The Public Test Shard (“PTS”) is a shard on a separate PTS Client that is accessible by everyone and is updated on a regular basis with new content and changes prior to them making it to Live. This allows the players to test things out and hopefully find bugs and glitches or provide feedback prior to the content making it to Live.

As well as helping to assist Trion provide a slightly better version of content prior to their release on the Live clients, players themselves can benefit from the PTS through early information.

This allows the players to go through quests prior to Live, allowing for a better chance at shard firsts. Or – as mentioned in my guide on making platinum – it can help provide you with information on market changes prior to new content being released.

Accessing the PTS Client + Dummy Foundry – You can find instructions on downloading and accessing the client through our guide, which also includes information on the two Dummy Foundry instances where you go to buy test gear/item packs.

Below I will continuously update a list of differences between the current PTS and Live clients as well as future slated updates that aren’t on PTS yet:

PTS/Live Comparison

Last Updated: 23rd January 2016

New Content on PTS

Unknown ETA

• Dimension Key Bundles. Four icons were in the data files for the 29th Oct PTS Update. They look like dimension key bundles. No further details or ETA known. [r]

Patch 3.5: Winter’s Wrath

Came out on: Dec 9th 2015.
Patch Name: Winter’s Wrath

Full RIFT 3.5: Winter’s Wrath Patch Notes + additional useful information can be found here.

• Archonix and Snedhepl Letters. Archonix will have a Producer Letter ready approx. early February (pushed back from initial Jan estimate). Lead Engineer Snedhepl will also have a Letter ready potentially around that time. [r]

Content on Live removed on PTS

(this list does not include soul changes mentioned above or temporary events).

• No known content on Live removed on PTS.

Content slated for release not yet on PTS

• Gifting Bag Slots to other players. Currently no ETA although Daglar has confirmed he would like to add this feature.
• More Emotes, More Dances – Looking to add more emotes and more dance animations. Have a suggestion? Check out Marigold’s thread here.
  • Looks like /lookout might be a new emote viewable on Live with High Elves/Kelari.
• New Planar Attunement. Ocho seems to have teased that it won’t be long before we get new Planar Attunement levels. [r]
• Armor/Weapon Concept Art. Senior Concept Artist Julien Renoult uploaded new armor set and a weapon. No clue what content this relates to or when it’ll appear. [r]

• Puzzle/Artifact-related.
  • Puzzle Chronicles. Dead Simon is floating the idea of creating a puzzle chronicle. Possibly termed “Simon’s Playground” internally (there’s a ‘simons_playgroundphysics_0’ folder in Nov 19th 2015 PTS files). [r]
  • Twisted Artifacts are coming to the Planetouched Wilds. [r]
  • Dead Simon is still on the fence about whether or not to add Unstable artifacts to PTW. [r]

• Dimension-related – [r]
  • Dimension Collections System. Something similar to the 3.2 Wardrobe collections system for dimension items. No ETA, but idea has been approved. [r]
  • Ambient Dimension Sounds Toggle On/Off.
  • Incremental Rotation/Scaling/Movement options. Bulk changing included.
  • Item Locking to prevent items from being adjusted. Bulk locking included.
  • New Possible Dimension Keys. Current keys slated are: Solstice Tower, Luminous Passage, Cathedral of Canus, Ghar Station Mem, Ghar Station Tau, Temple of Ranri, Port Scuddra and Temple of Aia. More info here. Might be postponed, and no guarantees.
  • New Dimension Keys. Khort, Ovog Shrine, Haunted Terminal, Landquarium and Realm of Autumn Harvest dimension preview images datamined. [r]
    • Haunted Terminal, Landquarium and Anywhere (Deep Forest theme) confirmed to be coming out by Morticus. [r]
  • New Dimension Blocks. Morticus showed off what looks like a translucent/transparent building block and two other unknown blocks that the art team are working on. [Image] [Thread].
    • Might be the Glass, Ice and Water building blocks Morticus mentioned were being worked on. [r]

• Raid/Dungeon-related:
  • T3 10-man Raid. Archonix mentioned of a new T3 10-man raid: “There is down the road”. [r]

• Instant Adventure-related:
  • Intrepid MoM IA. Archonix confirmed that there would be an Intrepid Instant Adventure version of the T3 20-man Mind of Madness some time down the road. [r]

• Class-related:
  • Vladd would like to work on Ranger, Beastmaster, Archon and Dominator. No details. [r]
  • New Primalist Souls. The other four Primalist souls slated for Primalist will be coming out some time in 2016. Already being worked on. [r] Vladd mentioned they were Ranged ST Burst DPS, Melee ST Burst DPS, Support, and AoE/Raid Healer. [r]
  • Warrior Warlord Buff. Warlord is getting a buff. No details. [r]
  • Warrior Reaver Changes. Reaver is “intended to be an AoE soul” and its ST damage isn’t supposed to be as high as it is. Possible nerf to ST damage. [r]
  • Cleric Healer Resource Management Change. Cleric Healers might be getting an easing of resource management to make their spells less mana intensive. [r]
  • Mage Dominator Changes. The devs mentioned that the Mage Dominator soul will be getting some changes in the future so they are less “fun police” in PvP. No ETA or details. [r]
    • Red Hawk: “Dominator will still maintain its flavor but will be pushed more towards DPS and far away from “not allowing other people to play their characters””. [r]
  • Red Hawk is also looking to improve Cleric Cabalists and make Druids function without a pet in raids. [r]
  • A lot of generic class-related info here was mentioned during Rift’s Reddit AMA in Oct.

• User Interface-related:
  • Vouchers to the Cash Shop.
  • Notoriety Progress Bar. Low priority and may not be implemented. Ability to switch between XP and Notoriety Bars. [r]
  • Account-wide Ignore List. Possible account-wide ignore list and account-wide ignore. [r]
  • Edit Soul Button. Gingers has mentioned that an ‘Edit Soul’ button is on Trion’s to-do list. This would make it so that instead of resetting your soul completely, you can just edit your soul with existing points already placed. On Trion’s to-do list, but no promises. [r]
  • ‘Show additional overhead NPC icons’ by default.
  • Chat Restriction Adjustments. Looking at potentially getting rid of the ‘sent too much mail’ and ‘sent too many chat messages’ restrictions for raids, groups and guild chat/transactions.

• Optimization-related:
  • On-going improvements set over multiple patches. One of the recent ones was to guild memory. Snedhepl has a write-up about it here.
    
  • Tech Improvements/Refactoring. Reducing ‘tech debt’ and ‘refactoring’ to clean up code. In short, bugs will get solved faster, and new features likely built faster. [r]
  • Major Tech Announcements ‘Soon’. During Jan 22nd 2016 livestream talking about engineering and tech in the game, Trion mentioned briefly that there would be “major tech announcements” coming in a couple of weeks. No further info provided. [r]

• PvP-related:
  • No current info available.

• Minions:
  • Notoriety Adventures for Maxed out players. Pithos mentioned Trion are considering ‘something interesting’ for maxed-notoriety players besides just gold/plat. No details yet. [r]
  • Aventurine Tooltips. Tooltips to show that non-1min adventures give Aventurine. [r]
  • More Achievements. More achievements will be coming out, including a potential achievement that counts your no. of Level 25 minions. ETA: After 3.1. [r]

• Mounts:
  • Gliders. Talked about internally and on Daglar’s wishlist but unknown when or if it will actually arrive.
    
  • More Kitsune Mounts. Skins/Rigs datamined show a Grey, Cross, Burgundy and Arctic versions of the Kitsune mount. [r]
  • More Greathound Mounts. Besides the purple Greathound available during Sept 2015 from the GREY2K USA Worldwide promotion, there are also three other skins: White Polkadot; Orange/Red and a Black/Gray version. [Image] Skins datamined on Live. [r]

Content (Possibly) Scrapped

Below is a list of content that was slated at some point but has likely been scrapped or replaced/absorbed into other content. The below items have not been confirmed by Trion to be scrapped, which is why they are still listed here just in case they rise from the dead:

• Monty and Rodney Combat Pets. Warrior Beastmaster and Rogue Rangers were supposed to get new combat pets named Monty and Rodney respectively. No ETA was given. [r] However, these might be scrapped as the Primalist’s Griffon avatar uses one of the combat pet’s models.
  

• Minion Stamina Potions. Datamined from Live client. Potions that probably replenish Minion Stamina. [r] These may have been abandoned with the introduction of the Minion Stamina Recharge button on Live.

• ‘Temporal Alchemist’. No info on it, but it was teased at in passing in a Livestream. [Been almost two years since the livestream so it might have been a teaser for something that already exists in the game].

• New Warfront: Hive Kaaz’Gfuu Assault. In one of their livestreams, Trion briefly teased a new warfront called Hive Kaaz’Gfuu Assault. That’s as much as we know about it right now. [r] Unknown if this has been replaced with ‘Assault on Bronze Tomb’. [r]

Content that is currently off the table

• Cross-shard AH. Too difficult to implement. [Update: 13th June 2014] Daglar mentioned on the 13th June 2014 Livestream that he wants to do Cross-shard AH but that the new Auction House UI and improved functionality would be a priority. (We’re going to keep Cross-Shard AH under “currently off the table” until more solid information is presented).
  

• Cross-shard Trading. Not possible due to server architecture (and duping concerns).

• 3-Day Patron Pass. Not happening. [r] Note: Trion has given away 3-day patron several times over promo weekends. However, it looks like the 3-day Patron Pass itself will probably not be for sale anymore.

• Dimension-related: [r]
  • Tier 6 or higher item limit. Trion has stated that they cannot go past 2,520 item limit.
  • Salvaging dimension items. Won’t do it due to economic issues.
  • Dying Dimension Items. No plans to allow dying (color) of dimension items.
  • Combat NPCs. Combat NPCs that fight back can’t work out due to pathing and other issues.

• PvP-related: [r]
  • World PvP. No new improvements to world pvp or any world pvp quests.
  • Arenas. No Arenas. Daglar has made that clear multiple times.
  • Making Seastone (NA) Guild vs Guild. No to Seastone GvG.
  • Changing CQ Queue System. No to changing the CQ Queue System.