Trion had their 23rd January 2015 Friday Livestream where they talked about Patch 3.1: Storm at Sea – mainly on the Tyrant’s Throne island.

Click here for a replay of the 23rd January 2015 Livestream video on twitch.tv. RIFT segment starts about 1hr into the video.

Legend:
Black/Normal Text = Livestream Summary.
[Dark Blue Text] = My own comments. i.e. May not be indicative of actual content.

Trion had their 23rd January 2015 Friday Livestream with Community Manager Eric “Ocho” Cleaver, Game Director Christopher “Archonix” Junior, Executive Producer Bill “Daglar” Fisher and Lead Content Designer Julia “Darkmoon” Flemming.

As always, everything can be subject to change prior to the content hitting Live.

Patch 3.1 Trailer

RIFT Patch 3.1 Trailer – Johan

Trion showed off a draft version of the upcoming 3.1 trailer, showing off Tyrant’s Throne and the upcoming Tier 1 Tyrant’s Forge raid with PUMPKIN, Johan and Mecha Crucia bosses.

Johan is the first boss of the raid. Keep an eye out on an upcoming RiftGrate article about the first boss and his mechanics.

RIFT Patch 3.1 Trailer – PUMPKIN

P.U.M.P.K.I.N. is the second boss of Tyrant’s Forge at the main factory area of Tyrant’s Throne. No idea on his mechanics.

RIFT Patch 3.1 Trailer – Mecha Crucia

Mecha Crucia! Not sure what the actual name will be, but it looks like she’s bipedal this time and probably has a few more laser/lightning attacks.

Keep your other eye out for the trailer that will likely be uploaded to RIFT’s Youtube channel at some point in the near future. Tyrant’s Throne comes out on 4th February 2015, a week after 3.1 launch.

Tyrant’s Throne

The Yrlwalach

Darkmoon went over a bit of Tyrant’s Throne – mainly the cave system where one manifestation of The Yrlwalach resides.

A few things were mentioned briefly:

• Tyrant’s Throne is an island that is part of Goboro Reef.
• Crucia is hiding from the Ascended on the island, gathering power. She’s not very happy to see you there.
• Crucia is attempting to harness the power of The Yrlwalach.
• The Yrlwalach drives players (and NPCs) insane, causing you to see stuff that others can’t.
• No artifacts on the island yet.
• There’s hidden minion cards associated with 3.1 and the island. No details/hints given.

You can get to Tyrant’s Throne either by swimming from the south-east end of Goboro Reef to the island at (6107, 9110). You can also speak to  a skelf that is right in front of the Margle Palace porticulum in Draumheim. He will then unlock the porticulum at Beach’s Head in Tyrant’s Throne for you.

RIFT Progression

Trion is looking at reviewing progression in RIFT in general across all aspects of the game.

As Daglar stated, they want progression to be inclusive and something everyone can aim towards:

Everybody in the game really has a progression path going forward. […] large portion of our player base has pointed out that they want to keep progressing. Good gear […] shouldn’t just stop if they are unable to partake in raids.

Firstly, Marauder Supply Cache has gotten a stat boost with the latest hotfix and next week the 3-stat gear will be removed from Cache drops. Also reducing three of the high-endurance options from the Cache with 3.1.

Next they are evaluating upgrade costs across the game. [They’ve heavily reduced Illusory Mote costs for Ghar Essence upgrades].

Molten Thresher Mount

Molten Thresher Mount

Darkmoon showed off the Molten Thresher Mount and announced that it is coming in Patch 3.1.

• It is an Amphibious, 155% mount.

Although not mentioned on the livestream, Darkmoon later revealed during today’s Zone Event Playtest that the mount will be available via a lockbox.

Since it’s part of a lockbox, that makes it a Premium mount and the consumable item will most likely be available to purchase from other players like other Premium mounts.

PvP Premade Changes

Trion announced that they are looking to test some changes for Premades in PvP.

Conquest Premade Size Change

Trion have been talking about reducing premade sizes in Conquest. Specifically, they are looking to test out reducing premade group size to only 5.

They’ll then see how players react to it with a couple weeks of testing.

No ETA, and no promises, but it’s something they would like to test out.

Premade Warfront Marking

Long term, Trion wants to add a way to tell players who is on a premade in warfronts [probably with an icon in Scoreboard or something similar]. This way players will know 100% if there’s a premade on the other team and “remove the bogey-man” (Daglar) of assuming a premade is on the other team just because the other team is doing well.

Misc.

Some misc. items of interest that were mentioned on the livestream:

• Tyrant’s Throne has 3 bosses, rounding out Level 65 Tier 1 20-man raid bosses to 8; same as with Level 60 Tier 2 20-mans (5 PBB; 3 IG).
• Rogue Marksman issues (Barbed Shot) are being fixed. – Archonix. Will go out with 3.1. – Daglar.
• Trion is talking about how to create new uses for old raids. No details.
• Black Dire Riding Squirrel is up on the RIFT Store front page for 3,000 Credits (2,700 for Patrons) for the next two days.
• Everything has the possibility of becoming direct sale on the RIFT Store, even if they’re exclusive to lockboxes for now.
• ‘Hoverboard’ mount? Daglar referenced the hoverboard from “Back to the Future” where Marty McFly goes to the future (the year 2015) where there are hoverboards. Archonix said “Man, we should do a hoverboard”. [Not sure if this is just a side comment or an actual teaser, but datamining does show “Disc” and “Levitate” mount filenames. The ‘Levitate_Mount’ could be referring to a hoverboard.]
• Archonix will pass on to the team to look at the drop rate of trinkets in Nightmare Tide.
• Don’t have a 10-man Raid in development right now, but they’re definitely talking about future 10-mans amongst themselves. [There is another 20-man in development, presumed Tier 2; Lord Arak Raid].

Other Locations

Trion ‘potentially’ teased about going to some much sought-after locations: Planetouched Wildes, Shi-Ming and Myrkur’s Depths. Note that I say ‘potentially’ as it might just be them teasing or miscommunication.

Here’s the transcript to help you come up with your own conclusions on the exchange that occured:

• Archonix: “Someone is asking to be summoned to Planetouched Wildes, uh, no. That ain’t going to happen.”
• Daglar: “Well…not until we go there.”
• Darkmoon: “Bill…”
• Archonix: “Whose to say we’ll even go there? That’s like saying we’re gonna go to Shi-Ming or Myrkur Depths…”

Fingers crossed, there’s still some hope. The light is still there, especially since Myrkur Depths was datamined by Magelo as a Zone in the PTS data files at some point quite a few months ago. With Archonix’s last sentence, this could imply that Shi-Ming and Planetouched Wildes zones could exist/become accessible in the future as well.

Livestream Giveaways

During the Livestream, a handful of livestream chat channel viewers received:

• 1x Ducklar Companion Pet to 5 livestream viewers.
• 1x Arclight Rider Mount to 5 livestream viewers.
• 1x Molten Thresher Mount to 3 lucky livestream viewers! [Those who won will have to wait until after next week to receive their code].
• 1x Ultimate Nightmare Edition Pack to 1 lucky livestream viewer!
• 1x All Hellbug Mounts and Companion Pets Pack to 1 lucky livestream viewer!

Congratulations to all the winners!

Your codes will appear in your Twitch inbox – usually in the ‘Other’ tab. Might take a week or more to get to you.

(From Left to Right: Ocho, Archonix, Daglar, Darkmoon)

A few things were revealed today – the teaser trailer was great and the Molten Thresher mount looks snazzy. The PvP premade changs are rather interesting as well. Some sweet giveaways this week as well!

Past Livestream Summaries can be accessed here.