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!

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.

Rift: Planes of Telara Beta 4

When I first heard about this game, it was in Beta 3. It was during a short session when a Justin.tv (JTV) broadcaster casted one evening. It got me interested in the game as I search for more information about the game. Little did I know that it was in beta phase, and sign-up are available. I quickly signed up and search all over the web for these beta-keys to guarantee that I would make into the next beta. As an avid MMO gamer, I must try this game I said to myself. And I did as I got into Beta 4.

The first time installation got me a bit frustrated since I had problems with the installation. It was about 7 GB download, but it was fine since I’m downloading at my maximum speed. After the download complete and it installs, there was an error. Some file got corrupted or something and it wouldn’t continue. Perhaps it was because I install to another drive or perhaps a packet of download didn’t download correctly. I had to recover/download the whole thing again. Once again, it failed causing me to download gain. The final one works at least, and I am on the way to play the game on Beta 4 day.

I didn’t wake up early in time for the server to start up; I was about 2 hours late. One of my JTV friends also got into the beta as well. We were both excited the day before the test day. My friend Momo chose the Wolfsbane server, so I went with her. We chose Defiant. When I woke up, Momo was already out of the starting zone. I hurried my way as I do my starting zone quests. Of course, I also took the time to read the text and find out my way around. This is easy because the whole interface is familiar to me. It is about the same as World of Warcraft that I have played before, so it wasn’t hard to learn the system. Prior to the game, I did some research on what seems like a class, or Soul, I would like to play. I know I was going to be a Mage, and since the Stormcaller interested me I chose that as my main one I will spend more points on. The final battle was so interesting in the final starting area, it’s RIFTTTTT. Once I got out of there, I arrived at Freemarch. I followed my way towards the quest waypoint and all of the sudden this NPC just fall down, shocked by my presence as an Ascended. Lots of LOL ensues.

We grouped up and formed a mini two-man party. Various Rifts appears all over the place and we tried them out. It was nice to learn about these rifts and work together with others in sealing them up. When we’re at Kelari Refuge, I began choosing a profession (crafting). I chose Butchering, Runecraft, and Outfitter. It is nice making things we can actually use while we level up. We finished quests after quests and head on towards Meridian. After many, many hours, we obtained all of our souls. All of the sudden, the sky turns dark. This was our first zone wide major invasion. We took on the final boss and are awarded various goods like the Orb of Heroism, and 2 gold O.o. When we are finally high enough level, we went to try our first instance, the Iron Tombs (IT). This is where I learned about the Chloromancer, a healing mage that heals based on the damage they dealt. I bought a second role and chose Chloromancer main. It was fun, and we couldn’t have survived the first boss without it. Momo was a Ranger, Bard, and another soul I forgot. I was Archon, Chloromancer, Warlock. Those are very poor soul choices until I figure out how to actually play it later on. We did IT with her pet tanking, while her bard abilities and my Chloromancer abilities heal the pet. Now, here’s something bad, I never used Lifegiving Veil! Yes, being a noob is bad. I didn’t know how to use the ability until later on. Not only that, I never put any points into reducing the cast time on Bloom and Flourish. My only way to heal the pet tank was the long casting of Bloom and Flourish. We never cleared IT though, but it was fun either way. We finished every quest in Freemarch and have nothing to do except to head to Stonefield, but we never did. As the time draws closer to the end of the beta, we decided to play on the Guardian side and see that part of the story as a new calling.

It was nice being able to choose the Guardian as well on the same Server (Shard). I chose to be a Paladin tank and she chose to be a Cleric. The Rifts here on this side was very different. There are Fire Rifts and it was fun. We did the starting zone, and came out. We took on the Fire Rifts and finally ended the journey at the academy. Torturing students was fun, esp. being Defiant at heart.