A small 223MB update hit RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS) for the 25th August 2014. There’s a few achievement additions, some new leaderboards as well as what looks like Minions UI Art Assets.
Summary:
- New Achievements: 485 new achievement pts added, although no new achieves visible.
- New Leaderboards for Nightmare Rifts.
- New Artifact Sets for Nightmare Rifts.
- New Work-in-Progress Nightmare Tide Map.
- Minions UI Art Assets.
- Boss Mob Art Assets. – Matrodtraum.
- Some Datamined Skins/Models – Giant Frost Ballista (or Frost Giant’s Ballista); Mage/Cleric 3.0 Staves; Scuba Gear Helm; More Icons.
As always, everything below is subject to change prior to hitting Live and some things included below may never make it to Live release.
New Achievements
485 new achievement points have been added to the PTS since the last update.
- Achievements -> Zones -> RIFT: Nightmare Tide dropped from 145 to 120 pts. No achievement difference.
- Achievements -> Zones went up 100pts. No new achieves shown.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Air increased from 365 to 430pts.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Death increased from 310 to 375pts.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Earth increased from 275 to 340pts.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Fire increased from 815 to 880pts.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Life increased from 380 to 445pts.
- Achievements -> Planes -> Water increased from 265 to 330pts.
- None of the new Planes achievements are visible.
- Achievements -> Dungeons -> RIFT: Nightmare Tide -> Citadel of Insanity is up from 50 to 70pts. No new achieves.
New Leaderboards
Nightmare Rift Leaderboards
Leaderboards (default key “;“) have received some new ‘Nightmare X Rift Stage’ categories under General. These show the five ranks (used to be seven) of Nightmare Rifts coming in RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide. It will be interesting to see how high of a stage players are able to hit these rifts in the first week/month of the expansion. Past indications are that these rifts can hit over 100 stages.
New Nightmare Rift Artifact Sets
The Nightmare Artifact Sets
If you go to your Character window (default key ‘c‘) -> Artifacts and then search for ‘Nightmare’, you will find ‘The # Nightmare’ artifact sets. These go from “The First Nightmare” to “The Seventh Nightmare”.
These can be found both on Live and on the PTS. Thanks to Serein for finding and informing us of this information!
- These artifacts have placeholder rewards – the “Planar Air Dimensional Chest” that gives Air-based dimension items and “Remarkable Coffer of Goods” that rewards some pots and/or scrolls.
- Although there are seven sets, this might be based on the old number of Nightmare Rift Ranks – which was 7. However, in recent PTS updates, the achievements for Nightmare Rifts have been reduced to 5 ranks, so these artifact sets might also drop to 5 before hitting Live.
New WIP Nightmare Tide Map
A new WIP Nightmare Tide Map has been added that makes several improvements over the old WIP map datamined on July 2nd.
RIFT 3.0 Nightmare Tide WIP Map 2
Amongst the changes, all of Goboro Reef’s flora has been changed to purple. The lower-left of Goboro Reef has also been expanded upon. There’s also an absence of ‘dev paint’ such as the arrow leading from Goboro Reef to Draumheim or the ‘unwalkable’ paint to the south of Draumheim.
The ‘second Atragarian Well’ to the East of the first one in the middle of the Goboro Reef zone now looks much less like an Atragarian Well.
Tarken Glacier has had a decent change-up. Locations with buildings have been ‘covered’ in snow and Mount Sharax in the north now looks more polished.
Click here for the old map to compare.
Minions UI Art Assets
Datamining of today’s PTS update has revealed what looks to be a multitude of Minion UI Art Assets!
First up, ‘frames’:
Minions Adventure Card Frames
Possible Minion Adventure Card UI Art Assets
Possible Minion Adventure Card UI Art Assets 2
These ‘frames’ might be Adventure Card (Mission) frames. They could also be what you see when you gain a Minion Card, with the borders representing what type of minion you’ve gained.
Interestingly, there seems to be two Air-related and two Death-related frames. These might indicate more powerful/rarer Minions with the last 4 having a different look to the top 6. Their top and bottom banners are different from the rest.
The last 4 could be Reglos-related; Crucia-related, Nightmare (Tribulation)-related and Dream Guard-related.
Minions UI Background
Possible Minions Background UI
Here are a bunch of backgrounds to what is assumed to be the Minions System UI. These are for the first sixframes displayed above. The last 3 have slightly different frames:
Possible Minions Background UI 2
Possible Minions Background UI 3
Again the differences in both the borders (which get ‘cut off’ at the top for the first 6 and are filled for these 4) as well as the magic circle in the background seems to indicate that these four are somewhat special – or represent some other difference, such as perhaps an indication that a minion has completed their mission and is awaiting turn-in.
Minions Missions/Adventure Cards
Possible Minions Missions
The above 6 images are likely indicators of the Adventure Cards (Missions) your Minions can go out on.
- First is obviously to collect Artifacts with the sparkles showing Twisted (red), Normal (white) and Unstable (blue) Artifacts.
- This is a little less obvious. Book, Potion, Chest and Key. Perhaps it is a mission that gives you a chance at obtaining lockboxes, boosts and books?
- The third is clearly for gathering resource nodes: Mining and Foraging.
- Fourth might be for quests to obtain recipes, fight mobs and perhaps a chance at other minion cards. Probably related to gaining experience and bringing back platinum and perhaps even notoriety.
- 5th seems to be another gathering resource nodes mission: Butchering and Fishing.
- The last seems to be for gathering Outfitting (cloth), Runecrafting (as indicated by the flickering crystal) and Artificing (as indicated by the dust)
Minions Attribute Icons
Possible Minions Attributes Icons
These icons are ‘potentially’ attribute icons. Trion has revealed before that Adventure Cards (Missions) will take Minions to different Planes/locations to perform different tasks. They also told us that some Minions will be better suited for certain jobs (example: Greenscale would be suited for a mission in the Plane of Life).
To that end, these icons are more than likely included on each Minion card to indicate what Plane they are associated with (i.e. ‘Skull’ = Death; ‘Tree’ = Life) and which activities they are good at (i.e. ‘Sword’ = Fighting; ‘White wisp’ = Artifact-collecting; ‘Logs’ = Foraging).
The attributes are used to encourage players to collect as many Minions as possible so they can maximise the rewards gained from each mission by choosing the most optimal Minion to perform each task.
Possible HurryMission Icon
Minions Firebolt
This particular icon above is much larger than the others and I have this inkling that this ‘Minions Firebolt’ (no clue on actual name) is probably Cash-Shop related.
Back in June, TehFrank datamined some Minions Commands as per below:
- !MinionXP@Minions
- !Attributes@Minions
- !SlotsOpen@Minions
- minionsTabMaster._AddMinions
- minions.ClaimMission
- minions.SelectTab
- minions.HideMinionSelector
- minions.AssignMinion
- minions.HurryMission
- minions.UnlockMissionSlot
- $Select_A_Minion@UI
Notice the “minions.HurryMission” command. That seems like a Cash-Shop-related command to speed up the time it takes to complete a Mission. The firebolt with the jagged lines to indicate ‘lightning’ would seem to be a pretty good representation of ‘speed’.
Other Misc Icons
Possible Minions Misc Icons
And here’s a whole bunch of other misc – possibly Minions-related – icons. The Planar-related art assets could be used to spiffy up window borders – there’s Life (plants), Water (tentacles/fins) and Death (death-spines) icons as well as an Air-related art asset at the bottom.
The colored banners are likely Minion-related given the design.
The ‘portrait border’ icons (such as the Elite red spikes and Raid gold spikes) are quite interesting because they seem to be placed around buttons rather than portraits. They are obviously stretched here. What they are meant to be for is unknown, although the blank, Elite and Raid frames seem to indicate rank or power of some sort.
The right-most ‘orb’ is an upgrade icon (like upgrading Conquest Extractors or Sourcewells). This leads me to believe that these icons could be meant to indicate your Minions progress to a new ‘level’, with the Normal/Elite/Raid frames indicating the Minions ‘rank’/’level’.
As for the 4th icon – that’s just the Promo Week icon, although I’ve included it here just in case it has another use related to the other icons.
Can’t wait to see the Minion System all come together. Currently non-testers do not have access to the Minion System on the PTS, although with these new art assets it looks like the testers finally have a chance to see the Minions UI in action.
Boss Mob Art Assets
Three Boss Mob Art Assets
Three boss art assets. Some of these might be old assets, although the middle one is Matrodtraum, one of the boss mobs in Nightmare Tide. These could be used on top of promotional material in-game in the Rift Store, or they could be added onto World Event and Promo Week windows. It isn’t too farfetched to imagine Matrodtraum on top of the prelude 3.0 World Event window UI.
Some Datamined Skins/Models
A couple of datamined skins and models from this latest update:
Giant Frost Ballista
RIFT 3.0 Giant Frost Ballista
Either the filename ‘P_TG_frost_giant_ballista_01.ma’ refers to “Frost Giant’s Ballista”, or it refers to a “Giant Frost Ballista”. The item itself seems too sophisticated for the Ice Giants who seem more like cavemen, so ‘frost_giant’ may just be referring to the Ballista’s size and the fact it is in Tarken Glacier.
RIFT Datamined Mechanical Parts
Above is a skin with a whole bunch of mechanic parts. Given some of the components (like the ‘curved’ pieces), this is likely the skin for the “Giant Frost Ballista”.
More 3.0 Weapons
More 3.0 weapon models and skins:
RIFT 3.0 More 3.0 Weapon Staves
This time there’s a line-up of Cleric/Mage staves. The first is Glacial, second and third are Skelf, 4th is nightmare/tribulation, 5th is probably Dream Guard and the last one is another Glacial (guesses based on design).
RIFT 3.0 More 3.0 Weapon Staves Skins
And some of their skins. The top two are Skelf stave skins, the bottom-left is nightmare/tribulation and the bottom-right is Glacial.
Scuba Gear Helm
Scuba Suit Helm
Scuba Suit Helm skin – the steampunk kind you see in fish tanks.
There’s even an icon to go with it! Probably something to watch out for in the Rift Store under Wardrobe, although it isn’t on the PTS yet.
Other Icons
Other Icons Datamined
Some other icons datamined. The flask could be a Minion-related temporary boost; although anything is possible. The second one could potentially be a new supply crate, or perhaps a higher-slot storage bag. The two jellyfish icons are probably related to jellyfish critters and the last, ‘nightmare’ eye icon could be anything nightmare-related – perhaps a Nightmare Rift lure.
A nice variety of updates this time round, including art assets for the Minions system. Look forward to that Scuba Helm coming some time to Live.
Update 08.25.14: A second update hit the PTS today, with the addition of a whole heap of new ‘thumbnails’ that are likely either Porticulum Preview thumbnails or Rift Store ‘Featured’ backgrounds. Check them out here.
For past PTS Updates, click here. You can also find past datamining and 3.0-related news updates.
RiftGrate 
I don’t know if this is possible or not or if it’s just a lot of work but, is it possible to show some of the models with their textures on?
I’m sure there’s some program out there that can pull the skin and model together (after-all, that’s what the skin is for, right?). No idea on where you’d get it – how much it’d cost – and if all the data is available to piece them together from the datamined files. There’s plenty of files that aren’t readable without knowing what program is required to read them (like the numerous .dat files).
It could be possible that you’d need the game engine itself to piece them together.
Take too long to explain and it’ll confuse you quite a bit… so ill put it simple. There is no way possible…. Unless u paint the 3D img u see in PS or something.
It’ll take too long to explain so ill put it simple; There is no way in what you’re asking IF that is by saying taking these images and putting them together (Khortish is suggesting). The devs have the 3D model (files) only they can place the textures on it themselves. UNLESS u take these 3D images and paint it on Photoshop or somethin similar. which would be a pain.