Trion had their 18th September 2015 Friday Livestream where they talked about some of the characters of the Planetouched Wilds as well as how the story will be told in the zone.

Click here for a replay of the 18th September 2015 Livestream video on twitch.tv. RIFT portion starts at 3hr 13min 30sec into the video.

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

Trion had their 18th September 2015 Friday Livestream with Community Manager Evan “Scapes” Berman, Sound Designer Jason Clark, Senior Game Designer Nicholas “Captain Cursor” McDowell and Lead Content Designer Julia “Darkmoon” Flemming. Guest appearance by RIFT Game Director Christopher “Archonix” Junior during the livestream giveaways.

Table of Contents:

• Personalities of the Planetouched Wilds. Key characters follow you; Voice Actors; Voice Examples and Act II now available on PTS.
  
• Other Tidbits. Planetouched Wilds info; Primalist Info (Berserker up); Autumn Harvest; Other Tidbits; Upcoming RIFT Livestream.
• Livestream Giveaways

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

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Personalities of the Planetouched Wilds

Key Characters Follow You

Trion added key characters to follow players throughout the story questchain. These characters have a ton of voice-over (“VO”) lines and will converse with both yourself, their surroundings and the other NPCs tagging along.

This is an experiment by Trion to see how players like having more VO whilst they are adventuring.

Trion was struggling to do a better job in telling the lore and increasing characterisation in the game. They concluded that having NPCs who go on an adventure with you and talk about the lore or their own concerns would improve on this. This was as a result of positive feedback from players with Tasuil (Dendrome) and Finric (Nightmare Tide) who follow you during those questchains.

• Planetouched Wilds will have the most VO and character dialog in the game by far.
• A lot of the conversations are voiced (about half).
• All conversations are viewable in your chat window.
• The NPCs like Khar and Usukhel will fight with you, but will hardly do any damage.
• There are 31 random conversations between King Khar and Usukhel which adds random lore tidbits. Originally 30, but they added a 31st which has Usukhel explaining the reason she wears a tiger’s head.

Cancelling Voice Over

If you don’t like the VO, you can just right-click the ‘Companions of the Wilds’ buff on your buff bar to get rid of the NPCs.

The NPCs will reappear at key quest locations, but you can right-click the buff again to remove them.

Of course, you can always go to ESC- > Settings -> Audio and just turn down the Voice Over Volume.

Voice Actors

A few of the Voice Actors were revealed during the stream:

• King Khar is voiced by Brian Sommer. He did Faceless Man, Lord Arak, Threngar, General Ogg, Salvarola, Carwin and Veras.
• Usukhel is voiced by Dana Bauer.
• Sevshee is voiced by Rebecca Schweitzer. Also did Arethea, Torva, Inyr’Kta.
• All of the male Teth voices are voiced by Roger Jackson.
• Zal voiced by Molly Benson. [assuming that’s the correct imdb. Could be wrong.]
• Sons voiced by Dave Fennoy. Also voiced Regulos.
• Rahn Chuluun by Eric Mason.
• Orphiel (appearing in Mind of Madness raid) is voiced by Adam Harrington. He was also Bulf, Swarmlord Khargroth and Prince Casimar.

Captain Cursor’s kids also get a few voiceover roles in there. [Does this mean we’ll finally get children in Telara?]

Voice Examples

Here are a collection of lines for some of the NPCs that were datamined previously.

• King Khar Compilation. King Khar. Most of the lines are likely from the Khar Warfront Announcer you get with The Wilds Pack.

• Sevshee Compilation. Brief compilation of Khar’s sister.

• Usukhel. Usukhel? Usukhel! Ooo…Usukhel. Usukhel!

You can hear a lot more lines from the livestream video itself (RIFT portion starts at 3hr 13min 30sec into the video), although it might contain quite a few spoilers since Trion went over Act II of the storyline.

Act II Now Available

Act II of the story chain is now available on the PTS. You travel with King Khar and Usukhel to find his sheep flock. You can learn more about the open testing and where to post feedback here.

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Other Tidbits

A few other tidbits from the livestream:

3.4 Launch Date

Still slated for some time in Fall 2015. No exact date given.

Planetouched Wilds Info

• The Planetouched Wilds is tuned around Level 65 Expert Geared players. The mobs will be harder than those found in Tarken Glacier.

• Story Quests will jump you around the zone based on where the story goes rather than opening up the zone bit by bit. Trion is trying this method out because the zone is not a leveling zone and thus you don’t need to slowly ‘progress up’ through the zone.

• Shal Korva will be populated; currently relatively empty on the PTS.

• There will be at least 3 new minion cards associated with the Planetouched Wilds.

• A dinosaur-themed mount has been talked about and is currently a “maybe”.

• The zone has one notoriety faction: Shal Korva. The Quartermaster is still WIP. Currently only has a heirloom ring and Seal runes.

• A lot of respawn points in the Planetouched Wilds are on top of the floating rocks, and you might be able to get onto some of them via quests.

• Clothing explanation: Titans are fully clothed (like King Khar). Berserkers on the other hand have less clothing for both Male and Female characters (like Usukhel).

• The higher rarity the artifact is when you pick it up in the Planetouched Wilds, the greater the chance of getting the debuff/DoT that will allow you to see the higher-tier artifact type. (Normal -> Poison -> Burning -> Nightmare).

• There’s a fairy badger called “Bell” that you can get as part of the PTW.

Primalist Info

• The Primalist’s Berserker soul is now available to play on the PTS! You can learn more about how to obtain the Primalist on the PTS and where to post feedback here.

• Trion is going through and making sure quests have a Primalist gear option.

• Still working on boosting Typhoon soul.

• The Titan soul might be able to get some AoE abilities from the Berserker soul.

Autumn Harvest

Trion briefly mentioned that there would be a new mount available during this year’s Autumn Harvest, slated for some time in Fall 2015.

Possibly one of the most awesome mounts we’ve ever made is coming out for Autumn Harvest – Darkmoon

Other Tidbits

• Regulos and Usukhel Warfront Announcers are in the works.

• The Systems team have done an itemization pass for Primalists so they should appear in chests and other areas on PTS at some point.

• No Planar Attunement increase in 3.4.

• Vladd has some ideas for Rogue’s Bladedancer soul adjustments but won’t be announced until after Primalist is ready.

• Riftblade changes coming for Warrior will be released at the same time as the Reaver changes on the PTS.

• Significant performance improvements for the Auction House and RIFT Store when 3.4 hits. Also loads of shader and collision work is on-going. No details.

Upcoming RIFT Livestream

Next week Trion will hold another RIFT Livestream, this time talking about the new Crafting and UI additions hitting the game with RIFT 3.4: Into the Wilds. CM Ocho will be joined by Senior Game Designer Noah “Morticus” Holmes and Senior UI Artist Amber “Gingers” Alexander.

Be sure to tune into Trion’s Twitch Channel next Friday, 25th September 2015! (Although not mentioned in the stream, next week’s livestream will probably be at the usual time of 3:30PM PDT).

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Livestream Giveaways

Livestream Channel Giveaways

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

• 1x Crystalline Lifter Mount to 10 livestream viewers.
• 1x 4th Anniversary Arclight Rider Mount to 3 livestream viewers.
• 1x Ducklar Companion Pet to 5 livestream viewers.
• 1x Minion Card: Rough Raptor to 5 livestream viewers.
• 1x The Wilds Pack to 5 lucky livestream viewers!

Congratulations to all the winners!

Trion will send winners a message on their Twitch Private Message (might appear in the ‘Other’ tab) within about 3 business days. Those who won the Crystalline Lifter mount will need to send a reply to that message with their charname@shardname to receive their mount.

Note: Do not sell your Rough Raptor minion to Roughraptor.

(From Left to Right: Scapes, Jason Clark, Captain Cursor and Darkmoon)

(From Left to Right: Jason Clark, Archonix and Captain Cursor)

[Guardians represent!]

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Another jam-packed livestream. The Planetouched Wilds is ramping up to be a big, story-filled, voice-over overload for the players! ETA? Still ‘Fall 2015’.

Be sure to tune into next week’s livestream as well about 3.4 Crafting and UI additions. Time unknown, but RIFT Livestreams are usually held on Fridays at 3:30PM PDT.

Past Livestream Summaries can be accessed here.