PTS Update 26-27th January 2015

RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) was updated on the 26-27th of January 2015 with an approx. 200MB and 140MB update respectively. There was nothing interesting in the datamined files that aren’t already included on the PTS directly.

Bulk of file sizes are from re-downloading new or existing Nightmare Tide map and sound files.

Patch versions are TEST-301-26-B-977140 and TEST-301-27-A-977658.

Summary:

• Currency Caps Increased.
• World and Dungeon Gear Price Reduction.
• New Wardrobe Bundles: Flamebound, Earthbound, Seabound and Riding Bundles.
• New Achievements: PUMPKIN and Crucia Achieves.
• Minion Time Display.
• Greater Essence Upgrade Cost Reduction.
• Tyrant’s Forge Entrance.

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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Currency Caps Increased

Nightmare Tide Currency caps have been increased on the PTS. Fragments remain the same at 5,400 per week for Patrons and 4,500 for Non-Patrons.

Patron:

• Void Stones: 47,000, up from 42,000.
• Abyssal Crusader’s Marks: 20,000, up from 15,000.

Non-Patron:

• Void Stones: 45,000. up from 40,000.
• Abyssal Crusader’s Marks: Unknown* (probably 17,500 given the +5k trend of the rest of the currency caps).

*If you are not a Patron and have access to the PTS, can you confirm the weekly Abyssal Crusader’s Marks cap? Thank you in advance!

(Thanks to Euca for the info!)

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World and Dungeon Gear Price Reduction

Void Seeker (World) and Abyssal Crusader’s (Dungeon) gear on the RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Armor and RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Weapons have had a price reduction.

Void Seeker Gear:

• Gloves/Belt/Boots: 3,500 VS, down from 10,500.
• Shoulders/Helm: 7,000 VS, down from 14,000.
• Chest/Legs: 21,000 VS, down from 28,000.

Abyssal Crusader’s Gear:

• Gloves/Belt/Boots: 4,300 ACM, down from 7,500.
• Shoulders/Helm: 6,850 ACM, down from 10,000.
• Chest/Legs: 11,750 ACM, down from 18,750.
• Weapons: 11,750 ACM, down from 18,750.

VS = Void Stones
ACM = Abyssal Crusader’s Marks.

(Thanks to Euca for the info!)

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New Wardrobe Bundles

A few new Wardrobe Bundles have popped up, mainly to fill out the ‘[Plane]bound Steel] sets.

Bound Steel Bundles

There’s three new ‘Bound Steel’ bundles on the RIFT Store -> Wardrobe which cost 2,125 Credits each (1,912 for Patrons). As you can guess, these follow a similar style to all the existing ‘Bound Steel’ bundles.

This means we now have:

• Flamebound Steel
• Earthbound Steel
• Seabound Steel
• Icebound Steel
• Lifebound Steel
• Deathbound Steel (from Nightmare Tide lockboxes)
• Tempered Steel

Wonder if we’ll get an Airbound at some point? Or a Nightmarebound. And how about the hybrids (Dustbound, Duskbound, Steambound, Cinderbound, Stormbound, Naturebound)?

Riding Bundle

Ever wanted to ride on your mechanical horse with a little more elegance? There’s a Riding Bundle on the PTS RIFT Store -> Wardrobe for 1,200 Credits (1,080 for Patrons). Unfortunately it doesn’t come with the Riding Cap which is an old item you can get from RIFT Store -> Wardrobe -> Premium.

The boots come with a small spur at the back.

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New Achievements

New achievements bringing total to 35,307. There’s new Tyrant’s Forge achievement, mainly for PUMPKIN and Crucia bosses, Crucia Hard Mode and a Conqueror achievement.

PUMPKIN Achieves

Quite a few PUMPKIN achieves were added in with the latest two updates. From the achievements it sounds like PUMPKIN heats up the raid encounter and you have to drop stacks of a debuff (or gain a temporary debuff) by running over one of the cooling vats in the area. You seem to have to do this fairly often.

There also seems to be a mechanic to kill a Reinforced AI mob before PUMPKIN gets to him, and ‘Overwatch 9000’ mobs to avoid that sounds like snipers on the platforms surrounding the encounter area.

Sound like an interesting fight!

Mecha Crucia Achieves

Mecha Crucia has received some achievements as well. Includes a Hard Mode versions!

The achieves make the fight sound highly electrical-based, which isn’t a surprise. Capacitors to destroy before a timer runs out, ‘Conduit’ debuff, Locking On that might be a reactive that players can pass to others and ‘Displaced’, which sounds like a large AoE knockback.

The Grounding Chain sounds interesting – “Create a Grounding chain connecting 10 or more players”. This is probably something a random player gets and they run to other players to give them a Grounding buff so they don’t become a Conduit, which is the “Stay Grounded” achievement.

I’m guessing that once you become a Conduit, you’ll be hit by Discharge if it manages to go off from one of the two Capacitors.

Another interesting-sounding fight, just from reading the achieves.

Tyrant’s Forge Conqueror Achieve

Finally, Tyrant’s Forge Conqueror achievement has been added with a title and item reward.

Title reward is “Tyrannical”, so you could be “Tyrannical [player], the Tyrant” from obtaining both Conqueror: Tyrant’s Forge and “Thus Always To Tyrants” (the Tyrant’s Throne zone ‘conqueror’ achievement). I wonder if this is related to at least one of the hidden minion cards coming with 3.1?

Currently the item reward “The Tyrant’s Touch” provides one stack of ‘The Love Bug’ buff (from Mariel-Taun day), but it is just placeholder for something else (Thanks to Boase for the info!). Tooltip states “Use: Share the tyranny! Applies Relief after 1 use, making the caster immune to the Hate Bug for 1 hour.” No further details known.

This could also be part of the parameters required to get a hidden minion card. Perhaps there’s a Hate Bug similar to the Love Bug, but found somewhere on Tyrant’s Throne. It might give you a debuff that prevents you from continuing with the objectives to get the hidden minion card – so you use this ‘The Tyrant’s Touch’ to become immune and ‘continue on’ from there.

All speculation of course at this point, but that would make one hard-to-get minion card if it pans out this way.

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Minion Time Display

On the PTS, Minions on Adventures now have a time display to tell you what the duration of the adventure was. The usual ‘time left’ is displayed on the left, but there’s now an ‘adventure time’ on the right. The above image for example shows an on-going adventure “Hunt the Forest” that is an 8hr adventure.

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Greater Essence Upgrade Cost Reduction

The final upgrade path for Greater Essences dropped from Raid Rifts such as the Sea of Ladon have also had a cost reduction with the Illusory Motes requirement dropping from 100 to 10. The first upgrade’s cost has not been reduced and the amount of Illusory Motes requires remains at 50.

(Thanks to snipebad for the information and graphic!)

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Tyrant’s Forge Entrance

Probably not new, but the entrance to the upcoming Tyrant’s Forge raid is located at (6588, 9104). Note that the raid won’t be coming out until 4th February 2015 so the entrance might not be there when 3.1 hits on the 28th Jan 2015.

(Thanks to Slipmat for the info!)

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Nice to see some new wardrobe bundles popping up. This is probably the last update prior to 3.1.

Please note that shards will go down for Patch 3.1 at 12AM PST / 8AM GMT at the same time for all shards. Shard down-time will be approx. 11hrs and all Trion-based websites will also be down during this time. [r]

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