A large 2GB update hit RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) on 2nd Jan 2015.
Patch version is TEST-301-7-A-970924. As you can see, “301” instead of “300” suggests that this is a PTS version of at least part of Patch 3.1.
You can check out information on the datamined files here.
Summary:
- Minion System Additions: Shuffling adventures; stamina recharge
- New Achievements: Tyrant’s Forge; Chronicle: Rhen of Fate; new zone events + more.
- New Planar Attunement Trees: Three new trees.
- Crafting Favorites.
- Tyrant’s Throne: New island.
- Other Additions: Guard Change; Help menu changes; Portrait Frame edit change; Dimension Permissions improvement; Slight Focus Graphics Change.
As always, everything below is subject to change prior to hitting Live and some things included below may never make it to Live release.
Minion System Additions
The Minions System has gotten three main additions:
- Shuffling Adventure Decks
- Stamina Recharge
- More Flavor Text
- Sound on Adventure Completion
Shuffling Adventure Decks
Minion Shuffle Feature
Shuffling adventure decks is something you’re probably aware of if you keep track of RIFT news. With the latest PTS update we now have a chance to test this new feature out.
- Simply click on the ‘Shuffle’ button above an adventure deck to put the current adventure in the deck on cooldown and move to the next adventure card.
- Shuffling costs either Aventurine or Credits.
- Snedhepl has stated before that the more you shuffle the more costly it will be. This cost will reset back down on a daily basis.
Current costs for the first shuffle of each adventure deck are as follows:
- 8 Aventurine or 5 Credits for 1min.
- 30 Aventurine or 15 Credits for 5/15min.
- 200 Aventurine or 75 Credits for 8hr.
- 300 Aventurine or 150 Credits for 10hr.
If you have any feedback or suggestions, be sure to send them either via the in-game report on the PTS or through the Public Test Shard sub-forum on the RIFT forums.
Stamina Recharge
Minion Stamina Recharge
Recharging Minions stamina was datamined previously from a recent Live hotfix. It’s now up on the PTS for testing.
- By clicking the Stamina icon to the left of your Aventurine total, all minions that aren’t at full stamina will have their icon turn into a cross/heal icon.
- Clicking on a minion that isn’t full stamina will pop up a purchase confirmation.
- Right now you can only purchase with Credits.
There’s a zero beside the Stamina recharge button so this might be something that is supposed to link to the RIFT Store to purchase Stamina pots. I’m guessing that you can either recharge stamina directly via Credits, or through purchasing ‘pots’ that add Stamina Recharge Points or something similar. Perhaps the pots are cheaper (like a ‘bulk deal’).
There’s currently no Stamina Recharge pots on the RIFT Store, but the possibility that these will exist is still there since the icons were datamined previously, as per below:
Minion Stamina Potions (Datamining)
More Flavor Text
More Minion Flavor Text
As promised by Trion, it seems that they’ve added a large amount of flavor text to minion cards that didn’t have any.
Unfortunately the PTS’ minions are separate from your NA or US-wide minions so I personally don’t have many on the PTS. However, all of them now have flavor text so Trion might have managed to add them to all minion cards.
Sound on Adventure Completion
When a minion completes an adventure, you will now get a small sound effect to alert you that your minion is done with its adventure.
New Achievements
380 new achievement points were added to the PTS bringing the total to 34,942.
Zone Events
Two new zone events can be found under Planes -> Water. They are “Azure Fastness” and “Leviathan”.
The interesting thing about “Leviathan” is that it could be referring to the Skelf’s ‘leviathan’.
Trion mentioned this Leviathan a few times and a twitter post back in July stated:
“The skelf originally hail from the Komoho ocean, they are pilots to a leviathan avatar of Draum”.[r]
Who knows, maybe it’s a larger colossus or at least a unique zone event and not the usual close x rift, kill x invasions-style ones we see through Nightmare Tide.
Chronicle: The Rhen of Fate
120 new achievement points have been added to a new “Chronicle: The Rhen of Fate” under the Chronicles category. Looks like an ‘intrepid’-style chronicle based on the Tier 1 10-man sliver of the same name.
The new chronicle is currently not available in the Chronicles window.
Raid: Tyrant’s Forge
A new achievement sub-category is up for “Tyrant’s Forge”, the upcoming Tier 1 10- or 20-man raid that is coming either with Patch 3.1 or during the 3.1 patch cycle.
There’s currently 55 achievement points with a few achievements for a single boss, Johan. There’s obviously going to be more bosses, but these are just some teasers with hints at the mechanics for this first boss.
Currently there does not seem to be an entrance to the Tyrant’s Forge raid. I’ll keep you all updated if one does pop up.
Other Achievements
- Character -> Fishing has 145 new achievement points. New ones include fishing up Sunken Treasure, Rare Fish and Fishing artifact sets related to the Plane of Water.
- Character -> Minions has 30 new achievement points related to higher ‘minion adventures completed’ tiers.
- Dungeons -> Return to Iron Tomb. 10pts added for an achieve called “Weep Not For The Chests Unlooted”. There’s now hidden loot that gives bonus loot. Probably as a response to players having horrible rng on the last boss ‘Totek’ that has a lot of good pre-raid BiS/near-BiS weapons for mages and clerics.
New Planar Attunement Trees
New Planar Attunement Trees
Three new Planar Attunement (‘PA’) Trees have been added in:
- Steam (Fire + Water)
- Dusk (Life + Death)
- Dust (Air + Earth)
These new PA trees are single-tier only but adds in new consumables appropriate for Nightmare Tide. Nothing out of the ordinary with the usual main stat, secondary stat, Endurance and AP or SP. There’s also elemental resist based on the tree (i.e., Steam has Fire and Water resistance cells).
The new Planar Attunement additions brings max PA from 1,277 to 1,427. That’s an increase of 150 PA levels.
New PA Consumables
Unfortunately the new consumables don’t stack with the older ones, so Salvaged Tablet, for instance, shares a cooldown with Archaic Tablet PA consume.
Crafting Favorites
Crafting Favorites Tab
The latest PTS update has added in a ‘Favorites’ feature to Crafting.
- Simply check the ‘Favorite’ checkbox below any crafting recipe to have it added to a new ‘Favorites’ tab that you can access from the profession drop-down.
- If you want to have the game automatically open to the Favorties tab whenever you click on a crafting station (instead of one of the professions associated with that crafting station), just click the “Open Favorites when right clicking a crafting station” checkbox at the top of your Crafting UI.
A very welcome addition. Test it out on the PTS and see if there’s anything you might not like or want improved.
Tyrant’s Throne
Queen’s Crucible – the top of Tyrant’s Throne.
A new island will be introduced with RIFT Patch 3.1: Storm at Sea and it seems to be heavily related to Crucia. If you’ve done the Draumheim quest-line or completed the large 40+ quests Air Saga questchain, you should know why Crucia would be in the Plane of Water.
Location
The Storm Cage with water ‘prisons’ or ‘hydro power cells’.
Tyrant’s Throne is located off the coast of Goboro Reef at around (6271, 9093). Type in chat: /setwaypoint 6271 9093
Current locations within Tyrant’s Throne are:
- Omicron Harbor. A harbor with various dock-based assets.
- Cave of Infinity. A single-tunnel underwater cave.
- Altar of Glory. Currently just a single Storm Legion platform with the rest of the area barren.
- The Storm Cage. A possible lift or just a smaller platform. Also seems to have some interesting underground water ‘prisons’.
- Queen’s Crucible. The center of the island atop a mountain. Primary building has a lot of missing textures. Probably the entrance to Tyrant’s Forge raid.
A new Tier 1 raid called “Tyrant’s Forge” will also be located on Tyrant’s Throne. Currently there does not seem to be an entrance to this raid yet.
Work-In-Progress
Omicron Harbor
Right now on PTS the island is heavily work-in-progress with no NPCs, missing textures, low-res textures in certain areas, floating objects and large swathes of barren landscape. That said, roaming the area can give you an idea of the size and major points of interest on the island.
Omicron Harbor 2
Lighting, shadows and general polish have not been added in yet. As such, some areas can look rather dark, especially with the thunderstorm sky overlay that just darkens the entire island.
The PTS will likely be getting updates in the coming weeks with more fleshed out versions of Tyrant’s Forge.
Other Additions
A few other additions have been added in including:
- Guard Change
- Help Drop-Down Change
- Portrait Frame Location Change
- Dimension Permissions Improvement
- Slight Focus Graphics Change
Guard Change
Guard Stat Change
The Guard stat used by tanks now has additional tooltips and has been changed to provide different damage reduction based on the Tier of content.
As shown in the image above, instead of a flat damage reduction, Guard will be different per tier. In this case, NT Experts and NT Tier 1 Raids have the same damage reduction, but Guard seems to provide more damage reduction for Tier 2 Raids.
The tooltip now also displays the range that your Guard affects allies.
(Thanks to Arione@Brutwacht for the info!)
Help Drop-Down Changes
Help Icon Changes
The Help drop-down in the mini menu bar has “Search Issues”, View Petitions” and “Contact Game Master” with new icons that link to the Trion website. Currently it takes you to a “server not found” error page, but perhaps this suggests a new policy that takes players straight to the support page. Could just be a linking error though.
Portrait Frame Location Change
Portrait Frame UI Change
Changing portrait frames is now done by right-clicking your portrait rather than from the Settings window. This should make it easier to switch portrait frames to suit your mood.
Dimension Permissions Improvement
Dimension Permissions Special and Ban List
Dimensions have been given an improvement to its Permissions feature.
- There’s now a new column for ‘Special’ that you can edit. This is like a separate friends list for dimensions.
- There’s also a new ‘Ban List’ so you can individually blacklist players, preventing them from entering your dimension.
Note that these new additions currently don’t work yet with the buttons doing nothing. It’s still a work-in-progress.
Slight Focus Graphics Change
Focus Look Changed
The focus has changed its look to make it more consistent with the rest of the UI. Purely cosmetic change. [r]
A good few beefy additions with the latest patch. This patch will also likely be the first of a good few PTS updates over the coming weeks prior to 3.1 launch on Live.
You can check out information on the datamined files here.
For past PTS Updates, click here. You can also find past datamining here.
RiftGrate 
New patch looks pretty awesome 😀
Yes the focus change was purely cosmetic. We felt that the glow was too bright and made it look like something that was unlocked, so I went with something that matched the center circle instead.
Looks good, and the old one definitely looked out of place compared to the UI format of the rest of the game. Just wasn’t sure if maybe it was going to add in another row of essence slots or something like that.