End Game - Where the real playing starts.

What a blur of a couple weeks it has been! I managed to hit 50 of course, though I did it the night 1.3 dropped. Just could not get it done before hand. Speaking of 1.3 the world event has been a blast so far. Lot's of new daily quests to do, at this point Phase 2 is going on and the second set of dailies are in full swing. Judging from the length of time between Phase 1 and Phase 2 the next Phase (3) should be here any day now.

Now, end game... What a complete change in tempo once you hit 50! I went from mindlessly grinding quests alone to constantly bouncing from one group activity to another with my Guild Mates. Between doing the daily Expert Rift or running down defiant with the new PvP dailies it's been none stop group fun. I have even managed to get my gear to a point where I can get into T2 dungeons. I can't tank them yet though, only run DPS as a MM/Ranger or Support as a Bard. But I must say I like how Trion did the dungeons.

Each dungeon is available in "normal" mode while you are leveling up, and each one has a set level range you can play in. Once you hit 50 and can enter Tier 1 or Tier 2 dungeons you are basically repeating the first ones, however they are extended with more boss encounters, in some cases extending the story lines as well.

There are only two things I have not had a chance to do yet, Raid Rifts and Raid Instances. Both require a few more geared out level 50's than my guild can field right now and getting into a PUG for either one can be very hard.

I have a video of me hitting level 50 however I have not had a chance to upload it to Youtube yet, once I do though you can expect to see it here :) Until then enjoy this nice image of Sanctum castle post 1.3

Sanctum Castle after 1.3 changes

To 50, and Beyond!

Well, the new patch and all the exciting changes comes out tomorrow. Before it gets here though I would LOVE to make level 50. I am currently level 48 and roughly 3/4's to 49 so I believe it would be totally doable for me to make 50 tonight if I really push myself and don't get distracted with playing the Auction House ^_^


Speaking of the Auction House, how much fun is that! I must have spent 50p in the last two days getting my Apothecary skill up to max level so I could start pumping out the black and white dye. And now that I finally can I have been spending much of my time "playing the auction house" as my guild calls it. Buying materials to make Dye as cheap as I can then selling Dye and undercutting other sellers so mine will sell. Fun times even if I don't seem to be making any money. :(

For tonight though, I want to focus on Questing and Dungeon runs. I have yet to play through AP or CC so I have the quest bonuses for those two dungeons to look forward to. And I still have some quests in Stillmoor I can work on. I am up to the large Caldera where a death rift looms menacingly. I am told that area is Solo content even if it does look tougher than anything before it.

Well, here's hoping my next post brings good tidings and an annoucement that I made level 50 :)

Invading the Enemy

It finally happened, I went on a mad killing spree in Stonewood the other night. Many Defiant lost their lives (or at the very least had to respawn). My favored tactic was to come up from behind and send my Wolf at them while I flung arrows from a safe distance. The astute reader would know of course that I was in the low level Defiant zone killing "lowbies" a most dishonorable act.

The PvP die hards know though, you roll on a PvP server and this is what you need to expect. Some wild crazy higher level player just running up and stomping on you from out of nowhere. Well, this weekend, that wild player was me!

The festivities of that night culminated when a massive invasion started in Stonewood. I sat quietly and waited while the Defiant players fought back invasion forces and closed Rifts, then once the boss appeared I decided it was time to reveal myself. Of course being the ONLY Guardian there I focused on attacking the boss instead of trying to get any more kills. I figured even if I was double their level they would dominate me through sheer numbers at that point. I even managed to capture the boss fight ^_^







While I did participate in the fight I was not awarded an achievment for beating him :( Oh well, I still enjoyed myself and managed to get away without getting mobbed by the horde.


Another interesting video I took over the weekend was during an invasion in Moonshade, once the boss spawned everyone raced to him and began taking him down. The best part was a rather large army of Defiant players came as well, you can see everyone kind of popping shots at one another through out the fight. And look for the moment when I realized I could use my AoE skills and damage the Defiant tanks as well. Afterwards of course a rather fun fight broke out between both factions, good times all around I'd say!






End of Weekend Level - 42

Ding! Level 40!

As anticipated I managed to hit level 40 last night! YAY ME! Of course the first point of order was to purchase a new (faster) mount. I opted to purchase one using the Favor I accumulated playing PVP, 13k Favor vs 35 platinum. My choice was limited to one "style" however I cared more about moving faster than I did about looking pretty.  One of the draws to an MMO is earning new gear and I must say I grabbed that carrot pretty hard last night.

After purchasing my new mount I made an expedition trip into lands held pretty tightly by the defiant. While I did gank some poor lower level player (mid 20's) for the most part I just rode by people opting not to fight and just enjoy the thrill of being in enemy lands. I managed to make it just inside of Freemarch before I had my first rude awakening. NPC Guards inside Freemarch auto crit for over 5,000 damage. Up until that point I rode past them without incident, however once inside Freemarch that all changed. The first one I rode by one shot me and that was that.

I am planning another foray into Defiant lands tonight, this time I believe I will record some parts of it. There will also be more blood split of course ^_^  Last night was about how far I could get, tonight will be a full on one man invasion! While part of me feels slightly bad for the lower level's that I will walk on, the other part is giddy with the anticipation of open world PvP at it's purest. I will just have to remind myself that THEY picked a PvP server for a reason. And while I have no doubt that some of them will start to call for reinforcements my tactic's will be from Sun Tzu himself. I will attack without warning and from an unexpected direction. Quickly with drawl and attack another location at random.


Actively invading the Defiant controlled lands will probably set me back a day in my goal to hit 40 before the 1.3 patch lands on the 22nd however I am confident that I will still have plenty of time to make that goal while having a little fun on the side.

To those Defiants who will die tonight, I salute you!

Been a little longer than I wanted since my last diary entry. Nothing really spectacular to note, oh wait... YES THERE IS!!!! I am on track to hit level 40 tonight!!! And as I have been finding out that means I should be getting another mount, one that is presumably faster.

While I suppose I should be buying it with good old fashioned platinum and gold, from what my guildies have been telling me I can in fact purchase it with Favor. And since I have roughly 50k saved up I think I will use some of it ^_^

While not much else has been going on I have taken a couple more videos, while I have not gotten a really good one uploaded to youtube yet I did manage to get 3 more.

Just a rather mundane night.

I would say last night was a fairly typical night. Unlike the night before last where I leveled up 2 times and got into a new area, last night I wandered around closing Rifts and raiding a dungeon.

As promised in my last entry I took a small video of some play time last night. In this video you can watch me and some random players take on an Aelfwar Preserver during a Life Force Invasion. I was trying to be conscientious about the camera positioning, unlike the fight with Mar'Kul in an earlier video I think I did a much better job.





While thinking about what I wanted to do tonight I came upon an idea. Being a Guardian I think I will try and sneak into the Defiant Capitol city of Meridian. I am still not 100% sure it is even possible to do that, currently awaiting confirmation from the forums on what to expect when I try.

After looking over the maps I believe my best bet will be to try and swim to the other side of the river near Founders Threshold (the area where you are dropped when leaving the starting area as a Guardian). If this works I will be taking some video's of myself running around in Freemarch and eventually going into the Defiants capitol city, Meridian.

Onward and Upward!

After a marthon 5 hour session last night I finally managed to make it out of the GloamWood area and into Scarlet Gorge. And may I say the Gorge area just looks fantastic! While I spent only enough time there to find the Porticulum so I did not have to walk/ride back what I have scene of it so far impressed me.

During my time in GloamWood though a very cool thing happened, as I was doing my quests a couple of random players came up behind me and invited me to their party. Turns out they were doing the exact same quest line I was so we were able to stay together for the better part of 3 hours. After pushing our way through many quests and an Invasion though they needed to go just as we accepted what would turn out to be the last leg of quests in Gloamwood. Devastated I tried to continue on by myself knowing that the area ahead would be very tricky to do alone.

Just then I noticed two OTHER players ahead of me, as luck would have it they were questing along the same set of quests I was, only one set behind! After getting invited to the party I helped them through those and then went with them while they back tracked to pickup the quests I was on. After a few more battles and some cool banter with the NPC's we had killed the Old Hag and made it out of Gloam Wood!!!

At this point my self and my new companions were tired and decided to call it a night. I rode ahead to Scarlet Gorge picked up the Porticulum point and zoned back to Sanctum to sell off / auction off nearly 4 hours worth of loot.

While it may sound like I had a grand time last night, it was smeared a bit with the foul stench of "griefing". Before joining up with anyone I was questing alone in Gloam Wood, a contested area and PvP enabled. (I play on Briarcliff a PvP server) I wont name drop the individual but there was a level 50 Defiant Rogue camping out side the main city in Gloam Wood stalking low level players. While I understand that rolling on a PvP server comes with things like this I never expected to get ganked two times in a row by someone "lowbie hunting". It was all in good fun though and eventually he did die to a couple level 50 Guardians who came to our rescue!

On a side note, I really do need to remember to record more videos and snap more pictures. Blog posts without any media are a little... boring :(

Play that funky music Rogue boy!

Ahhh another day, another entry in the diary. I guess this post is going to cover the last couple days in Telara... to be honest I was quite busy yesterday with yard work and just playing Rift ^_^ I found out that I could level up quite nicely just playing PvP. I would say I easily went from level 23 to 24 ONLY playing PvP. Mixing Black Island and the Codex Warfronts.

Last night however I wanted to try something a little bit different, so I ponied up the 4 platinum and bought my 3rd role from the trainer and went 100% Bard (well more like 95% bard and 5% bladedancer? the defensive soul for Rogues). While playing a Bard is not exactly hard, nor does it really require much in the way of strategic thinking it does offer one very useful trait. The "LFG" tool pegs me as a support class and I get into groups nearly instantly.

Playing 100% Bard I was able to run 3 dungeons last night. And even in the face of extreme boredom I got a good look at the other side of the table, support and healers. Normally I start out any type of MMO as a Warrior class and eventually end up getting bored but with Rift something made me want to be a stealthy assassin popping out of the woods and bursting enemy players down. Yes, I totally do that during PvP matches but when grouping for a raid there are about 1'000 other players on the server looking to do the same thing So playing a Bard lets me experience the game in a new way while also completing the lower level dungeons.

Now other than that, not a lot to report. I have a feeling the "game" wont start until I hit max level so that is my goal from here on out, level, level, level and more level. Speaking of which I need to go hit up the forums and ask some questions about my new Bard skills and the potential for Rangers in Solo PvE, while I am away here, look at a cool picture I took last night while standing on a mountain range in GloomWoods.

Dungeons - Weeeeee!

Got into a new dungeon last night, Darkening Deeps. A friend and myself qued up with the looking for dungeon utility, it took a little while of course to actually get into a group, but once there it was a fairly fun time. Unlike my first solo dungeon event that went off without a hitch, no deaths for anyone in the group. This time the group wiped a couple times someone even left towards the end and we had to get another person (a tank) to help us finish the run. Felt kind of sorry for them since they cued for a whole dungeon run and basically showed up for the last boss.

I have also found the usefulness of the auction house ^_^ I have been making a tidy profit selling the lesser essences I find during major raids in Silverwood. Most of them sell for somewhere between 20 and 50 gold. While I have not really found a use for the standard coin in the game I am sure there is something down the line to spend it on, so I have been hoarding as much as I could so far.

Made it to the level 20 mark last night as well, so that meant a brand new PvP arena, and to my delight the first arena is still accessible just with a higher selection of participants. The new arena is a sort of control point game type where each side needs to take control of towers, each tower under your sides control grants your team points and which ever team gets to a set number of points first wins.

As with any PvP area in this game I am woefully inadequate. What I believe my problem is, is macro's. Or the lack of me using them. So while I have some free time in the next few hours I plan on searching high and low on the forums for help in setting up macro's in the game for fighting. (I also might make a switch to using bows instead of melee so I can stay ranged for a while ^_^ )

Harvesting the bacon

I must admit last night was one of the more boring times I have had in Rift, however that is not to say it was the games fault. I finally decided to take a 3rd profession, butcher, and spent the majority of the night in lower level area's getting my skill up.

There were of course some minor rift events and small invasion forces that needed to be repelled. And I ran around doing some of the daily quests. The biggest thing I did was the Realm of The Fae dungeon with a random group of people. It was a really enjoyable experience and the group I had was friendly an helpful for my first time. The only really "meh" part was I sat in Que for around 40 minutes while the game paired me up with 4 others. Truthfully I had forgotten I was waiting by then, when the pop up came it sort of surprised me and I was a little panicked thinking something bad was about to happen ^_^

End of day level ~ 19 & 1/2 (But butchering @ 50 ! )

Rift Raid Event, Planar Boss and more PvP Noobishness [Weekend Roundup]

Yesterday saw many firsts for me in the world of Telara,  my first large scale raid event, the first "Boss" fight, my first attempts at using the in game video recorder and the in game Facebook screen shot publisher. I learned more about PvP, including the fact that there are "PvP" souls you can get that give you specific bonuses for fighting other players.

On the low end of the scale, publishing screenshots to Facebook through imageshack seems fairly flawless. After allowing the Riftconnect application the appropriate rights I snapped a few scenic shots during my session and they were instantly added to my Facebook stream. Here are a couple of the better ones;

A nice shot of a Death Rift opening

Me relaxing in Sanctum while the war rages on

Nothing to spectacular just a couple things I thought looked nice enough to snap shot and share ^_^

While wondering around looking for photo-ops I stumbled across something I never experienced in a MMO (mostly because I would lose interest in other MMO's after an hour or so) a large scale raid event was happening right under my feet. You see, I had the map zoomed in to far and did not notice the swath of reddish orange swirls indicating a massive assault on the land. However once I did, I mounted my trusty steed and galloped as fast as I could to the closest Rift Tear and instantly joined the group.

It was a swirling of daggers and raw hide as we battled tear after tear but in the end we found ourselves very far from the starting point and in need to return quickly, for the commander was spawning.

All of us riding to the commanders spawn

I was in a bit of shock when we go there, so much so you can see me attacking the wrong thing completely. (Notice the words "Immune" scrolling up, yeah I admit it, I am a noob!) Afterwards we gathered up our lewt, smiled and said how much fun it was then returned to solo questing for levels.

It was around this time I realized my backpack and bags were getting full, so I headed to Argent Glade (one of the Guardians starter cities) to unload my spoils and start some new quests. After spending some time deciding on my 2nd "skill" (Apothecary, this way I can Forge for items then turn them into potions!) the next "big" thing occured.

For some strange reason everyone was rushing past me heading North, towards the higher level area. "What's going on?" I thought as I opened the map. There staring me in the face was my next big moment for the night, a boss had come to town!

Apparently this mytical fire creature "Mar'Kul" had finally had enough of sending his plebs against us, here he was walking into the city and trying to pick a fight. Well we were having none of it! As Lemmings we poured over him until the whole area resembled that scene from Gulliver's Travels.

Mar'Kul invades Argent Glade

After this mighty defeat I was feeling pumped so I decided to hit up some more PvP. It was around this time I had my next noob moment, Rift has PvP specific Souls! After buying the "Infiltrator" soul and spending a good 15 minutes trying to figure out how to equip it (You need to buy a 2nd role from your trainer!) I set about trying to beat the Defiant's in contests of strength. (Thankfully my side was fielding some good healers and we were able to win a few, through no fault of mine. I basically ran around like a spaz and tried to attack whatever was in front of me!)

All in all it was a great day in Telara.


End of day level ~ 18