The Advantages of Gifting

Have you ever wondered why players provide gifting services? What do they gain from charging only 0.7 Plat per Credit for items on the Rift Store (effectively 875 plat per 1,250 Credits, or per REX-equivalent)?

The answer? RIFT Gifting provides you with more plat, or more loyalty, depending on your goal.

Summary:

• Gifters get more platinum from gifting Credits bought with $100 Credit Pack vs selling 10x $10 REX.
• Gifters get way more loyalty for continuously Gifting Credits and then buying REX, consuming them for Credits, and then Gifting those Credits. Rinse and Repeat for large amounts of loyalty.
• Buyers benefit from cheaper Rift Store items and services and not needing to build up as much platinum for items that aren’t exactly 1,250 Credits.

Table of Contents:

• How to Gift in RIFT
  • How to be a Gifter
• Benefits of Gifting
  • More Platinum with Gifting
  • More Loyalty with Gifting
  • Why would players want to use the gifting service?
• The Risks of Gifting

How to Gift in RIFT

First up we’ll go over how to Gift in RIFT. When you go to the Rift Store (default key “]“), you may see a ‘Gift’ icon in the right-most area of some of the items in the Rift Store. This icon indicates that they are giftable to other players.

Clicking on the ‘Gift’ icon will bring you to the Gifting Window which acts like Mail – Simply type in the receiver’s name@shardname, an optional message, optional wrapping and then click on the cost button.

When you send the Gift over, you receive all the loyalty instead of the receiver (2 Loyalty per Credit spent).

Gifting can be done across shards as long as you input a charactername@shardname, so say, Marko@Laethys. It cannot be done across Clusters though. Those on the North American (“NA”) shards have no worries as they are all on the same cluster, but European (“EU”) shard players will need to be aware that you have two clusters – the English-speaking ones and the international ones.

How to be a Gifter

Becoming a Gifter is easy. Just have Credits on you and then type in Trade, Level 60 or CrossEvents@Faeblight (for NA players). If you are going to restrict yourself to gifting on your own shard then you won’t have to worry about setting up alts on other shards – just send messages like “Gifting Service – 0.7p/credit – PST me with what you want” to the Trade and Level 60 channel.

• Trade channel is automatically accessed when you are in Sanctum, Meridian or Tempest Bay and is usually /3. If you have accidentally deleted that channel for whatever reason, go to Sanctum, Meridian or Tempest Bay and type /join Trade.
• Level 60 channel is only accessible for Level 60s. If you accidentally deleted the channel, type /join Level 60. You can also use your gifting services in your own level channel corresponding to your level bracket.

For those looking at targeting a wider market, you can try your crossevents channel. For NA that is CrossEvents@Faeblight. For the EU shards you can also consider typing into the 60s channels of each shard individually by typing /join Level 60@shardname in chat (with shardname replaced by the actual shard’s name).

Gifting Cross-shard means you’ll need to have alts ready on the various shards to receive the customer’s plat. Since your Credits are account-wide, you can gift from your alts without issues.

Benefits of Gifting

More Platinum with Gifting

Let’s pretend you want to spend $100 on the game. You could spend it on an $100 Credit Pack that provides 18,500 Credits*, or for the same amount of money, 10x REX which gives 11,250 Credits. Already, the $100 Credit Pack would be more beneficial.

If you were to charge 0.7 Plat per Credit, you would get 12,950 Plat as opposed to the 10,000 Plat (or less) you would get for selling those 10 REX on the NA Shards.

So simply put, Gifting provides more plat for the same $.

*Note: For simplicity’s sake, we’re using NA numbers. EU mileage may vary.

More Loyalty with Gifting

There’s various benefits to obtaining loyalty, including extra currency/notoriety/token drops, player summons, titles, companion pets, wardrobe items, mounts, teleports and costume character portraits, 32-36 slotted bags and even the ability to summon a portable auctioneer.

If you are interested in loyalty-only, Gifting provides a fantastic way of obtaining huge amounts of loyalty for a minimal spend. As a gifter, you get the loyalty for spending Credits to gift to another player.

Note: You get 2 Loyalty for every Credit bought, and 2 Loyalty for every Credit spent. In regards to REX, you get 2,500 Loyalty when you consume the REX (not when you buy it), and 2 Loyalty for every Credit spent.

1. Spend $100 on the $100 Credit Pack, you get 18,500 Credits. You gain 37,000 Loyalty for buying the Credit Pack.
2. You gift 18,500 Credits at 0.7 plat per Credit. You gain 12,950 Platinum. You gain 37,000 Loyalty for spending Credits.
3. You buy 12.95 REX at 1,000 Platinum per REX (let’s just round it to 13 since it’s fairly easy to get a 950 plat REX). You then consume all 13 REX to Credits. This gives you 16,250 Credits and 32,500 Loyalty for consuming the REXs.
4. You gift 16,250 Credits at 0.7 plat per Credit. You gain 11,375 Platinum. You gain 32,500 Loyalty for spending Credits.
5. You buy 11.375 REX at 1,000 Platinum per REX. You then consume 11 REX to Credits and have 375 Platinum remaining. This gives you 13,750 Credits and 27,500 Loyalty for consuming the REXs.
6. You gift 13,750 Credits at 0.7 plat per Credit. You gain 9,625 Platinum. You gain 27,500 Loyalty for spending Credits.
7. You buy 10 REX at 1,000 Platinum per REX (9,625 + 375 from #5). You then consume 10 REX. This gives you 12,500 Credits and 25,000 Loyalty for consuming the REXs.
8. You gift 12,500 Credits at 0.7 plat per Credit. You gain 8,750 Platinum. You gain 25,000 Loyalty for spending the Credits.
9. You buy 8 REX at 1,000 Platinum per REX. You then consume 8 REX to Credits and have 750 Platinum remaining. This gives you 10,000 Credits and 20,000 Loyalty for consuming the REXs.
10. And so on and so forth.

You are effectively looking at 493,500 Loyalty gained from an $100 Credit Pack via the Gifting method compared to only 74,000 Loyalty if you had simply bought the Credit Pack and spent it on yourself.

Of course things won’t go as perfectly for you in reality depending on the demands of gifters. It’s also a LOT more work than simply spending the Credits on yourself – but it will certainly provide you with a lot more bang for your buck if you are after Loyalty.

By simply reaching #3 you’ve already gotten yourself more Loyalty than through the normal buy-Credits-and-use-them-for-yourself method.

Why would players want to use the Gifting service?

Simply put, players want to use the Gifting service because it is not only cheaper than buying REX off other players, but it also allows them to buy lower cost items without having to pitch in for an entire REX, or to obtain items that might cost slightly more credits than REX (say, 1,300 Credits when REX only provides 1,250 Credits).

• At the average Gifter’s price of 0.7 plat per Credit, that is effectively 875 Plat for REX-equivalent Credits (1,250 Credits). A pretty good deal already.
• If the Gifter also passes on Patron discount to the buyer, that’s another 10% discount (if the buyer doesn’t have patron discount).
• Let’s say you just want a Planar Essence Removal Device that costs 160 Credits (144 for Patrons). Instead of having to build up 950-1,000 plat to purchase a REX and consume it for Credits, you only need to have 112 platinum (0.7 plat per Credit) or 100 plat 80 gold (if the Gifter passes on Patron discount to you).
• Let’s say you want the Dawnfire Jester Bundle which costs 1,425 Credits (1,282 for Patrons). Instead of having to purchase 2 REX at approx 1,900-2,000 Plat, you only need 997 plat 11g (or 897 plat 40g with patron discount passed on).

There’s some nice advantages to Gifting for both the Gifter and the Buyer. So why isn’t this activity more popular?

The Risks of Gifting

The reason Gifting isn’t as widespread (other than the lack of knowledge of its benefits) is that it carries a risk. In most cases, Gifters operate by requesting buyers to pay platinum up-front prior to them gifting (since it’s easier for the buyer to chase one person – the Gifter – rather than having the Gifter chase up multiple Buyers).

Some risks:

• Potential Buyers may be unwilling to risk sending platinum to someone fearing that they may be scammed.
• Potential Gifters may be unwilling to spend the time logging back and forth between accounts on various alts in order to collect platinum from Buyers.

It becomes a lot easier for a Gifter once they’ve established some trust. If you’re already well-known in some part of the community, this can make things easier (so say, if you’re a Conquest leader who leads quite often, or some guild leader in a large guild on a shard; these can usually help build trust). Of course, the more you gift and the more happy customers you have, the more players can recommend your services or back you up if a buyer is wary of buying from you.

Note: Gifting services are not actively supported by Trion, but are not considered illegal/exploiting either.