PTS Datamining for 31st March 2015 – Part 2

RIFT’s Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) was updated on the 31st March 2015 with a 4.79GB update. You can check out the main PTS info here.

Part 1 of the datamining had info on new mounts, portraits and Lord Arak Raid models/skins. You can check it out here. The following is Part 2 of the datamining for this update.

Patch version TEST-302-4-A-993757.

Summary:

• Planetouched Wilds. Models, Skins and Mini-Map Compilations.
  
• Other Skins. More Lord Arak Raid skins. Mainly architecture and a cape skin. Butterfly Mob. Fairy Dress.
• Music Files. Skylla, HK IA and Akylios Poems sound files.
• Other Info. Possible ‘Nature Rift’, Dye Bucket icons and a Nightmare icon.

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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Planetouched Wilds

Planetouched Wilds is a long-awaited zone situated in the ‘koala’s tail‘ of Mathosia, East of Droughtlands. Darkmoon confirmed it will be a Level 65 zone. [r]

The data files for the 31st March 2015 PTS Update includes a few files on the Planetouched Wilds.

Planetouched Wilds Models

PTW Temple

The only building thus far is of the following temple:

An open temple which doesn’t seem to have any enclosed rooms.

A closer look at the pillars and right side of the temple can be seen below:

It gives off an almost tribal feel and I wouldn’t be surprised if large portions of the temple are made of wood.

At various locations there are these statues with faces on each side.

Misc Models

The rest of the models available so far are just rocks, cliffs, ledges, crystals and scaffolding.

Planetouched Wilds seems to be filled with cliffs and rock formations, encompassing crystal mines:

Crystals abound in the zone. The zone is probably highly sort after by the Planes for its minerals/energy.

And scaffolding. Probably found in the open mines just like you see in Storm Legion zones and architect mining.

Planetouched Wilds Minimaps

A few mini-map files for the Planetouched Wilds were found in the latest datamining. I’ve taken out my puzzle-foo and attempted to piece all the mini-maps together. As such, there could be mistakes.

Please note that the map is likely still heavily work-in-progress and anything below could change. Just like with past Nightmare Tide Mini-Map Compilations, the following PTW mini-maps will likely change/be improved on.

Top-Right Map Compilation

The first map is the latest collection I could find. It shows that at least some portion of the zone will have a lot of open mines with cliffs surrounding them. The blue areas represent some ore texture, whilst the red spikes represent the crystal models shown previously.

Water seems to surround all along the right and top sides of  the mini-map compilation. The only area on PTW in Mathosia would be the top-right section. As such, I’ve guesstimated that this compilation only shows the top-right section of the zone.

Of course I could be completely wrong and perhaps the top-right section of the compilation relates to the top-right section of the zone.

Moving on though, there’s a few areas of interest:

Hillside Temple

A path to the left leads up to an elevated area on top of a hill. There’s circular buildings and what clearly looks to be the Temple model shown earlier. This is probably a quest hub.

The circular buildings are likely yurts as some of the .gfx files show “A_PTW_yurt_large_01″/etc. Perhaps the Planetouched Wilds has Turkic or Mongolian influences.

Dev Creation Pit

Given the way all those buildings are lined up, the area in the center of the mini-map compilation is likely just a place where the devs place various assets. There’s the yurts, some scaffolding, bridge and fort pieces.

Gyel Fortress?

Strangely, there’s a Gyel Fortress in the top area of the compilation. This is very odd, especially since Gyel Fortress was once the Tree of Gyel before it was desecrated by the falling ships of the Bloodfire Army.

For it to exist in the Planetouched Wilds doesn’t make much sense unless Gyel Fortress was somehow sucked out of the Plane of Water and landed in Telara.

The obvious explanation is that this is just placeholder, although it might suggest that the remnants of the Bloodfire Army might have a presence here. This might also be used as a size reference.

2nd Compilation

The second ‘major’ compilation:

This portion doesn’t seem to connect to the main one shown previously. As such I have no idea where this could be located, although the shape of the trench seems to suggest it is lodged in the right-side of the zone.

Nothing much to see except that there’s a rocky bridge in the middle as well as a man-made bridge to the left. The rectangular shapes are probably scaffolding.

The blue dotted lines show the size of each mini-map.

3rd Compilation

Another compilation. No clue where this is located in the zone. Again you see the crystals and rocky cliffs.

Planetouched Wilds Skins

A few skins possibly relating to Planetouched Wilds:

Crystal Skins

First up is the blue crystal texture you see throughout PTW:

And a mineral/limestone skin that might show up on the walls of the open mine trenches.

Architecture Skins

A pillar skin:

And more pillar skins:

And more architecture skins:

Possible Pot/Vase Skins:

These might also be the top of pillars.

And oddly, some gear skins:

Not sure what the gears are for but maybe there will be excavation machinery in the region.

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Other Skins

A few other skins were found:

Nightmare Cape

We’ve already got the eye-bally Cape of Endless Nightmares that you can obtain if you are Revered with the Ghar Notoriety (RIFT Store -> Wardrobe -> Costume; bottom of list). However, this new one is likely the skin for the Lord Arak Raid capes. Just like with the second nightmare weapon sets and gear models, the above cape is devoid of eyes.

LAR Skins

Some more Lord Arak Raid skins:

LAR Pillar Skin

The pillar to the right looks a lot like the shape of the pillars surrounding the Uknown encounter room. The statue within the pillar looks to have a halo behind the person.

Book Skin

This one is definitely a Lord Arak Raid model. Cracked texture seems to be a common theme and this skin’s central design looks like balance scales – a common object found in the End to Reason models.

A book model. I’m thinking it’s the book that the statue to the right of the End to Reason interior holds. This suggests that the giant statues in the building are likely cracked as well.

Butterfly Mob Skin

We don’t have any butterfly mobs right now do we? Looks like a colorful butterfly mob will be popping up at some point. Probably in the Planetouched Wilds. Can’t imagine this being part of the Lord Arak Raid.

Fairy Dress Skin

Okay, so we’ve seen this skin before:

I stated in the past that this doesn’t seem to be available anywhere.

Well, it turns out the dress is part of the druid fairy pet skin:

However! I still maintain that the dress skin is likely for player use. Simply put, clothing for mobs is attached to their skin. The clothing usually isn’t a separate skin because mobs don’t need to change wardrobes. Thus, the separate skin should be for player use.

Trion have done this before with clothing like Acolyte Bundle and Brevanic Bundle – creating a separate skin for player use. The details on the separate dress skin are also higher, and the lower attachment is red on the stand-alone skin, whilst it’s yellow-ish on the fairy pet skin.

This only solidifies my speculation that the fairy pet skin’s dress will become a player costume.

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Music Files

A few interesting music files have popped up. Some are old, others new. Obviously, spoilers.

• Skylla – Citadel of Insanity. Skylla, one of the bosses from Citadel of Insanity talks about his pillow. If you enjoyed his voiceovers in the dungeon, you can re-listen to his quotes here.

• Hammerknell Fortress Instant Adventures. The upcoming HK IA has multiple voice-overs and seems to tell a bit more of the story of HK, filling some of the gaps left by the raid and chronicle. Warning: Spoilers! You can listen to the audio here.

• Akylios Poems. Not sure if these are new, but it’s basically Akylios spouting random words. These might be from the Draumheim questline. You can find them here.

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Other Info

Nature Rift

A “rift_nature.ma”. Will we finally see a (non-Nightmare) hybrid Rift? ‘Nature’ on the Planar Attunement trees would be Life + Earth. Within the file included a “treant_boss_oaknarl”.

Of course, this could just be what Life Rifts were originally referred to as, and Oaknarl might just be an existing boss. It is the treant’s concept art.

Dye Buckets

Dye bucket icons with the upcoming 3.2 Wardrobe System revamp of the dye system. The dye system has it’s own color swatch so these are likely icons for the RIFT Store.

Dye buckets are unlimited dyes and are account-wide. Unknown at this stage whether Trion will have any bundles available.

Nightmare Icon

A Nightmare-based icon. Probably either what the newly upgraded Nightmare Seals, new upgrade component or NMR6 lures or essences will look like.

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Some Planetouched Wilds info in the data files. Not much though besides a portion of the map revealed by piecing together some of the mini-maps that were available with the latest update. Clearly heavily WIP. Keep in mind that these mini-maps were found on the PTS and Trion’s dev client probably has updated versions. Plus, the zone is slated for this year with no further details.

You can also check out some related information below:

• PTS Update for 31st March 2015. Full info on stuff available for viewing on the PTS including 3.2 Wardrobe System, IA revamp, Tier 1 cost reduction, Tier 2 gear and NMR6.
• PTS Datamining for 31st March 2015 – Part 1. The first part of datamining for the latest update. Includes info on new mounts, portraits and Lord Arak Raid models/skins.

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