Instead of ranting about how this is the first MMO i've bought and not resubbed after the first free month, i thought i'd just post some pics. Fix your game Bioware.
Well, it didn't take that long but finally rank 8. Probably the most fun i've had in Rift despite the class imbalance. This ones all on Noraan, Naughtius and Zygore for distracting people so i could stab them. Played mostly as 51 Nightblade with my warrior mentality of just running in and destroying people. As if any other rogue soul could do that, right?
Prior to 1.4, i decided i'd work on getting as many coins as i could stomach to purchase a bunch of the new epic water resist source machines. As usual, this led to me finding a bunch of stupid things to do to occupy my time. One of those was finishing up all the achievements in every zone for finishing quests.
First things first. Rocking my new look. The originator of the chainmail rogue.
Last on my list was the quest chain in Shimmersand. Holy fuck did this send me all over the map and back a dozen times, but man was it a fun chain.
Achievement complete!
New mount from a random drop off an expert water rift. Looks like a cross between a rat and a frog. Funny story about getting this too. It seems to only drop when i show up on bard after going afk to make a sandwich. It's true, i swear. We got 2 of them like that.
Holy debuffs Batman.
I thought i had enough of crabs when i left FFXI. Instead we get lobsters.
We also got a random world drop banner that does absolutely nothing. I call it the dirty q-tip. The only use for it is for everyone to throw one up during a raid and annoy everyone else.
Also started PVP'ing again for the first time since level 40. All i can say is, man it was so much more fun pre 50. Shit's ridiculously unbalanced.
Camping the event vendor awaiting phase 4 to start, for server firsts of course. I failed.
Guardian invasion in Meridian that i somehow missed. Gotta get those 50 kills for my achievement dammit.
No one should ever give me access to the guild bank, for i will hijack it and rearrange everything as annoyingly as possible. I screwed up on the "A" though.
Let's go Hammerknell already. 1.4 can't come soon enough.
June 22nd marks the release of yet another huge patch for Rift. The Waves of Madness events kicks off leading to the eventual opening of the new 20-man raid zone Hammerknell, the dwarven city in the hills of Moonshade Highlands.
Trion released a nice teaser trailer:
Russ Brown takes us on a walk through of Hammerknell:
Along with the new raid comes the implementation of free character transfers, which hopefully should take care of having way too many servers to accommodate launch. A very smart way of handling server merges without using that dreaded term and scaring people away. Everyone should hop over to Keenblade obviously!
The other huge nugget of info for 1.3 is of course the addition of an addon tab. Whether or not this makes it into 1.3. i'm not sure about, but it definitely is exciting to say the least. While i'm not really a fan of some of the crazy healing and threat addons out there for other games, i absolutely love UI customization.
Lets nitpick a little and talk about esthetics. I'm going to be honest, i'm so disappointed in the look of the new leather set compared to the current set. Chain sets always look amazing and makes me wish i could equip them, even if it's just in my wardrobe slot. Leather, on the other hand, looks like some low level junk you'd find on the street. Lets compare!
Tier 1 leather raid set. Dyed to my personal color scheme of purple/light green.
Tier 2 leather set, also dyed.
Not only is the set hideous but there's no fucking bow!!! I acnnot state enough my distaste for guns. I'm going to have a fucking headache listening to that shit go boom boom boom. I'm too sound dependent in game to ever turn the audio off so i'll have to manage and curse out Trion for this.
Let's get to the good part though. The stat increases are ridiculous. On average after a few parses, i'd say the minimum is a dps increase of about 300. Keep in mind also that there's 2 version of the new t2 sets; an epic and a relic version. The 300 difference was a jump from t1 to t2 relic.
Breakdown of my stats self buffed on ranger in t1, t2 epic and t2 relic.
Lesser Essences also received a minor boost in stats, probably to make up for the fact that you'll no longer be able to equip them in greater slots. What really annoys me is that we started working on water resist source machines in preparation for Hammerknell, only to find out that there's also a new source machine with 20 water resist already on it! That really wouldn't be so bad if i hadn't already put my 50 stone greater in my machine already -_-.
Much to our enjoyment, Trion decided to release a 2nd 20-man raid instance called River of Souls. Despite the lackluster server wide event leading up to its opening, the zone itself didn't disappoint. Well except for the fact that we've dubbed the zone River of Trash instead for the ridiculous amounts. This of course is right up our alley since we love wiping to trash over and over while 1 shotting the bosses themselves.
The raid itself is on the same tier as Greenscale. It's basically another zone to gear people up in and get some relic weapons in the process. A second loot pinata is never a bad thing right? Well after clearing Greenscale, RoS took us a bit longer mostly due to the cockblock that is Herald Gauthath. Overall, i'd say i'm impressed with the amount of content Trion has released in such a short amount of time. I can only see it getting better. Anyways, here are the fights themselves for your viewing pleasure.
VI becomes just the 8th guild in the world to achieve the Perfect Greenscale. We were rewarded with what has now been renamed The Staff Of Tentacle Rape. The ladies in the guild are all over Gisli now.
First guild on Keenblade to clear Greenscale's Blight! After countless wipes and strat revisions, we've finally downed the first raid instance. Feels good to finally beat this. Now we can hopefully get this on farm and gear everyone up. All i have to say is, Greenscale must have been a piece of cake before his HP was more than doubled and his stupid breath attack triggered every 45 sec instead of the 25 it does now.
Duke Letareus
Infiltrator Johlen
Oracle Aleria
Prince Hylas
Lord Greenscale - video is incomplete because we weren't expecting to kill and no one was frapsing >.>
Hurray for first relic weapon on Keenblade, and it goes to some nub (me).
Once you're 50 and geared yourself up in expert dungeons, it's time to rock. Raid rifts are essentially open world 10-man encounters that drop some ridiculous gear and essences. Drops from expert dungeons are required to open these so save up! The fights themselves are pretty tough for 10 undergeared players but since it's open world, you can bring more.
Greenscale's Blight is the first 20-man raid encounter. The instance has 5 bosses and of course loads of trash. Our first crack at it was a bit rough to say the least. Most of us didn't have the gear or dps to get much done but we managed cleared to the first boss, which of course handed us our asses.
