PTS Update for 1st July 2015

RIFT updated the Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) on 1st July with a considerable 1.9GB update! TEST-302-81-A-1017565. A whole bunch of stuff added in including Nightmare Saga and Planetouched Wilds quests!

Datamining for the most recent PTS Update can be found here. Includes a bunch of PTW assets including Shal Korva models and creature skins.

Summary:

• Nightmare Saga & Planetouched Wilds. You can now pick up via in-game mail on PTS.
• New Achievements. Droughtlands, Cult Sagas and Wardrobe Sets.
• Silver Tier Loyalty. New tier of loyalty with new rewards.
• Other Features. Random Chronicle Queue; IA Queue Changes; Account Vault; Appearance Sets Addition; Glyph of Clarity; New Warfront Announcers; Nightmare Saga Weapon Skins.
• Planar Crafting: Dimension Update. The other half populated. Check out The Strider!

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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Nightmare Saga & Planetouched Wilds

The Nightmare Saga and the Planetouched Wilds quests are now up on the PTS for testing!

• Both quests are obtained via in-game mail. Just click on the associated mail, collect the item and then click on it in your inventory and accept the starting quests.

Note that you will only be able to complete the Planetouched Wilds quests up to the portal just below the PTW entrance that likely takes you to a quest instance relating to the opening of the wall that separates Droughtlands from the Planetouched Wilds. As at the time of this post, the portal does not work and will give you a “You do not meet the requirements for this map” message. That said, you can go past the portal and up towards Planetouched Wilds.

Krug has stated that he needs to “flip a switch” to activate the instance portal which will take one or two PTS Updates [r]. Also, note that the instance portal at the end of the pre-PTW quests will not take you to the actual zone.

Get in there and send Trion any feedback and/or bug reports!

Planetouched Wilds

It’s interesting that the Planetouched Wilds quests have popped up at the same time as the Nightmare Saga quests. That said, Planetouched Wilds is probably not slated for a 3.3 release because it would kind of clash with the Nightmare Saga questchain.

Also, Mathosia has been reshaped:

Instead of a cute koala holding onto a tree, it seems the new Planetouched Wilds-enhanced koala has its tail on fire. Or perhaps it evolved into a Slowbro?

This is quite encouraging as it seems the new Planetouched Wilds is a significantly larger landmass than the original. It’s almost as large as Shimmersand, Droughtlands and Freemarch combined.

Planetouched Wilds Preview

Necalli over on the RIFT Forums was able to take some screenshots of the Planetouched Wilds (although you cannot get in yet). Check them out below!

You are able to get past the ‘broken’ portal and keep going up the hill towards the entrance to the Planetouched Wilds. However, there’s an invisible wall that still blocks you from entering.

Some simple jumping can get you to the top of the wall, but you can’t get past it.

Planetouched Wilds Artifact Sets

There’s a few PTW artifact sets that have popped up on the PTS that gives some insight into the type of creatures, locations and NPCs that you will meet in the upcoming zone:

A few tidbits:

• Shal Korva as the Bahmi base in PTW.
• Sky Leviathans are likely the skywhales shown in the past.
• Shalistiri would be the ancestors of the Bahmi from the Plane of Air.
• Callweddi looks to be the Life/Fae portion of the zone.
• Rhinenahyrcaros would link the Plane of Earth to the zone.

Look forward to the new zone opening up (on PTS) at some point in the future!

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New Achievements

250 points of new achievements, bringing the total from 36652 to 36902.

Droughtlands Achievement

Zones -> RIFT -> Droughtlands has a new 5pt achievement called “Tear Down That Wall”, related to the Planetouched Wilds.

Cult Sagas Achievements

Character -> Cult Sagas has 40pts of achievements related to the upcoming Nightmare Saga questchain.

Wardrobe Achievements

Wardrobe has 75 pts in new “Wardrobe: Set I”/etc. Related to the increase in Appearance Sets.

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Silver Tier Loyalty

A new tier of loyalty has popped up on the PTS, slated for 3.3!

You need a total of 4,100,000 loyalty to max the tier. As per usual, any loyalty you’ve saved up past the current Black Tier will go towards the new Silver Tier.

Mid-tier Rewards:

Mid-tier rewards are gained whilst you build up to full loyalty.

• 820,000 – Silver Tier Dimension Item Pack. Contains 9 highly rare and desirable items for your dimension.
• 1,640,000 – Minion Card: Pay to Whinny (Earth, Harvesting, 12 stamina).
• 2,460,000 – Key to Dimension: Everywhere. Unknown location.
• 3,280,000 – Empowered Pow Kickers. Reduce mount time by 50%. Permanent, does not stack with Spring Loaded Pow Kickers. (Should be great for escaping from players in Warfronts!)

Silver Tier Dimension Item Pack

Accol over on the RIFT Forums was able to get access to the Silver Tier Dimension Item Pack. Check out the items below:

The “End of the Universe Sky Projector” can be seen below in the Everywhere dimension below:

Key to Dimension: Everywhere

Accol also has the “Key to Dimension: Everywhere”. Just like the ‘Anywhere’ dimension, the entire buildable area is flat. Except in this case instead of dirt/sand, the entire place is a flat layer of snow.

In the distance you can see large, snowy mountains. Item Limit is 2,000.

Above, you can see the “End of the Universe Sky Projector” in action.

You can check out all these Silver-tier dimension rewards in Accol’s dimension on the PTS:

• Name: Silver Tier Items Everywhere
• Location: Everywhere Dimension
• Owner: Accol

Full-tier Rewards:

Full-tier rewards require that you complete the full 4,100,000 loyalty for Silver Tier.

• Writ of the Distinguished. Title.
• Distinguished Portrait. The diamond-encrusted player portrait.
• Treasure Map Overload. +20% Exp, Notoriety and Token Currency from all sources. Should replace previous tier treasure maps (so doesn’t stack with the other treasure maps).
• Miss Money Piggy. A companion pet. The piggy is smiling and has a coin slot at its top. It also wiggles its butt.
• Distinguished Gift. Interesting new reward. Grouping up with a Silver-tier player will give you 5% increased exp, favor, notoriety, prestige and token currency from all sources.
• Distinguished Levitation. A 155% amphibious mount.

Distinguished Levitation

Bobbobbinson78 on the RIFT Forums has uploaded a screenshot of the Distinguished Levitate mount (Silver Tier Loyalty Reward) that you can check out here. Below is a cropped version:

Remember that this is the PTS and things are subject to change. Marigold seems to indicate that Trion ‘might’ add wings to the mount. No concrete confirmation though. [r]

For all those who have been sitting on Black Tier for a while, look forward to Silver Tier in 3.3!

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Other Features

A whole variety of other features were added to the game:

• Random Chronicle Queue
• Instant Adventure Queue Changes
• Account Vault
• Appearance Sets Addition
• Glyph of Clarity

Random Chronicle Queue

With 3.3 you will be able to queue for random chronicles that has daily rewards. Unsure if the marks above are placeholder or not, but if it’s final then it’s the same as Random Experts and Random Warfronts.

Instant Adventure Queue Changes

Instant Adventure window has changed a bit:

• Featured adventure is now Tarken Glacier.
• Instant Adventure and Intrepid Adventures split up. Intrepid Adventures relate to IAs located in raid instances.

It looks like Hammerknell Fortress is the only Intrepid Adventure thus far, but Trion have mentioned their interest in creating IA versions of other raids.

Be sure to test out the Tarken Glacier IAs which are slated for 3.3 release!

Account Vault

As mentioned in last month’s livestream, you will be able to unlock an account vault that initially has 32 slots. Items within the account vault can be accessed across your characters within the same shard.

The Account Vault can now be seen in your bank under the other vaults. It costs 3,000 Credits to unlock (2,700 for Patrons). Unknown at this point if purchasing the Account Vault will unlock access to the Account Vault functionality across your entire account or only for that particular shard.

Appearance Sets Addition

Appearance Sets (found in your Character window) have increased from 76 to 365. The additions are existing appearance sets, mainly from existing bundles.

Glyph of Clarity

Glyph of the Fire Wurm has been changed to Glyph of Clarity. It gives a ‘headlight’-style vfx similar to the starting mini-event in Archive of Flesh (Lvl 60 dungeon).

Also, was finally able to see Glyph of the Drunkard’s vfx. Bubbles come out of your nose (probably supposed to be mouth).

New Warfront Announcers

Several new warfront announcers are now up on RIFT Store -> Services:

• Arethea, Cavalla (a Skelf), Cosmologist Mann, Finric, Lady Glasya and Veras!

They cost 700 Credits each (630 for Patrons).

Nightmare Saga Weapon Skins

What is assumed to be the Nightmare Saga weapon skins have popped up on the PTS:

They use the Ultimate Nightmare Pack weapon skins as a base, then expands on it with extra green-highlighted spikes and more green glow.

That bow, especially, is probably the largest bow model in the game yet!

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Planar Crafting: Dimension Update

The planar crafted dimension items have been updated. In the previous update, only half the dimension items were visible with the other half being duplicates. Now the other half have their own items!

As predicted, “The Sea Strider” is the Draumheim Ship model.

The Sea Strider

“The Sea Strider” dimension item is huge. The default size is massive.

(Oddly, I imagined it to be a lot more colorful given the ‘draumheim ship’ model name.)

The front has a mermaid statue and the smoother lines plus pieces of blue show it’s not a Bloodfire Army-style ship.

The front part has this interesting circular mechanism. The orange discs rotate.

There’s stairs, balcony and other areas. Unfortunately you can’t get into the main building in the middle or the ship’s interiors. However, you can get up into the ship via the big ramp at the back of the ship (top-right picture below).

Look forward to obtaining “The Sea Strider” and other dimension items in 3.3! If you check out some of the past PTS Updates in recent weeks, there’s an absolute heap of dimension items obtained through a variety of means that are slated for 3.3!

You can view The Sea Strider dimension item in the Dimension “The Sea Strider Dimension Item” by Marko on the PTS.

• Name: The Sea Strider Dimension Item
• Location: Anywhere
• Owner: Marko

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Wow! A lot of stuff in the latest PTS Update! Planetouched Wilds still has an invisible barrier over it, but it looks like they’re really starting to flesh it out. The most surprising part is how large the zone is now that the Mathosia map reflects the true size of the zone.

If you’ve got some time, check out the new Nightmare Saga and intro Planetouched Wilds quests and provide any feedback you have either via the in-game feedback/bug report or via the PTS Forums.

Datamining for the most recent PTS Update can be found here. Includes a bunch of PTW assets including Shal Korva models and creature skins.

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