RIFT is preparing to launch their eighth major content update, bringing to us a new raid, new trade-skills and the ever-expanding role of Instant Adventures. This week, we sat in on a conference call with Hal Hanlin, Scott Hartsman and Adam Gershowitz, and discussed everything that is coming with this latest patch. We even got a taste of what is coming on down the road.

There were plenty of questions regarding Fishing and Survival. We learned that these new skills don’t just bring reasons to roleplay and play around, they bring actual benefits to your character, from a power and convenience perspective. For example, the tents and bedrolls for survival are not just for roleplaying purposes; they do have effects. According to Adam Gershowitz, from a gameplay perspective, they are there to give you a little bit of rest experience as well! The developers main focus is to allow players to pitch a tent, so that they can attend to things happening in real life, like kids or making dinner, and not force the player to head back to town to log off safely.

Today’s Dev Chat was with Senior Designer for Rift: Planes of Telara, Dan Steamer. I was able to ask him some questions… I mean everyone got a chance to submit questions… to discuss the zone called Gloamwood. A few days ago we had a preview of the zone where we saw everything from concept art to video fly-throughs. Let’s take a look at what we learned this afternoon from our time with Dan Steamer.

Gloamwood is a place of corruption as a result of the Shade War that is guarded by the Hag. Full of goblins and the denizens of the Endless Court. The zone has been built out of twelve unique locations each encompassing about an hour of play. It is connected to four other zones, one of which is Silverwood. The other three have yet to be revealed. There is also an instance inside that contains a Goblin themed dungeon.