PTS Update for 11th-12th March 2015

RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) was updated on both the 11th and 12th March 2015 with under 100MB updates. Nothing in the datamining; and nothing interesting in Live files in this week’s hotfix.

Patch versions are TEST-301-66-A-989064 and TEST-301-67-A-989280.

Summary:

• Hammerknell Achievements. For Tier 2 Return to Hammerknell + HK Leaderboards.
• PvP-dropped Gear Adjusted.
• Tier 2 Raid Test Gear is up.

As always, everything below is subject to change prior to hitting Live and some things included below may never make it to Live release.

Hammerknell Achievements

Achievements have changed by 10 points overall, up to 31,317.

• Hammerknell Fortress (‘HK’) is no longer under Achievements -> Raids -> RIFT. 480 achievement points have thus been removed.
• HK  is now under Achievements -> Raids -> RIFT: Nightmare Tide, for a total of 525 points.
• Strangely, Achievements -> Chronicles -> HK: Runes of Corruption (the level 50 chronicle version) is empty.

Not sure if these are bugs or intended, especially since you can’t find your old Level 50 HK achievements anymore on the PTS. They aren’t under Legacy.

Conqueror HK Level 65 Achievement.

The main difference between the Level 65 and old Level 50 HK achievements is currently the Conqueror achievement which – instead of rewarding the title “Tide Mistress” and the Swift Armored Murdantix Bridle mount – now rewards “The Beast” title and the Storm Legion Lifter mount.

The Storm Legion Lifter mount is normally gained from the Arclight Infiltration Promo Week. Unsure if this is just a placeholder mount or not.

The rest of the achievements and the bosses mentioned seem to be the same as the Level 50 version so they are probably placeholder.

HK Leaderboards

Not surprisingly, Level 65 Hammerknell Fortress Dominance leaderboards are up under Leaderboards (default key “;“). All the old bosses are up there, confirming the revamped raid will use the same raid bosses.

PvP-dropped Gear Adjusted

Example Dreambreaker Adjustments

[Update: As of 13th March 2015 PTS Update, this has been reverted back to original values with Vladd changing Bolstered gear values for PvP instead. [r] ]

As per Vladd’s recent announcement on the forums, PvP-dropped gear (Ephemeral, Marauder and Dreambreaker) have had some stat adjustments made in order to make it easier  for players to determine whether a piece is an upgrade or not. [r]

Briefly:

• Primary, Secondary and Endurance stats (WIS, INT, DEX, STR) have increased.
• Tertiary stats (CP, AP, SP/etc) have been reduced.
• PvP-dropped Greater Essences have had a boost to their procs. (Based on info in PvP chat channels; don’t have screenshots).
• A large list of adjustments can be found in Stihl’s post here.

The above image depicts two of those changes. Overall your ‘stat value’ will decrease, unless you are stacking Critical Power (‘CP’) Dreambreaker gear and are already well past the CP soft cap (somewhere around 3,120).

You can post feedback about the changes in Vladd’s thread here.

Tier 2 Raid Test Gear

Mr Raidmare Tide. Raid 2 Gear NPC.

Mr. SL Raid 1 in Master Mode Dummy Foundry and Mr. Raidmare Tide right outside Hammerknell Fortress in Moonshades Highlands (6460, 1226) are both selling Tier 2 test gear for 2 silver each on the PTS.

Note: Mr. Raidmare Tide tends to be spawned by the devs when guilds are testing with dev supervision. As such, he might not be outside HK when you’re on – best to head to Mr. SL Raid 1 in Master Mode Dummy Foundry.

I wasn’t able to enter HK due to size restrictions, so unable to determine if any of the bosses have been updated.

Tier 2 Test Gear

Tier 2 Test Gear Boots

Nothing too exciting except the usual test gear on every piece, current top-tier runes, essences and savant orbs. The Tier 2 test gear has higher stats (when comparing like-for-like tertiary stats; i.e. CP vs CP) compared to current Tier 1 Relic gear.

Tier 2 Raid Test Gear Cleric DPS

However, some of the raid test gear has AP/SP and Physical/Spell Crit so overall – as per usual – the test gear has significantly lower CP values than the average player on Live.

Testing Tier 2

You can apply to test out the “Return to Hammerknell” Tier 2 raid by responding to CM Ocho’s thread here. Note that you should speak to your guild leader as there’s only one application per guild.

If you’re providing feedback on the raids or are interested in reading up on feedback given by other players, Trion has introduced a new procedure so that all feedback will be publicly available in the new Raid Testing Feedback sub-forum found under the Public Test Shard sub-forum. DEV_Anony has a template for posting feedback here.

Other Info

• The ‘Primalist’ (5th Calling) has been removed from gear tooltips.

Small updates in last two days with some placeholder achievements for the Tier 2 Raid: Return to Hammerknell Fortress. Also Tier 2 test gear and testing applications open up. There’s also a bit of PvP-dropped gear stat adjustments you’ll probably want to take a look at. Stihl’s post here gives a brief overview.

If you haven’t already done so, quench some of your curiosity for 3.2 info by checking out the teaser to upcoming Wardrobe UI changes.

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