Since there’s so much to explore on the Player Test Shard at the moment thanks to a huge portion of RIFT 2.3 hitting the PTS this week, we’re going to be splitting our preview into two sections. Here’s the first part, which will focus primarily on The Dendrome and the content directly associated with this new zone. We’ll talk a bit about the Item Store briefly, but stay tuned for a full-length preview in the days to come.

One other thing to note– the Item Store is currently undergoing a lot of changes, which will hopefully make the game’s free-to-play system better overall. If you check it out on the PTS yourself, to bring up the store, you’ll have to press “]”. There is also a button where Deeps’ Depot used to be. The store seems to be taken offline intermittently in order to receive staff updates, so if you find the button missing and the keybind disabled, it’s probably best to wait a while and try again or check back the next day.

As with all information on the PTS, everything discussed here is subject to change at any time. As usual, we’ll do our best to shy away from story spoilers. That said, let’s take a tour of Dendrome, shall we?

Faratha shared an informative summary on the forums yesterday of how exactly dimensions will be affected when RIFT‘s transition to free-to-play takes place on June 12th. The super-short summary is that dimension enthusiasts will be getting a lot more goodies to have fun with. One look at the RIFT Store on the PTS confirms this. There are a ton of new dimension items (and some achievements finally!). Thankfully, almost all of the dimension items in the store are purchasable with Credits or Plat.

Keep reading to take a look at Faratha’s full post.

QUESTS
* Morban: Added additional map markers for the quest Blast Away to help pinpoint the location of the cannons.

ZONES
* Morban: Reduced Draelock’s damage across most of his abilities.
* Steppes of Infinity: For the instant adventure Capture Commanders, Antapo Commanders will now despawn two minutes after being captured. Additionally, if a Commander gets stuck in the terrain, it will despawn if the player moves far enough away.
* Steppes of Infinity: Fixed an issue during The Craft of Conflict zone event that could result in players not receiving credit if their characters die fighting the Nug Battler Nug .

CALLINGS
* Shaman: Vicious Streak now increases the critical chance of all abilities.
* Inquisitor: Radical Coalescence is now removed if the Inquisitor dies.
* Sentinel: Damage from Wrathful Exuberance is now reduced in PVP.
* Sentinel: Damage procs from Wrathful Exuberance now have a 35 meter range.
* Harbinger: Lucent Slash no longer requires a target in order to use.
* Harbinger: Phantom Blades no longer requires you to be facing your target in order to cast.

ADDONS
* Fixed a problem with Dimension “add” and “remove” events for addons not always working properly.

During last Friday’s official RIFT live stream, we found out a little more about the Loyalty system that will be a major part of the new free-to-play system beginning June 12th. Yesterday Bill “Daglar” Fisher continued delving into the explanations of the system in a new developer blog. The Loyalty system will be replacing our current Veteran Rewards program, and instead of being able to purchase goodies after having been a subscriber for so long, we’ll be able to automatically pick up rewards as we reach certain Loyalty tiers.

As was discussed during the live stream, Loyalty will be granted to players who subscribe as a Patron, purchase or spend Credits, and consume REX. Veteran players will also be receiving a one-time stipend of 7000 Loyalty per past month of subscription when the F2P system goes live. This will mean that for most of us, we should log in on June 12th with some goodies to pick up right off the bat.

The title image above, which is a sampling of an in-progress Loyalty tier reward, shows an interesting variety of items available. Currently on the PTS the Loyalty tiers aren’t fully implemented, but most other parts of the item store are available for preview.

A large portion of the content headed our way in RIFT 2.3: Empyreal Assault is now on the Public Test Shard for player testing. The item store isn’t completely functional yet and is still very much in progress, which is evident by many of the items and prices, but the store itself is there for our previewing pleasures. Dendrome is also in place along with some of the zone events, new dynamic content, Strongholds, and Queen’s Gambit, which is the new Chronicle.

MikeD shared some details in a forum post as far as what to expect in the dynamic content within Dendrome. Keep reading to take a look.

The RIFT portion of yesterday’s Trion Friday live stream extravaganza was, unsurprisingly, focused on RIFT’s big move to a free-to-play system beginning on June 12th. Daglar joined Simon and Elrar and explained how some of the systems will work in greater detail as well as updated the RIFT community on some promising changes to the current Patron reward system. The team has been listening to all of our feedback and has made a few changes that, overall, make being a RIFT veteran a little more appealing.

Elrar also showed off the in-game shop in its current state and let Daglar talk a little bit about the different categories of items, the Loyalty tiers, and a whole lot more. To catch a replay of the live stream, you can see it here. Alternatively, keep reading to see our detailed highlights roundup.

Daglar continued addressing a solid portion of player feedback on the forums yesterday. Among his posts, a few were especially interesting. He commented on what we’ll be seeing as far as race and faction change items in the cash shop as well as the future of server transfers and expansion content.

This first quote was regarding the possibility of additional character slots in the item store:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Character slots is on the wish list, but we cannot say for certain if it will make the launch date.

Server transfers will remain free for your normal free weekly transfer. We could potentially in the distant future charge for multiple moves per week, but I don’t really like that idea and I’d rather get us to a better place with cross shard / single shard technology.

Faction and race changes are not linked. If you change yourself to a Bahmi as a guardian, you are still a Guardian. If you are a Kelari and change faction, you are still a Kelari.

Bahmi Guardian? Now that’s an interesting change.

Yesterday, Trion released a screenshot of how the in-game RIFT item shop currently looks, even though it’s still a work in progress. The screenshot tells us a few interesting things, however, and it also lets us preview a few of the items that will be available for purchase when our free-to-play system goes live. Thanks to the currencies and prices on-screen, we’re also able to take a stab at how much things may cost in real-time dollars. A pretty dapper top hat and accompanying outfit are also previewable to the side of the screenshot.

Keep reading to take a peek!

Since this week’s huge bombshell announcement regarding RIFT going free-to-play beginning June 12th, Daglar and the entire Trion RIFT team have been quite diligent in making sure they keep the lines of communication open with the playerbase. Daglar has set a record with the amount of posts he’s made in this official forum thread (hence “Daglar Tracker”) which has been an overall solid source for player feedback.

Keep reading to see a couple of choice quotes that Daglar made yesterday regarding the possibility of additional servers for the F2P transition and thoughts on in-game shop gear, previous raid tiers, and some possible changes we may see to tier mark systems in the future.

GENERAL
* Raid assistants can now invite instead of recommend invite via the unit frame menu, and non-assistants can now recommend invite.
* Fixed an issue causing Hellbugs to do more damage than intended to other NPCs in the Invasive Species rift.
* The Hellbug Monarch from the Invasive Species rift is no longer immune to taunt.
* Fixed the Skywarped Talon mob spawning with no health in the Runecrafting crafting rift.

CALLINGS
WARRIOR
Beastmaster
* Calliope’s Beastmaster Crystal: The 4 piece bonus buff triggered by Messy Wounds now last 30s, up from 15s.
Tempest
* Discharged Defenses: The tooltop for Discharged Defenses has been corrected, it now correctly reads that its buff causes Warrior attacks to ignore some of the target’s armor and resistance.