PTS Update + Datamining 22nd-23rd January 2015

RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) was updated on the 22nd-23rd of January 2015 with an approx. 850MB and 250MB update respectively. Both PTS Update and Datamining included here.

Bulk of file sizes are from re-downloading new or existing Nightmare Tide map and sound files. Files are not of interest or new compared to others.

Patch versions are TEST-301-23-A-976042 and TEST-301-24-A-976582.

Summary:

• Rogue and Warrior Class Changes. Marksman, Reaver and Tempest Soul Changes.
• New Achievements. The Yrlwalach fail achieves turn Legacy.
• Chronicle Payout Change. Additional Abyssal Crusader’s Marks rewarded.
• Transcendent Chest Stat Adjusted.
• Ghar Essence Upgrade Cost Reduction.
• Artifact Tracking Vial Changes.
• Planar Squirrel Mount Trophy.
• Molten Thresher Supply Crate.
• Datamining. Sound Files; Tyrant’s Throne Map; ‘Nightmare Tree’ Skin.

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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Rogue And Warrior Class Changes

Further Rogue Marksman, Warrior Reaver and Warrior Tempest changes have popped up on the PTS.

Rogue Marksman Changes

A large amount of changes have hit the PTS for Rogue’s Marksman soul to be in line with Vladd’s goal of bringing Marksman “up to par with other ranged souls like Pyro, Tempest and Inquisitor”. [r]

Root Changes

• Deaden (24): Now a debilitate ability. Not an interrupt then debilitate.
• Lightning Fury (32): Now adds 1 combo point on top of existing attributes.
• Sentry Battery (54): Now a 3 sec ST channel with a 45sec CD.
• Free Recoil (61): No longer applies to all finishers. Instead, Rapid Fire Shot consumes max 2 combo points and cast time of Dead Eye Shot is reduced by .5s. 1hr self-buff.

Tree Changes

• Guarded Departure (Tier 3): Replaces Hasty Departure. Causes On the Double to apply an absorb shield. Aborbs 50% of damage received up to an amount based on your AP. Lasts 15 secs.
• Ranged Combat Mastery (Tier 3): Originally Tier 4, now Tier 3. Buffs the Rogue to increase their ranged damage done by 5% and damage done by channels by 5%. Lasts 1hr.
• Barbed Shot (Tier 4): Originally Tier 3, now Tier 4. Deals x damage. Deals additional y damage each second for 15s. Increases the target’s chance to be critically hit by Marksman channeled abilities by 10%. Awards 1 Combo Point. 22 Energy, instant. no CD.
• Bull’s Eye (Tier 5): Increases critical hit chance by 25% for 5 secs. 1min CD.
• Flawless Precision(Tier 6): Replaces Rapid Extrication. Increases damage of Swift Shot, Empowered Shot, Lightning Fury, and Rapid Fire Shot by 10/20%.
• Calculated Shot (Tier 9): Replaces Decoy. Deals instant damage. Removes movement buffs awarded by Swift Shot and Hasted Shot. If a movement buff is removed, cooldown is set to 0. Awards 1 Combo Point. CD is 10 secs.

Cooldown Times Changed

Cooldown times have changed since the removal of Rapid Extrication. CDs are now as follows:

• Strafe – 45 secs
• Bull’s Eye – 1 min
• Static Shot -45 secs
• Repelling Shot – 20 secs
• On the Double – 20 secs
• Empowered Shot – 8 secs
• Deaden – 10 secs
• Lighting Fury – 8 secs
• Quick Reload – 2 mins
• Rapid Fire Shot – 12 secs
• Retreat – 30 secs
• Eradicate – 8 secs
• Crossfire – 20 secs
• Sentry Battery – 1 min
• Free Recoil – 10 secs

Note: There’s currently a bug with Barbed Shot making it deal insane damage. This will likely be fixed before the Marksman Changes hit Live.

According to Daglar during yesterday’s livestream, the Marksman Changes are coming to Live with 3.1 on 28th Jan 2015.

(Thanks to snipebad and haybale for all the Rogue Marksman change information!)

Warrior Class Changes

Reaver Changes

• Default range of all Reaver abilities is now 30.
• Planar Attunement (Tier 1 Tree): Now increases range of ranged attacks by 1/2/3/4/5m on top of current damage buff. Range increase does not stack with Tempest’s Long Range Training.
• Shadow Warp (Tier 5 Tree): Teleports 15m forward. Now removes all crow control effects. Cooldown reduced to 20s. Instant, no cost.
• From the Shadows (Tier 6 Tree): Now reduces damage taken by the Reaver by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Tempest Changes

• Long Range Training (Tier 1 Tree): No longer stacks with Planar Attunement range increase.

(Thanks to ttlyevil for all the Warrior change information!)

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New Achievements

Some achievement adjustments with the latest patches, changing total achievements from 35,137 to 35,102. Losing 35 points.

• “Tempest Torn” is a new achievement under Zones -> RIFT: Nightmare Tide -> Tyrant’s Throne for completing 14 quests. 5 points.
• 2 more Carnages were added to “Priority Targets”, bringing the total to 5.

Mount Sharax Reduction

Mount Sharax had its achievement points reduced from 400 to 360 points. All of the achieves involving failing mechanics on The Yrlwalach have been moved to Legacy. Perhaps raid leaders were complaining about how much time was wasted wiping for these achievements.

Achievements turning Legacy are as follows:

• Guardian? Defiant? I’ll Just Be Over Here…
• Take One For The Team
• Attention Doxy
• You Had One Job
• So… Uh… I Guess We Win?
• Harbinger of the Yrlwalachalypse

If you want to preserve these achievements in your Legacy tab, you’ll probably need to complete them before next week’s patch. Once they turn Legacy – if you don’t have the achievement already – you’ll no longer be able to obtain or even view them on your character.

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Chronicle Payout Change

The two new Chronicle Dailies that were added to the PTS recently have had an additional reward – 50 Abyssal Crusader’s Marks for Misty Rayne’s daily and 60 for Hard Mode Chronicle: Rhen of Fate daily.

Note: There seems to be an issue on the PTS currently where the quest will auto-complete even if you haven’t done the chronicle that reset.

(Thanks to Arione@Brutwacht for the info!)

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Transcendent Chest Stat Adjustment

The Transcendent Chest upgrade that you can get from upgrading your Relic Tier 1 Frost Horror Chests with a Tyrant’s Anvil (presumably dropped from the upcoming Tyrant’s Forge raid) has gotten a stat adjustment.

Now the main change between Relic and Transcendent is that DPS/Heal gear only have their AP/SP/CP/Crit changed whilst Tank gear only has their Endurance stat changed. The initial stats which upgraded main/secondary stat are now the same between Relic and Transcendent gear.

There’s also a small increase in Armor.

The stat adjustments end up being an upgrade from the initial values for the Transcendent gear. You can check out the old comparisons here.

(Thanks to Arione@Brutwacht for the info!)

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Ghar Essence Upgrade Cost Reduction

On top of the upgrade cost reduction to NMR5-unlocked Ghar Essences mentioned with the 15th Jan 2015 PTS Update, there’s now also upgrade cost reductions to NMR3-unlocked and Decorated Ghar Essences obtained on the RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Essences.

• NMR5-unlocked Essences: Illusory Motes reduced from 100x to 10x. Void Source Accelerators reduced from 5x to 1x.
• NMR3-unlocked Essences: Illusory Motes reduced from 50x to 10x.
• Ghar Decorated Essences: Illusory Motes reduced from 25x to 10x.

These changes will likely go up with Patch 3.1 next week.

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Artifact Tracking Vial Changes

As Dead Simon mentioned earlier in the week, Artifact Tracking Vials have been adjusted.

• The normal vials only track Normal Artifacts. Their duration increased to 30min.
• Unstable Artifact Tracking Vials still track Unstable Artifacts only. Duration remains the same at 30min.
• New Twisted Artifact Tracking Vials track Twisted Artifacts-only. Also gives you a temporary buff so you can track Twisted artifacts.

Patron Artifact Vials remain the same, allowing you to track all three artifact types. You’ll need Omen/Quantum Sight buff up to see Twisted Artifacts, as per usual.

You can find these vials under RIFT Store -> Boosts on the PTS.

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Planar Squirrel Mount Trophy

You can now purchase additional Planar Squirrel Mounts that you have unlocked via RIFT Store -> Trophies for Credits.

Planar Squirrel Mounts are obtained from completing Unstable Artifact Sets that reward a Planar Nut item. Turning in 23 Planar Nuts to the Artifact Vendor gets you one of the 6 planar squirrel mounts.

With this new change, players who have unlocked the achievement that you get for purchasing a planar squirrel mount will be able to purchase more for Credits for their other characters.

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Molten Thresher Supply Crate

The Molten Thresher Supply Crate is up on the PTS. These new lockboxes will be coming with Patch 3.1 next week. You can find it on the PTS under RIFT Store -> Chests & Keys. The lockboxes cost 650 Credits (585 for Patrons) each and gives you a rare chance at a 155% and amphibious Molten Thresher mount.

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Datamining

Datamining mainly contained a lot of uninteresting map files and sfx files for The Yrlwalach, water and other uninteresting tidbits. Only listing anything of interest below:

Tyrant’s Throne NPC Voiceover Files

There’s a whole bunch of interesting voice-over files for an NPC on Tyrant’s Throne who occasionally shouts out his lines across the island. He sounds like he has multiple personalities. You can download the files here.

(P.S. Ignore the incorrect file name).

Again Disc & Levitate Mounts

Originally found under their own config files, they now appear in each race’s config file:

• anim\mount\idle\asset\elf_male_mount_disc_idle.kf
• anim\mount\idle\asset\elf_male_mount_levitate_idle.kf

This pretty much confirms that the ‘mount_disc’ and ‘mount_levitate’ are actual mounts coming into the game. These are not the Arclight Rider mount, which is called ‘mount_bike’ in the data files.

Could one of them potentially point towards a hoverboard? Daglar did mention hoverboards during the 23rd Jan 2015 Livestream.

Tyrant’s Forge Map

Datamined files had the Tyrant’s Forge map. This is for the upcoming Tier 1 20-man Raid that is coming to Live on 4th February 2015 (a week after Patch 3.1 launch). The raid uses parts of the Tyrant’s Throne island, starting from outside the Cave of Infinity at the bottom-right and ending at Crucia’s platform.

Nightmare Tree Skin

Not really sure what this is, but I’ll term them ‘Nightmare Tree segments’ for now. This is a skin to what is most likely the odd tree-like models seen in the ‘Uknown Base’ model that is presumably part of the Lord Arak Raid in previous datamining.

Just to jog your memory, here’s the “D_LAR_uknown_base_01.ma” model above. The numerous distorted ‘trees’ likely use the skin datamined above.

Still no idea what the area is for, but it’s probably for a raid encounter or perhaps a mechanic similar to X1-Breaker in the Infinity Gate raid where certain players are probably teleported to this instance as part of a boss fight. That would explain the sparseness of the rest of the model.

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Small updates with the higher download size mainly caused by re-downloading map files. There’s still some significant changes like Marksman and Reaver additions, Transcendent stat adjustment and Ghar Essence upgrade costs reduced in line with Trion’s focus on reviewing the progression in RIFT across all aspects of the game.

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