PTS Datamining for 30th July 2015

RIFT updated the Public Test Shard (‘PTS’) on 30th July with a 1.9GB update! You can check out the update here. Below are interesting file found in the update.

Summary:

• Great Hound Charity. Great Hound Mount & Grey2K USA Worldwide charity.
• Planetouched Wilds Assets. Plenty of Bahmi skins & rigs, various PTW creatures, Teth, architecture skins and Shal Korva models updated.
  
• Other Interesting Files. Dimension Tiles, a ‘Bat’ wardrobe bundle, Nightmare Lifter Mount.
  

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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Great Hound Charity

The Great Hound mount has popped up again in the data files, this time with a new image that reveals where we’ll be obtaining at least one of the mounts.

GREY2K USA Worldwide

The image above is clearly a front page RIFT Store feature image. It seems like Trion will be supporting the GREY2K USA Worldwide charity which aims to end dog racing world-wide. You can find out more about the charity here.

Great Hound Mount

The feature image also shows the purple, striped Great Hound mount from the concept art, so that will probably be the mount you will be able to purchase. It’s also the only mount that we’ve seen with a skin in the data files. The others might be held back as future additions.

If this in-game charity event is anything like the previously held Medecins Sans Frontieres: Doctors Without Borders charity event, you’ll probably not be able to obtain the mount via other means (at least not for a while anyway). The previous event’s bundle cost 2,000 Credits and was available for 30 days with Trion donating $5 to the charity for each coat or bundle purchased. Unknown how much the Great Hount mount will cost.

According to the config file, it should be amphibious. It also has its own rig, so should move differently from the existing mounts.

When Is It?

No clue when the Grey2k USA Worldwide RIFT charity event will be held. There doesn’t seem to be a fixed yearly fundraising date on the website. If it’s like the Doctors Without Borders promo though, it’ll probably last a while so you’re bound not to miss it.

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Planetouched Wilds Assets

There’s quite a few new Planetouched Wilds-related files like new creature skins and updates to existing models.

Planetouched Wilds Bahmi Files

Quite a handful of Bahmi files have appeared related to the Planetouched Wilds.

Bahmi Rigs

Beserker, Witch Doctor and Barbarian NPC rigs have popped up. Notice the “_zal” and “_khar”.

From the Planetouched Wilds Artifact Sets on the PTS, those two are most likely important characters in the storyline:

• “_khar” is probably King Khar. According to the artifact set: “He ran from his destiny of becoming the Keeper of Radiance and cut a bloody swath to Shal Korva as the Titan of Wilds”.
• “_zal” is probably Zal Shulam. From the artifact set: “The Vulcanist of Ovog was the most powerful primalists of her generation, whose temper was as fiery as her evocations.”

Bahmi Skins

There’s a bunch of new Bahmi skins on top of the ones datamined previously.

Generic Bahmi

The first ones are relatively small in image size, which suggests these are generic NPCs.

The individual ‘eye’ seems to suggest that these NPCs will have moving eyes (instead of the static images you see in most existing NPCs besides important characters like Crucia). (Try it some time. Zoom into NPC faces and fear their blank stares).

Wolf Pelt Female Bahmi

The next few have larger resolutions, probably indicating that they are important NPCs that you’ll be staring at every now and then.

This skin is probably female given what looks to be a bra band on her back in the right-most body image. You’ll notice the same band in the top-left ‘female’ Bahmi in the earlier image (as opposed to the absence of the band in the bottom-left ‘male’ Bahmi skin).

The skin is similar to some of the smaller skins, but this one has a wolf pelt hat covering her purple hair which probably indicates status. She’s probably Zal Shulam, ‘the Vulcanist of Ovog’.

Green/Blue Hair Female Bahmi

Another female Bahmi skin. Has Greenish-Blue hair. Quite a bit of it actually.

She probably looks like Primalist Trainer “Yeke of the Wilds” on the PTS given the skin, except with a lot more hair flowing all over the place.

Purple Beard Male Bahmi

Finally, we have a male Bahmi with a purple beard. I actually think this is a dwarf. I don’t think this is King Khar, simply because there’s no discerning feature (except the large horn in the top-right and the beard) that clearly separates him from the other NPCs with similar skins to this one.

Why a dwarf? Firstly because of the purple beard. It looks far too large for any traditional Bahmi. Secondly because of some character config files in the latest patch:

• rig\asset\bahmi_female_medium_merchant_0_a.nif
• rig\asset\bahmi_male_medium_bandit_melee_0_a.nif
• rig\asset\dwarf_male_medium.nif
• rig\asset\elf_female_medium.nif
• rig\asset\elf_male_medium_aelfwar_skirmisher_0.nif
• rig\asset\human_female_medium.nif
• rig\asset\human_male_medium.nif

As you can see, there’s a “rig\asset\dwarf_male_medium.nif”. The normal player config files would end at “dwarf_male.nif”, so the “_medium” seems to be aimed at NPCs. You’ll notice that all the Bahmi rigs clearly meant for Planetouched Wilds Bahmi NPCs have “_medium” in their file names as well.

Could the Shalistiri have actually mated with the Dwarves to create the Bahmi? And these “dwarf_male_medium” could be the offspring whose Dwarf DNA were a little more dominant than the Shalistiri DNA. So, perhaps we’ll meet blue-skinned Shalistiri-Dwarf hybrids of ‘considerable’ height (compared to Telaran Dwarves) in the Planetouched Wilds!

Pure speculation of course, but it’s something to look out for when we finally get access to the zone.

Planetouched Wilds Creature Files

There’s some new PTW creature files in the latest data files as well!

Earth Twisted Bahmi Skin

The skin below is likely of an ‘Earth-twisted’ Bahmi. You can clearly see the bahmi skin in the bottom-right. The Bahmi is clearly corrupted/’planetouched’ with the plane of Earth.

The idea of the skin being ‘Earth Twisted’ comes from the Planetouched Wilds achievements on the PTS.

Chances are the above skin is of an ‘Earth Twisted Baac Hunter’.

Crystal Golem Skin

Next up is a ‘Crystal Golem’ skin. This might actually be the ‘Earth Twisted Baac’.

One thing to note about this particular skin is that it was rather large (2048×2048) compared to the other skins. This could suggest that it might be scaled up (such as for use as a zone event boss).

The skin also shows 4 ‘feet/hands’. Most skins have only 2 instances of feet/hands because that portion of the skin is simply repeated for the other side. This ‘might’ indicate that this creature has 8 feet/hands. The bottom-left triangular object might indicate a tail.

Teth Rigs

There’s two rigs for Teth. A ‘colossus_water_rock_teth’ and a ‘colossus_teth’ which uses the ‘colossus_guardian_vigil_saint’ rig.

These might be the Teth Yelishan and Teth Telioas mentioned in the PTW achievements. The 2nd rig probably uses the same rig as the Drekanoth of Fate although it might have a different skin.

According to an artifact set about Teth, he/she seems to be a Tenebrean that is able to change forms each time he/she is reincarnated.

However, “Teth Yelishan” and “Teth Telioas” are not part of the Teths in the artifact set, which seems to suggest these are more recent forms it has/will take in the storyline.

Crystal Dino Skins

A few dino-like skins have popped up. Planetouched Wilds achievements in the latest PTS Update mentioned a few varieties of dinosaurs including:

• Crystal Drakes
• Boar Dinos
• Ram Dinos
• Rhino Dinos
• T-Rexs

Unsure which one the below are, but they ‘look’ like they might be dinos:

Dino Skin #1

Can’t really tell what the first one looks like. One of the Dinos…probably.

Dino Skin #2

Second one actually looks like an armored honey badger. Maybe it’s a babaroo?

Dino Skin #3

And another crystal dino-ish skin. Looks kind of frail in skin-form, so maybe it’s the crystal drake (since current drakes are rather skinny).

Dino Skin #4

Couldn’t find the colored version of this creature’s skin. However, this is the closest skin to the Crystalline Raptor concept art.

The 6 eyes match both on the skin (middle-right) and concept art.

The person in the bottom-left corner of the concept art could be a potential scale reference for the creature, although this might change between the concept stage and the size of the creature once it’s in-game.

dino_crystal_boss

Regardless of which skin is the ‘dino_crystal’, there is a “dino_crystal_boss” config file. That said, its only attack seems to be an “unarmed_melee_bite” (for now at least).

Architecture Skins

There’s a few PTW architecture skins. Mostly of various Stone Heads.

The top one does show a 6-armed individual. Is it worship of the Shalistiri? Or some other race/god/s? The Shalistiri seem to only have 2 arms (unless there are multiple kinds of Shalistiri), so it’s probably not them.

Shal Korva Updated

The models for Shal Korva datamined back on 1st July have been updated. These now have a lot more ‘cloth’ on the wooden platforms, and there’s balloons/blimps!

I had been wondering how all these thin platforms managed to support itself. The below image clearly shows some parts are kept up with large balloons/blimps, whilst other parts are weighed down with those bags of sand/rock.

It’s not just the floats that have been added. There’s plenty of new cloth and what looks like sails throughout the updated models.

With the old models, it was assumed that Shal Korva would be against a cliff to prevent the wooden platforms from collapsing in on themselves. However, the balloons/blimps suggest that some parts of Shal Korva might be floating in the air, or at least being supported by them.

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Other Interesting Files

Dimension Tiles

A whole heap of dimension tile skins have popped up. Not sure if each 4×4 tile image is supposed to be a single dimension item, or if it relates to 16 different dimension items (or some kind of randomizer).

These will probably arrive with 3.4, based on past info from Trion.

Bat Wardrobe Bundle

Interestingly, a bat-themed wardrobe bundle popped up in the files. This doesn’t really seem like it’s related to the Planetouched Wilds. Could be for Autumn Harvest?

Nightmare Lifter Mount Skin

A skin and icon have popped up for a Nightmare Lifter Mount.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the mount turns out to be the Lord Arak Raid Conqueror achievement reward (given the Abyssal Lifter Mount is the Hammerknell Fortress Conqueror reward).

Wheel of Fortune

The following two images were part of the data files.

These were high-res 2048×2048 images.It seems this was either added to the files on purpose for anyone looking through them, or they have been placed in a specific location temporarily.

The image is of Pat Sajak, from the American version of the TV show “Wheel of Fortune”. (Thanks to Apolllyon and Stormbow for the info on who this is)

The reason why he is there is probably because the Planetouched Wilds seems to have its own version of the Wheel of Fortune called the Wheel of Fate and someone on the art team probably wanted to have him staring up at them as they build the landscape around the Wheel of Fate.

So far there’s ‘bahmi’, ‘monkey’, ‘skull’ and ‘lion’ file names related to this ‘Wheel of Fate’, although there’s nothing interesting in the rigs themselves (basically one or two lines).

The only other thing known about this ‘Wheel of Fate’ is from the Artifact set of the same name on the PTS:

Guess the Wheel of Fate must be some superstitious (or magical) predictor of the Bahmi’s fortunes.

SFX – Enigma & Teth

Data files had about 100+ sound effects for Enigma and Teth. Nothing too interesting, just a whole bunch of 1-3sec wailing, huffing and grunting sound files. Enigma seems to be a possible boss mob in the Lord Arak Raid whilst Teth is related to the Planetouched Wilds.

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A lot of new files in the latest PTS Update pertaining to the Planetouched Wilds.

If you’re interested in what was added to the latest PTS Update that you can access in-game including 3.4 crafting recipes, check the article here!

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