With RIFT’s one-year anniversary approaching, we’ve been hearing a lot about the celebration planned for the occasion. Patch 1.7 and the marriage addition were forerunners to the actual anniversary, and the in-game world event, called Carnival of the Ascended, is out currently on the Public Test Shard (PTS) for player testing. The event takes a turn from most of the past RIFT events, thankfully, is six phases long, and offers some pretty nifty rewards.

Before digging into an actual review of the event as it stands currently, let me preface this article by saying that many of RIFT’s world events have been disappointing to some players, as described in a past article. The themes for some of them have been awesome, and some of the rewards were cool, but the creativity in them has been lacking. I may be a harsh judge of world events, to be fair, but I know I haven’t been the only player unhappy with RIFT’s world events because of Trion’s official response regarding them.

We got a chance to wrack Josh York’s brain in regards to Trion’s direction for itemization with 1.7 and beyond. With the latest game update we see Trion flexing it’s muscle in creating a itemization system that should give the room to grow as we inch closer to the one year mark. With these changes, we are probably going to be seeing a new tier of content very soon. Hopefully these changes will help create a smoother transition to new game content.

The biggest test to the new itemization system will come with the next tier of content. Previously, PVP gear remained the best in slot option due to being able to get a full set well before the natural saturation point in Hammerknell. With the new PVP changes and gear more easily gotten, at least there isn’t a major grind. Hopefully the implemented changes allow a much smoother transition for new and returning players along with long time veteran players.

Josh York is an up and coming developer for Trion, and you might remember him from an interview we did when he was part of the QA team. He’s working with the Itemization team and we thought he was the perfect person to talk to about the new itemization system in 1.7!

Keep reading for the full interview.

Platinum. Planarite. Inscribed Sourcestones. Plaques. Marks. Greater Marks. Special Event Currency…

Rift has a boggling number of currencies — far more than I have ever seen in any game, MMO or otherwise — and up until this point, each has had a serious flaw. At a certain point, each becomes mostly obsolete, continuing to accumulate, but with little, if anything, left to buy with it.

With the Rift 1.7 patch on the horizon though, it looks like Trion is finally beginning to address this problem. In the most recent PTS Set (#2), Trion has added new sinks for almost every currency. Those thousands of expert dungeon plaques you had saved up, or the hundreds of raid marks that sat in your vault collecting virtual dust can now be traded in for planar attunement xp. This is a perfect sink. The gains from PA levels are extremely incremental, but desirable enough to be worth something, and it will remain something that players will continue to be able to benefit by purchasing for a long time to come. [If you are interested, current exchange rates on the PTS are included at the bottom of this article.]

As you know, with 1.7 the PvP specific Souls and their associated achievement are going the way of the Dodo bird. If you are an achievement whore now is the time to pick up your “I’ve Got Soul and I Am a Soldier” before it’s gone! With the loss of PvP Souls we are being given a new PvP Planar Attunement, and I hopped onto PTS tonight to see what it has for us to play with!

Originally posted by Zinibik (Source)

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I’ve updated the original post to include all changes currently up or on their way to PTS. I also wanted to clarify a few matters:

• Mead Rush is just a charge with some damage on it. That’s it. No snare, no CC break, no interrupt.
• Gathering of the Ancestors uses smart healing to determine who it applies to. It should hit the 10 people with the lowest percentage health who don’t already have the blocker on them. If you had two Purifiers in your raid and one cast it shortly after the other, all 20 people in the raid should get it.
• Brutalize uses a higher ratio of Massive Blow’s damage now (60% instead of 40%), but is spread over a longer period of time (10s), meaning a single stack will do less damage per tick. However, you will now see it stack much more often and stacking it will actually increase its damage properly now (meaning two stacks will do twice as much damage as one stack).
• Ekkehard’s Invocation is not meant to be added to your standard rotation. It’s meant to be used whenever you can’t be in melee range and can’t charge in (either because Battle Charge is on cooldown or there’s some mechanic preventing you from utilizing it). If you’re in melee range and don’t have anything better to use, you should use Crushing Blow, not Ekkehard’s Invocation.
• Favored of the Valnir simply adds more ticks to Lightning and causes each additional tick to deal more damage. The original damage isn’t spread out over a longer period of time.

The next things we’ll be looking at are Druids and Justicars (namely their reliance on avoidance for mitigation). Both will require some time to get right, so you probably won’t see any more changes to either until we start patching 1.8. I do want to specify right now though that the Druid will not become a full support soul. There are currently no plans to add a full support soul to the Cleric in the foreseeable future.

PVP UPDATES
* In the ongoing effort to more appropriately match up characters of different ranks, and give a smoother entry to high-level PvP, we will be revamping the existing Prestige system in 1.7. The below are some initial changes currently in testing, with more to come over the following weeks. As usual, the below info may change prior to the patch going to live shards.
* The Prestige system has expanded from 8 ranks to 40 – existing ranks will be converted to the appropriate rank on the updated scale.
* Bolstering is now enabled for level 50 Warfronts. Players entering a level 50 Warfront below Rank 13 will have their stats boosted to be more effective for both rank-appropriate and mixed-rank Warfronts.
* Marks of Retribution gained from closing PvP Rifts and completing weekly quests are now consumables that grant 1600 Favor.
** Existing Marks of Retribution will be converted to Favor in an upcoming update.
* Reinforced Crystallized Insight is now available for purchase from Girdoom in Meridian and Templar Zim in Sanctum. These consumables grant 100,000 Planar Attunement experience at a cost of 15,000 Favor.

Check out Warbs as he brings us a preview of the new chronicle, River of Souls, set to come out with patch 1.7.

Originally posted by Ailion (Source)

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Additional proposed Rogue changes to be added for 1.7. It will go into the test shard soon.

Assassin

Expose Weakness has been fixed. The additional damage from Expose Weakness will be added per stack of Serrated Blades. So you get 3 times the bonus for 3 stacks of Serrated Blades.

Bladedancer

Blade and Fury – Your Quick Strike and Precision Strike increases the damage of your next Keen Strike by 10-20%, up from 5-10%.

Deadly Dance – Can now be triggered by Compound Attack.

Nightblade

Dusk to Dawn – It is no longer a channeled ability but a straight up DOT attack. It now awards 2 Combo Points and

The beginning stages of RIFT’s Patch 1.7 are now on the PTS for player testing, and with the patch come some interesting changes to endgame. The PTS patch notes can be found here if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. The changes are an attempt to smooth out endgame progression in general and the gear obtained during the various phases of endgame. What does this mean, exactly? For starters, it’s a step in the right direction.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial summing up the current state of RIFT’s endgame. In it, I basically discuss a gap that seems to be increasing in size between RIFT’s casual/social population and its raider population. The world of Telara is a great place to relax and enjoy small group content, but it also supports a thriving raiding community that’s eager to get back into action when Infernal Dawn is released. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of players in between these two groups. Thus, a gap is created. This makes it difficult for Hammerknell guilds to recruit and for players to obtain the gear necessary to become recruited.

Originally posted by Atrius (Source)

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Not every change we are intending is up yet in patch note form or on test. To help alleviate some of your concerns I want to share a couple of these changes with you.

First we will be putting up a change to the way we handle Physical DPS in PVP. This has been a concern for a while and has been a difficult change to make work right. However this change should be available soon for you all to test. This is an important change for 1.7, rest assured it has not been forgotten.

Second we are working hard to get another fix in for Energy starvation on the Warriors. The goal here is for this to impact players who are not popping Tablets like candy more and create less of a need for these consumables.

And third we will be giving the Beastmaster a couple new abilities to help them be desirable again. This is not intended to make them more desirable than anyone else, but we are hoping it once again makes them a viable choice.

Keep your eyes open for these changes, they should be coming up shortly.