The Tide Rolls In

Rift's Nightmare Tide expansion launched yesterday. And with our return to Telara only last week, Scooter and I were sort of primed to get right in and check it out. Since I wasn't really tracking the date of the expansion other than "some time this fall," when I discovered there was a patch to load, I initially assumed it was the Halloween event. Until I started reading the patch notes (which, honestly, I rarely do). Rift 3.0 brings lots of changes and new things. Stats have been simplified a bit, like Deflect being rolled into Block. The Warrior soul "Reaver" has received a complete overhaul, warranting its own section in the patch notes. And, of course, there are new zones, new instanced dungeons, raids, etc.

We are concentrating on new characters, and our highest level characters are not even through the Storm Legion content. So Scooter and I were not in a position to check out the Nightmare Tide zones. The plus side to sticking to lowbies was that we didn't encounter huge crowds fighting around us like Belghast did.

We did, however, get a chance to try out the brand new Minion system. I assumed at first that minions would be like some kind of combat companion like SWTOR or EQ2 have. However, it bears more resemblance to STO's Duty Officers mixed with Neverwinter's Professions, where you send your minions out on adventures to collect stuff for you. The interface is kinda cool, more like a card game than anything else. Scooter and I bought all the basic minions, who turn out to be creatures, rather than humanoids (Stofie is a shrimp, for instance). The adventures range from one minute to several hours, with corresponding costs and rewards. And many are amusing, though there seems to be little choice beyond the four on display at any given time. Unlocking adventure slots costs credits (in other words, RL money) and I accidentally bought one because of where the button is on the interface. Overall, Minions seem like a cute diversion, though an offline interface through the Rift mobile app would be really cool.

I totally stole this screen from Belghast, I was going to replace it, but my interface looks basically the same.

We were looking at crafting last night, as well, and I ended up going with Dream Weaver, among other things. DW is a "new" crafting profession (introduced in January, 2014) that is able to create Dimension (a.k.a. Housing) items and effects, including whole Dimensions. Seems like it may be quite a resource sink, especially given that the resources it uses are artifacts (a.k.a. Shinies). So I am torn between using Shinies to fill out my own collections or using them as the crafting materials for my Dream Weaving. DW-crafted items seem to go for quite a bit at the Auction House, but I noticed they were all buyout only, so the prices may be wishful thinking on the part of the crafter/sellers.

I ended up raiding the guild bank of House Stalwart of a bunch of Shinies, but I don't want to seem too greedy. On the other hand, prior to last night, it had been over a month since anyone had touched the guild bank, and House Stalwart's message of the day can be paraphrased as "Take the Shinies."

Having just plunked down a bunch of dough on patron status and other goodies, I was not prepared to purchase any of the Nightmare Tide special editions with their bonuses and boosts. We'll see next month whether we are still enjoying ourselves and want the goodies. I really like Rift, but I am cautious about making the investment only to leave in a few weeks like the last time we played.

And I kind of hate that, too. That indecision about making a commitment to my hobby.

~~~

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.