Greetings fellow Ascended, I've seen various people complain that there is not enough 'RIFT News' so I've decided (Until Azuri verbally beats me up and locks my threads) for a bit of fun, I'm going to do a weekly RIFT news post right here on the MMO champion forums, from my endgame raiding perspective on things, also covering all the drama, action and controversy that goes on behind the magic.
Working As Intended
If you haven't already stumbled across it, a couple of expert dungeon bosses got somewhat 'overlooked' during development and somebody forgot to press the button that makes certain bosses immune to crowd control effects, this lead to quite a few groups who were aware of this having a rather easy time on the 4th and 5th boss in Archieve of Flesh, one dashingly handsome Youtuber even made a how to video!
To the best of my knowledge this bug still exsists, but I have no doubt it will be fixed in the upcoming days.
The race to slay Crucia
This week we have had three guilds defeat the Twin Storm Giants also known Kolmasveli and Toinenveli. The first was <Special Olympics> who downed the troublesome two Wednesday night, followed by <Addiction> claiming a kill on saturday evening (seriously who raids on saturdays?!?!? guild name says it all!) and finally <Terrible Idea> right on their heels who managed to defeat the giants on monday evening. After some quite brutual trash, all three guilds have managed to reach Crucia and have started progressing on her, though she is what can only be described as a 'significant' leap up from the other bosses in terms of difficulty, through watching livestreams and video's of all three guilds progressing on Crucia, It appears to be a neck and neck race, I'm predicting a World First kill will come within the next 2-3
weeks.
Two weeks on since release only 8 guilds have managed to even kill the first boss in Frozen Tempest compared to 15+ guilds that have cleared the 10 Man known as Triumph of the Dragon Queen, As people are rapidly gearing up there is no doubt that we are going to see more kills in Frozen Tempest coming shortly.
A little teaser video of the first couple of phases of the Crucia Encounter~
The Quest to Level 60
Amongst the RIFT community there has been a lot of debate on the speed of leveling, Some people despise leveling while others absolutely love it. An issue that was mainly raised is the amount of time it takes to level from 50-60, with the initial first few levels taking anywhere between 2 and 6 hours and later levels taking anywhere between 6-10 hours of solid gameplay. Obviously with all the vanity such as Dimensions, Artifacts and Outstanding landscapes that were introduced with Storm Legion, people tend to get side-tracked and these levels may take even longer.
From my perspective personally, I was the first person in the world to reach level 59 after playing a solid 34 hours straight, Unfortunately about half way through level 59 I had not trained my body well enough and passed out due to lack of rest. A great experience non the less, when I woke up a couple of people had already hit level 60, So I just quickly powered through and made it to 60. I believe the World First level 60 Character went to either Weenz or Rong from <Parabellum> EU.
Some players just could'nt take the grind to 60 (Coookie)~
Disclaimer: Not Actually Coookie, I think...
In conclusion with almost full BIS gear from raiding in chocolate RIFT, it took me about 39 hours to reach level 60, the only leveling on beta I did was from 50-52, so I didn't have to much experience with all the quest and story lines, This leads me to believe that an average player will take 50-100 Hours to get to level 60. Although I played for so many hours straight, At almost no point did I feel like it was a 'Grind' I literally loved every minuite of it, I must say all the story and quest lines upto level 58 where ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, A few I recall as being quite memoriable where the Dreamhive series, Going into the Mind of the Overseer and beating up Crucia as a Giant Crablord, Fighting Kain in some dark-fleshy room at the end of the Morban quest series and finally going around Licking Frogs. The quests felt like they had stepped up so much in terms of rich storyline and enjoyment.
I was bitterly, bitterly disappointed with Ashora and Steppes of Infinity, each Zone had about a Story Line consisting of 6-10 Quests which at level 58 each zone storyline probably gave about 20% of a level. This is genuinely the first time I have felt somewhat 'cheated' by Trion and I'm aware of time constraints but I feel personally that both zones should of had a more extended and solid storyline before release. Regardless of which at this point in time I was half way through Kingsward, so after completing both zones, I headed back there did some amazing quests which ended up with a face off with one of the more notorious figures that you encounter via Brevane questing in the top of a tower, which was in itself very epic, I then went around Steppes and Ashora doing Carnages and defeating RIFTs for the last half of 59, which led me to have quite a few Infinity Stone's at level 60, Allowing myself to quickly jump into normals and then onto experts, once a few guildys had caught up!
In conclusion from my personal perspective, one of two things needs to change, to exp requirement needs to be lowered ever so slightly per level (5-15%) or experience gained from Carnage quests needs to be increased.
Bots, Bots, Bots, Bots, Bots, Bots everybody!
Since the release of Storm Legion, we have seen a large increase in the amount of harvesting bots, The leaderboards however make it quite clear who bots, the most common of the bots at the moment appears to be fishing ones, a lot of people are botting and then selling the fish or matts on Auction House to feed the surge of endgame players using vast amounts of consumables to enter experts and raids to sometimes make up for gear there lacking and on progression give them that extra boost to raid performance.
While personally I don't give heads or tails whether people 'fish bot' or not, I thought I'd share some strong sided views I've heard throughout the week for and against botting~
For:
- "I find fishing, one of the more dull things to do in RIFT, I don't want to spend hours farming and doing something I don't enjoy so that I can be viable in Endgame"
- "It's good for those of us who don't bot, due to it bringing down prices of fish and mats on the Auction house, making it easier and cheaper to make raid consumables
Against:
- "Botters get rewarded for not playing the game, I hope that Trion take serious action to ban botters and remove any gain they have got from doing so"
- "Botting in my eyes is a type of cheating and I strongly dispise anyone that uses any form of cheats to get advantage over others in online games"
As always somepeople took a very light hearted approach to 'fish-botting' and made this~
Warriors Viable ranged DPS in Storm Legion... Hotfix 2 says not so fast!
After Hotifx 2 Warriors grabbed there pitchforks and stormed the forums and in my opinion rightfully so, I must admit Warriors needed a slight nerf, but to the extent the tempest soul damage was reduced made a few more spots for warriors on the benches of top raiding guilds and in certain boss fights forced guilds to change tactics to allow melee to dps.
The question of Atrius competence also came into the firing line with a lot of people outraged at these changes, whether or not the issue's with warriors dps will be solved within the next few weeks is a question that is being asked by the majority at the moment, I guess for now we will just have to ride it out, make a few adjustments and see what happens in the upcoming weeks.
On a more positive note due to the changes to Warriors, Justin Timberlake got a few more youtube hits!
Come on... Give me a break
A recent issue has been raised with rested experience, some people are getting it, others aren't, some people's instantly vanishes, others does not vanish and persists all the way to level 60, While it is not to sure what is causing the bug, rest assured Trion are on the case!
espcially with the somewhat hefty journey to max level quite a few people are relying on rested exp to give them a bit of a boost to the levelling process, My predicition is that we will likely see a fix to this by the end of the week.
Stay Classy Trion
A recent NPC came to light, that has a few rather interesting things to say... I suggest you take a look at the image below
I mean come on, who doesn't love a good spitroast on the old BBQ? Well that concludes my weekly news roundup! Next week I'll probably dive a bit more into PVP once we have a chance to see how PVP balances out a bit more with gear