are hundreds of daily quests ingame and Trion would have to find a feasable way to do this without spending to many resources because each player only does a tiny portion of those hundreds of quests anyway.

How to Keep Track of the Charges?
That would be easy, just like the group quests have "Group (X)" in front of them saying it is a quest intended to be completed by a group of X players it could also have something like "Charges (Y)" or just "(Y)", indicating that that specific quest can still be completed Y more times before the server reset.

Other Unexpected Benefits
In addition to be able to customize your weekly/monthly play time it could have additional positive aspects like being able to help a friend (guildie) completing a quest and still be rewarded for it again even if you had already turned it in that day. And then another friend logs in and you do it again...and again 10 minutes later. You wouldn't have any reason to not help a friend in need (it might be a negative aspect sometimes hum?).

In conclusion I want to say that I would really love to see Trion implementing this, maybe for 3.0, since it has no visible negative aspects and with luck it can be implemented automatically thus saving precious resources.

See you all ingame,
Jimmie@Gelidra.

Order Of Mathos notoriety

Made for Rift 2.7
All values presented are base values without any vials.

About Order Of Mathos

Stillmoor main faction is Order of Mathos and it's quartermaster can be found at Zareph's Return (1574,2628).

Stillmoor. Quartermaster Savija can be found at Zareph's Return. Here you can also find most of the daily quests that award notoriety with Order of Mathos.

Quartermaster Savija offers a selection of unique items:

• Check items sold by Quartermaster Savija.

Order Of Mathos Notoriety

There's a variety of ways to gain notoriety with the Order of Mathos. In my opinion the best way should be by doing the daily quests at Zareph's Return. Also killing mobs around Stillmoor should increase your notoriety specially those elites around The Endless Citadel. Here is a Rifthead list of daily quests that award notoriety with the Order of Mathos. Notoriety awarded ranges from +250 to +900 without vials. If you're into fishing there's also two fish exchange quests located at Zareph's Return that award notoriety.

Quartermaster Savija and a couple other NPCs.

Other daily questgivers around Zareph's Return.

Achievement

By reaching Glorified with Order Of Mathos you will get the Knight Of Mathos achievement.

The Runeguard notoriety

Made for Rift 2.7
All values presented are base values without any vials.

About The Runeguard

The Runeguard are the dwarves that stayed behind to defend and free their homeland of Moonshade Highlands. While individuals may have feelings for the gods, or not, as a group they owe allegiance only to the true King of Hammerknel.[1]

The Runeguard Quartermaster Balint is located at Reclaimer's Hold.

By gaining notoriety with The Runeguard you unlock a variety of recipes and other items sold by Balint:

• Check itens sold by Balint.

The Runeguard Notoriety

There are several ways  to obtain notoriety with The Runeguard but like every other "classic" faction after completing story and normal quests one can find itself already deep into Honored. So what can be done after Honored to increase notoriety? The daily quests at Reclaimer's Hold and running the Runic Descent instance are probably the best ways to increase your notoriety.

Runic Descent

Runic Descent is an easy dungeon for a level 60. Here are some values I got while clearing this dungeon:

• +5 notoriety for each normal mob;
• +15 notoriety for each elite mob;
• +250 notoriety for each boss;
• +500 notoriety on completion.

Daily Repeatable Quests

There are a few daily quest at Reclaimer's Hold (around  6305, 1605):

• Riven By The Flood: +2000 notoriety per turn in;
• The Wallowing Abyss: +2000 notoriety per turn in;
• The Loci of Moonshade: +2000 per turn in;
• A Gathering Force: +2000 per turn in;
•  Farthest Fallen: +2000 per turn in.

Plus the usual planar quests:

• Seal Rifts @(6307, 1615): +2000 notoriety per turn in;
•  Kill Rift Creatures @(5522, 2191): +2000 notoriety per turn in.

And the fishing quests (6345,1661):

• Fish Exchange (2 quests): Major Fish Award each one.

 Daily Route

I usually just do the fishing quests once for the unique recipe. After that I normally stick to the "kill/collect" quests. The figure below shows my daily path across Moonshade Highlands when I was increasing my notoriety with The Runeguard.

Daily route at Moonshade Highlands to complete daily quests. Red: by mount: Blue: used porticulum.

First I accept the quest at Timberveil then port to Reclaimer's Hold. That's where I accept the remaining quests and start my journey. I start at the Etched Plains and go northeast to the Hammerknell Fortress. Then south to the lake to activate the underwater locus. After that I go east, kill the demiurge there and move south to The Hammerhead and Faemist Point. My journey is concluded by completing the 3 remaining objectives between Faemist Point and Timberveil again. Use porticulum back to Reclaimer's Hold and it's done. While moving between all these locations I close 4 rifts and kill the 18 rift creatures required.

Achievement

By reaching Glorified with The Runeguard you will get the Runeguard Reclaimer achievement.

[Defiant]Arcane Hand notoriety

Made for Rift 2.7
All values presented are base values without any vials.

About Arcane Hand

The Arcane Hand are the residents of the Droughtlands, descendents of the sorcerers of Eth. They are neutral with respect to Defiant and Guardians[1].

Location of Quartermaster Uzan

By gaining notoriety you unlock a variety of recipes and other items sold by Uzan:

• Check items sold by Uzan.

Arcane Hand Notoriety

There are several ways  to obtain notoriety with the Arcane Hand. As usual there are workworders at Meridian, normal/story/dungeon quests and carnages. Running The Fall of Lantern Hook also awards notoriety with the Arcane Hand. Finally there are a few daily quests that can be completed to increase your notoriety with AH.
As with almost all the other "classic" factions I was already level 60 when I started hunting Arcane Hand faction achieve so I had the most of it done already. If you don't have about 7,000 to 10,000 into Honored status then you're probably missing a lot of quests. I advise you to complet those first.

The Fall of Lantern Hook

Running The Fall of Lantern Hook is probably the best way to increase notoriety. This is a level 44 dungeon. Here are some values:

•  +5 notoriety for each normal mob;
• +25 notoriety for each elite mob;
• +400 notoriety for each boss;
• +1150 notoriety for completion. 

 

Daily Repeatable Quests: Fishing, Closing Rifts and killing Rift Creatures

Bellow is a map showing daily repeatable quests located in Droughtlands that award notoriety with the Arcane Hand.

Location of repeatable quests in Droughtlands.

• Seal Rifts: +300 notoriety per turn in;
• Kill Rift Creatures: +300 notoriety per turn in;
• Collect Pellts: +300 per turn in;
• Collect Feathers: +300 per turn in;
• Fish Exchange (3 quests): Major Fishing Award each one.

 

Achievement

By reaching Revered with the Arcane Hand you will get the Arcane Devotee achievement.