UPDATE: From Hotfix#1
* Slightly increased the health of Greenscale’s Blight and River of Souls general population NPCs.
* River of Souls: Reduced the amount of standard pulls in River of Souls due to popular demand!
It appears Trion has reduced the trash but increased the hitpoints. Further review to come.
RIFT lived up to it’s promise of fast content delivery just over three weeks ago with the release of it’s second T1 raid instance called River of Souls. For those new comers out there, RIFT debuted with one raid instance, Greenscale’s Blight and two tiers of expert 5 man dungeons often referred to Tier 1 and Tier 2. As Greenscale was being cleared very quickly after release, Trion announced patch 1.1 and the release of a World Event that ended with the opening of River of Souls on April 16th.
We’re going to take a look at River of Souls as a whole and see if it lives up to the quality content we’ve gotten to expect from Trion. This is not a guide but a general review of the content.
The entrance to River of Souls is located to your right as you approach the Baron, the target of the weekly raid quest from Zephyr’s Return. Once inside you’ll notice that the zone is bit larger that Greenscale’s Blight, but one main difference is that it’s all open. It’s a huge “open world” area reminiscent of the newbie starting area that was taken out from the initial beta events. Players have the option of heading towards any of the boss encounters they want.
The zone’s terrain is quite drab as you are essentially in the middle of a barren wasteland taken over by the plane of Death. It’s full of purples and other dark colors that really set the mood. You are standing in the crossroads of souls where Alsbeth is taking claim to them to create soldiers in the name of Regulos. Above your head, far in the sky, you can see the actual river flowing through the sky from Telara. Fair warning however, after spending 4-5 hours clearing the trash in this zone you may become depressed; more on that later though.
Upon entering you are given your standard auto-quest which asks you to defeat the Herald, Warmaster and Plutonus. Also, you must defeat three “foci”. Once they are all defeated you will be given an update to defeat Alsbeth. River of Souls has four bosses and three mini bosses, compared to Greenscale’s five, however the foci reward the raid with a single piece of loot and 5 plaques and they all share the same loot table. In the end the raid ends up getting the same number of loot, however the quality is better in Greenscale due to the opportunity to gain more “token” pieces.
The Good
River of Souls has some fantastic aspects to it. The first is the introduction of mini-bosses and we think that they should be in ever raid zone. Not only are they a change of pace from clearing trash, they provide the raid with rewards. The foci that you have to clear are small scripted events that, if you’re not careful, can wipe the raid. However they are not that challenging where you’re advancement in the zone is going to be hampered by them. In future raid instances, Trion should focus on providing different entertaining pacing mechanics that reward the whole raid.
Outside of the Warmaster, all the raid encounters in River of Souls are fun but challenging. Plutonous offers unique mechanics and a puzzle for a new raid that has not read up on strategies or watched videos. The Herald is the hardest fight in the zone that requires a lot of coordination from the whole raid. The fight requires you to coordinate movement of the main tank and the dps. It requires two other off tanks, coordinated silencing and taunting, and a DPS check for the enrage timer. The final boss, Alsbeth, is not as difficult but it does take the longest amount of time. It’s a fun fight that isn’t as much a DPS fight rather than a survival fight. There are plenty of mechanics going on at the same time, but isn’t as stressful as the other bosses.
Trion has done a great job in tuning all the fights perfectly to the gear level and skill level expected of players for a Tier 1 Raid encounter.
The Bad
The over all design of the raid environment is rather boring and drab. It’s essentially a wide open area surrounded in mountains full of empty terrain, rocks, and Death Rift art assets. It’s nearly monochromatic in that dark purple/black color.
Speaking of art assets…
Where did those pillars come from? *cough* Is someone over compensating here for something?
One can forgive Trion in it’s environmental design of River of Souls. It was built and constructed in record time and it did ultimately deliver some fantastic raid encounters.
The Ugly
We were pleasantly surprised with Greenscale’s Blight. The trash was minimal, there wasn’t much running around and you were able to move from Boss to Boss quickly enough that you didn’t notice the boring part like trash pulls. You were even running through a hedge-maze which was pretty cool to begin with. So when we entered River of Souls, we were blindsided by TRASH, TRASH, and more TRASH!
Oh dear god the trash. Did we mention the trash? Imagine taking GSB’s hedge maze, making it about 3-4 times bigger and then putting trash around EVER SINGLE CORNER. It’s not even that the trash is boring that you can watch TV while you clear it. You have to pay attention or you die. So it feels like you’re doing small boss encounters each time and you get no rewards.
If you’re playing a Bard or another support class, watch out for those archer mobs. They will target you immediately, due to the threat from your buffs, at the start of each pull and pretty much two shot you every time.
The trash is by far the worst thing about River of Souls. There is so much pointless trash clearing that it makes the whole zone a nightmare to clear. What is the design goal of putting so much useless trash that offers absolutely nothing other than making River of Souls artificially longer to complete? After the brilliance of Greenscale’s Blight where the trash was so minimal, we were shocked by Trion’s design decision of a billion trash mobs.
When you are clearing GSB the raid is pretty upbeat and having a good time. You are moving pretty quickly through the zone and you can reach each raid boss within 10 minutes of each other. You can keep you raid roster focused on killing bad guys and loot. In contrast, in ROS the raid group gets pretty bored and depressed after clearing trash for three hours. Not only are you looking at dark and purple, not to mention boring, landscape the whole time, you have to actually work at killing trash. It’s called trash for a reason right? Why do we have to really work at it? It’s so horrible for morale, and frustrating.
There is absolutely zero reason for all of that trash. There can’t be. Someone get Berenger Fish on the phone please.
This is the reason we love Mini-Bosses so much. Why not replace all those trash mobs with some fun tank-and-spank mini bosses that are engaging and drop loot? The loot doesn’t even have to be raid quality, it can be T2 expert quality. Hell, even putting a few Rift Events inside, instead of trash with 1 million hit points, would be a better solution. The whole point is that people love playing a game for rewards and points. Trash is pointless and provides zero entertainment to everyone playing.
There is a silver lining though, you are getting Mathos reputation with each kill.
In the end…
River of Souls is a success in our opinion. Trion would get a “A” from us if it wasn’t for the trash, instead we give them a “B” for getting a fantastically tuned raid instance with some very fun and challenging encounters. We look forward to Hammerknell, and if Trion’s track records holds up, they should improve greatly on what is a great Raid foundation.
Stay tuned for a full guide on River of Souls boss encounters soon.
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