If you have a character who’s an artificer, you’ve probably noticed that salvaging hasn’t been quite right for a little while, especially for low-level artificers who are trying to play catch up. Faratha had an update for artificers on the forums yesterday, and stated that a fix will be coming in RIFT 2.2:

Originally posted by Faratha (Source)

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Artificer salvaging has indeed been borked for a while now, and please accept my heartfelt apologies for not having fixed this sooner. The GM quoted in the other thread didn’t have all the details because I hadn’t looked into the situation yet.

As of 2.2 -

• Low-level jewelry will once again yield gem components when salvaged by an artificer. Depending on a ring or necklace’s level, it will provide Gemstone Fragments, Iridescent Powder, or Clear Crystal.
• Artificers will be able to salvage totems that weren’t salvaging correctly.
• Artificers, not weaponsmiths, will be able to salvage staves.

We received two dev tracker posts of value yesterday, one regarding some upcoming fixes to runecrafting materials and runebreaking, and another with some good news for folks who weren’t able to pick up the first Conquest trinket. First, the trinket bit, which was posted by Daglar as a sort of Fae Yule surprise for players:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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We have updated the merchants such that there is a voucher (non-tradable) for the previous season’s Marks of Conquest purchasable with the current seasons Freelancer Marks of Conquest.. You will be capable of transferring the new marks into the old.

This should go out with the next hot fix, that we hope to have out this week.

Daglar also followed up with a hint that we will soon see new items added to the Ridge Runner faction vendor.

As Storm Legion quickly approaches, many players who enjoy crafting are wondering how exactly the recipe currency system will work this time around, and whether or not the costs make sense in their current state on beta. Taleen had a few words to share about the mark requirements for crafting recipes in Storm Legion on the official forums. Also touched on is the matter of crafting lures.

Originally posted by Taleen (Source)

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With the usual “I’m not promising anything and this is always subject to change” clause …

1) The current cost of recipes is unlikely to change much, if at all. However, there will likely be addition ways to acquire various marks (AMs, MCMs, and GMCMs) added in the future if we feel that the addition of new recipes and the ballooning costs create an unhealthy environment for new players.

2) Upgrading MCMs to GMCMs (probably at a rate of about 35:1) will likely appear in a post-release patch. Downgrading marks is unlikely at this current time, but not entirely impossible eventually.

3) The rate at which new recipes appear in future patches should be much better than it was with Live. We really didn’t add any substantial crafting updates until Infernal Dawn. I’m hoping to prevent that from happening again.

4) Crafting Lures for Storm Legion zones will likely appear in a post-release patch.

All this sounds pretty good to me.

We’re starting to see some of the crafting changes happening in Storm Legion thanks to the preview of RIFT Patch 1.11′s Crafting PTS Patch Notes. To those who haven’t checked out the patch notes yet, there will be normalization adjustments and some major changes to salvaging, augments, and temporary item enhancements. One other small, very needed change is happening, although it hasn’t been made note of on the PTS and may not happen in time for 1.11– all crafting materials will finally stack to 99.

Here’s the announcement, which was delivered yesterday on the official forums by Trion staff member Taleen:

Originally posted by Taleen (Source)

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All crafting materials should stack to 99 in Storm Legion. I don’t think that change made it into the 1.11 build or onto PTS, however.

Sometimes the little things can make crafting so much easier and more enjoyable. This is one of them.

As anyone who has watched the market can tell you, expansions are a great time to make some serious platinum. And that’s a good thing, because expansions can also be really expensive for a character! Soon we’ll have to buy 10 levels of riding skills, training, crafting, and more, but fortunately an understanding of expansion economies can pay off both now and after the launch of Storm Legion.

There are three main behaviors that can shape the market in the time shortly before and after an expansion:

1. People will no longer be focused on level 50 items. This means that the price of  level 50 items is already dropping and will sink like a stone after launch.
2. People will be levelling their mains, often as quickly as possible. This means that the value of new Storm Legion items will be very high.
3. There will be peaks in the number of active low level alts leading up to the expansion and a few weeks after launch. Low level market prices will increase somewhat.

We got a chance to talk to Hal Hanlin and pick his brain about the upcoming addition to Rift: Conquest. We went over the basics of conquest earlier and now we get to ask some of the questions we’ve been wondering about. Conquest is currently on the PTS servers and being tested at specific times, so keep your eyes out on the official forums for updates on when the next round of testing is going to happen.

In the mean time keep reading and find out what Hal Hanlin had to say about RIFT’s new three-way faction war: Conquest.

Gearing up for raids can be a stressful affair. Expectations aren’t always set realistically, and a new raider is often under a great deal of pressure to come up to speed on everything at once. Worse, if your gear is sub-par, it reflects on your own capabilities more than it probably should, after all, if an extremely well geared character is pulling 1,800 dps, that’s actually fairly poor, but they’ll probably be allowed to slide. On the other hand, a newbie who is managing 900 dps in a mix of questing and normal dungeon gear is doing very well, but often are told they need to “step up”.

One way to get up to speed faster is to start with crafted gear. PvP gear is also an option, and will be the subject of a later article, but for now let’s just look into what crafting can produce.

As of the 1.7 patch, many of the crafted items have been updated, and are now excellent starters for raiding. The highest priority should be the weapon, which comes with a huge amount of spell-power and is thus your largest single upgrade. After that, focus on whichever pieces you can afford.

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.

On the PTS are currently new recipes for weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, apothecary, outfitting and artificer. Apothecaries get new recipes to create augments, all armor crafting professions get new armor recipes that include set bonuses. To check out all the new recipes and their details, keep reading.

Remember to click on each image to enlarge it.

Every week we try to bring you the latest hot topics and driving conversations from the RIFT community. Let’s get started.

Support and CC Roles, PVP and PVE
This week we find that there are a few sore spots players have with support roles and their effects on PVP and PVE. In this thread on the official forums we find this argument:

As I leveled my Mage from 1-50, I played a Dom/SC build. I liked the control that I got from Ice Based spells to contribute to the great CC that Dom posessed. However, on the way from 1-50, as I LFG’ed for dungs, CC was looked at as a waste of time, just prolonging runs. … Trion creates all these interesting Souls that can fill utility roles, then nerfs the encounters to make cc/utility completly useless.

What do you think? Should CC and control have a more prominent role in PVE gameplay?