Hotfix #20

RIVER OF SOULS
* River of Souls quests that have been completed may be turned in to Bourlana in Meridian and Brendnall in Sanctum.
* Quest items for Tools of Destruction and Exorcising Evil will continue to drop for any players with the active quests.
* Players are no longer offered the quest “Bolstering the Defense” by faction invaders.
* Otherworldly Sourcestone will no longer drop from death invaders or colossi.

GENERAL
* Major zone events should fire off more often and the mythical purple zone event currencies should rain from the sky! Okay, maybe not rain – but they’ll be more common than they have been recently.
* Scarwood Reach: Sealing the Portal: The portal at the back of the Sagespire should be much more active now.
* Reporting spam for an offline character will no longer fail.
* Fixed a cosmetic issue causing the UI to report negative damage when damage preventing effects “attempted” to prevent more than 100% of incoming damage.* In those situations, true damage taken was (and still is) 0.

Now, Premium Junkies have the advertisements removed on the ENTIRE RIFT Junkies website! What better way to show your support for RIFT Junkies and get all of the advertisements removed at the same time?

In total a Premium Junkie subscription includes all advertisements turned off, access to a private forum, and you’ll get a colored username.

Alpha was opened briefly yesterday and a lot of people got to see a ton of changes that Trion is playing with. Here are somethings that the community is reporting on:

This post will be updated as more things are reported. There are also no patch notes on Alpha currently. Also remember that all of this is subject to change at a moments notice. We’ll try to keep it updated until there are official Alpha patch notes.

Updates:
1:07pm EST 4/21/2011 – Warrior Changes

It’s finally the time to have that talk about tanking as a Cleric! I will go over some tanking basics and examine our only tanking soul, Justicar, to show you what it has to offer. Because we only have one soul for tanking, we do not have as much freedom as a Warrior would have when it comes to setting up a tanking build. Still, being a Cleric does allow us to fulfill pretty much every role, so we can’t really complain too much. Besides, Justicar isn’t that bad a tanking soul.

One of the more unique souls in the game is the Bard. It’s a support soul that offers buffs and healing to the group they are through the power of music. There is an ingrained nostalgia with many player with the bard that goes all the way back to Everquest over a decade ago. The class was continued in Vanguard and with the Minstrel in LOTRO. Bards are typically one of those jack-of-all-trades type of classes, usually with a unique subset of skills that can turn the tide of the battle in any group. Regardless of their power they are usually incredibly fun to play and carry their own unique way of doing things.

Unfortunately this is not the case in RIFT. The Bard in RIFT is an uninspired and boring soul to play that offers no special gameplay mechanics nor do they provide any satisfying game feedback that allows the player to feel either special or that they are accomplishing anything. Let is also be known that the purpose of this article is based strictly on PVE-gameplay elements, though many points transition into PVP-gameplay. Also, we are not saying that the buffs Bards bring are insignificant, we are trying to point out the way they are brought to the group is lame.

Hotfix #19: 4/20/11

RIVER OF SOULS
* Expect mailbox delivery of your River of Souls Event Reward Pack shortly after this update hits your shards, for each character that existed prior to the River of Souls Phase 2 start point – see the River of Souls World Event Wrapup thread on the General Discussion forum for more details on the reward pack itself.
* River of Souls event merchants will remain available for several more days to give you time for last-minute purchases. These will eventually be removed, so don’t delay too much!
* The River of Souls daily quests have been removed now that the event has concluded.
* Characters are now required to be level 50 to enter the River of Souls raid zone.
* Discordant Pillar can no longer drop loot.
* Plutonus: Adjusted the placement of the ‘lightning fence’ during the latter phase of this encounter.
* Plutonus: Thundering Fists no longer reduces Death damage dealt by Plutonus.
* Alsbeth now spends a bit less time on the ground between air phases.
* Shadetouched Weapon Caches have been renamed so players can tell which cache awards what level of items.
* Swift Spectral Horse from River of Souls Raid has been renamed to Swift Soulbound Charger.
* Swift Spectral Warhorse from River of Souls Raid has been renamed to Swift Soulbound Warhorse.

GENERAL
* Dueling works again.
* Fixed loot windows from accidentally closing, causing you to lose out on items.
* NPCs that can fly in the air no longer get stuck unable to cast abilities.
* Corrected a badd typo in one display of the ‘Riftblade’ soul name.

SOULS
* Resolved an issue where Distorted Shadows [Cabalist] and Shards of Light [Sentinel] could be exploited. These abilities should once again be available for use.
* Champion: Lingering Wounds: Fixed a bug causing this ability to stop applying.

GREENSCALE’S BLIGHT [Raid]
* Prince Hylas: Should now reliably drop a full four pieces of loot.

ITEMS
* River of Souls event currencies and quest item drops will no longer appear.
* Due to outcry from the Telara Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Spectral Horses can no longer be Runebroken.
* Shroud of Anti-Life: Corrected the text in this item’s buff tooltip.

As most people are likely aware, the addition of a Dungeon Finder tool to Rift has become quite the hot topic among the community. Those opposed to such an implementation typically cite their former experience with a similar tool and extrapolate that experience into the Rift community which, indeed, leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth. On the other side of the coin, those in favor of a Dungeon Finer argue that the implementation would alleviate the frustration that many players are suffering when trying to put together groups, which would ultimately benefit the game far more than damage it.

Laughingskull brings you another video, this time showcasing Expert Iron Tombs.

The River of Souls event was mired in problems and the crew at GBTV is here to talk about what went right… and what went terribly wrong with Rift’s first world event. Hosts: Gary Gannon, IRLJasmine, Josh Allen aka Lore