Tier 3 Raid inc ! - Return of Akylios

[Slipmat]

In a surprise post Cyzo, one of the Lead Raid designers, announced plans to open up testing for a new Tier 3 Raid starting next Wednesday, January 29th.

Why is this such a surprise? well currently only two Guilds have even killed the current end-boss in Planebreaker Bastion, Planebreaker Abominus so we all assumed that PPB would be "current" until Expansion 3.0

Come one, come all and step right up to be one of the first guilds to test tier 3 raid content! With entry to the Planes looming ever closer, some Ascended are reflecting back upon the history of Telara and the binding of the dragons. Revisit the past and join the original heroes of Telara to shackle the Blood Storm at the height of their power.

Starting next Wednesday, 1/29, we will begin to test the first of these encounters: the Binding of Greenscale and the Binding of Akylios. The usual caveats apply: VFX have not had an art pass, tuning will be WAY off, and many mechanics can and will change throughout the process. We're going to leave the zone entrances open on PTS for now but guided tests generally give us the best feedback and are always fun for everyone involved. Contact me via PMs or post here with contact info and I will arrange a playtest. The fights are T3 and will be tuned accordingly so guilds with T2 experience are preferred. I also spoke with Daglar who gave us the go ahead to grant loyalty, credits, and titles to those who help us test the most.

Source: http://forums.riftgame.com/game-disc...d-testing.html

Don't forget that what we killed already was only the 'Avatars' of Greenscale and Akylios, this will be us fighting them at the height of their powers, no one is sure what we'll get, Hammerknell part 2? just one room where we only fight Greenie and Akylios? let the speculation begin

Although we did get a screenie posted

[Syce]

isnt that hammerknell where you fight akylios?

[Fencers]

Yea, I got a text about this last night but I went to bed before checking it out fully.

Quite exciting even though I don't progression raid anymore due to work.

[Fkiolaris]

Going by what you say in the second paragraph and assuming I understand the raid system in Rift correctly, doesn't that mean that it is new content for literally 40 people?

[Lathais]

Going by what you say in the second paragraph and assuming I understand the raid system in Rift correctly, doesn't that mean that it is new content for literally 40 people?

Sort of. Just because people do not have the last boss in PBB down does not mean they are not T3 ready and could not go. There are probably plenty of guilds that are getting down some of the T2 bosses that have T3 geared raiders. It is still a pretty small portion of the community, but it is more than 40.

[Slipmat]

doesn't that mean that it is new content for literally 40 people?

I doubt it, instanced raiding in Rift is 10-man and 20-man only so far

The three Open World bosses are just that, in the open and can get 200+ people each time on them, anyhow Cyzo has added a bit more info, these will be new fights and you'll get to fight alongside some key Lore figures who originally imprisoned the dragons

A few more points to address some concerns:

These are very much new fights but draw from the themes of the old ones.
They aren't being released anytime soon, definitely a few months down the road.
You will fight alongside some of the original heroes that imprisoned them.


As I mentioned they pretty much have not been tuned at all yet but, as an example, I'd like for one of the dragons to be more accessible and the other to be more of a challenge. We'll have to see how the mechanics shake out in testing.

On the issue of gearing up, as many people have stated Dream Orbs should help significantly with many guilds' progression in T2. I'm also open to tweaking a few mechanics after 2.6 hits to help as well.

Also, the class guys want more testing with the new souls so any guilds that test a few times will be given all the new souls to play around with.

Source: http://forums.riftgame.com/game-disc...ml#post4673275

[gonterf]

Going by what you say in the second paragraph and assuming I understand the raid system in Rift correctly, doesn't that mean that it is new content for literally 40 people?

That would be correct for right now, but in a few months it's reasonable to assume that another 2 or 3 guilds at least will have cleared PBB. There is also the element that this will provide a goal towards which many guilds can work until 3.0 comes out. I'm starting to think 3.0 is a LOT further out than I originally thought, so there could be 3-5 months for these raids to be relevant. That being said, even if no new art is made for these, they are still a completely ridiculous allocation of resources that is nothing short of mind-boggling when you consider the same devs could be working on 5 player expert bosses or master modes (though there is another set of new bosses coming up that should be more impactful.)

[Lathais]

That would be correct for right now, but in a few months it's reasonable to assume that another 2 or 3 guilds at least will have cleared PBB. There is also the element that this will provide a goal towards which many guilds can work until 3.0 comes out. I'm starting to think 3.0 is a LOT further out than I originally thought, so there could be 3-5 months for these raids to be relevant. That being said, even if no new art is made for these, they are still a completely ridiculous allocation of resources that is nothing short of mind-boggling when you consider the same devs could be working on 5 player expert bosses or master modes (though there is another set of new bosses coming up that should be more impactful.)

You are working on the assumption that you must have cleared PBB to enter T3. This is just not true in the least. There are a lot more than 4-5 guilds that are farming most of T2, minus the final boss of PBB or a few others. These players are more than ready to enter T3. The same way plenty of guilds who had not downed Regulod when T2 came out were able to start progressing in T2, then downed Regulos once they had some T2 gear.

[theWocky]

People are also assuming that there won't be a huge surge in the player-base again when 3.0 hits

I think there will be.

Just because the game may appear to be in a bit of a lull in the raiding side - and I speculate as I don't raid much, but I have noticed the guys on my friend's list who have cleared the current content are only occasionally logging on - this doesn't mean Trion must abandon their player-base, so regardless how many people are raiding, they still have to make content.

I think many people that try Rift in Rift 3.0 will be pleasantly surprised and I am hoping Trion will boost new people to level 60 to make the zones from 60 to max level packed and fun. In my opinion, the instant 90 boost was the best thing WoW is doing this expansion for new and returning players.

[Fkiolaris]

Thanks for the clarifications to the people who answered my question.

All the best.

[Puremallace]

I have absolutely no problem with them updating old content to make it relevant as the game progresses on. Talk about SEVERELY depressing playing WoW hearing all the stories about these great Vanilla raids and never getting chance to do them.

People are also assuming that there won't be a huge surge in the player-base again when 3.0 hits

"Planes" has been intensely expected and wanted by the mmo community for a long time with Rift. That was more then the likely the single biggest request back when the game launched. In my honest opinion 2.0 should have been going to the planes.

[Archimand]

sup slipmat it Benikage, havnt been logged that much into rift since im to busy atm. how is rift those days ?

[Khelendros]

It sounds like Greenscale will be the one that most guilds who are progressed moderately in PBB should be able to down. While Akylios will be much harder. These are just the first two. I suspect this will be a 6 boss sliver (What with the time traveling and such). They haven't said if its 20 or 10 but I assume 10. I would also guess the other bosses will be the other 4 dragons of the bloodstorm. Maybe minus Regulos depending on the time period this is set in. I don't think Regulos was ever bound anyways, he was banished.

[Slipmat]

Another large update hit the Public Test Shard (PTS) as more content gets added to the upcoming 2.6 Update

This time they also added the new Tier 3 raids, which are still months away don't panic, in which we get to go back in time and help some of the original heroes of Telara imprison the various Dragon 'Gods', if you've played Rift and raided you'd know that we kill Greenscale in his weakened state from been bound by chains of death.

Akylios was probably also weak after been trapped under Hammerknell for a few thousand years until Lord Jornaru attempted to free him, which is when we arrived to stop that

Anyhow, the scene is set in the 'secret' part of Hammerknell, you may have noticed an abandoned entrance reached by rope bridges to the NE of Three Springs in Moonshade Highlands/ Well this leads to an underground passage which takes you to the secret library to the east of Hammerknell Fortress itself.

After you reach this, Trion very kindly provide you with a porticulum



First off, a trip to Greenscale's Lair where i got to hang out with the original Mage, Cleric and Warrior NPC's, one or two you may recognise



A brief look at the first part of the Lair, trash mobs and deadly plants abound



Note there's no hedge maze or 'bosses' here as all this is set thousands of years before Prince Hylas appeared to try and free Greenscale.

The heroes greet you and some Lore info....



Of course there's always a party crasher, this time the 'Drekanoth of Fate', this is another time we start to hear whispers of a missing God or Goddess of Fate, were the old Dragon Gods been controlled by something worse? the plot thickens



Time to take a swim with Akylios but unfortunately you have to kill all the trash to activate him, solo Slipmat is good, just not that good

Two views of Hammerknell back in it's 'prime' looking nice and clean






Finally, my attempt to make a video of both Greenscale and Akylios and the inside of the Library

[Fencers]

I wonder if Greenscale is going to fly up and glitch out in this new raid too. XD

[Slipmat]

I wonder if Greenscale is going to fly up and glitch out in this new raid too.

lolwut? that was nearly three years ago when some Guild called < Stay Small Nerds > "killed" the first version of Greenscale when he had only ~1.8 million HP.

With "clever use of game mechanics" you could push Greenscale so he'd skip mechanics and stay in the air, Trion fixed it, buffed Greenscale to 4.1 million HP and SSN couldn't even kill it, let alone kill Hylas for a long time

I still remember the e-peening and trolling between < Stay Small Nerds > and < Addiction > when they got World "first" on the fixed 4.1m Greenscale. Ah the life of "World firsts", e-peen waving and strutting around like peacocks

[Fencers]

Oh no, Greenscale still glitched out when he went up occasionally long after SSN's "WF".

The GS bug happened more than a handful of times for us on Wolfsbane, Three Springs, Faeblight and Keenblade. Last time we encountered the glitch was like ~6 months ago or something on a Perfect Greenscale achieve run. Wolfbane server.

[Khelendros]

I can confirm that bug still happens at times. It happens in the Chronicle to. Its fairly rare though.

[intrinsc]

This is seriously awesome news. If the catchup to be competitive in Rift wasn't such a hurdle I would re-install it and find a guild for these tier 3s. My two favorite raids ever coming back more badass than ever. Hnnnggggh.

[Slipmat]

Now added to the PTS is a third Dragon boss for your wiping pleasure

Laethys, Goddess of Avarice is available for some testing and it's set inside Charmer's Caldera, looks to be a multi-platform fight as well as the second pathway is blocked off.

Of course i didn't last much past 2 nanoseconds as soon as Laethys became active, interestingly, also datamined from the PTS are files for the Binding of Maelforge.