PTS Update for 1st October 2014

A large ~1.74GB update hit the Public Test Shard for 1st October 2014. A lot of changes – plenty of polish, mob additions, new carnages and new doodads floating around. A ton of stuff to go over.

You can check out information on the datamined files for this update here.

Summary:

• Maps & Zones Updated. Loads of new additions to Draumheim and Tarken Glacier.
  
• Old Dailies EXP Change. Some EXP removed, others PA-only.
  
• New Gear on PTS. Level 65 Relic Weapons; Synergy Crystals; Earrings; Notoriety gear.
  
• Crabnarok Mount and Supply Crate. New mount. Deathbound Steel Bundle + more.
• New Achievements. Draumheim + Tarken Glacier Achieves.
  
• Crafting Additions. Savant Dream Orbs.
• Other Stuff: TB Porticulum changed; Currency caps; Artifact set rewards; New planar consumes; Shadows now has Ultra Setting; Writ of the Waterlogged.

As always, everything below is subject to change prior to hitting Live and some things included below may never make it to Live release.

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Getting Level 65 on PTS

There’s ‘Make me level 65’ potions available for purchase in the Master Mode Dummy Foundry.

Instructions:

1. Right-click your character portrait and choose Master under Dungeon Difficulty.
2. Then, click on the bear trap in front of Sanctum, Meridian and Tempest Bay Porticulums.
3. The NPC should give you the potion.
4. You can exit the Master Mode Dummy Foundry via the yellow trap behind the NPC (takes you to Tempest Bay).

Note: This only works for players who already have a Level 65 character on the PTS.

Alternate Method:

For those who don’t already have a Level 65 character, you can ask someone to trade you a ‘Make me level 65’ potion. Just ask it in the Level 60-64 chat and someone in Tempest Bay will probably give you one. It says ‘Bind to Account’ but it is tradeable and useable by anyone.

Have fun testing end-game content!

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Maps & Zones Updated

Fully-Detailed Map

The Plane of Water main map has been updated to what appears to be the final version prior to launch. It is now fully detailed with proper pathing guidelines to all major locations, including in-between Goboro Reef and Draumheim.

The above image is the low-res 2,000 x 2,000px at just under 1MB in size. I’ve pieced together a high-res version that you can download here. Note that it is 81.2MB in size and 10,000 x 10,000px. The high-res would be useful for creating gathering node, artifact, rare mob, carnage, farseer and other similar map guides that would benefit from a higher-res map.

4th Zone

You’ve probably noticed the ‘4th zone’ to the right of Draumheim. This place literally looks like what it does on the map – it’s not hidden, it pretty much has nothing on it. There’s been no confirmation as to whether this will eventually shape up to be the 4th zone but if it does pan out that way it probably won’t appear until months after launch like Ember Isle was for Mathosia and The Dendrome for Storm Legion.

Zones Updated – Goboro Reef

A lot of improvements have been made to various zones.

Main change for Goboro Reef would be some updates to coral to make them stand out more with some new glow animation patterns and texture changes. Other than that, filling out the zone with artifacts in more than just Luminous Passage and Moonriven Breach seems to be the other major change.

Datamining also shows more clumped models – probably to reduce load times.

Zones Updated – Draumheim

Draumheim was updated a lot, especially in the city area.

The Sun

First up, Draumheim was given a yellow hue/sun texture in the sky layer above the Ocean Sky. This seems to have also changed up the look of Draumheim so it isn’t as ‘hazy’ as it once was. Looks more crisp.

Not only that, but this texture also includes a ‘yellow fog’ that moves across the Ocean Sky. Who ever said there wasn’t yellow water in Nightmare Tide?

Texture Improvements

There’s been a lot of texture improvements throughout the zone, with places like Gemini Bluffs looking vastly more vibrant than it did before. A lot of foliage has also been added to pools of water to make them less dull-looking. It’s hard to represent with static screenshots, but when you combine all the glow animations on a lot of the coral – it looks spectacular!

Models Updated

Several models have been updated, including the Sea Sponge, Margle Palace vendors and the mobs in the various city districts.

City Districts Come Alive

A lot of the empty city districts have now been given new life. Polyp Promenade is now filled with Dreadful Dancer mobs, a ton of dancing jellyfish, Delightful Dames and Party Fowl NPCs. Other areas such as Zeuxis District now have ‘soccer balls’, Avant Guard, Mimes, Ice Sculptures and Critic NPCs.

With these NPCs comes quite a few new carnages.

There’s also Savant Trainers/Crafting Stations at Choreburg, just East of Margle Palace. Crafting Dailies NPC can also be located here.

Zones Updated – Tarken Glacier

Tarken Glacier was also updated with new models in Port Scuddra and a decent amount of new carnages and side-quests in places like FARV. There’s been more doodads, ice pillars and the like to make the zone more visually appealing.

Octus Monastery was refurbished so that you can now enter the building. It has two floors, with several Tomes available to read on the bottom floor and a nice telescope area on the top floor looking through the Cosmos. The tear is rather nice – like the Aurora/Nebula mounts, you can see different parts of space when you look at the tear from different angles.

There’s also been various visual and sound effect updates throughout the zone.

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Old Dailies EXP Change

The latest PTS update has removed experience from a lot of Level 60 dailies! An experience reduction was expected, but complete removal of experience is quite a shocking change.

Here’s the changes for Level 60 Quests:

No Longer Gives EXP

• Onslaughts no longer give EXP.
• General PvE Dailies (from quest hubs) no longer give EXP.
• PvP Weeklies no longer give EXP.
• Raid Weeklies gives PA Exp-only.
• Weekly ‘Shards of Infinity’ Zone Event quest gives PA EXP-only.

Still Gives EXP

• Dendrome Group Dailies/Weeklies still give EXP. This includes Kaaz’Ra, Senbora and Ahkane the Eternal.
• Raid Rift Daily still gives EXP.
• PvP Dailies still give EXP.
• Chronicle Dailies still give EXP.
• Crafting Dailies still give EXP.

Also note that with RIFT 2.8 Hotfix #11 you can no longer stack Dungeon and Warfront daily charge rewards because they now auto-reward when you complete them.

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New Gear on PTS

A whole bunch of new gear is now up on PTS, including Level 65 Relic weapons that are likely there for show, new notoriety runes, capes (fluff) and synergy crystals.

Level 65 Relic Weapons

Here’s what are likely to be the Tier 1 Relic Weapons. They are available on the PTS under RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Armor using a Level 65 filter. Yes, in armor. Just placeholder location. They cost 40-50 plat each (again, placeholder).

If you need platinum on the PTS to buy these for testing purposes, go to the Standard/Expert version of Dummy Foundry and speak to Fluffy the first time you go in for a quest that gives 400p. That quest just requires you to speak to him again to complete. He should also have an item in his store that gives 10p per use.

Note: The Glacial weaponry’s glow only appears briefly the first time you equip or preview the item. Some weapons (like bow) models are not up yet.

Earrings

There’s two Level 60 Earrings available for purchase on the RIFT Store -> Accessories. Level 60 filter. They cost 375 Credits (337 for Patrons) each.

Synergy Crystals

There are new Synergy Crystals on the PTS that you can obtain under RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Armor with Level 60 filter. Placement is placeholder, cost (Infinity Stones) is also placeholder.

The new Nightmare Garb-bonus Synergy Crystals change things up. Warriors and Rogues share crystals, and so do Clerics and Mages. These are no longer soul-based, but instead split between ST & AoE DPS, Crit-based DPS, ST & AoE Heals and Tank.

Nightmare Garb synergy crystals are used by Void Seekers (World), Abyssal Crusader’s (Dungeon) and Frost Seeker’s (T1 Raid) gear.

Notoriety Gear

There’s a few pieces of Notoriety-based gear added to most of the new notoriety vendors. These are runes and fluff capes. More will probably be added in a future update.

Three ‘fluff’ capes. No important stats currently on them (could be placeholder), but there’s new cape models. Only three capes thus far – there could be more coming in a future update.

There’s also the usual notoriety runes. Note that there’s now Earring runes from The Onir faction.

These might not be final and there’s still the Manugo League faction. The vendor for it still has placeholder Level 60 rune items. From 1st Oct Livestream, we know that Manugo League will – at the very least – have the new crab mount.

All the Notoriety Vendors are at different locations across the zones, although most (excl. Atragarian) can also be found outside Margle Palace at (5503, 5568). Use /loc 5503 5568 to mark it on the map. Also, the items will probably be on the RIFT Store at some point so you won’t need to go to the vendors.

Void Source Accelerator

Void Source Accelerators are now available for purchase on the PTS under RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Armor. They cost 15,000 Void Stones and are used to upgrade open world gear.

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Crabnarok Mount and Supply Crate

One of the new supply crates that scale to Level 65 is the Cobalt Crabnarok Supply Crate. The ‘crab’ mount they mentioned in the livestream on Oct 1st probably refers to this ‘Crabnarok’ mount. These can be obtained from Weekly Patron Gifts although it will likely become available on the RIFT Store as well for Credits.

It drops the usual stuff like currencies, artifacts, consumables up to 65 based on your level. It can also drop minion cards and a rare chance at the Cobalt Crabnarok mount (no preview yet).

There’s a few special drops I’ve found thus far though:

• Deathbound Steel Bundle
• Gloop Companion Pet
• Minion Card: King Humbert
• Minion Card: Jakub
• Aventurine (Minion Currency)

Deathbound Steel Bundle

The Deathbound Steel Bundle has 6 pieces: Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Legs and Boots. Looks pretty amazing! The bundle item is currently tradeable on the PTS, however, the individual items are Bound to Account.

Gloop Companion Pet

A Gloop Companion Pet. This is slightly different from the exclusive Bloop Companion Pet from the NT Digital Editions which is purple.

Minion Card: King Humbert

A ‘King Humbart’ Minion Card. Has both Death and Assassination (Minion Exp) attributes. Not sure if this is exclusive to the Cobalt Crabnarok Supply Crate.

Minion Card: Jakub

A ‘Jakub’ Minion Card. Has both Death and Diplomacy (Notoriety) attributes. Not sure if this is exclusive to the Cobalt Crabnarok Supply Crate.

(I’ll update this section with more interesting drops once I find them).

Note: All current lockboxes will only scale up to 60. New lockboxes will become available that scale to 65.

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New Achievements

Just 80 point addition, to Zones -> RIFT: Nightmare Tide -> Tarken Glacier and Draumheim.

These are ‘Conqueror’ achieves for Tarken Glacier and Draumheim with new Minion Cards: Birch and Zairatis respectively. Slipmat also discovered the meta Carnage achievement for getting all Carnages in all Nightmare Tide zones gives Minion Card: Kiljurn.

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Crafting Additions

A few additions to crafting.

• Amender recipes are now visible on the RIFT Store -> Crafting section.
• New Savant Dream Orbs are now available from Savant Dream Weaver Trainer.

Dust of the Void is now available for purchase under RIFT Store -> Crafting for 50 void stones. This is almost certainly placeholder value and is likely added to help players on the PTS test Savant crafting.

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Other Stuff

Below you can find a few misc. additions or info on the PTS:

Tempest Bay Porticulum Change

There’s now floating Infinity Gate objects surrounding the Tempest Bay Porticulum. Perhaps to indicate that the Porticulums are attuned to the Infinity Gate? Perhaps to help explain why you can port to another Plane from the Porticulum instead of via the Infinity Gate alone.

Currency Caps

Current weekly currency caps for Nightmare Tide currencies are as follows:

• 35,000 Void Stones per week. Open World Currency.
• 15,000 Abyssal Crusader’s Marks per week. Dungeon Currency.
• 4,500 Fragments of Horror Marks per week. Tier 1 Raid Currency.

Artifact Set Rewards

A few artifact sets now have Minion card rewards. Below are two examples:

Artifact Set: Bloodfire Soldier Kit (61)
Water Allergy Pills
Codex of Remembered Sins
Suffering Companion
Notched Victory Dirk
Duchess Envy Figurine

Reward: A Coral Cache + Minion Card: Mongrok

Draum’s Tropical Dreams (61)
Gentle Swells
warm Shallows
Bright Colors
Dazzling Caustics
Distant Songs
Safe Coves

Reward: A Hefty Coral Cache + Minion Card: Yoodipti

Seems like Minion Card rewards are becoming the go-to reward for most achievements and artifact sets in Nightmare Tide. Probably doesn’t require as much resources as creating new companion pets or mounts.

New Planar Consumables

New planar consumables are now dropping from rifts, including ‘Salvaged Tablet’, which is the latest tier above Archaic Tablets. However right now the tooltip seems to be bugged and they give the exact same stats as Archaic Tablets.

Shadows Ultra Setting

There’s now an Ultra settings for Shadows found under ESC -> Settings -> Video -> Advanced.

Writ of the Waterlogged

Beta Testers on the PTS have been given the title “The Waterlogged” via the Writ of the Waterlogged sent to their mail.

Puzzle Cape is Goboro Reef Reward

Turntablist on the PTS has received confirmation from Dead Simon that the Puzzle Cape datamined previously is indeed part of the Goboro Reef puzzle reward. Each puzzle also has a unique Minion Card reward, with subsequent attempts sharing from a pool of Minion Cards.

Draumheim’s puzzle reward is a rotating rubiks cube dimension item.

Thanks for the info Turntablist!

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A pretty large update mainly on improving models and populating more of the Draumheim and Tarken Glacier zones. A lot of other interesting tidbits including the new Crabnarok mount.

You can check out information on the datamined files for this update here.

Nightmare Tide is in Open Beta right now on the PTS, so check all the changes out for yourself on the PTS!

For past PTS Updates, click here. You can also find past datamining and 3.0-related news updates.