Every once in a while we come across some great guides that were made by the community and we feel the need to point them out. Today we wanted to share with you the NIGHTMAN PVP build guide by Orangu. It’s a blend of Marksman, Nightblade and Infiltrator. Quick on it’s feet and attacking from range, this build is incredibly versatile offering melee and ranged attack options.

The build shown in the link to the official forums is meant for those of Rank 3, but we can tell you it works extremely well at Rank 1 if you have decent gear. (Editor’s Note: I tested this with full T1 raid gear and I easily top the damage charts except I’m squishy due to 0 Valor!) So if you’re a newbie PVPer, or veteran that just wants to try something new, check this guide out.

After defeating Soulrender Zilas, you can move deeper into Hammerknell and you come across this guy, Vladmal Prime. Who is he and is he a full-fledged boss? What other secrets lurk in the depths of Hammerknell?

Originally posted by Elrar (Source)

---

Hey Everyone,

The development team has been taking a look at the way you spend favor. Through our own experiences playing, your feedback, and the data available some things are pretty clear:

• It’s more cost effective to save up for Rank 5 & 6 gear than to purchase each set of gear.
• You’re sacrificing short term effectiveness for the long term gain by hoarding your favor due to this.

We took these points to heart and with 1.4 will be introducing a solution we think you can all enjoy by giving you the most bang for your buck and getting the most out of your hard-fought Prestige Ranks. We’ve done this by bringing the cost of the PvP Sets for Prestige Ranks 1-4 in line with the current total cost to purchase Rank 5 & 6 with the following in mind:

• We wanted to have a system where you’re never penalized for choosing to upgrade. Getting upgrades along the way is a lot more fun, and helps you perform better; we want it to always be the smartest move.
• If you’re currently gearing up we don’t want the progress you’ve made already to be marginalized – Your upgrade cost to your “next” piece remains the same or smaller – It doesn’t go up

So with that, we’re making the following adjustments:

• Converted the costs on the two PvP Sets available to those with Prestige Rank 3-6. Armor and weapons are now purchased with Marks of Retribution and require the previous set’s items to purchase the upgrade.
• Reduced the overall cost of purchasing the individual sets for Prestige Rank 1-6 armor & weapons to cost the same as purchasing the Rank 5 and 6 set previously.
• Completing Weekly PvP Quests grant additional Marks of Retribution and closing PvP rifts have an additional chance to reward even more!

Essentially, with these changes there’s no increase in cost to purchasing Rank 5 & 6 gear while allowing you make use of each set as you earn it. Coupled with new ways to earn Favor, Prestige, and the new Marks of Retribution you’ll get more reward for each Prestige Rank you earn.

As always, share your questions and feedback below – good fight, good night!

DROWNED HALLS – NEW SLIVER
* A new Sliver location has been reported to be intersecting with present-day Telara in the region of Lord’s Hall in Scarwood Reach.
* High Priestess Hydriss attempts to break through from a twisted reality, bringing her Abyssal army to claim the Ascended’s Telara for Akylios. Enter the Sliver to fight her back on her own turf before she can bring her future into ours!
* Drowned Halls is positioned as an entry-level 10-person raid instance, with unique new loot to help gear for more difficult challenges.
* Several new costume items can be obtained from the Drowned Halls sliver and Achievements.

The guys over at PCGamer give us a fantastic preview of Hammerknell, detailing all the rooms and denizens all the way up to Akylion itself. Not only do we get some cool screenshots, we get a bit of insight into Murdantix.

Part 1: Boss: Murdantix (8.5 million hitpoints)

Before you even get into the halls of Hammerknell proper, you’ll need to get past its guard dog. Murdantix blocks the stairway inside, eager to bite at the faces of the soft and squishy Telarans pouring through its doors. Scared? Don’t be. Check out some of the exclusive details we have on this big, bad dog.

Abilities

• Spirit Capture: When an attacker dies he grows more powerful.
• Demonic Blast: A multiple-projectile attack with area-of-effect impacts.
• Demonic Tar: A projectile attack that leaves long lasting damage zones on the ground.
• Ferocious Pound: A large-radius knockback.
• Mangling Crush: A ferocious attack that leaves the target with an armor debuff.
• Summon Tormenters: Murdantix summons minions to fight with him.

Strategies

Make sure to keep ranged DPS and healers spread apart so they aren’t destroyed by Demonic Blast, or else, well, they’ll be destroyed by Demonic Blast. Demonic Tar will aim for, and land on a player, but it should be easy to deal with as long as players are quick to move out of it. Hey. HEY! Are you Alt-tabbed or just blind? Come on, man! MOVE! Ferocious Pound is unavoidable so be sure to have all players topped off before it hits. Though we’re pretty sure you’re going to try to jump anyway. The longer the battle lasts, the more Mangled Crush will hurt you, so prepare to have at least two tanks switching between off-tanking duties. The Tormentors should just be off-tanked and ignored if you have the healing to support it. You can clean them up when the big bad dog is dead.

New Environments

With 1.3′s World Event moving into it’s final phase and raiders around the world begin the race to defeating Akylios, Trion moves on to the future. Today we get a small glance with some screenshots from new landscapes and quest hubs, PVP Rifts, and the new 10 man Sliver: Drowned Halls.

With the launch of Phase 5 of Waves of Madness, players rushed into Hammerknell to join the fight to take down Akylios. Many guilds quickly took down the first boss in the instance, Murdantix, as the fight is pretty simple conceptually. After that players have an option of three different wings to take on either King Molinar, Matron Zamira or Soulrender Zilas. This is where the bugs started flying out.

King Molinar was disabled soon after Hammknell was opened and Zilas was reported to bug out after a few attempts though there are some reports of guilds defeating this fight before it was bugged. So the only option was really to take on Matron Zamira for most guilds.

The Dungeon and Raid section of the Official Forums is full of reports on other bugs and encounter and zone resets.

The silver lining here is that each fight is quite seems quite unique and interesting. The Zilas fight takes it’s queues from Tower Defense that, despite the bugs, is reported to be incredibly fun. Zamira tests the limits of the player by teasing them with many different abilities that can do different things when you interact with them (no spoilers yet!).

Stay tuned as we track the progress through Hammerknell. Screenshots and videos coming soon.

Scott Hartsman Summer Update, 1.4 hits the PTR, and RIFT is FREE!!!!

We need your support and help! Are you one of the RIFT Junkies who visit frequently and listen to our podcast? We’d like to encourage you to either become a premium junkie where you get all ads removed on the site and/or make a donation using the donate button above. It’s because of you we’re able to keep RIFT Junkies growing and delivering the best RIFT content on the web. Even if it’s $1, it really does help, you will make a difference.

RIFT Junkies is rapidly growing every month with more and more members, we’re rapidly approaching 90,000! In recent weeks we’ve also seen a huge growth in the number of listeners (over 50,000 per episode) for RIFTCEPTION. We’re averaging over 10 Terabytes of bandwidth usage per month on the podcast alone. We appreciate all of the positive feedback and emails we receive each week, it means a lot and keeps us doing what we do.

The big catchup of changes that went to test this week; additional combat notes from Tuesday’s build were already posted as Set#2.

* Note that this is caught up through the build intended to go to PTS at some point today but is not quite there yet.

GENERAL
* New transplanar Synergy Crystals have been added to the Rift faction vendors in Sanctum and Meridian. These work with the existing transplanar armor available from Rare Rift Goods vendors in Stillmoor, Shimmersand, and Iron Pine Peak.
* Bind on Pickup items can now be traded to other eligible characters within 30 minutes of looting the item.
* Aspect of the Ancients is no longer usable while you have full Planar Charges (which would end up just wasting it).
* The character window stat page now highlights stats that are important for your calling, with tooltip goodness.
* Characters can no longer use a Planar Focus that contains Planar Essences they cannot equip.
* Toned down the number of visual effects that display during large combat situations.