PTS Update 17th July 2014

A new ~1.1GB RIFT PTS Update has hit the Public Test Shard. There’s a few additions including a prelude quest likely slated for 2.8. The new Auction House UI/System shown in the 13th June 2014 Livestream is now up on the PTS, although there’s plenty of features not yet ready.

If you’re after info on the datamined files for this update, click here.

Summary:

• New 3.0 Achievements and achievement point increases to existing achievements.
• Rift Store now has a “Classic” section to Chests & Keys with old supply crates and a “Contest Winners” section to Wardrobe.
• New Patron Abilities – Experience Bonus Suppression and Bonus Charges.
• New 3.0 Prelude Quest in Tempest Bay. Heavily WIP.
• New Auction House UI/System.

New Achievements

Two new achieves and a new achieve sub-category:

• Achievements -> Zones -> Draumheim – Achieve pts increased from 15 to 45 with an actual achievement up, “Code Breaker!” for Draumheim’s puzzle.
• Achievements -> Zones -> Goboro Reef – The puzzle achievement for Goboro Reef now says “Goboro Reef” instead of “Ardent Domain”.
• Achievements -> Zones -> Tarken Glacier – Achieve pts increased from 0 to 15. No achieves.
• Achievemenst -> Dungeons -> Citadel of Insanity – This is a new achievement sub-category with 50 achievement points. No achieves. Confirms Citadel of Insanity is a dungeon.

Rift Store Additions

Rift Store Classic Section

(added each supply crate’s tooltip for very rare (Marvelous) drops)

The Rift Store now has a “Classic” section under its “Chests & Keys” category called “Classic” which has four previous Supply Crates:

• Deeps’ Supply Crate
• Crucia’s Supply Crate
• Greenscale’s Supply Crate
• Budgie Supply Crate

Each Supply Crate costs 650 Credits (585 for Patrons).

[This is likely an addition made in light of the new Marvelous Luck passive for Patrons that increases their chance of getting Marvelous items from Supply Crates.]

Rift Store Contest Winners’ Section

A contest winners section has been added to Rift Store -> Wardrobe category. There’s nothing in it yet but there are two filters:

• Concept Contest
• Costume Contest

This suggests that the past Dress The Night Away and this year’s Dreaming of Summer Wardrobe Contest winners’ outfits will likely pop up in this new section. Similarly, the “Savage Swords and Noble Staves” RIFT Concept Art Contest winners’ Capes, 2-Handed Staves and 2-Handed Sword models will likely appear here as well.

Previously datamined files have already shown off some of the RIFT Concept Art Contest winners’ entries’ skins and models.

[The fact they’ve added a separate section for “Concept Contest” instead of just distributing them in the existing sections of the Wardrobe category perhaps suggests further Concept Art Contests in the future.]

New Patron Abilities

Experience Bonus Suppression

As mentioned in our post about the new Patron improvements that came with this week’s hotfix, a Patron Experience toggle ability called “Experience Bonus Suppression” is now up on the PTS that will stop you from earning bonus Patron exp whilst the toggle-able buff is up. This is aimed at players who do not wish to outlevel their non-patron friends.

Bonus Charges

A new Patron ability called “Bonus Charges” is up. This is a consume that recharges on a weekly basis that provides you with 3 additional bonus reward charges for Random Warfronts and Dungeons.

It seems you can only use this when you are at 4x or less Random Warfront or Random Dungeon charges (i.e. the max you can have at a time is still 7x).

New 3.0 Prelude Quest

A new questchain is made available that seems to be the prelude RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide quest that Trion has mentioned was coming in RIFT 2.8: Madness Wakes. The first quest is “Dreaming Darkly” and it can be accessed by either Cyril Kalmer in Tempest Bay. They are in the room up the stairs to the left of the Tempest Bay Porticulum (where Queen Miela used to be before you do the “A Hero Rises” chronicle).

The quests are highly work-in-progress with issues meaning that you can’t progress past the second quest at this time.

[Chances are this will likely lead into the story of the Nightmare Coast Dungeon that is coming in 2.8.]

New Auction House UI/System

As shown off in the 13th June 2014 Livestream, Trion has now added the new Auction House UI/System onto the PTS for testing and feedback.

Senior UI Artist Gingers would like players to test out:

• Create LOTS of buy orders.
• Create LOTS of auctions.
• Buy auctions to develop a price history.
• Use price history and tell us how useful it is.
• Re-list auction items when they get returned to your mailbox.

Not everything is finished, including tooltip text, small arrow toggles and some of the other features.

Please provide feedback either in-game on the PTS or through Senior UI Artist Gingers’ thread here.

Looks like this was the start of RIFT 2.8: Madness Wakes content for the PTS. Look forward to more in the coming updates! We’ll also have any datamined information up in a following post once information is made available.

If you’re after info on the datamined files for this update, click here.

For past PTS Updates, click here. You can also find past datamining and 3.0-related news updates.