Trion had their 21st August 2015 Friday Livestream where they talked testing for RIFT, including how to provide the best feedback and bug reports. Dead Simon also showed off some of the Planetouched Wilds, especially Callweddi Village and the various puzzles and dimension items related to this special area.

Click here for a replay of the 21st August 2015 Livestream video on twitch.tv.

Legend:
Black/Normal Text = Livestream Summary.
[Dark Blue Text] = My own comments. i.e. May not be indicative of actual content.

Trion had their 21st August 2015 Friday Livestream with Community Manager Eric “Ocho” Cleave, Senior Content Designer Chris “Tacitus” Cates and Senior Design Director/Chief Artifact/Puzzle Director Simon “Dead Simon” Ffinch.

Table of Contents:

• RIFT Testing. General info, submitting feedback and 3.4 testing.
  
• Planetouched Wilds Sneak Peek. Various areas, Callweddi, Dimension items and Puzzles!
  
• Other Tidbits. PAX Prime, Fae Outfit, Life Lifter Mount and more.
  
• Livestream Giveaways

As always, everything can be subject to change prior to the content hitting Live.

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RIFT Testing

With this week’s livestream, Trion talked about testing in RIFT and bug reports.

General Testing Information

First up, open testing with player involvement is important to the game because players can stumble upon issues and perform actions that Trion has not anticipated.

There are two types of content:

• Systems Content. This includes abilities, classes and anything that is numbers-based or highly repeatable. Trion is pretty good at testing this all in-house with their QA team.

• General Content. General content like quests and zone-based activities. Players can really help out with this type of content because they can bring in so many different variables and do all kinds of crazy stuff that Trion can’t anticipate.

The upcoming Planetouuched Wilds zone would be under the general content category.

When the devs create content, they submit a ‘test request’ to the QA department, describing all the things that need to be tested for that piece of content. For instance, the puzzles in Planetouched Wilds had a 23-page test request submitted by Dead Simon.

Submitting Feedback

Trion gets feedback from players in 3 main areas:

• Forums. The RIFT Forums are a useful place to providing feedback, especially if they need more immediate attention. [PTS Sub-forum is a great place for feedback on content that is PTS-only].

• Private Message. Found an exploit? Please don’t post it publicly on the forums. Instead, send one of the devs or CMs a Private Message. They’ll then pass it along to the appropriate person.

• In-game Bug Report. You can submit your bug reports or any feedback in-game as well. This can be accessed from the “?” icon in your menu bar on your screen. Select the appropriate category, then type in the appropriate section and hit ‘Send’.

Note: The in-game Bug Report feature is not for contacting customer support. If you need CS, use the ‘Contact Game Master’ link in your menu bar.

In-Game Bug Report

The in-game bug report gets a huge volume of submissions. As such, it can be difficult finding the ‘signal amidst the noise’.

To help Trion quickly identify and resolve bugs, please make sure that you use key details and provide reproduction steps if possible. A few things to note:

• If you are reporting a bug related to a quest, include the Quest’s name at the start of the bug report. When Trion scrolls through the reports, if the first few words of a report includes the Quest’s name, it will be easier to identify.
• If you are reporting about an NPC, have that NPC targeted when you submit the report.
• Reporting on an issue in a particular zone? Be in that zone when you submit the report.
• Be sure to provide any reproduction steps so that QA can match your actions and try to reproduce the bug. This will make it easier to identify what is causing the bug.

Each bug report automatically sends out certain information: Your faction, server, level, race, souls active, what you have targeted and your current location. The bug report will not automatically take a screenshot of your game window. Any other details will need to be written down in the bug report.

Try your best to be in the same zone as the issue you have found when you submit the bug report, as Trion will often search issues by zone.

Testing RIFT 3.4: Into the Wilds

RIFT 3.4: Into the Wilds is slated for Fall 2015. Trion has yet to provide an exact date.

Leading up to the patch, Trion will be holding numerous tests for the 3.4 content. You can already start testing many 3.4-related craft recipes such as new dream orbs and new tiers of runes/vials.

Primalist Testing

As mentioned in last week’s Primalist livestream, the Primalist calling will be available for testing in batches on special testing weekends. Each weekend, more and more players will be given the chance to test the class until, eventually, all players will have access to the Primalist on the PTS for testing purposes.

Planetouched Wilds Testing

Trion might start with a limited amount of players testing the new zone, but will eventually expand this to give all players access.

Testing Dates

Trion mentioned that exact dates for testing 3.4 will be talked about next week. They also mentioned that they were hoping to push out a build to test today; although no guarantees and chances are it’ll be limited testing for now.

[My guess is that they’ll reveal the dates during PAX Prime, which is next Friday on August 28th 2015 between 6-10pm. More details about the party here.]

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Planetouched Wilds Sneak Peek

During the livestream, Dead Simon also showed off a brief glimpse at various sections of the Planetouched Wilds, including the Callweddi Village, some special vendors and a Pentomino puzzle.

A couple of areas close to the border between Droughtlands and the Planetouched Wilds were shown.

Ovog Shrine

A shrine filled with stone structures, stone head carvings and some wind mechanisms that seem to be symbolic of the Bahmi in PTW was shown off.

The place is empty of NPCs right now as the zone is still a work-in-progress. Only living creatures were from an Air foothold in front of the shrine.

There’s quite a variety of ‘stone head’ decorations, from the one in the top-left in the image above, to the red versions in the image below.

And here’s two more stone head designs:

Floating Structures

Numerous floating rocks dot the landscape, seemingly lifted up by giant blimps. Some of these floating rocks also have small temple-like structures on top.

PTW Porticulum

Dead Simon showed a unique Planetouched Wilds-themed Porticulum just beyond the entrance to the Planetouched Wilds.

The entrance is at /setwaypoint 7980 5636 at the edge of Droughtlands. However, the version Dead Simon showed is from the dev client, so the porticulum isn’t viewable yet on Live.

PTW Mobs

Two mobs were shown. One is just like the Zendi minion card that you can get from The Wilds Pack, whilst the other looks like a silver/gray-colored ram of some kind.

The ‘Zendi’ is a butterfly-wasp-like mob, whilst the other that was only shown briefly from a distance looks to be some kind of stone dino-ram.

Callweddi Village

Dead Simon spent most of the livestream in Callweddi Village, as well as the Pentomino puzzle below the floating village.

The village itself looks like a bunch of floating lillies and hedgerows. Filled with boglings and faeries.

Callweddi Village NPCs

There are several NPCs in Callweddi that sells a variety of goodies, from dimension items to puzzle boxes and artifact-related vials & nets.

Ceidwad <Well-Traveled Dimensioneer>

Ceidwad sells Plane of Water-related dimension items as well as the Dream Hive dimension key!

These items are:

Architect
Aegmir’s Skull
Mussel Covered Rock
Reef Sea Fern Group
Thin Rose Coral Tree
Animated Goboro Reef Jelly
Massive Bivalvia
Onir Tapestries
Key to Dimension: Dream Hive

There’s also a variety of Marble Tile building blocks: White, Grey, Steel, Jade, Teal, Aqua, Blue, Navy, Violet, Purple, Yellow, Mustard, Orange, Amber, Red, Blood, Pink, Ruby.

Ali <Omi’s Other Sister>

Ali was also shown, but Dead Simon didn’t reveal whether this was a vendor or not.

[Chances are that this is the Planetouched Wilds version of the Storm Legion puzzle book vendor, Omi. As such, there’s likely to be numerous Puzzle Books to put together with related artifact sets and torn puzzle pages…just like in Storm Legion. This backs up the theory that the Planetouched Wilds will have multiple puzzles.

This is also suggested from previous datamining of Pentomino icons.]

Twig <Expert Artifact Hunter>

Twig has a variety of artifact-related items for sale.

Pack of 1/5 Common Unstable Artifact Thief Catcher
Pack of 1/5 Uncommon Unstable Artifact Thief Catcher
Pack of 1/5 Rare Unstable Artifact Thief Catcher
Pack of 1/5 Epic Unstable Artifact Thief Catcher
Various Pack of 5 of Each Unstable Thief Catcher

There’s already recipes for the Unstable Thief Catchers that are used to catch the Unstable squirrels during Unstable Zone Events. These packs are probably just meant for players who don’t have the recipes.

There’s also the Artifact Hunter’s Tracking Vials available for both platinum and Credits, including three new artifact types:

The new ones (as we’ve seen from past PTS Updates) are “Poison”, “Burning” and “Nightmare”. There’s already a bunch of “Poison:” artifact sets you can search up on the PTS. No idea where these new artifacts will appear, but there will be (rather expensive) tracking vials for them at Callweddi!

You can already obtain the first three from the RIFT Store -> Boosts section for Credits; Twig simply gives you the option to purchase them for platinum as well.

Antonell <Callweddi Crafter>

Antonell sells ‘Puzzle Boxes’. They come in quite a few varieties: Shiny, Cosmic, Green Spotted, Unstable, Twisted, Floating, Cranial, Truncated, Standing, Grasping and Pedal.

No idea what they are used for as Dead Simon didn’t hover over any or explain them. [My guess is that these are interactive, ‘short/mini’ puzzles that you could possibly put into your dimension! Pure speculation at this point though. Given the shape of the icons (which matches the Fast Travel/summon icons), another possibility is that these Puzzle Boxes might grant you access to each puzzle’s own instance where the puzzle is located.]

Getting to Calweddi

Callweddi is a special place that seems to only be accessible via the ‘Call to Calweddi’ teleport item that Dead Simon had.

The item states “Having proved your worth to Queen Nissa you can use this item to return to Callweddi whenever you like”.

Dead Simon mentioned it would be not be easy to get to Callweddi. [Chances are puzzles and perhaps even artifact sets will be involved.]

Pentomino Puzzle

There was a Pentomino puzzle just below Calweddi Village which Dead Simon showed off. It makes use of Pentominos, which are 5-block shapes. Dead Simon calls it the Pentomino Permutator.

How it Works

There’s a board filled with white orbs. On the broken walls surrounding this board, different 5-block shapes are shown.

Clicking on an orb will turn it green. When you connect the dots and make a 5-block shape shape, the shape will change color on the board and the white orb associated with a shape on the wall will turn green.

Have all shapes’ orbs light up green and you’ve completed the puzzle. You will need to find a way to put all the different 5-block shapes together using the available area to win.

Made a mistake? Just click on the green orb for that particular shape on the wall to make it disappear.

There’s also a Yellow Orb at the entrance to the puzzle. That probably gives you access or a ‘ticket’ similar to Tarken Glacier’s puzzle so nobody else can disrupt the puzzle for you.

There was a 30sec long buff that kept refreshing when Dead Simon clicked on an orb. This is ‘probably’ the timer. Chances are if the buff reaches 0, you’ll lose access to the puzzle and whoever clicks on the Yellow orb next will be able to have a go.

Chances are that this is only the first of many Pentomino puzzles.

Look forward to testing the Planetouched Wilds zone at some point in the future, with the zone coming to the Live shards in RIFT 3.4: Into the Wilds, slated for some time in Fall 2015!

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Other Tidbits

A few other tidbits from the livestream:

PAX Prime Trion Party

Reminder that Trion’s Party at PAX Prime is next Friday on August 28th 2015 from 6-10pm! Limited edition RIFT Raid Steins, 4th Anniversary Arclight Rider mount codes and more will be available during the party!

Dead Simon will also be at the party, although he’ll be spending most of his time doing demonstrations for 3.4.

More info about the party here.

Planetouched Wilds Fae Outfit

Dead Simon was wearing a new ‘Fae’ outfit (name unknown) during the livestream. He stated that it will not be easy to get and require a whole lot of work, including puzzles to unlock.

The outfit will be available in-game and is not a paid costume. Will be dyeable!

Life Lifter Mount

The Life Lifter Mount previously datamined was also shown off.

Not sure on the name, but Dead Simon was mounting around on a new Life-based Lifter Mount! No information on where you will be able to obtain them, although possibly from the next Arclight Infiltration Promo Week.

Dead Simon’s Inventory

Dead Simon briefly hovered over three items in his inventory.

Call of Callweddi

As shown earlier, the Call of Callweddi teleports you to Callweddi in the Planetouched Wilds.

Red Faerie Puzzle Box

Soulbound. A puzzle box. Assuming it’s a dimension item, but who knows. It is not part of the vendor ‘Antonell’s puzzle boxes. Probably a puzzle or artifact set reward.

Floating Puzzle Box

Bound to Account. Has a whole bunch of numbers that don’t seem to be in any particular order. Again, assuming it’s some kind of interactive puzzle dimension item. The numbers in the tooltip might be a clue to how to solve the puzzle.

The Floating Puzzle Box is available for purchase from Antonell in Callweddi.

New Mount?

Dead Simon had a whole heap of mounts, companion pets and interactive items in his ability bar. One of them was the new Life Lifter Mount. Another one is an icon I don’t recognize.

The unknown icon:

Anyone know what it is? Could potentially just be The Nightmare mount, although it ‘kind’ of looks like a new Armored Ash Strider-type mount.

[Update: Turns out to be the Armored Nightmare mount from Autumn Harvest 2014. Thanks to Seshatar for the info!]

Account-Bound Crafting Lures

Tacitus mentioned he had a chat with Morticus about account-bound crafting lures. Morticus is on board with it and it might happen. No ETA.

Performance Improvements

Trion mentioned that performance improvements are on-going.

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Livestream Giveaways

Livestream Channel Giveaways

During the Livestream, a handful of livestream chat channel viewers received:

• 1x 4th Anniversary Arclight Rider Mount to 5 livestream viewers.
• 1x Artifact Thief Cache to 3 livestream viewers.
• 1x The Wilds Pack to 1 lucky livestream viewer!

Congratulations to all the winners!

(From Left to Right: Ocho, Tacitus and Dead Simon)

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A nice sneak peek at the Planetouched Wilds, especially Callweddi village. Be sure to take the testing info to heart as we approach open testing for the Planetouched Wilds zone and Primalist calling!

Trion mentioned that they would announce the exact dates for open testing next week. Chances are that the dates will be announced during Trion’s Party at PAX Prime next week on Friday, August 28th 2015 between 6-10pm. More details about the party here. As always, RiftGrate will have any news from the party up as soon as they are announced!

Past Livestream Summaries can be accessed here.