With RIFT’s one-year anniversary approaching, we’ve been hearing a lot about the celebration planned for the occasion. Patch 1.7 and the marriage addition were forerunners to the actual anniversary, and the in-game world event, called Carnival of the Ascended, is out currently on the Public Test Shard (PTS) for player testing. The event takes a turn from most of the past RIFT events, thankfully, is six phases long, and offers some pretty nifty rewards.

Before digging into an actual review of the event as it stands currently, let me preface this article by saying that many of RIFT’s world events have been disappointing to some players, as described in a past article. The themes for some of them have been awesome, and some of the rewards were cool, but the creativity in them has been lacking. I may be a harsh judge of world events, to be fair, but I know I haven’t been the only player unhappy with RIFT’s world events because of Trion’s official response regarding them.

With Carnival of the Ascended coming up (probably next week) I have been on PTS trying to find all the new minipets we have to look forward to! So far I’ve found the Akylios Balloon, Greenscale Balloon, Laethys Balloon and Maelforge Balloon (Balloons purchased with 100 Prize Tickets each). Also for our collecting enjoyment is the Wind-Up Pony (Defiant BoA) and Valmera Cub (Guardian BoA) purchased with 50 Glass Beads each.

The Balloons are a surprise as I wasn’t sure if they would be minipets or just a cosmetic offhand so of course I had to grind up tickets and have a look at one. I picked Greenscale as that’s one of my least favorite fights and dooming him to follow me in balloon form for eternity amuses me. Once you collect your new pet and summon him, he gently floats beside your character and you even have a string to hold in your hand to keep Greenscale from flying away when you aren’t looking! The sound effects are perfect and the animations outstanding! I can’t wait to collect all these Balloons on live!

The two faction specific pets are also adorable and as they are BoA you can purchase them on your “traitor” alt and mail it to your main. For me this means actually rolling up a traitor alt, but luckily I have about a week before Carnival goes to live so I’m not too worried!

The elemental planes have poured into our own reality. The skies darken and untold horrors pour through rifts reaping destruction wherever they go. We are on the defensive and a common cry from most Ascended is that they want to take the fight to the planes themselves. What a lot of us tend to forget however is that we already have taken our first tentative steps into these unknown realms. Brittle bones have cracked beneath our feet, stale air has filled our lungs, the Ascended have taken the battle to the Plane of Death and against all odds returned with a victory. So what exactly happened in the River of Souls and what does our conquest there mean in the long term?

When Alsbeth returned to Telara she was desperate. She had failed her master, Regulos and needed to do something big in order to stay his wrath. She had heard a legend of a man who had journeyed to the Soulstream in order to re-unite with his deceased lover. The man’s quest took him through the Plane of Death to it’s very edge, shared with the Plane of Life. Here he found the River of Souls and following in his footsteps so did Alsbeth. Just as the man was able to exploit this location to pluck his love back to the land of the living, Alsbeth was able to return an army.

Rift‘s crafting system has a lot of positive features. It’s fairly simple, easy to level, and (most importantly) enhances the in-game economy by providing a means to create a lot of items other players actually want. This last is the main reason I like the Rift crafting system so much. I’ve played a few games along the way in which crafting appeared to just be tacked on with no real notion of how the things I could make fit into the overall itemization scheme and it was always unsatisfying.

We got a chance to wrack Josh York’s brain in regards to Trion’s direction for itemization with 1.7 and beyond. With the latest game update we see Trion flexing it’s muscle in creating a itemization system that should give the room to grow as we inch closer to the one year mark. With these changes, we are probably going to be seeing a new tier of content very soon. Hopefully these changes will help create a smoother transition to new game content.

The biggest test to the new itemization system will come with the next tier of content. Previously, PVP gear remained the best in slot option due to being able to get a full set well before the natural saturation point in Hammerknell. With the new PVP changes and gear more easily gotten, at least there isn’t a major grind. Hopefully the implemented changes allow a much smoother transition for new and returning players along with long time veteran players.

Josh York is an up and coming developer for Trion, and you might remember him from an interview we did when he was part of the QA team. He’s working with the Itemization team and we thought he was the perfect person to talk to about the new itemization system in 1.7!

Keep reading for the full interview.

Who doesn’t want a Pet Rock? You don’t need to feed or water this little boulder of joy to keep it happy and think of how useful it can be! Pet Rock makes a wonderful seat for enjoying the sunset, or an impromptu table at a picnic for two. You can even fry a Roc Egg on your Pet Rock on an unusually hot day! But how do you get this stony companion? That’s the tricky part, which is why I am here to guide you to your very own precious Pet Rock!

The Pet Rock is a forced spawned pet, but I’m labeling it a dropped pet as it does “drop” from a specific rift event. To start you need the Encroaching Death Rift. If you are 50 (or you have a good friend who is) the PA Death Lure can summon this Rift, however which Death Rift the lure summons is random so expect to spend some time just getting the correct Rift to appear. On the first stage of Encroaching Death you will see a Demolitionist mob spawn along with some Skeletal Workers and a few Overseers. Avoid pulling the Overseers because you want to stay in Phase 1 until you get the pet! Carefully pull the Demolitionist over to one of the boulders the Workers are mining. Kill the Demolitionist at this boulder, as he dies you’ll see him explode which will break down the boulder. Each boulder may take a few Demolitionist to break, but as long as you don’t progress the rift into Phase 2, Demolitionist will spawn every 30 seconds or so. Eventually, if you keep detonating the Demolitionist on boulders (even the ruins) a clickable Pet Rock will appear on the ground for you to loot!

It took me 2 solid hours of rift summoning to get Encroaching Death to pop, but it was well worth the effort for this gloriously stationary Pet Rock!

The MMO market is larger than it’s ever been. There are quite a few quality games available now for MMO fans, and more are scheduled for release this coming year. With this kind of competition, many MMO developers are taking steps to attract new players and keep the attention of veteran players. The first step? Creating a quality game. Trion has succeeded there. The second step? Making that game accessible.

Some MMO companies are converting their games to a free-to-play model in order to make their game more accessible to their player base and still bring in a profit. Other companies, like Trion, are taking a different route– the trial version route. RIFT is now free, up to level 20, for new players and returning players. This announcement was made a few days ago. The details about this free version, also known as RIFT Lite, can be found on Trion’s official site.

RIFT’s preset soul build addition, also known as Calling Purposes, is fresh out on the PTS and available for player testing. Information about this feature and other additions Trion has in store for new players and old players alike can be found here. This brief guide will cover the various Warrior builds and some of the Warrior-centric features upon starting a new character. For the Cleric version of this guide that features more general information about the feature, check here.

RIFT’s preset soul build addition, also known as Calling Purposes, is fresh out on the PTS and available for player testing. Information about this feature and other additions Trion has in store for new players and old players alike can be found here. The preset build feature promises to be a helpful aid for new players leveling in RIFT, and also a handy, optional way for veterans to experiment with new builds, classes, and class roles. Let’s dive into some of the specifics about this cool feature, focusing on the Cleric class.

New players will probably gain the most benefits from this system. The benefits are seen as early as the character creation screen. When creating a new character, players will be prompted to choose their faction, then gender and race. Added to the race selection screen is now a handy set of buttons that allows players to preview the character in various sets of obtainable gear.

Platinum. Planarite. Inscribed Sourcestones. Plaques. Marks. Greater Marks. Special Event Currency…

Rift has a boggling number of currencies — far more than I have ever seen in any game, MMO or otherwise — and up until this point, each has had a serious flaw. At a certain point, each becomes mostly obsolete, continuing to accumulate, but with little, if anything, left to buy with it.

With the Rift 1.7 patch on the horizon though, it looks like Trion is finally beginning to address this problem. In the most recent PTS Set (#2), Trion has added new sinks for almost every currency. Those thousands of expert dungeon plaques you had saved up, or the hundreds of raid marks that sat in your vault collecting virtual dust can now be traded in for planar attunement xp. This is a perfect sink. The gains from PA levels are extremely incremental, but desirable enough to be worth something, and it will remain something that players will continue to be able to benefit by purchasing for a long time to come. [If you are interested, current exchange rates on the PTS are included at the bottom of this article.]