Hey guys, thought I’d throw together a quick guide for how to obtain some of the good stuff in this year’s Carnival of the Ascended.

Summary:

• There’s 3 different currencies with different ways of obtaining each currency: Auroral Doubloons, Glass Beads and Prize Tickets.
• A special Knight Spider Mount is now available for a limited time during the Carnival. Find out how to efficiently obtain one!
• Strategy on farming Carnival Celebration Crates.
• Analysis of the new Carnival Weapons and Essences – Are they worth obtaining?

Read on for more information and some strategies to obtain some of this year’s Carnival goods in a quick and efficient manner.

Table of Contents:

• 3 Currencies
• How to get a Knight Spider Mount
• How to Farm Carnival Celebration Crates
• New Weapons and Essences, Are They Worth It?

3 Currencies

• Auroral Doubloon – Gained via a weekly quest in either Sanctum or Meridian, maximum of 3 obtainable over the course of the event. (Phase 1 gives 1 Auroral Doubloon; Phase 2 gives 2) [r].
• Glass Beads – Drop from Dragon Pinatas, RIFTS, planar invasions, zone events etc.
• Prize Tickets – Earned by completing Carnival games.

The quickest way to get Tickets is still doing a balloon stomp raid with the largest group possible. If you’re paying attention you should average around 1 ticket every 15 seconds. This means 4 tickets every minute and roughly 240 tickets every hour.

How to get a Knight Spider Mount

There are two ways to get a ‘Knight Spider’ mount, which is probably the most sought after new addition to this year’s Carnival of the Ascended.

• The first is via ‘luck’ in Carnival Celebration Crates;
• The second is by completing the achievement “Come On and Jump On My Spider”.

The second is the only guaranteed way to get the Knight Spider Mount and I’m going to talk you through the easiest and quickest way to do it (Which admittedly is neither easy or quick).

You need to complete a total of 4 achievements to complete the achievement “Come On and Jump On My Spider”.

These achievements are:

• Party Personifier;
• The Color Changer;
• Celebration Through Decoration; and
• Tito Approved!.

Party Personifier

For this achievement you’ll need to buy 7 different masks, these masks costs a variety of tickets:

• Carnival Planar Mask – 150 tickets
• Carnival Water Mask – 150 tickets
• Carnival Death Mask – 150 tickets
• Carnival Flame Mask – 150 tickets
• Carnival Life Mask – 250 tickets
• Carnival Air Mask – 250 tickets
• Carnival Earth Mask – 250 tickets

This makes for a grand total of 1,350 tickets or alternately if you’re daddy warbucks 3,150 Credits (2,835 for Patrons).

Celebration Through Decoration

This achievement requires you to buy all 4 of the Carnival Dimension Kits:

• Carnival Banquet Kit – 375 tickets
• Birthday Feast Kit – 125 tickets
• Carnival of the Ascended Kit – 300 tickets
• Carnival Latern Kit – 125 Tickets

This makes for a grand total of 925 tickets or alternately 1,850 Credits (1,665 for Patrons).

Tito Approved!

This achievement requires you to collect and summon all 17 of the pets that drop from the Carnival Crates. Each Carnival Crate is guaranteed to drop one of them, so expect these to be fairly low priced and common by the end of the world event.

I don’t think a full collection will cost you more than a couple of hundred plat, however I’ll go onto explain the quickest way to farm boxes.

Note: The Carnival companion pets are tradable so you will probably see some up on the Auction House.

The Color Changer

For this achievement you need to collect and use all the new glowing effect items, unlike previous items, these ones cost Glass Beads, which are fairly easily attainable and if you frequent the open world regularly you will likely have these coming out of your ears by the end of the event.

• Touch of the Redsand – 400 Beads
• Touch of the Vivid Dream – 400 Beads
• Touch of the Vibrant – 400 Beads
• Touch of the Mystics – 400 Beads.

That’s a total of 1,600 Beads or alternately 1,147 Credits (1,032 for Patrons).

So if you want a guaranteed Knight Spider the main obstacle will be the Prize Tickets. You will need a total of 2,275 of these. If you’re optimally farming the Prize tickets at 1 ticket every 15 seconds, it’s going to take you around 10 hours of jumping on balloons. Woop.

Alternately you could splash out 4,500+ Credits to alleviate this 10 hour ticket grind.

How to Farm Carnival Celebration Crates

You can farm Carnival Celebration Crates via new characters and get roughly 1 crate every 15-20 minutes.

For this to work effectively and be definitively faster than balloon stomping (where you’ll average 1 crate every 40 minutes), you’ll need to have been playing RIFT for at least 2 weeks, so that when you create a new character you’ll be sent 160% exp vials.

Step 1: Create a new Character

Make a new character (A rogue with a Marksman/Ranger appears to be the fastest class to get to level 10).

Step 2: Pop Vials and Level through Starting Zone

Pop 160% Exp Vial and Patron Vial (If you have it) and zerg through the starting zone. By the time you’re out of either starting zone, you should easily be level 10. (An experienced player with a bit of luck can clear these starting zones in 8-10 minutes).

Step 3: Head to your Capital City – Pick up Weekly Quest

Head to your faction’s capital city then pick up the quest from the Carnival Master that requires you to complete 50 carnival games.

The reward for this quest is 1x [Carnival Celebration Crate] and 1x[Auroral Dubloon].

Note: If you’re a blue tier and above patron, you can use Tempest Insignia as soon as you’re out of the starting zone and then head straight to your factions capital city via portals in the Defiant or Guardian wings of Tempest Bay).

Step 4: Join Balloon-Jumping Raid

Find the group that is spamming the balloon mini-game and join them.

Every time someone in your raid group completes that quest, the counter will tick up 1 for the 50 carnival games. So if you’re lucky enough to get in a full raid, this quest can be done within a minute. If you’re not in a full raid this quest can take anywhere from 2-5 minutes to complete.

Step 5: Profit

Hand the quest in, open your crate and then send whatever you get over to your main!

Warning: Everything from the chest can be sent apart from the Necklaces, so if you’re farming specifically for the necklace, then stick to the balloon farming.

The New Weapons and Essences, Are They Worth It?

Essences

If you don’t have Torvan Hunters/Lycini rep maxed out, the Essences will be worth the currency spent on them. They are fairly affordable at the price of 1,536 Glass Beads and 12,000 Planarite each.

Unfortunately due to the fact that these essences lack ‘off stats’ (e.g. The cleric DPS one lacks INT), they are currently not part of any ‘BIS’ cores to my knowledge for DPS and healing, thus not worth forking out the Infinity Stones to upgrade.

However, most of the tanking essences, once upgraded a couple of times from Empyreal Hero’s Large Cell (11,850 Infinity Stones) are considered BIS endurance-wise. If you want to upgrade it a further time you will need a Radiant Infinity Cell, which can be obtained from Conquest, Tier 1 raids or lockboxes. To fully upgrade this essence it will cost you 35,550 Infinity Stones, 2 Ephemeral Element’s and one Radiant Infinity Cell. Which considering it’s part of the BIS core, is a fairly justifiable cost.

Weapons

No, no, no and no.

These weapons in my honest opinion are just shameful.

The fully upgraded versions I will admit are pretty awesome. Once fully upgraded, they are just below tier 1 relic weapons in terms of stats, before this level, they kind of suck and for most classes crafted weapons or weapons that drop in experts will considerably be better and the cost of the first few upgrades are really not justifiable. However to reach the tier 1 equivalent level it requires a total of 22 Empyreal Vanquishers Large Cells.

Each one of these Cell’s cost 8,460 Infinity Stones. That’s a total of 186,120 Infinity Stones for a fully upgraded weapon. Adding to that there are a ton of crafting materials needed for each one. 186,120 Infinity Stones?!?! I really don’t even know where to start on that. A full Venerated Torvan Hunters/Lycini core is just short of 55,000 Stones.

Anyways that’s it for the guide guys, any questions, fire away, cheers!

You can check out an overview of other areas of the Carnival of the Ascended below:

• Guide: Carnival Store Items

• Guide: Carnival Dimension Items

Also, check out the main Carnival Guide with Quest/Carnival Games information and details on the Carnival Achievements below:

• Guide: Carnival of the Ascended