RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide

Rift 3.0: Nightmare Tide sends the Ascended to the Plane of Water. This Plane is filled with secrets, nightmares and insanity, created from a being called ‘Draum”s dreams. The Sirens’ songs and Sinister Presences in the game have indicated the presence of an ancient, evil race known as the Akvan. Although at present under an eternal slumber, sinister denizens of the Plane of Water are looking to re-awaken them and wreck havoc across the cosmos.

Original speculation came from The Whiteboard and The Plane of Water Image which revealed various tidbits of information of the new expansion back in April 2013.

ETA: Nightmare Tide launches October 22nd 2014 [r]

Cost: Free. Nightmare Tide’s primary content, such as zones, story quests, dungeons, chronicles, PvP and raids are free. There are three editions you can check out here with additional benefits; some of which can be earned in-game.

 

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The Zones of Nightmare Tide

There are three major zones appearing with the release of Nightmare Tide:

• Goboro Reef in the bottom-left;
• Draum Heim in the bottom-right; and
• Tarken Glacier up top.

Although there’s only three zones, they are extremely big, both horizontally and vertically.

You can find a high-res version of the map (perhaps for guide-writing purposes) here. Warning: It is ~81MB.

You can also check out porticulum and other points of interest location information for each zone here.

There is a possible 4th zone coming in a future update. If it is added, it will likely appear to the right of Draumheim.

 10% Underwater

A common concern from players is that underwater combat and movement is clunky in various video game titles. Trion has used feedback from Ember Isle’s Level 60 underwater quest chain and decided to only place approx. 10% of core content underwater. Don’t fret though – Instanced PvP, Dungeons and Raids won’t be underwater.

For explorers, there’s still a ton of objects such as chests, mermaid purses and hidden nooks and crannies to delve into in the Plane of Water.

Moons and Layers

Each zone in the Plane of Water is a separate ‘layer’ of a dream of the being known as ‘Draum’. Each layer has its own Moon which represents the type of dream the layer contains.

From various concept art revealed by Trion, it seems the sky is actually water as well and even though you’re walking on ‘dry’ land, it feels like you’re in a giant bubble.

‘Dry’ land in Goboro Reef

Gyel Fortress ‘flamescaping’ Goboro Reef

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Delving into the Lore

Nightmare Tide is filled with lore spanning from the Atragarian mermaids who control the kingdom under the sea to the Bloodfire Army under Lady Glasya’s command who are rapidly flamescaping the world and even touching on the creation of the Plane of Water itself.

Trion has posted a few articles on various lore in the expansion:

• Exploring Goboro Reef Part 1: Getting Your Feet Wet
• Exploring Goboro Reef Part 2: Fortress Of Flames
• Exploring Draumheim – The City of Nightmares
• Exploring Tarken Glacier – At the Frozen Edge of the Cosmos
• Tales of the Deep: Imaginary Threats
• Tales of the Deep: Infinity Theft
• Tales of the Deep: Akvan Tiroyogo
• Tales of the Deep: The Fall of Gyel
• Tales of the Deep – Picnic in Draumheim
• The Sirens’ Songs

 The Denizens of the Plane of Water

The creatures of Nightmare Tide are abundant and varied, coming out from the dreams and nightmares of the residents of the Plane of Water.

Ice Giants, massive ice-shell crustaceans and varieties of fishmen (‘Skelf’) abound. You can check out some concept art on the creatures of Draum here.

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Livestreams

Trion have held a whole variety of livestreams in relation to the Nightmare Tide expansion’s features and content. You can check out both the recorded videos as well as summaries of each livestream below:

• 3.0 Minions, Crafting + Dimensions – Summary
• PvP in 3.0 + Masteries – Summary
• Nightmare Rifts + Gyel Fort – Summary
• Tarken Glacier + Glacial Maw – Summary
• Draumheim Zone Preview – Summary
• Nightmare Tide Q&A – Summary
• Further NT Info – Summary
• Chronicle, Dungeon + Warfront! – Summary

There’s also previews done by DEV_SupermanSocks of some of the new raids:

• The Rhen of Fate 10-man Raid
• Mount Sharax 20-man Raid

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The Features

Below is an assortment of content we’ve heard about from official channels.

Last Updated: 20th October 2014

New Level All Around

The Level Cap will increase to 65 and we will have all new notorieties, gear, achievements and quests to go after. New Masteries will be gained for each level above Level 60 that provides a new way to customize each of your specs whilst out of combat.

Keep an eye out for a new ‘Savant’ level of crafting for all professions bringing forth a whole swathe of new recipes.

Masteries System

Each level above 60, you will now gain Masteries instead of additional Soul Points.

• You are able to choose between a selection of Masteries for each level.
• Masteries can be changed whilst out of combat and are saved for each of your specs.

Detailed images of each ability/passive for each Calling can be found here.

Gearing Changes

There’s a few gear-based changes coming in with the expansion:

• PvP and PvE gear have been combined.
• Planewalker: Water attunement will be required in order to use certain planar gear. Around 15-20% of the gear in Nightmare Tide will require this attunement, although no single type of gear will be exclusive to this attunement. An in-game method will be made available to obtain this attunement.
• There are new Earring Slots. You can unlock them via either NT digital edition packs or via an in-game method.
• Manugo League reputation will allow you to purchase a variety of equipment and crafting recipes.
• Toughness will be removed from Tank gear. Tanks will simply require Hit, although other tank stats (Block/Deflect) still remain.
• Guard Stat. This is a new tank stat that acts as a kind of beneficial aura to players around a certain radius of the tank.

All New Armor and Weapon Models

As with any expansion, expect to see all new armor and weapon models of varying designs. We’ve got Concept Art on the Sea of Dreams armor sets as well as the Dream Guard, Onir Nightmare, Glacial and Skelf Weapons.

You can check out the Armor sets here. There’s also new weapon sets you can find here.

You can also check out two armor model sets by going to the RIFT Store -> Equipment -> Armor and use a level filter of 65.

New Notoriety

A whole bunch of new notoriety factions have been introduced into Nightmare Tide with new runes, essences, companion pets, capes and even a 155% mount obtainable from the faction vendors.

Notorieties are as follows:

• Atragarians
• Cerulean Rhenke
• The Ghar
• Manugo League
• The Onir
• Pelagic Order

You can find out full details on how to obtain each notoriety, including the locations of all daily NPCs that provide notoriety here: Guide: Nightmare Tide Notoriety.

Mentoring Up

With Nightmare Tide comes the ability to mentor up! This will give lower-level players the opportunity to join in with the bulk of the player base to tackle zone events and dungeons (potentially even raids!).

• You will mentor up to the highest level player in your party.
• If the highest level player mentors down, you will also mentor down to their mentored down level (if they still remain the highest level player).

There’s a few limitations to note however:

• Unable to pick up quests that require a higher level than your ‘real’ level.
• You receive all passives in your soul tree up to the mentored level, but you will not receive higher-level abilities than your ‘real’ level.
• You must be at least Level 10 to mentor up.
• You cannot join a dungeon solo. You have to have a full party of 5. (so don’t worry, you won’t see mentored up players in your randoms!)

To enable mentoring up, simply right-click your character portrait and choose “Sidetracking: Enabled”. Note that this option is not available to Level 65 characters.

Minions System

A new Minions system is being introduced that will allow players to collect a large variety of minions and use them to complete Adventures which bring a variety of rewards such as gathering material, artifacts and loot.

• Minions can be gained in a variety of ways including through a vendor, loot drops and other ways not yet revealed.
• There are Adventure Slots that you use by combining an Adventure Card with a Minion Card. Your Minion will then carry out its mission and once complete, will return, freeing up a slot.
• Adventures and Minions have up to two attributes. Using a Minion with the ‘right’ attributes as the Adventure Card will provide better rewards upon completion.

You can find out more about Minions and a sneak peek at the user interface here.

Water/Amphibious Mounts

3.0 introduces Water and Amphibious Mounts. Current mounts are classified as Land Mounts, whilst Water Mounts can be used in bodies of water and Amphibious Mounts can traverse both the land and the sea.

At present, the Ultimate Nightmare Digital Edition can get you a ‘Cobalt Thresher Mount‘ which has frog-like, distorted fins to allow it to walk on land. There’s also a Cobalt Crabnarok Mount available via the Cobalt Crabnarok Supply Crate found under RIFT Store -> Chests & Keys.

At some point when the expansion comes, upgrade items will be made available to upgrade some of the existing mounts into Amphibious mounts. Daglar has stated these will most likely require Credits.

Current known/datamined Amphibious mounts/upgradeable mounts:

• Murdantix
• Hellbug
• ‘Doopah’ (probably Tartagon)
• ‘Floating Storm Legion’ (probably Cyclone)
• Squirrel
• Crocnard
• Crabnarok

Note: As always, everything subject to change prior to 3.0 release.

Nightmare Rifts

A big addition coming to RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide is the introduction of Nightmare Rifts. These are rifts with an infinite amount of stages! As stages progress the fights become harder with more complex objectives (not just killing) and stage timers begin to shorten.

You will need to use powerups in an intelligent manner and tackle a multitude of mechanics to reach the highest stage on the server.

• There’s 125 bosses to tackle over 5 ranks of Nightmare Rifts.
• Nightmare Rifts are available even for low-level players.
• Instanced versions of the Nightmare Rifts will become available at some point after the launch of the expansion for those who truly want to push the stages without the distraction of random players coming in to mess up your powerups set-up.
• Leaderboards will track highest Stage completed.
• Videos by Trion have shown that you can get bonus exp – one video showed 2x and 3x experience bonus gained.

You can obtain the lures under RIFT Store -> Rifts -> Nightmare on the PTS.

Check out our guide to Nightmare Rifts with further information here.

Instanced Content

RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide will open up with the following instanced content: [r]

• 6 new Dungeons (Normal/Expert) [4 new; 2 revamped] [r]
• 1 new Chronicle
• 1 new Sliver
• 1 new Raid

Of course as we get new 3.x patches, new instanced content will open up later on.

• Chronicles:
  • Shadow From The Beyond
• Dungeons:
  • Nightmare Coast (live)
  • Gyel Fortress
  • Glacial Maw
  • Citadel of Insanity
  • Return to Iron Tomb
  • Return to Empyrean Core
• Raids:
  • Mount Sharax (20-man)
  • The Rhen of Fate (10-man)

You can check out guides and videos on all the Nightmare Tide instances here: Nightmare Tide Dungeon/Raid Guides.

Raid Zone Instant Adventures

The Nightmare Tide expansion will be adding in new ‘Raid Zone Instant Adventures’ that – you guess it – takes you into past raids! First up on the list is Hammerknell Fortress, a Level 50 Tier 2 20-man raid that is said to be one of the best raids in RIFT’s history. [r]

There are no details on this new group feature yet, but players have suggested that it may be Trion’s alternate solution to suggestions for a Looking-For-Raid and to reignite interest in old content.

PvP Improvements

A few changes to PvP are coming, including:

• PvP and PvE gear combining.
• Vengeance and Valor to be removed.
• PvP Bolstering – ‘Floor’ on stats remains, but now there’s a ‘Ceiling’ on stats.
• If you are bolstered, your gear’s Runes and Dream Orbs will still remain.
• A new warfront is coming in with the expansion – no details.
• Matchmaking improvements – Balancing Healers and DPS. There will also be adjustments so that players with losing streaks will be on opposite teams so that at least one of them will win.

Conquest will also be disabled until more players are Level 65. Conquest Power/Perks will also be removed.

New Warfront

A new Warfront will be added in called “Ghar Station Eyn” which is themed on the ‘Manugo’ numbers game. For this warfront you need to hold onto ‘Numbers’ and interact with ‘Manugo Stations’. Holding the ‘Numbers’ will cause damage to you over time (like the ‘Fang’ in Black Garden).

More information on PvP changes can be found here.

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Where to Go From Here

Want more information? No problem! Check out the following tags on RiftGrate.com to catch up on all the latest articles related to the Public Test Shard, datamining and the RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide expansion!

• PTS Updates
• PTS Datamining
• RIFT 3.0-related Content Updates

Don’t forget to prepare for the expansion with our RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide Preparation article!

See you in RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide on 22nd October 2014!