Rift: Beta 6

Rift 6 came and even more improvements over the previous ones. There are less sparkles and graphic animations all around the world. There are huge changes to the class abilities as well as the racial abilities. My Bahmi can now take a leap and I am able to access areas where normal jump are not accessible. It is fun, hehe. This time, I completely abandoned my Warrior tank since we’re making Rukuso tank instead. I just focused on my Chloromancer because it’s fun and I can aid as a half DPS and support.

I didn’t abandon my Warrior until later on when I did the long series of quest in Titan’s Well. In this beta, I switch back and forth between my Paladin and my Chloromancer a lot. In order to level my Chloromancer up, I grind through the quest in Stonefield all the way to Granite Falls. Our group (Rukuso, Bonnie, and I) continue to do Deepstrike Mines. This time, it’s easier since we learn from our previous encounter. We got some more members to join and when we finally reached Gatekeeper Kaleida, we were able to kill it because we have enough DPS focusing on the Earth Crystal. Everything else is just Tank and Spank. After the instance, we were excited and so I told everyone, “Let’s go do Foul Cascade!”, and they agreed. Note that Bonnie and I are level 26 at this point, Rukuso is at 27 or 28, the other member (a Mage and another Rogue) are at 30. This is a group looking for disaster, as we kept doing instance at the worst levels possible.

Before we did Deepstrike Mines, I manage to find two things. One of them is the Telescope puzzle, the other is a cairn filled with random magical+ goodies for our level. I told Bonnie and Rukuso to come up towards me to get the free goodies and do the puzzle. It was fun! I only later found out that there are dancing squirrels in the vicinity and that is where we’re supposed to get the “Dancing with Squirrels” achievement. 😦

On our way to Scarlet Gorge

Not far from Granite Falls, we hopped our way towards Scarlet Gorge and on our way to the Foul Cascade (FC). Only to realize how far the instance really is from where we are. We have to reach all the way to the end of Scarlet Gorge in order to get to the Foul Cascade. We grab the Porticulum in Scarlet Gorge, and we all split apart to find the road and entrance to the instance. Aside from being a shared zone, these monsters can be higher level than us and various invasion and nasty treacherous danger can come at any moment. And I was right. I stepped into a Guardian area and the guards instantaneously 1-shotted me. It was hiding behind a wall and when I head towards a doorway, thud! After that I just soul walked and kept on going. Near the end, everyone was confused in how you enter. I started from the bottom of the gorge, and walk my way inside climbing the long passageway only to find out it’s not all the way to the top. I then head around and find the green dot and manage to portal in.

The zone greets us with two quests, we quickly accepted. The beginning was rather sloppy. Mobs would be roaming all around and aggroing us when we were fighting the Gnar Residue. First wipe happens, and it wasn’t the last. After we clear the trash mobs and the Gnar Residue, we head towards Matron Verosa. Bad Idea. The fight itself is pretty easy, but when Lesch starts to face rape random people (namely either Bonnie or I) things gets ugly. We wipe to it many times, trying various strategies with no progress. We were fed up being 1-shotted, and almost call it quits entirely. I then told everyone to do the other bosses before coming back to this one. We head on to Krasimir Barionov and clear any Gnar Residue we come into as well as trash mobs. Those bigass trash mob hurts, but we had no problem with a Cleric and Chloro healer.

Krasimir is relatively easy. The fight is about 4 waves. The first wave he will summon 5 Animate Corpses. The second wave he will summon 3 Reconstructed Corpses. The third wave he will summon 2 Reconstructed Abominations. These Abominations will periodically be buffed by Krasimir and will gain in size, take it down first. The final wave is Krasimir himself. He can cast Dark Touch that can have AoE DoT effect on the targeted person. They can be dispelled and pose no problem if the healer can keep up on the cure. He also cast Void Bolt and does an ability called Shout of Rage. Shout of Rage is a point blank AoE knockback ability. We killed it easily and were looking at the loot. Someone *cough* Bk, the Rogue, decided to touch the altar and a mob spawned killing him while we were enjoying rolling on the item. LoL. We head on to the next boss, Surin Skenobar.

As we head towards Surin, the trash mobs killed us when more adds aggro us. We soulwalked and resurrected and cleared them. Surin is pretty easy, just keep the heals up as she cycles her abilities. Her abilities are Shrapnel Blast (instant cast DD spell), Void Charge (longer casting spell which can be interrupted), and Hail of Bullets (teleports 5 times to random party member and attack them).

When these two bosses are killed we turn in our quest and head on to Verosa again. This time it was progressing smoother than before. We don’t know why though! We manage to get to Gurze, but then wiped afterwards. Once again stacking close doesn’t do jack since Lesch was able to 1-shot Bonnie or me with or without the Staggering Blitz move. We were in close range too, and it still did that. After many wipes and two soul mending, we manage to defeat her. Yes, the whole instance was like 2-3 hours and we all had to recall and heal our souls two times.  On the time we finally defeated Verosa, I actually died on Lesch phase as I got 1-shotted. I quickly resurrected and ran my ass back to the fight. Note that I didn’t walk all the way from the bottom to the ramp to the fight, because of my racial ability I was able to jump over a ledge to get to Verosa. We cleared the fight confidently as we are able to keep everyone healed up and with Lesch being dead. Verosa phase was semi difficult as she sent Death storm towards us. With Flourish and my AoE heal, and Bonnie curing, we were able to top everyone off rather quickly.

After the instance, it was a bit late in my time. We decided to do another instance of Deepstrike Mines, but Bk had to go. We replaced him with a DPS Warrior, and cleared the whole area rather quickly. Kaleida went down even faster than before.

This was the most memorable time during Beta 6. Like all other Beta I’ve played, I also submitted bugs and feedbacks. I didn’t really get to play much due to three things: My brother coming home, Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year), and the Super Bowl. Hopefully I will play more during Beta 7 since I keep missing out the new content for each Beta. I’ll need to catch up and learn more before I play pre-release!