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.

A few days ago, Daglar mentioned that the Trion team was unsure about adding a second tier to the PvP Planar Attunement tree (also called Attunement of War) anytime soon. He did state, however, that one of the developers was really pushing for the addition. It seems that developer has come through for PvP players after all, since we now have a second tier previewing on the Public Test Server (PTS).

No announcement has been made at the time of writing this article as to when this tier may reach live servers or if the PA nodes are in their final stage. Keep reading to see a preview of the various nodes.

Note: As always, information on the PTS is subject to change at any time.

Despite Planar Attunement’s third tier popping back on the Public Test Server in early December, Trion didn’t include it in the in-progress PTS Patch Notes for Patch 2.2. This left some players confused as to whether or not it will be included in RIFT 2.2 or pushed back to another date. Daglar took some time on the official forums yesterday to confirm the fact that Trion does plan on releasing the third PA tier in 2.2. He also discussed the possibility of a future second tier for the PvP PA tree, Attunement of War:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Don’t assume anything about Tier 2 for PvP PA – it was never actually something that we had planned – nor did we communicate that it would ever be coming.

That said, one of our developers here really wants to add something for it so we’ll see.

Keep reading for Daglar’s explanation as to why the PA addition doesn’t show up on the in-progress notes.