There’s a new 1.2GB update on the PTS. Although a lot of it seems to be back-end or hidden away/non-activated items – there’s a few we’ve been made aware of.

• Further quests in the Runic Athenaeum.
• New Zone Event in Moonshade Highlands.
• New Warfront: Blighted Antechamber.
• New Tier 3 Encounter: Bindings of Laethys.
• TehFrank Datamining

Possible clues on hybrid elements and perhaps even a major patch about the past.

Table of Contents:

• Runic Athenaeum
• Zone Event in Moonshade Highlands
• Warfront: Blighted Antechamber
• Bindings of Laethys
• Bindings of Greenscale Portal

As always, anything below is subject to change prior to hitting Live.

Runic Athenaeum

The Runic Athenaeum in Moonshade Highlands has gotten some repeatable quests on top of the new soul-based quests. You can access the Runic Athenaeum from a cave entrance located at (7596, 1710).

The Runic Athenaeum automatically mentors you to 15 and also contains portals to the Tier 3 Raid “Bindings of Blood” Encounters.

Soul Quests

Although not from the latest update, it’s interesting to note that the Runic Athenaeum contains soul quests for every current soul, including Storm Legion souls.

Obtained from Voradrin who is in the middle of the Runic Athenaeum, the quests start at Level 15 and increase in level with each quest. Quests range from defeating souls to reading books and watching recreated visions of the heroes of the past.

Further Lore Quests

There’s a bunch of further quests obtained from Voradrin as well added in with the latest update. They involve killing mobs in the cave prior to the Runic Athenaeum, reading up on some of the books in the library and gathering various items around the area.

They reward a small amount of exp and gold so are meant for lower-levels.

Interestingly these quests speak to the idea of Para-elemental Hybrids and quasi, para and multi-elemental energies. If we look at Wikipedia, ‘Para-elemental’ is used in D&D:

“The para-elementals are the inhabitants of the para-elemental planes of Ice, Ooze, Magma, and Smoke, which lie between the major elemental planes of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Paraelementals fuse two of the classic elements into a single dangerous creature.”

Now look at the Planar Attunements:

• Nature (Earth/Life)
• Cinder (Fire/Death)
• Storm (Air/Water)

If you follow the Air Saga, the final quest has some interesting roleplay that could suggest the ‘Storm’ hybrid as highly likely to occur.

One of the books you read is a Rusalkan Bestiary that details 51 unique creatures found in Telara that each possess a link to the Plane of Water, but didn’t originate there.

Does this hint at some of the future mobs being hybrids? Do the Plane of Nature, Plane of Cinder and Plane of Storm actually exist?

Runic Refurbished

The Runic Athenaeum has been refurbished with new foliage and doodads as well as adds and interactable items related to quests gained in the area.

Interestingly the above image shows a bunch of Roman Numerals starting from 16 and going down to 1. It is found against the entrance to the cave prior to the Runic Athenaeum and once you get to the bottom you end up auto-mentored at Level 15. Is it just decoration, or could it mean something?

Regardless, there’s quite a bit for the lore buffs out there coming in the future.

Zone Event in Moonshade Highlands

Champions of Hammerknell

The new zone event in Moonshade Highlands is called Champions of Hammerknell and involves defeating water rifts, resurrecting old heroes and fighting alongside them to defeat the Shade of Jornaru.

There are ‘nightmare’-theme overtones but the most interesting part is that the heroes of old look like they are actually resurrected – not just in a ‘grayed-out-spirit-form’.

Interestingly according to the roleplay – none of them are expecting to return and yet have been resurrected by us.

Will we potentially see other zone events in other zones? Will the heroes who fought Greenscale be resurrected in a Stillmoor zone event? Will the heroes who fought Laethys be resurrected in a Shimmersand zone event? And what then, with all those heroes resurrected fighting alongside the Ascended.

Is the Plane of Water really that formidable?

Warfront: Blighted Antechamber

A new warfront has appeared on the PTS called “Blighted Antechamber”. It is located within Greenscale’s Blight and includes a maze and two large platforms. The idea – in terms of ‘lore’ – is to secure the area prior to Greenscale’s chamber.

Group: 15 vs 15 mixed mode Warfront.
Objectives: Control Points and Capture-The-Flag.

There’s 5 Control Points that provide points to the team:

• The Spire
• The Cul-de-sac
• The Cell
• The Vortex
• The Blind Alley

These are spread out throughout the hedge-maze-map.
There’s also two flags – one for the Defiant team and one for the Guardian team.

Under Construction

The map itself is heavily under construction and Dev Kerilar has mentioned that it is currently an extremely rough draft with multiple jump pads and adjustments to be made.

Also, the warfront currently does not have PvP enabled so you can’t actually fight with anyone just yet.

ETA

There’s no ETA on when the Blighted Antechamber Warfront will hit Live shards, but Kerilar mentioned that it has appeared on the PTS “a little ahead of schedule”. You will also notice that the warfront details in the image above states “Levels 50 to 65”.

Either this is simply the default range or it could potentially indicate that the warfront is slated for the 3.0 expansion.

Feedback

If anyone has time to run through the warfront on the PTS, Dev Kerilar would like to have you leave feedback, questions, comments or concerns in his thread here.

Video

Check out Seatin’s video of the new warfront – no fighting given PvP is disabled, but you can get an idea of what the Warfront looks like:

Thanks to Seatin for making a video of the new warfront!

Bindings of Laethys

Bindings of Laethys is the third Tier 3 Raid Encounter that is currently up on the PTS. You can find information on Bindings of Greenscale and Bindings of Akylios here.

The encounter is located in Charmer’s Caldera – the volcano situated in Shimmersand with an associated dungeon named after it. The entrance itself is located on the top floor of the Runic Athenaeum [Entrance] just like the other Bindings of Blood encounters.

The NPCs

Just like the Bindings of Greenscale (and possibly Bindings of Akylios), there are past heroes who seem to help you out in the fight: Amardis, Kamuzu, Kushi, Nysyr and Tahkaat.

They all have buffs that allow them not to be damaged by certain abilities of Laethys.

Laethys

There’s no adds prior to Laethys – this differs from the Bindings of Greenscale and Bindings of Akylios instances (so it may be added in later on).

The NPC heroes surround her at the start and she seems to use at least some of the abilities that she does in the Level 50 Tier 3 Raid: Infernal Dawn – such as Laethic Gold, Golden Destruction and some of her old AoEs.

However, just from looking at some of the achieves currently up relating to the fight, she seems to at least have a few new abilities and mechanics – such as one that requires you to convert an NPC from gold to flesh called “Transmute Gold to Flesh”.

The NPCs don’t have reactive abilities (at least from a first look at the fight) so I get the feeling their mechanic may be a stacking mechanic similar to General Silgen in the Level 50 Tier 2 10-man raid Phoenix Rise.

Achievements

Multiple new achievements relating to Bindings of Blood: Laethys are up on the PTS under Achievements -> Raids -> Bindings of Blood.

From the looks of it you have some of the old Laethys mechanics like Laethic Gold and Golden Destruction, but also new ones like the Gold to Flesh transmutation ability.

Messenger of Fate

The Messenger of Fate makes another appearance. It seems he appears at the start of every Bindings of Blood fight. This time he warns Laethys about the Ascended and how the Ascended in multiple alternate realities have already defeated Laethys.

This character is becoming quite a thrill for lore buffs due to the on-going theory that there is a sixth Vigil referred to as the Goddess of Fate. If the Messenger of Fate is a true representative for the Goddess of Fate – it would seem she is less than happy with the presence of the Ascended.

Below is what he looks like in the Binding of Greenscale encounter:

Tier 3 Raids are made up of multiple instances with a trash mob and a Dragon God boss for each encounter. This makes it highly possible that Tier 3 will introduce individual boss encounter lockouts as they are in separate instances. Thus if you lock yourself to one of the bosses, you shouldn’t be locked to any of the others.

Bindings of Greenscale Portal

Interestingly there’s now a portal outside of the Infinity Gate that leads straight to the Bindings of Greenscale. It’s not just a green portal, but also has floating Architect/Infinity Gate items around it that may be hard to see in the above screenshot.

This is interesting because the portal to the encounter is still up on the top floor of the Runic Athenaeum. Either one or the other is a placeholder, or they will both appear as possible entrances.

TehFrank Datamining

TehFrank on the Rift Forums has datamined a few items of interest for this current PTS Update:

• Bindings of Maelforge
• Mini-maps Updated
• Necropolis Main Building
• 3.0 Soul UI Icons
• Multiple Colored Trees
• Various Skins
• Feet Models Updated

Check out the information with screenshots below:

• PTS News: 1.2GB PTS Update – Datamining

Tier 3 Raids are coming up starting at the tail end of 2.6 and more of the encounters will be released with Patch 2.7. Given all the “Journey-to-the-Past”-type content surrounding Tier 3 Raids + Runic Athenaeum + Moonshade Zone Event – it feels like Patch 2.7 will be quite a large, lore-heavy patch.