Friday, October 21, 2011

Stone Me! : Rift




Phase Two of Rift's Ashes of History world event popped up unexpectedly last night. Unexpected by me, anyway. I've been playing a mix of Allods, Rift and EQ2 this week and I didn't log into Rift yesterday until quite late in the evening. Pretty much the first thing I noticed was that one of my Ashes quests had auto-completed. It's a handy Trion trick, where any obsolete World Event quests that remain unfinished in your journal are neatly finished off for you when the next phase begins.

Some of the Phase One quests are still active and several new ones have been added. The trend I commented on earlier continues and my Guardians had to travel significantly further, through significantly more dangerous territory to complete the same quest as my Defiants. Never mind. Purity is forged in the fire of sacrifice and all that jazz.

Travel stones? Nah, mate. Never 'eard of 'em.
The new quests are intriguing. The underlying plot of the Ashes event is all about the re-opening of the Travel Stones, a network of teleportation devices that existed before the Shattering Cataclysm Civil War. Or something. I never really understood Rift's lore. I don't recall the Porticulum guys mentioning any "Travel Stones" either, come to think of it. They all seemed to be pretty pleased with themselves for setting up their own system. You'd have thought they might have mentioned it was just a cover version.
  
My brother is much tastier than I am...hang on, that's goats.
Either way, these "Travel Stones" are coming back courtesy of the Golden Maw and The Wanton, who appear to be using the system as some kind of inter-dimensional courier service. This I found out by sidling up to the Travel Stone dressed as a deer, a reckless disguise given that the two creatures I was eavesdropping on appeared to be an ogre and a kobold. Lucky I didn't end up spit-roasted.

Then it was off to try the Travel Stones out for myself. Not to go anywhere, not yet at least. That comes after the event ends, when we get to use the Travel Stones to visit Ember Isle, the upcoming high-level zone . For now we just have to prod the stone and see what jumps out.

You can't kill me. I got my claws up!
First time I did it I got a giant crab that wasn't best pleased. What a giant crab was doing using the arcane tramlines I never found out because dead crabs don't go much for conversation and it was him or me. The next two times a startled Kelari appeared, reminding me a little of the White Rabbit.



The fourth time was far and away the most spectacular It actually made me go "Whoooaah" out loud as my eyebrows crisped.

I see why they put these stones out of town now


















 Back in town, the new repeatable quest involved combining a variety of colored stones to make a resonating inscribed travel stone. Catchy name. First time I did this I spent ages fiddling about with all kinds of color combinations on the assumption that there was some meaning to be construed. Turns out it's just the bottom one on the list, then the top one. I do like simplicity.
 
Overall, another good portion of lore with some fun special effects. I'm enjoying this event a lot.


3 comments:

  1. That first step of the quest included what had to be the ugliest deer model I have ever seen. It was like a deer imagined by a guy who did custom vans in the 70s.

    Also, I went into the quest with my beast master companion still out, which was conspicuous in its lack of interest in eating either the guys I was listening in on, or the tasty red deer standing right next to it.

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  2. Every deer but mine seemed to be on springs. I had trouble getting a screenshot without a deer three feet off the ground. What is it that makes people bounce like toddlers on a trampoline every time they have to wait for more than 5 seconds?

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  3. I was trying to find the deer in the thumbnail. It was only after I looked at the full size version that I realized that what I had thought was a fox actually was supposed to be the deer.

    Wow. and Rift is actually pretty good with models otherwise! I can only imagine it was supposed to look conspicuously crappy as some sort of joke? ;)

    And I agree that the constant jumping is annoying. Wasn't there a game that punished players for jumping too much? Maybe that wasn't the dumbest idea ever after all.

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