I have some questions on raiding

[Fencers]

Well, you killed Greenscale and Alsbeth fairly quickly in original Rift. Like less than a 1 month apart IRL time. Both Alsbeth and Greenscale were major players in the Defiant and Guardian early storylines. Respectively.

Then we killed Akylois. Then Maelforge and Laethys.

So yea, seems the Ascended don't fuck around much.

Also, it has been explained that the true form/nature of the "dragons" [psst, they're not really dragons] lays beyond the veil. In quasi elemental planes. So you can't really "kill" Regulos on Telera. He exists as an entity in some ether of the universe.

Long ago, Scott Hartsman dropped a tiny hint that at some point the Ascended would travel through the planes via Rifts. Everquest 1 style. Trion has been tight lipped about that ever since though.

[theWocky]

1. You don't have to do 20-mans. You can get pretty good gear (for now - as we are on the 1st tier of raiding) from dungeons merely by grinding dungeon marks and infinity stones. You can most get gear from crafting, the odd drop from Raid Hunt Rifts, even some Zone events - I got an epic lvl 51 BoA helm on my rogue with lvl 60 stats on it. You can also get several items via rep grind.

You can most certainly get decent essences to fill your raid engine - either directly off hunt rift rifts, from rep grind, or from Auction House.

2. Hunt Rift Raids are going most of the time. Pretty easy to find people doing them. Start a few and people are generally eager to join as most people want Torvan rep. As for "PuGs" - if you're referring to these to raid, with this being the first tier of raiding, you are going to struggle to get a place without a guild, or an linking an achievement. My guild took me through the ten man. I found it quite an enjoyable instance. I prefer to stick in a guild. My current guild is a gaming community and I find them a very friendly bunch.

3. Most 10-man raids take 1~2 hours for an average group. Most 20-mans take 2~3 hours with current average geared people.

Tanking will get you an instant queue in the 5-man dungeons. You can build up quite a good amount of decent gear from dungeons alone. However, this is only the first tier - expect a few "master mode" dungeons to compensate as the tiers progress and the necessity to do 10-mans to get adequate gear. You are not going to step into a PuG as a tank easily without linking achievements - not a fixed rule, but i think it would be the exception if you were taken.

The best gear is in 20 man raids.

[Hakator]

Thank you for all your answers.
Can someone explain to a total newbie to Rift (but not to mmos)how exactly is the 20 Men Raid gear superior compared to the 10 Men Raid (oh wait it's called "Sliver", right?)gear.
And what do you need to do to get a hypotetic full set of this incredible 20 Men gear.
I have understood there are Tokens items you loot from every boss, and from what I have understood everyone in the group gets them. What I don't understand is why, if the Token Item you get from 10 Men Raids and 20 Men Raids are the same, the Gear from 20 Men Raids is still superior.
Is there maybe another kind of Token Item I'm not taking in consideration? Or particular looted gear you need to roll for and that only drops from 20 Mens? Or maybe all depends on these "Hearts of Crucia/Regulos" someone has talked about. By the way do you have to roll to aquire these hearts (Wow's Head of Onyxia-style, Aion's Omega's Fragment-style), or everyone gets it like the Token thingies?
Thanks

[Primalthirst]

@Hakator

Both 10 man content (Slivers) and 20 man content (Raids) both drop gear of the same strength from MOST bosses.
Each boss drops marks which are used to purchase set gear, in the current tier they are called Frozen Eclipse Stones. 20 man bosses drop more marks than 10 man bosses and usually drop 2 pieces of loot, 10 man bosses drop 1 piece of loot each.

The exception to these statements is the end boss of each 20 man raid drops 'Relic' (Orange) quality weapons which are usually about a third to half a tier higher than the 'Epic' (Purple) weapons dropped by all the other bosses. Some of the more recent endbosses in 20 man content have also had a 'Heart of <Bosses Name>' on the loot table which can be used to upgrade certain Epic drops from both 20 man and 10 man content into Relics. For example for Mages there is a Relic offhand drop from Crucia, a Relic mainhand drop from Regulos, a Relic Staff that drops from Crucia, a staff from the 10 man that can be upgraded with a Heart of Crucia and a staff from a 20 man that can be upgraded with the Heart of Regulos. (this tier is a bit strange since there's 3 Relic staffs, never had more than 2 in a tier before, usually only 1)

In the previous two tiers (T2 and T3 at level 50) have also had specified 20 man bosses drop specific Tokens which upgrade a vendor bought piece into a Relic version. For example Sicaron in Hammerknell Fortress (20 man) dropped the Hexed Shoulders which could be used to upgrade Epic Vendor Shoulders into Relics. In the current tier (T4) the endbosses of both 20 mans as well as the Hardmodes (which are not currently on Live) drop a random Token (called Infinity Cells this tier) which upgrade vendor pieces.

Thus it is impossible to get full BiS gear from 10 mans. But you can still get a very high quality set of gear. Compared with previous tiers I expect Relics to be rarer in this one since the Hardmodes look like they're not going to be doable for the vast majority of players, they're HARD.