Well I’m done for the night in Rift beta 3 and therefore beta 3 itself as I’m not around tomorrow, so I figured I’d write a post now.
Beta 3 is basically beta’s 1 and 2 combined in that you can play either faction, Guardians or Defiant up to level 20. They have however ramped up the rift/invasion spawn rate and difficulty.
On the first night I decided to make a new Rogue bard, who managed level 2 before I decided I would be better off leveling Yetian my Dwarf mage so I could see more content in this beta.
Yetian at the start of this beta was around level 10 or so and had both Warlock and Archon souls. The Warlock soul for life tap and a direct damage bolt, that’s as far as I got points wise with that soul. Most of my points went into Archon, the debuffer/bufffer class. By the end of the beta I had 5 souls, having picked up Elementalist, Pyromancer and Chloromancer. My working build as I logged out tonight was Archon (about 20 points), Warlock (5 points) and Chloromancer (4 points). I only received the Chloromancer soul late on so didn’t have much to put into it points wise, even though I managed to get half way through level 19.
As I said the Archon is pretty much a debuff/buff class. The debuffs are in two forms from what I’ve seen. Those that debuff an enemy and give you the stats, or those that debuff you yourself and give your group your stats. I had debuffs for armour, resists and spell casting as well as buffs for stats for the group. There are also damage spells which damage the mob and buff you, I had 2 of these both of which can be cast up to 5 times, each cast stacking your buff more. The buff lasts for 5 minutes and can be topped up by recasting one of the spells.
My Warlock soul, the first soul I chose only had a few points in. These gave me a Lifetap, a Direct damage and a damage shield. The damage shield was dropped from my hotbar due to the Archon armour buff which worked better in my mind and you can only have one armour buff active.
The Chloromancer arrived late in my beta 3 life but allowed my to improve my setup quite a bit. The basic Chloromancer soul plus a few points gave me a new dimension build wise. I had a spell which when cast on a mob gave whoever damaged it a 15% chance to heal themselves a total of 100% of the damage caused. Another was a DOT which had a chance to heal up to 7 nearby allies when it went off and the final ability was a direct damage spell.
This meant I would cast the heal proc’ing spell first, then the Damage over time (DOT)/heal, then my lifetap. I usually followed this by at least 1 debuff and then more DOT/DD’s. As the buffs such as the armour and resist buff last 5 minutes I wouldn’t always use them, though sometimes If i wanted the mob debuffed I would cast those, debuffing the mob and refreshing my buff in the meantime.
I spent a good chunk of my time on the 2nd day, well evening (I was at work in the day), Rift bashing with Ffaffner. Myself and Ffaffner decided we’d spend some time going around closing Rifts and fighting off invasions. Not on our own of course, but as a dynamic duo lending a hand. The odd amusing death did result when we ran head first into more than we could chew, getting chewed up in the process. Here are a few pics for you of our adventures before I ramble on some more.
The first pic shows a life Rift with some really nice graphics going on. The next pic is a fight within a life Rift and I only paused shortly to take the pic before charging in, of course.
You’ll have to excuse the messy UI in the 3rd pic, I forgot to turn it off. That guy had something like 180,000 hit points and put up a fairly lengthy fight before the hoard of players took him down.
One thing of note about invasions is they have to destroy the areas stone (can’t remember it’s exact name, wardstone maybe). When fighting in Rifts you often obtain an item which can be used on the stones to upgrade them and heal them at the same time. This results in a more resistant quest area.
Invasions are a nice touch as they bring the fight to you if your too lazy or not inclined to go hunt Rifts. It can be a problem if your crafting and your quets area is taken over I suppose, in this case I recommend slapping the mobs with whatever you just made (weapons are a bonus) until they run away crying.
Anyway I’m rambling again and I have more pics to show. Items in Rift are the usual fair with various stats that are familiar to most MMO’ers, they can also have items added during their creation if they are crafted items, though I didn’t manage to make any such shiny versions. I did make a good number of runes which are basically like adornments in EQ2 so I had a good set of stats boosting bits on my none crafted armour.
Myself and Ffaffner managed to buy ourselves some planar armour with emblems obtained from doing well in Rift fights and sourcestones which you also obtain fighting in Rifts/Invasions. They are fairly expensive and take a while to save up for, there is also shiny weapons and other bits at the planar vendors.
Tonight on my final night in beta 3, I decided to go on a quest spree running around the map like a mad mage finishing as many quests as I could. I managed to make level 19 and saw a lot more of the map due to my questing frenzy. There are some nice quests to perform, granted they are not really anything new as far as MMO quests go but there are some nice touches to the story quests.
I also managed to complete a couple of collections although I didn’t get back to Sanctum to hand either of them in, or try a bit more crafting as I’d planned.
Yetian did manage to find a shiny new hat and robe, one as a quest reward and the other as dropped loot, though don’t ask me which way round it was. They are nice robes, though with that hat and the scimitar style weapon I have I looked a bit like a mad ancient Turk.
Anyway the rambling is almost over and if you are still here I’ll get your medal in the post. Before I go however, I will say that I think I’ll be buying the game on release. How long I play will depend on how the game progresses, it will be as a 2nd game to EQ2 as that’s where my guild is mainly based and I’ll still be there for group nights when mini me allows me time.
I am looking forward to future beta’s to see what else we get to test and to trying out more classes and souls to see how they work.
See you in the next beta!
Related posts:
A pity you missed the last night Yetian as the Devs let all
hell loose with multiple major rifts and invasions converging on
the main quest hubs during the final hours (Trion extended the beta
by 4 hours of extra server time bless 'em). Much mayhem, much fun.
No one could complain that the game lacks action, and I agree the
quests are fairly standard fare, but enjoyable. If I have a worry
it is that the game world 'may' lack – not content – but depth, for
those players like me who craft, explore, indulge in minor
roleplay, and generally try to find a good level of immersion. But
these are worries are just on 'stand-by' for now, not forgetting
that this is only closed beta time (and the polish and solidity of
the game play at this stage does make it easy to forget sometimes
that this is not a release client yet). Overall, probably a game I
will also buy.