PTS Datamining 13th January 2015

There’s quite a bit of juicy information from datamining RIFT’s latest Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) update on the 13th January 2015. Possible new raid (besides Tyrant’s Forge)? Perhaps! Archlight Rider (hover bike) mount model is now available!

If you’re interested, you can find the public information to the latest update here.

Summary:

• Cyborg Models.
• Archlight Rider Mount Model.
• Lord Arak’s Raid Models: End to Reason; Heart of Darkness.
• Other Models: Johan’s Anchor; Draumheim Ship; More Oculons; Dark Genesis.
• Datamined Skins: Nightmare Statue; Nightmare Staff; Ape Man; Mechs; Draumheim Ship skins
• Music Files: Insanity Event Song; Sirens + various sfx.
• Datamined Files.

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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Cyborg Models

There’s a couple of cyborg/mech models that came with the PTS Update for the 13th Jan 2015. Just bits and pieces of ‘mech_part’ files.

The files are “P_GR_TF_mech_part_##.ma”. ‘GR’ usually means Goboro Reef, but ‘TF’ is a new one. That’s almost certainly referring to Tyrant’s Forge, the upcoming Tier 1 raid.

As the file location suggests – “/prop/” – these are probably just props within the Tyrant’s Forge raid. However, Darkmoon has hinted that there’s both Mecha Crucia and another robot boss. The models above are perhaps prototypes for the new robot boss – kind of like how there’s multiple unfinished Planebreakers dotted around the raid environment before you get to Planebreaker Abominus (final boss) in the Level 60 Tier 3 20-man Raid, Planebreaker Bastion.

There’s also a few ‘cyborg_parts’ models. Again, props that are likely scattered around the Tyrant’s Forge raid to give it more life and to indicate it’s a factory for producing Crucia’s army.

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Archlight Rider Mount Model

We’ve previously seen various rigs for the hover bike mount and Trion updated the PTS with the new achievements for this mount just recently. It’s currently unknown whether it is named Archlight Rider or Arclight Rider because the achievements and the lockbox have different spellings.

Above you can see a side-ways view of the Archlight Rider mount. [Probably one of Crucia’s inventions – walking around in her new body just isn’t her style.]

Below I’ve captured the model in other angles:

And here’s the icon for color reference:

Mainly brown/golden with a red seat and blue ‘sourcestone’ in the middle of the ‘wheel’.

Look forward to the Archlight Rider Mount, coming with an Archlight Promo Week at some point in the future. There may or may not be a second mount, since Promo Weeks usually have one mount in a lockbox and at least one more via the PRI Quartermaster that you can earn with event currency.

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Lord Arak Raid

The most surprising datamined files for this PTS Update would be various files with the “lord_arak_raid” file location. Is this a new raid separate from Tyrant’s Forge? Could this be a potential Tier 2 raid being prepped up that made it into the PTS client prematurely?

Are top raiding guilds already testing Tier 2 raids?

Entrance

One of the models shown is an entrance – given the ‘_03’, it’s probably an entrance within the raid itself; not the raid’s entrance itself.

From the model itself, it looks like it’s ice-based. The cliff could indicate that it is either in Tarken Glacier or the island next to it to the South of Port Scuddra and to the East of Draumheim (speculations suggest this is potentially ‘Myrkur’s Depths’, the elusive 4th zone). The objects just below the entrance looks almost like sheets of ice; the ones you see in places like Loddyr Floe.

A few points to consider:

• Although the file location is under “dungeons”, this could also be where raids are stored.
• “lord_arak_raid” is a pretty big indicator that this is a new raid separate from Tyrant’s Throne, and the “D_LAR_” seems to suggest this as well. Tyrant’s Forge seems to use “TF” whereas this uses “LAR”. However, it could simply be the name of a dungeon.
• I don’t think “D” stands for Draumheim because Draumheim models have used “drh”. However, it is possible that this stands for “Dungeon” or event ‘Depths’.

Glacial Bridges and Platforms

Here’s a few of the platforms and bridges that make up Lord Arak’s Raid. It clearly looks to be ice-based. That said, it could just be rocks.

Interestingly, all these models seem to have the same file name “D_LAR_nexus_path_02_platform_02.ma”. Perhaps it just indicates that they are all supposed to be connected to a primary platform.

End to Reason

Lord Arak’s Coliseum? This datamined model shows a large – likely floating – structure with a coliseum-like building at the centre, two connected ‘lighthouses’ on the side and a multitude of statues ‘guarding’ the entrance to the coliseum.

The file name is “D_LAR_end_to_reason_03.ma” so “End to Reason” is likely a location name within the raid.

Below are some close-ups:

Closeup of the entrance to the ‘Coliseum’ at the End to Reason. There’s a whole bunch of statues including what is probably a statue of Lord Arak featured prominently in the middle.

Here’s a closeup of one of the two ‘lighthouses’ at the End to Reason. This could actually be an observatory. Could also just be some kind of power generator that stops players from approaching the Coliseum.

There’s a pathway to each ‘lighthouse’ so you might need to fight trash packs and a mini-boss or two in order to shut down or activate something. Trion probably wouldn’t create paths to each if they were just added to make the area look more interesting.

Heart of Darkness

The “Heart of Darkness” is a rather large spherical object. Perhaps this is Lord Arak’s heart that we end up having to fight mobs at. Notice the top-left area with what looks like platforms and ramps? Yep, those seem to be exactly that – so that should give you an idea of the scale of this object.

As you can see, one area outside the sphere has platforms, bridges and various doodads floating in the air. This might be a specific raid encounter (given the ‘heart’, probably the final). Be sure to download the datamined files (link found at the bottom of the post) if you want to fly around the place for yourself.

Given the shape of some of the objects in this model, it’s probably rather fleshy in nature – like the inside of Izbithu in Glacial Maw.

Uknown Base

This could just be an area that the developers use to play around with objects to create stuff for the Lord Arak Raid, or it could be an actual location.

The large ‘disc’ area is probably just the entire map with only the ‘forest’ area as the relevant area. Perhaps this is part of an encounter similar to X1-Breaker, where you port to a different location during the encounter.

There seems to be somewhat of a ‘path’ between the large orb to the left and around the various ‘objects’ covering the place.

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Other Models

There’s a whole bunch of other models that look interesting.

Johan Anchor

Found this anchor model for Johan, one of the bosses in the Tyrant’s Forge raid and the only one with achievements currently on the PTS. This might indicate that this boss fight has an ‘anchor’ mechanic, perhaps similar to Proteus in Planebreaker’s Bastion.

Draumheim Ship Model

A model of a ship, in Draumehim. That’s as far as the model reveals.

Is this related to Tyrant’s Throne? Will we use this ship to ‘travel’ to Tyrant’s Throne, or is this perhaps part of a new questline (perhaps in preparation for Lord Arak’s Raid in the future)? There’s also the possibility that this is for a new zone event – perhaps to fight in the Ocean/Dream Sky – a large ship that travels across Draumheim bombarding it perhaps.

I originally thought this could be the ‘Leviathan’ that the Skelfs used to pilot, but the upcoming ‘Leviathan’ zone event is in Goboro Reef, not Draumheim.

It is also not a Bloodfire Army ship or any of the ships you currently see above Draumheim. This one has much smoother textures and hardly any sharp angles; lending itself more to a ship that is likely created by the Onir or Pelagic Order.

Oculon Models

More Oculon models. We’ve mainly been seeing Fire Oculons as of late due to Lady Glasya and the Bloodfire Army. With her failure, are the Tenebreans now starting to push to the forefront of the story? Or perhaps they’ve decided to gift their creations to prominent figures from other Planes.

In any case, we’ll probably see other Planar Oculons running about causing mischief.

Various Rigs

A few rigs were datamined with this update. ‘Dark Genesis’, ‘Mech Nautical’ and ‘Dragon Mecha’.

• ‘Dark Genesis’ – Hard to tell what this is. Could be a Skelf or perhaps even a ‘dark’ version of Miela just before Crucia transfers her mind into the mechanical version of her dragon form.
• ‘Mech Nautical’ – Given the file path, it’s probably a reskin of Manslaughter – perhaps a new mob type with different weaponry.
• ‘Dragon Mecha’ – Mecha Crucia! This is a top-down view of her dragon form.

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Datamined Skins

A variety of skins have been datamined with the Jan 13th PTS Update.

Nightmare Skins

There’s a rather large statue skin that is obviously Nightmare-based. This is most likely part of Lord Arak’s Raid. In fact, since it’s a statue it could very well be one of the statues leading up to the ‘Coliseum’ as part of the “End to Reason” model mentioned earlier.

This potential ‘Nightmare Staff’ is either a weapon that players will be able to wield, or what the statues at the “End to Reason” hold. The various rings and other bits and bobs makes this staff look like it is used for rituals.

Ape Man Skin

Top-left of this skin is clearly an ape of some sort. Given the rest of the body it’s probably an Ape-man. The armor could potentially suggest that he is part of the ‘Coliseum’ as one of the gladiators, perhaps.

Mech Skins

The above skin is probably a skin for one of Crucia’s mechs. The ‘small’ nature of the skin compared to most others could possibly indicate that this is just a weapon. Could it also be the ‘disc mount’?

This could just be a rusted mech, crane or pretty much any mechanical object with a lot of cogs and spherical parts really. Probably another one of Crucia’s mechs.

Draumheim Ship Skins

The above statue is clearly the front of the ‘Draumheim Ship’ model datamined earlier. The shape of the skin’s various parts just match the model. The ship clearly isn’t from the Bloodfire Army.

The above could potentially be parts of the ‘Draumheim Ship’. Some random red doodling – could be a quick way of indicating blood, or perhaps it’s just dev markings to indicate issues with, say, joints between skins.

Other Skins

A door. Perhaps for a pod or the Draumheim Ship’s cabin. The various components seems to suggest that perhaps the door’s ‘handle’ could be animated.

Large gear piece. Could potentially also be animated with the right section on top of the left one. This might be the circular designs at the front of the ‘Draumheim Ship’.

And finally a large collection of skins that are likely part of Tyrant’s Throne, Tyrant’s Forge, Lord Arak’s Raid and the Draumheim Ship.

Just a tile; for a glass window or the floor of a church or stone garden perhaps.

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Other Other

Just one other random addition to the datamine. A hooded figure with a ‘quiet’ gesture. The proportions seems to suggest this is a mini-Feature box for the RIFT Store front page. Might not mean anything, just an additional feature image.

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Music Files

There’s a bunch of music/sound files added with today’s update.

• ‘Insanity Event’ is a 2min 8sec music file that is most likely the background music for Tyrant’s Forge, or the music for Tyrant’s Throne. [mp3]
• New ‘Goboro Reef’ music files. More sirens singing. [.rar]
• The rest of the files are sound effects for the Archlight Rider Mount, Mecha Crucia and the Yrlwalach. [.rar]

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Datamined Files

Given how interesting some of these models are, it’s probably best to check them out for yourself and ‘fly around’ them. Use Nifscope to view .nif files.

You can find the datamined files for the 13th Jan 2015’s PTS Update here.

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A lot of very interesting datamined files with this update. Is this ‘Lord Arak Raid’ a future planned Tier 2 raid, or is it just part of Tyrant’s Forge? If it is a separate raid, will we find it as part of a potential new zone called Myrkur’s Depths? In any case, with Tyrant’s Forge coming up, it will probably be a good few months before we see Lord Arak’s Raid.

If you’re interested, you can find the public information to the latest update here.

For past PTS Updates, click here. You can also find past datamining here.