Rift: Beta 5

So…Beta 5 came and between Beta 4 and 5 I manage to drag a few friends over to play with me. Since they are all new, I made a new character as well to play with them. I decided to be a Warrior tank since one is going to be a Cleric, and another is going for Rogue. In the end of Beta 4, I played a Warrior tank as well until level 13. I didn’t know which soul is good for Paladin so I chose the default compatibility. The best thing about playing games is the ongoing learning process. You improve over your previous experience. Unlike in Beta 4 where I played a lot, I played a lot less in Beta 5.

We all woke up early and wait for the servers to go live. We had no problem because we got in earlier than most people. I was a Warrior, Bonnie was the Cleric, Rukuso and Castellano are Rogues. During this time, the server went crazy. Many people are having problems logging in or even get to the server list. Luckily for us, we manage to stay in the server without interruption. However, Rukuso got unlucky and he was stuck on the 49% – 89% thing. After a while, they patch up the issue and people no longer have problems.

When we’re high enough level we decided to trio Iron Tombs (IT). Caor Ashstone pretty much wiped us when I got stacks of Jagged Wounds and Curses on me. It wasn’t until later when we’re higher level that we were able to do this. I told them that Caor Ashstone drops a 10-slot Bag. It didn’t drop the first time we did it and Rukuso was like Liiiiiiiar! After the Three Kings, we were playing Ghostbuster and capturing the Spectral Screamers. Bonnie had to go to work so we didn’t have a chance to fight the final boss.

The next time we did the instance, we finally had more members! I was doing quests with a random person I encounter in Stonefield. When Bonnie logged on, we decided to go do IT for real this time. We grabbed another player and we went in. Everything went smooth; we split into 3 people tanking the three kings. Why? Because we can lol. I took on Derribec with my Void Knight sub soul abilities, Rukuso took on Laric, and the random took on Humbart. We all took them down about the same time. We did the Ghostbuster quest again because some of them didn’t do the quest before. Now, the fun part is the Orb room. I told them to hop from orb to orb! And we all wipe because there was so many shades. I laughed my ass off so hard. We took on the shades later after we resurrected by moving little by little until they don’t spawn much anymore. On the last boss, I told them I’ll be moving towards the light when Eliam’s Ghost popped up, but I never told them to get into the light as well. Well, we know what happens. LOL, a lot of people died when it did the AoE. We wiped or ran away to lose aggro. We cleared the instance after that of course and that concludes Day 1. It was very late and the sun was rising.

The next time, we did Deepstrike Mines. Once again we did the instance at lower than the expected level. Especially for Bonnie, she was our healer and she was about few levels lower than us, which was fine. The instance itself was pretty easy, except for the final boss. I was fooling around too much and I keep falling down and getting myself killed. Deepstrike Mines is pretty basic; kill trash, tank and spank, repeat. The first boss is the Overseer Markus. On the distance you see him whipping 4 Rotted Dredgers. When you engage him, they all come into you. Don’t get behind the red line since that will reset the fight. The first thing is to clear out the 4 trash mob then focus on Markus. At about 50% HP, he’ll split into 3 Shades of Markus, you then have to kill them all before he returns to battle. He’ll come back at the same amount of HP he left off with. Kill him and head on towards the next boss.

The next boss is Gregori Krezlav. He is a mage mob that doesn’t move. He just cast spells on the tank and summons Baneful Delver from time to time. At some point, three channelers will spawn and put a buff on Gregori to prevent any damage being done to him. I, being the tank, then switched target to kill the annoying Baneful Delver while the other DPS focused on the channelers. After the three channelers are dead, we then focus on Gregori. It was a pretty easy fight.

The next boss we encounter is Bonehew the Thunderer. He’s such a big boss. While not engaged, he likes to play with fire and blast that thing in the middle of the platform. He’s also an easy boss; just have to avoid his Seismic Smash which causes a huge frontal damage knockback move. Bonnie being the lower level actually got hurt more than the rest of us. When we finished killing him we head on down to the lower level to do the Eth Device quest. The mobs are annoying since they keep knocking you away from the device. It was funny being pushed away, and even funnier with those funny sound effects.

After we’re done with the quest, we face the Gatekeeper Kaleida. Well at first we didn’t know about it until we mess around. We were hopping all around the side and see if we can jump over the platform in between the gate. Rukuso took a leap and ended up engaging Kelaida. Now this is one of the hardest bosses we’ve ever encounter because of the Earth Crystal. Every time we took it down, it would just heal back up to 100%. We wiped a couple times, and then finally decided to quit when we didn’t have enough DPS to take it down. This was the last instance we’ve ever done and Beta 5 is concluding. In Beta 6, I no longer played Warrior and switch back to my Chloromancer because it was actually more fun.

In Beta 5, Rukuso and I did a lot of Black Gardens. We would pass the Fang around whenever we died to it just so we could win. I believe we did about 5-6 in a row, and only lost once or twice. I don’t know why, but every time I played it people don’t really know what to do. They would just constantly try to kill people and ignoring the fact that the Guardian has the Fang or even bother to grab the fang and go to a better defensive area. The strategy is to grab the fang and move it back towards your faction area and defend it. It may be a pussy move, and some wants to actually engage in fight, but that’s the goal. There are the attackers and defenders. Once the defender grabbed the Fang, the attackers can just engage the enemies that are coming. Here are some screenshots in the Black Gardens in Beta 5.