PTS Update + Datamining 15-16th January 2015

RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) was updated on the 15th and 16th of January 2015 with approx. 120MB and 350MB updates respectively. Combining both update and datamining for both days here as there isn’t a significant amount of changes.

Patch versions are TEST-301-18-A-974086 and TEST-301-19-A-974403.

Summary:

• Class Changes: Nightblade, Bard and Reaver.
• Essence Changes: Upgrade Cost Reduction + Stat Adjustment
• New Zone Events: The Leviathan and more!
• New Dimension Items: Bank Vault + Practice Dummies.
• Molten Thresher Mount.
• Other Info: Map, Chronicle: Rhen of Fate update; VFX.

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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Class Changes

In addition to the Bard, Nightblade, Reaver and Necromancer changes mentioned previously, Trion has updated the PTS with a few more changes.

Further Rogue Changes

Nightblade:

• Enhanced Weapon Enchantments’ damage boost has been reduced to 20%/40%/60% (down from 30%/60%/90%). (Thanks to snipebad for the info!)

Bard:

• For a brief time the bard’s motif range increase of 35m was working alongside the 5m range increase Mastery. This has been fixed so the bard’s motifs will now default to 35m and won’t be affected by the additional 5m from the Mastery.

Further Reaver Changes

A few more changes have hit the PTS for the Warrior’s Reaver soul:

• Fixed Shadow Strike so it now works correctly.
• Added Rancid Cleave to the abilities affected by Shadow Strike.
• Lowered bonus damage added by Shadow Strike from 33% to 25% and capped out the max contributing Reaver DoTs to 3.
• Removed the default damage bonus for Reaver DoTs on Rancid Cleave.

[Source: Vladd]

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Essence Changes

Nightmare Rift Rank 5-unlocked Ghar notoriety essences (found under RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Essences) have had a major upgrade cost reduction as well as stat adjustments to each upgrade.

Cost Reduction

The cost of upgrading NMR5 essences are as follows:

• 1x Heart of the Frozen remains the same.
• Illusory Motes have been reduced from 100x to 10x.
• Void Source Accelerator has been reduced from 5x to 1x.

Cost of other essences have not changed.

Stat Adjustments

A few stat adjustments have been made to each upgraded essences. Below is a comparison of each class’ essences (Live vs PTS). You’ll notice some stats have gone down and others have gone up.

Note: The last name of some essences are cut off but they are all the same: “Pyrestone”, “Dreamcatcher” and “Fathomstone”.

Cleric

Mage

Warrior

Rogue

What do you think of the adjustments? You can send your feedback either via the in-game feedback report on the PTS or via the PTS Sub-Forum.

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New Zone Events

A whole bunch of new zone events are on the PTS and were tested out during the Zone Event Playtest on 15th Jan. The zone events tested were:

• Darkness From The Depths in Tarken Glacier.
• Aphogglach in Draumheim.
• The Ravenous Devourer in Draumheim.
• The Leviathan in Tyrant’s Throne.

Each of the zone events are fairly unique compared to the usual close x rifts, kill x invasions zone events so they should spice up the NT zone event rotation.

Darkness From The Depths

Darkness From The Depths is located in a small section of Tarken Glacier rather than the entire zone where you must close rifts, defeat Nightmare invasions and charge up ‘Dream Machines’ to unfreeze a boss in the middle of Ghadaul Tundra.

What makes this zone event unique is that you need to speak to an NPC called Erisha who will allow you to either ‘Dream’ or have a ‘Nightmare’. You will be given either a Dream or Nightmare buff depending on which option you choose.

• Only players with the ‘Nightmare’ buff can see special Nightmare invasions – other players only see Water invasions.
• Defeating a Nightmare invasion will make them drop dream shards. Only players with the ‘Dream’ buff can see these shards.

Thus, players need to work together to defeat Nightmare invasions and collect the dream shards which are used to power the three Dream Machines on the map.

Aphogglach

The ‘Aphogglach’ zone event is situated above Draumheim. You go to the various iceberg platforms along the edges of the zone and participate in the random content that is generated there.

The iceberg content is already available on Live. Activities include:

• Defeating a collection of mobs;
• Putting out fires on the ships near the ice platforms;
• Swimming through a collection of rings; and so forth.

Completing ten activities triggers the boss Aphogglach who can be found on one of the platforms. He has a few mechanics and spawns Menhirs that attack players.

The Ravenous Devourer

The idea behind ‘The Ravenous Devourer’ zone event is that the boss, Ojingeodon, is going around devouring creatures in his path. You need to kill these ‘fodder’ before he gets to them all.

• This event takes place entirely in the Ocean/Dream Sky above Draumheim.
• Various interactable objects will appear throughout the place including bombs and nets that slow the boss down.
• At some point he’ll disappear in a puff of smoke/ink and re-appear between three icebergs for the final fight. He’s got a few abilities, including red spheres of doom and maelstroms that pull you in.

The Leviathan

The Leviathan zone event is probably the highlight of the new zone events coming to Live. It is set on Tyrant’s Throne and – not surprisingly – the Yrwalach is not too happy at what’s going on around him.

If you haven’t fought him in Mount Sharax, the Yrwalach is a rather large creature. The zone event involves destroying Storm Legion forts, building up cannons and getting ready to take down the Yrwalach, who nonchalantly walks up onto the beach.

The Yrwalach himself has a few AoE abilities, but the main threat is from the adds he spawns intermittently that grow bigger and stronger with every summon.

Look forward to these zone events in the future; probably with 3.1.

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New Dimension Items

There’s new Bank Vault and Level 67 Expert/Raid Boss Practice Dummies found under RIFT Store -> Dimensions -> Interactive on the PTS.

• The Bank Vault is a wooden safe that you interact with to access your character’s bank.
• Expert/Raid Boss Practice Dummies are suited for current end-game (Level 67) bosses.

Current prices might be placeholder.

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Molten Thresher Mount

During the recent Zone Event Playtest, a player was riding a ‘Molten Thresher’ Mount. In my great wisdom I forgot to ask them where they obtained it from, but if memory serves correct, I seem to recall a bunch of raid testers a few months (or maybe years) back received special mounts – this could be it.

In any case, a Molten Thresher mount might pop up on Live for the general player base at some point in the future. It’s amphibious like the Cobalt Thresher mount, although the non-scale mount speed is only 60%.

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Other Info

Map Data

A large portion of the two most recent patches were for map data. There’s nothing to see there though. That said, there were high-rest map pieces for Tyrant’s Throne – I’ve combined them below:

• Tyrant’s Throne High-Res Map. 2.23MB.

 Chronicle: Rhen of Fate Update

The Rhen of Fate chronicle has been updated with changes based on player feedback.

• As per the image above, flavor text and a preview image are now up in the Chronicles window.
• Trash mobs have had their potency reduced with less mobs and slightly less damage dealt.
• Ungolok’s dual red AoE is no longer insta-kill in normal mode and Pressure Blast no longer hits for 80k even with an active shambler up in hard mode.
• There are parchments now prior to each boss that will hint at the mechanics of the boss so new players aren’t completely in the dark.

Atmosphere VFX

There’s various ‘atmosphere’ vfx files in-game for both ‘TF’ and ‘LAR’. There’s nothing much to see in the files since they’re for stuff like clouds, lightning/etc. However, the fact that there’s files like “SKY_LAR_heart_of_darkness_dome_01.ma” and “N_W_ep2_ocean_chunk_half_tyrantsforge_01.ma” seems to support the idea that the Lord Arak Raid models datamined on the 13th Jan are in fact for a completely separate raid to Tyrant’s Forge and that the “TF” and “LAR” files are not just naming conflicts.

Given that Tyrant’s Forge is coming at some time in the 3.1 patch cycle, don’t expect Lord Arak’s Raid to make an appearance for at least a few months.

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A bunch of fixes, map data files, vfx and likely adjustments to new content. The changes to the NMR5 Essences might garner a response from players, although I doubt there’s many players who have enough Hearts for the upgraded essence yet.

Still thirsting for info? Check out the PTS Update for 13th Jan 2015 and it’s associated Datamining.

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