August 5, 2014 | Khortish | 1 Comment

A Look Back: RIFT Patch 2.7 – Binding of Blood

With RIFT Patch 2.8: Madness Wakes coming to our shores on 6th August 2014, it is time to take a look back at the last 3 months since Binding of Blood (RIFT 2.7) came out. You might even come across content you’ve missed through the miasma of 16 hotfixes we’ve seen!

Summary:

The Runic Athenaeum

Trion introduced The Runic Athenaeum in Patch 2.7 – a new location hidden underneath the hills of Moonshade Highlands where Voradrin, the Arbiter, has stored countless historical documents. Soul quests introducing the new Dream Souls (Arbiter, Liberator, Oracle and Physician) as well as new lore on hybridization are available here.

You can find a guide to getting and navigating through the Runic Athenaeum quests here. Bag yourself some nice experience, interesting lore on hybridization and the back-story for each Dream Soul as well as a cape for each soul!

Dream Souls

The Dream Souls arrived with 2.7, adding one new soul for each class and filling the role they were missing up till then.

The Dream Soul Pack can be obtained from the RIFT Store -> Services section for 5,000 Credits (4,500 for Patrons).

The Arbiter – Mage Tank Soul
The Liberator – Warrior AoE Healing Soul
The Physician – Rogue ST Healing Soul
The Oracle – Cleric Support Soul

Major Class Changes

With every Patch there’s a ton of hotfixes with a whole mix of minor changes to a variety of souls in each class. Below are the major class changes of note:

Cleric Cabalist Overhauled – New toggles to differentiate no. of mobs being attacked; multiple changes to existing abilities, new abilities and even an immobile stealth ability.
Cleric Justicar Overhauled – Cleric threat changed so that the Justicar no longer benefits from overhealing threat. A few abilities have been changed up in response and Convictions are now gained automatically over time.
Mage Stormcaller Overhauled – Large overhaul to greatly reduce no. of abilities and improve DPS.

Tier 3 Raids: Binding of Blood

Tier 3 Storm Legion Raids popped up one by one over the course of Patch 2.7’s release cycle, starting with Greenscale, Akylios, Laethys and finally, Maelforge.

You can find kill videos, standings and guides below (where available):

Greenscale: Kill Videos | Guide by fufi | World First by -Vendetta- (Greybriar, NA)
Akylios: Kill Videos | Guide by ginc | World First by Trinity (Greybriar, NA)
Laethys: Kill Videos | Guide by Yobiraion | World First by -Vendetta- (Greybriar, NA)
Maelforge: Kill Videos | Guide by Yobiraion | World First by -Vendetta- (Greybriar, NA)

Congratulations to all the guilds that have downed these raids! Special congratulations goes to -Vendetta- for being the first guild to down all Storm Legion Raid Bosses and for having 3 of the 4 Bindings of Blood World Firsts. You can check out their Bindings of Blood: Maelforge kill thread here.

World Events/Promo Weeks

A number of World Events and Promo Weeks popped up during the course of RIFT 2.7:

Unicornalia Promo Week – Newly introduced in May, the Unicornalia Promo Week adds new Unicorn mounts to the game that can be gained as a rare drop from Sparkle Troves or via Sparkle Essences gained in Unicornalia daily quests.
Temporal Flux Week – Old Promo Week that adds Empyreal Walker mounts gained as a rare drop from Temporal Troves or via currency gained in Temporal Flux daily quests.
Mayhem in Mathosia – This event happens every now and then that adds bonus rewards and rare chance drops to certain zones over the course of the event. This time the zones were Moonshade Highlands & Droughtlands.
Summerfest 2014 – An annual World Event, Summerfest was chock-full of Scavenger Hunts and other activities in both Mathosia, Brevane and Dusken continents. Also introduced the Ravensong mount.

Multiple UI Improvements

A multitude of UI improvements were brought into Patch 2.7 with the thanks of Trion’s engineers and Senior UI Artist Gingers.

Macro UI Improved

The Macro UI received a massive, much-requested improvement making the management of the Macros to become a lot easier:

The amount of macro slots was increased to 200 with 10 categories of 20 macro slots.
Each Macro Category can be renamed.
All macros are moveable with a simple drag and drop within and between categories.
You can copy macros by SHIFT+dragging the Macro Icon you want to copy to a new, empty slot.
The UI is also improved so that each Category shows a 4 by 5 grid of macros instead of the old, single column macro UI.

Crafting UI Improved

The Crafting UI also received some nice quality-of-life improvements to deal with the increasing amounts of recipes that players were being bogged down by:

Collapse All/Expand All buttons were added in to collapse or expand all recipe categories.
The recipe categories now have ‘memory‘ and will remember which categories you have collapsed or expanded the next time you open the crafting window.
There is now a ‘Hide Trivial Recipes‘ checkbox in the top right-hand corner that will hide all Gray recipes (low-level recipes compared to your current craft level for that profession).

Achievement UI Improved

The Achievement UI received an upgrade with Achievement Tracking and Achievement Searching.

Achievement Tracking: Clicking on the circle button next to the achievement points of an achievement will place it in your Quest/Achievement Tracker on your screen. Going to ESC -> Settings -> Interface -> Display. Achievement Tracking ‘Stickies’ are shared with ‘Quest Stickies’ (max 10).
Achievement Searching: Click on a category to search achievements in that specific category, or click on the ‘Summary’ category to search the entire database. Achievements will begin displaying as you type so you don’t need to type the entire achievement name.

Preview Items UI Improved

The Preview Items Window was improved to include the “Previewed Items” buttons, including dye previewing that the RIFT Store preview already contained.

Porticulum UI Improved

The Porticulum UI was improved with an additional mini-map of both Mathosia and Storm Legion continents in the bottom-left hand corner as a quality of life improvement. With this addition you no longer needed to speak to the Porticulum Master again when trying to switch maps.

Expansion of Wardrobe and Quest Item Slots

Wardrobe Slots were expanded from 19 to 39 (+ original armor slot).

Quest Item Slots found under your Quest Log Window (default key “L“) were increased from 20 to 40 to deal with quest items overflowing into players’ inventories, especially for those with a lot of crafting and gathering profession dailies/weeklies.

Last Name Scroll

The Last Name Scroll was added in during Patch 2.7. It is not visible in chat channels, but it acts like a suffix title that goes before your actual suffix title. I.e. [prefix title] [FirstName] [LastName] [suffix title]. The Last Name is not limited to a single word and can have multiple words with spaces in them! It is available for 450 Credits (405 for Patrons) on the RIFT Store -> Services.

You can find out more information about the Last Name Scroll and any limitations here.

Removal of Old Currencies

In order to clean up the Currencies window, Trion performed an automatic conversion of all major old world mark currencies (such as Marks of Ascension and Plaques of Achievement) into platinum on a 1000-to-1 ratio. [r]

They also converted all Empyreal Sourcestones into Infinity Stones at a 35-to-10 ratio. Subsequently, all activities that previously rewarded Empyreal Sourcestones and all gear that cost Empyreal Sourcestones were converted to Infinity Stones. [r]

PvP: Blighted Antechamber Warfront

Introduced in RIFT 2.7 Hotfix #16, the Blighted Antechamber is a new PvP Warfront available to Level 60s. It is a Capture the Flag-based Warfront in a Life-based maze.

There are several ways to score points in the warfront. The team with the most points by the time the timer ends, or who has reached 1,000 points first, wins.

Three Capture Points: The Spire, The Cul-de-sac and The Blind Alley. The Spire provides the least amount of points per tick, but it has the advantage of being in the center of the map on a raised platform and thus provides significant bonuses to visibility and mobility.
Two Flags: There is one flag on each side of the map. Stealing the other team’s flag and returning it to your base will grant you a large amount of points. However, if the other team has taken your team’s flag, you cannot turn in the flag until the enemy flag carrier has died.
Jump Pads: There are various Jump Pads throughout the map that jump you to The Spire at the center of the room. Note that those carrying Flags cannot use the Jump Pads and cannot go up to The Spire.

New Ascend-a-Friend Program

A new Ascend-a-Friend Program was introduced that was a much needed change since RIFT went F2P. You are now rewarded with Referral Coins each time your referred friends purchase Credit packs. These Referral Coins can be spent in the RIFT Store in a new category called Referral Rewards.

Referral Rewards include capes, mounts, pets and even REX and Budgie Supply Crates if you have enough Referral Coins. The rate seems to be 150 Referral Coins for every $5 in Credits your referred friends purchase.

Patron Benefits Improved

Patron Subscriptions/Passes received a rather significant boost to entice players to purchase Patron.

Patron Pots/Vials have now become passive. (24hrs instead of 2hr buffs).
New Ability: Experience Bonus Suppression. To suppress 40% EXP for those leveling with non-patron friends.
New Passive: Mounted Command – Reduce time to mount by 25%; Reduce chance to dismount by 5%; 10% mount speed increase.
New Passive: Marvelous Luck – Increases chance to receive Marvelous items from Supply Crates.
New Passive: Patron Focus – Reduce cast time of Call of the Ascended by 10 secs (Also resets battle resurrection CDs); Reduce CD on Archaic Tablet, Charged Mirror, Consuming Flame, Petrified Rune, Renewing Seed and Soul Crystal Planar Abilities (not the consumables) by 15min.
New Ability: Patron Fast Pass – Allow an Ascended remote access to any Porticulum once every 30min.
New Ability: Patron’s Radiance. Toggle ability that displays a halo on your head.
New Ability: Bonus Warfront Charges + Bonus Dungeon Charges. Each one of these abilities adds 3 charges to your Random Warfront or Random Expert Dungeon respectively. You can use each ability once a week.
In the Future – Also, an in-game window that tracks days left on patron.

Further information can be found here.

Glyph Launcher Introduced

The Glyph Launcher was introduced at the start of July and became a mandatory conversion, removing the original RIFT Launcher and replacing it with one that held all of Trion’s titles.

There’s a bunch of benefits to the new Launcher including auto-login and no need to keep opening up a launcher when re-logging into RIFT. It also benefits players who play multiple Trion titles or who switch between server regions.

Unfortunately the Glyph Launcher was released with a lot of bugs and some players are still dealing with errors.

If you are still having issues with the Glyph Launcher, try some of the solutions found here.

That’s it for the major additions to the game with Patch 2.7! Hope you enjoyed this “Look Back” summary and look forward to Patch 2.8: Madness Wakes on the 6th August 2014!

We have some snippets of information about the patch you can find here, but rest assured we’ll post up a link to the patch notes when CM Morgana releases them!

Tags: A Look Back, Archives, Patch 2.7, Rift

Categories: Archives

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One Comment on “A Look Back: RIFT Patch 2.7 – Binding of Blood”

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Elioty

August 5, 2014 at 9:57 am #

Some people can claim that the release cycle might be a bit slower than during Rift 1.x but hell, so many things went live/happened within these 3 months. Just to say that Rift detractors’ arguments are kind of invalid.