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?

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.

In Patch 2.3, one of the many things being added to RIFT is another new personal dimension. This one’s also based off the popularly-requested Moonshade Highlands map and is called Three Springs. Three Springs is a fairly large dimension based on the Three Springs area of the in-game zone, of course, and it comes with a gorgeous bit of interior space. The Assembly House in Three Springs is completely accessible, which will give dimensioneers some pretty cool options.

The key for Three Springs will set you back 300 Plat and can be purchased at the vendor with all the other dimension keys in Tempest Bay. The dimension itself comes with a 1000-item limit. And the best part? Three Springs is currently available on the Player Test Shard for us to check out. Keep reading for our screenshot preview.

Originally posted by Ailion (Source)

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Just a heads up, some Bladedancer and Ranger changes are already up on PTS. Patch notes haven’t been posted yet.

1. Bladedancer: Dauntless Strike: No longer increases the Critical Hit chance of group members. It now applies a debuff to the target, increasing the target’s chance to be critically hit by 5%.
2. Bladedancer: Blade Hustle: An additional effect has been added. You now gain Blade Hustle every 3s, increasing the damage of your next Quick Strike or Precision Strike 3-9%. Stacks up to 10 times.
3. Bladedancer: Disengage: Can now be used anytime. Now on GCD.
4. Bladedancer: Dancing Steel, Hundred Blades: Now on a 30s cooldown, down from 60s.
5. Ranger: New ability added to the Blood Raptor. The Blood Raptor can now charge at the enemy, dealing physical damage.
6. Ranger: Escape Artist: Cooldown has been reduced to 1 min, down from 2 min.
7. Ranger: Fleeting Instinct: Effect can now be applied both in and out of combat.

The PTS (Public Test Shard) can be a fun place. We can test new builds, gear setups, new raids that are currently in development, and oh yeah– explore cool places like Dendrome! A few players have been romping through invisible walls and alternate, uh, areas in order to take a sneak peek at what Trion has cooking for us in the Dendrome zone.

Feel like a preview? Let’s take a look, shall we?

Cyzo, a member of RIFT’s developer dungeon team, recently announced that Trion will be offering future dungeon and raid content player testing on the Public Test Server from now on instead of holding private tests. After the success of the recent Hard Mode Endless Eclipse and Frozen Tempest encounter tests on the PTS, the team decided it was simply a wise move due to the amount of feedback available with open testing. Cyzo gave us another update yesterday, this time with a few important details that strike a compromise many raiders were asking for:

Originally posted by Cyzo (Source)

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Thanks for the feedback everyone, bear in mind we are still a ways away from testing the next tier of 20-man content so we have plenty of time to refine the system that works best both for us and you: the raiding community. I’m only going to address some updates to the 20-man system with this post since I feel like everyone is on board with 5-man and 10-man content being completely open.

• We want Raiders to maintain an interest in testing and not burn themselves out by spending weeks or months on an encounter before it goes live. To this end we are planning on doing a rotation of which bosses are available on the PTS; most likely one or two bosses a given week. This will give us a very quick feedback loop, allow for noticeable iteration, and keep things fresh for those that are testing content.
• We want to maintain some sense of progression and competition between guilds. Depending on the size of the raid we will keep the last one or two bosses more guarded. Exact testing procedures aren’t nailed down yet but these specific encounters might only be active for a day or two at a time to test the more complex mechanics with a developer observing. There is also a good chance that we will keep some mechanics on ALL of the raid encounters internal until they hit live.
• We want to respect your time and for you to have fun! We’re putting in measures that make testing as quick and painless as possible. Apparently some of you enjoy the dev presence as well so if you let us know when you are testing we can try and drop by. The new 10-man will help us perfect these new measures and get situated with guilds that want to have a larger part in the raiding scene.

I realize that change is hard and that many of you enjoyed the old system but with more content open to more people we can create a fairer testing environment while getting the bug count to as close to 0 as possible before the content goes live.

This approach makes a lot more sense.

Surprisingly, Trion hasn’t tossed much information on the Public Test Server about this year’s new additions to Carnival of the Ascended, the RIFT anniversary World Event starting this week. We know a few things, of course. We know that there will be at least two new games and a handful of new rewards including new hats and new mounts thanks to a few hints in the official announcement (look closely at this small screenshot to notice what looks like a recolored Nebula mount). We know there will also be an anniversary cloak up for grabs on the currency vendor.

We’ve also seen a few hints on the PTS. Players got to test out the Carnival of the Ascended alternate The Codex Warfront a couple of weeks ago. This alternate version is called Wheel of Fate, and involves this nifty wheel, balloons, and these awesome cannons that can send you flying across the battlefield while dealing damage to your enemies. Even a non-PvPer has to admit that sounds pretty fun, right?

There have also been a handful of new achievements popping up on the PTS over the past week or so. Among the additions have been a few for Carnival of the Ascended. Keep reading to take a peek!

When Trion started testing the first couple of encounters in Hard Mode Frozen Tempest and Hard Mode Endless Eclipse back in January, the dungeon team decided to utilize the PTS (Player Test Server) for player testing instead of holding private testing sessions with select guilds. This led to a bit of guild drama, naturally, but it also led to Trion receiving a solid amount of testing feedback in the way of bug reports, etc. Feedback, as we all know, is vital to releasing bug-free content, and Trion’s dungeon team seems rather pleased with the results of this trial of sorts for PTS raid testing. They’re pleased enough, in fact, to plan on moving all dungeon content testing to the PTS.

Keep reading to read the dev tracker post.

February is here, Valentine’s Day is approaching, and you know what that means. Those of us who are single get to happily avoid the pink-and-ballooned aisle of our local store! Well, aside from that, of course. There might be some /kissing going on, and not just outside of Telara, but in Telara, as well. In this past weekend’s update on the Public Test Server, some new holiday achievements appeared in the World Event section. And yes, it seems there will be some /kissing. And some killing! And some kind of Love Bug… thing. Read on to take a look.

While RIFT’s PvP updates often seem few and far in between, there is a small PvP update on the way and currently evident on the Public Test Server (PTS)– new PvP consumables that are purchasable with Favor. There’s a new PvP vendor in Tempest Bay by the name of Mercenary Burke. He’s located at the southern end of the PvP vendor building (which is almost directly south of where the porticulum is) and shares a counter with Mercenary Frost. His inventory may be expanded upon in the near future, but for now he has a selection of bind-on-pickup consumables that are usable only on level 60 PvP equipment. Keep reading to see a list of the items, complete with item descriptions and costs.