So, Elrar said something pretty interesting during last Friday’s Trion Worlds live stream event. The team was talking about the upcoming launch of Defiance, which is Trion’s MMOTPS that’s a direct crossover with the upcoming SyFy television series by the same name, and Elrar asked about the special red Dodge Challenger mount that’s obtainable when pre-ordering Defiance. A player in-game then asked if we’d see the Dodge Challenger make an appearance in RIFT as well (at around 11 minutes into the live stream). Elrar answered with this: “No, but there is going to be a sweet, pimped-out ride from Defiance making an appearance in RIFT. Ssh!”

Since trucks and pimped-out ATVs don’t make a whole lot of sense in RIFT, our best guess so far is that we may be seeing a Hellbug mount. What’s a Hellbug, you ask? Take a look at the title image. That’s a Hellbug. Hellbugs are some of the main enemies in Defiance and come in all sorts of shapes and sharp-toothed sizes. They also make a super cuddly plushie and mascot of sorts, but don’t tell them that.

A Hellbug would make a pretty fitting RIFT mount, especially considering the wide array of cool-looking beasties we’ve already tamed as Ascended. As rumors would have it, the data for a Hellbug mount, pet, and accompanying mobs have reportedly been found hidden in the PTS files. When will we see them make a live appearance? Hard to say, but soon hopefully, especially considering Defiance launches April 2nd! For more Defiance news and info, check out the official Defiance site as well as our sister site, Defiance Junkies.

…Well, kind of, anyway. Since this week’s Daglar-styled forum hint about our two class devs being hard at work designing brand new souls, the RIFT community’s been abuzz with all sorts of speculation and opinions on what we’ll see as far as new souls go and when exactly we’ll see them added to the game. Daglar tossed out a couple of additional hints yesterday and briefly mentioned the fact that Trion seriously considered adding in another calling for Storm Legion, but decided to go with new souls instead.

This reply was in regards to a question on whether we’ll see specific souls this time around or a completely new calling:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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New soul yes. New calling no.

We played around with a variety of ideas for a new calling for Storm Legion but felt that the game and our players were actually best served by expanding the class system we have.

Later on in the thread, Dalgar answered a forum poster who asked if we’d see the new souls in a few months time with, “Nope, not a few months. Longer than a few.” He posted one more time to remind players that creating new souls and continually balancing them can be an extremely involved task and tends to take longer than most players realize. “Quite a few tasks that people think are “super fast” are actually the result of multiple months worth of work,” he said. “WTB magic wand that makes things go faster.”

Sadly, we’re lacking that magic wand to help Daglar and his team out. We are left with a larger hint about what type of time frame we’re looking at, however. It definitely sounds like these new souls are nowhere ready to meet the public eye just yet. That just means we have more to look forward to!

Exodus of the Storm Queen is a fairly easy run, even on Expert mode. I will be discussing the Expert mode, and how to deal with all the abilities. Furthermore, videos for most of the encounters and a screenshot for one of the workarounds are here. Where applicable methods for working around mechanics will be discussed.

The encounters can be solo healed, excepting the mechanic workaround on Valthundr may be a problem. This is due to high tank and aoe damage, and will be discussed during his encounter discussion. Any mechanic workarounds may at some point be fixed by Trion, and as such it is advisable to know the normal method as well as any workarounds you may want to use.

GENERAL
* Warfronts: Fixed a case where some players’ damage and healing stats were not being properly displayed.
* Guild Perks: Updated the description of Cache Finder to indicate that its bonus applies to all Plaques, Marks, and Stones from Expert Dungeons and Raids, as well as Infinity Stones and Empyreal Sourcestones.

ZONES

A HERO RISES [Chronicle]
* Potential(!) fix for hotbars

EMPYREAN CORE
* Slightly reduced the damage of the general population immediately before Kaliban.

FROZEN TEMPEST
* Crucia: Tempest Flash should no longer get stuck casting over and over.

STILLMOOR
* Rise and Fall: Quest no longer applies an infinite-duration speed reduction debuff.

STEPPES OF INFINITY
* Fixed some Instant Adventures getting stuck running in the same location repeatedly.

STORM BREAKER PROTOCOL
* Blame Your Slag achievement should now work properly.

TRIUMPH OF THE DRAGON QUEEN
* Chasing the White Dragon achievement should now work properly.

You could always guess that new souls were always coming to RIFT, but in the first two years of life they were only hinted at by going into an expansion. With the shake-up with senior management that hit recently, are we going to be getting more souls sooner than the next expansion?

Will we finally see some of the original Telara design where souls are treated as rewards or loot drops? Interesting times ahead.

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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There is a difference between being unaware and having to many other tasks on him to address it. His full time job is not to read and respond to the forums and address every issue – though he does an absolutely amazing job of making additional time to do so. I on the other hand can go ask him to re-adjust his priority for the day and modify something.

I hate talking about things that are not close to being ready, but Kervik and Aillion are pretty busy working on brand new souls and other class related features for the future right now.

Daglar
Creative Director: RIFT

Free month of subscription time if someone can guess what those souls are.

Phase 2: Parade of the Dragons is finally here! As part of the Carnival of the Ascendent’s second phase, we received some additional carnival games and activities to explore. We also finally gained a repeatable source of Prize Tickets that isn’t quite as repetitive as the methods available during the first phase. The carnival float parades are making their way through classic RIFT zones and Storm Legion zones, which is quite an impressive sight when you stumble upon them.

One awesome addition to the Carnival thanks to the recent hotfix is the ability to trade Pyrite Doubloons from last year and exchange them into Prize Tickets. 1 Pyrite Doubloon grants you a Prize Ticket Bounty from the Moneychanger NPC in Sanctum/Meridian. Using the bounty will grant you 50 Prize Tickets. And yes, the bounties are bind-to-account. Make sure to check your alts and cash these in!

Let’s explore the Phase 2 additions in detail, shall we?

As part of RIFT‘s second anniversary celebration, Trion is holding another free weekend event for returning players from March 21st to March 26th. Also at this time (not quite coincidentally), Trion is offering players a special 25%-off promotion for both the Standard and Infinity editions of Storm Legion.

Both the returning player and new player versions of the expansion are on sale for this promotion. This 25%-off sales event will run the same length as the free event, from March 21st to March 26th. This might be a good weekend to talk a friend or two into trying Storm Legion.

For more details, check out the full pricing details as well as Trion’s official announcement.

GENERAL
* The following Runes should now trigger properly: Baneful Rune, Crushing Runeshard, Feral Rune, Icewall Rune, Invigorating Rune, Smoldering Rune, and Windshielding Rune.
* Tanking Relic Weapons have gotten an upgrade.
* PVP: Reduced the AoE damage reduction applied during PVP. Basically, AoE abilities deal slightly more damage.
* Crafting: All recipes granted as an occasional reward from crafting dailies can now be sold to vendors, if desired.
* Fixed a bug that prevented some quest items from dropping for cross-faction groups.
* Fixed some more difficult-or-impossible to reach Artifact spawn locations.

WORLD EVENT
* Auroral Doubloons and Pyrite Doubloons are now auto-consumed into the Currency tab instead of your inventory.
* Added an item to the Moneychanger NPC to grant 50 tickets in exchange for 1 Pyrite Doubloon.
* Gaining control of a location in Codex: Wheel of Fate should no longer break stealth for your team.

ZONES
* The Random Expert Dungeon daily now offers Frozen Eclipse Stone.
* Ardent Domain: Feeding Frenzy Zone Event: Lost Survivors are more survivable.
* Eastern Holdings: The rare spawn Prototype Watcher will properly path around the reservoir and should no longer engage in combat with Shane Hawkins.
* Additional adjustments to the start of Freemarch and Silverwood to improve quest flow.

This week we talk with Fable from PRX on why PRX is leaving GW2. We get into the nitty gritty about what Arenanet is lacking in the WvW realm of things. We also hint a bit about Archeage and Wildstar!

Note: This is a partial PTS update that is not part of RIFT 2.3.

GENERAL
* Guild Perks: Updated the description of Cache Finder to indicate that the bonus applies to all Plaques, Marks, and Stones from Expert Dungeons and Raids as well as Infinity Stones and Empyreal Sourcestones.

SOULS

MAGE

PYROMANCER
* Flame Sigil: Removed.
* Flame Rupture – new ability replacing Flame Sigil. Debuffs the enemy, applying a stack of Combust every 2 seconds on up to 5 targets within 7 meters. 15 second duration, 15 second cooldown.
* Fulminate: No longer gains a benefit from stacks of Combust on the target.
* Pyromancer’s Aegis: Can now proc an additional Fireball up to once every 3 seconds.
* Increased the damage of Fireball, Flame Bolt, Cinder Burst, Flame Volley, Fulminate, and Fusillade.