The Glade 4.0

7 day free trial for people like me who want to play but didn't get in the beta and don't want to invest $50 to "see how it is".

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

I haven't played in a few days, but with SOE's entire infrastructure being down, I would imagine the lower level zones are pretty heavily populated these days....

I went ahead and gave the free trial a whirl. At first I was like meh. then I did my first invasion and it was super awesome. Then another invasion...then another and another. Eventually I got pretty tired of doing those and they became an annoyance when I was trying to quest and these things popped up everywhere and killed quest and vendor NPCs in towns.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I've been dicking around with a few different class combinations. So far, I think I'm getting the most enjoyment out of the Justicar/Shaman/Druid and Chloromancer/Warlock/Archon builds.

If not for the fact that I'm very happy with my WoW guild, I'd probably switch. Instead, I keep thinking about how nice it would be if Blizzard would copy one or two ideas from Rift.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

From what I understand, they already have.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Rift invasions used to be a lot rarer, and the players who needed specific invasions for quests were getting frustrated to log on and find out the invasion they needed happened an hour before, and maybe it will happen tomorrow. So they dramatically increased the frequencies of the invasions, which committed players like, but trial players may not. After all, if you have a goal to get completely geared out in end game planar equipment, you'll pretty much be sticking around after the trial period is up.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

Maybe. It was pretty annoying to wait around for people to show up so we could kill the footholds that would basically be blocking all access to outposts that had quests and vendors.

Another thing, it's almost **** impossible to solo as a marksman. I try kiting and stuff seems to be just as fast as I am and even if I'm faster, there's never an open enough area to kite effectively and I end up with 4-5 mobs on me and I die. They basically force you into ranger if you want to be an archer so you can have a pet tank.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Yar, marks isn't a great solo class.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I have a love/hate with the invasions.

On one hand, the rewards are good, and they can be fun... and.. defeating the invasions and rifts is kinda what the games all about...

On the otherhand, they can be a pain in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was trying to turn in a tradeskill quest before bed the other night. Ended up spending two hours trying get to the turn in in Droughtlands. having never been there before. I started in Scarlet Gorge at the tail end of an invasion, ran into another on the way... finally got to freemarch and died on the bridge... and had to run all the way back to my corpse from Silverwood. Finally got to Droughtlands, which is a level 40 zone (I'm level 34), and there was an invasion going on there. Getting to the quest NPC was a pain.

I think Kaffis might be able to give dome tips on kiting, at least he's posted sbout having fun doing it. The problem with marksman is that a lot of the earlier speed boosts require you to be hit based on my quick perusal of the tree, and I wasn't interested in a Marks/Ranger combo either. So I paired my marksman with a riftstalker soul and abandoned the kiting stratagem for a shooter that can melee once the mob gets to me if I can't kill it on it's run to me where I'm standing my ground. This strategy will get you to the point where you can have enough skills to make kiting a bit more viable. But I wouldn't know for sure because I wound up loving melee and kinda gave up on a marksman heavy spec.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

I think next level, an NPC in Sanctum offers a quest that teleports you to Lantern Hook.

But the run is more interesting, and exposes you to more of the world.


As for Marksman kiting -- it's difficult, yes. The mob density in most of the game is very high. You really have to start near a road, and work your way in, kiting through the areas you've just cleared. Even so, I find myself making use of potions to keep my HP up (I'd recommend tonics; they heal more for a given tier than potions since they're HOT not instant), because you do have to plan on taking a hit or two.

What I really recommend is dipping into ranger enough to get Crippling Shot. It's a ranged snare that doesn't break on damage (unlike Static Shot's root in MM). Couple Crippling Shot and Barbed Shot for much kiting joy. Also keep in mind that when you get buffs to your speed (hasted shot, swift shot, etc), it doesn't increase your speed while backpedaling. This is my major criticism of kiting in Rift. It can be worked around, but I feel like the turning and running to gain distance, then turning back is like pointless busy-work that isn't really representative of any useful skill. It's a bad mechanic. You can strafe at full/buffed speed, though, so another common tactic, if you've got the space, is to essentially strafe in an expanding spiral from the enemy, which is a little faster at opening distance than backpedaling, but will still get you caught eventually.

For enclosed spaces, you'll need at least one build that's either melee, or has enough Ranger to give you a level appropriate razorbeast.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Speaking of ranger pets, I just got my raptor pet.

I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet. Is this just more DPS similar to the wolf pet? I'm mostly soloing, so I'm pretty much just using the razor beast except during the odd invasion/rift where there are tanks present.

It should be higher DPS than the wolf.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I was using the strafing method. Sometimes I was able to kill a mob before it got to me, but it was pretty rare. I did see a knockback shot in the MM tree, but I think the cooldown was 20 or 30 seconds. Might be useful, though coupled with the snare bomb from the saboteur soul. I didn't really get into the character because the guardian storyline was **** horrible. I don't want to play a radical Muslim, thanks.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Well, this has been a frustrating weekend.

I had some play time set aside, and haven't been able to log in.

I had an update to my phone, and my mobile authenticator doesn't work any more. I tried uninstalling and re-installing the app, but can no longer generate the key.

I don't see an option to disable it on the account management page... I guess I'll just have to do laundry instead :p

cross posting this from the EQ forums, just for those who don't read there...

So, apparently I didn't pay close attention to the 'welcome back' program..

This statement...



...means that ALL station accounts get 45 free days of station access, not just 'active' accounts...

Edit:
We should all make level 1's and go raid crushbone (or something! :p )

Basically this.

I had a great time in the game for about a month, leveling up toons. But once I hit the level cap, suddenly everything seemed to get boring. I suspect that much of that is because I'm not in a large guild. So finding groups to do instances can be somewhat of a pain, and it's difficult to dedicate as much time as is required.

Honestly, I think the one thing I'd like Blizzard to copy more than anything from Rift is the ability to have 4-5 roles.

I'd also like them to copy the wardrobe system. I, and many others, have been wanting Blizzard to do cosmetic gear slots for a long time now. It would also be really nice if you could loot an entire pile of corpses at once the way you can in Rift.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

So, I'm curious what everyone opinion is of the 'public group' concept and the way Rift has implemented it?

It's ok.

The concept is kinda cool, but the problem from my persective is balancing difficulty.

So looking at the large Rift events, it works pretty well, allowing multiple folks to easily group up to defeat an event. But once you get past a certain number, really most any strategy or true teamwork goes out the window and it's more or less a zergling rush. Sure you might have some tanks trying to keep aggro, but beyond that folks are basically facerolling and just mashing buttons. It's fun for the first couple big events, but gets old very fast. It's even worse at the level cap, when you have a metric **** ton of lvl 50's who are bored or grinding rep all popping in for every single high level rift.

It is nice for when you're questing and certain groups of mobs are overcamped or similar, you can insert yourself into a public group so that everyone gets the kill for a certain mob, etc. But similarly, if you are enjoying the challenge of soloing that can be removed by someone else.

If you're set against Ranger/Pet you could grab Nightblade for Twilight Force, a 6 sec snare on a 10 sec CD. That soul will also increase your damage on your combo point generating abilities and finishers by 15%.

Something like this at 18:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MfiM.E0zo.V0t0z

Not sure what level you are. I'd start with Barbed shot when you get that, keep 3 stacks of Fiery Spike on the mob and Swift Shot as filler, use hasted shot if you want to kite otherwise Rapid Fire Shot does sick damage. Could get the sabo snare bomb thing or the poison enchant from assassin as your 3rd soul with 0 points.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Don't start with barbed shot. Start with empowered shot or splinter shot. Always. Staying still for cast time shots doesn't affect you when you haven't aggro'd the enemy yet, and you get a second combo point right out of the gate. Barbed shot is your second shot.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Has anyone finished the "Big Game Hunter" achievement in Scarwood?

I have about half of the rares (mostly the animal ones since I can track them), and am thinking about trying to get the rest.

Just wondering if anyone has finished it? Are any of the mobs particularly difficult? Particularly rare?

I spent most of the last two days working on this. I've gone through the trophy quest twice now and have enough faction to buy the tracking potions (for the non-animals).

Last night was particularly frustrating though. I waited at Kain's for them to announce a mob (corpsegrinder in this case), and went looking for it. I even consulted the oracle (google) to narrow down the location. I used the tracking potion, but I never found the mob. I went back to Kains and they were continually announcing that corpsegrinder was up, but I could never find him after a couple of hours of this back and forth.

Just wondering if this is a common experience. If so, I'm not going to waste any more time on it.

The only times we had difficulty finding things (granted, this is a party of 4 occasionally spreading out (of which, 2-3 would be useful, as at least one of my friends is terribly ADD when it comes to this sort of thing), so YMMV somewhat), we'd get back to Kain's and they'd be announcing a different rare, so we just assumed somebody else got to it.

I don't remember off-hand which one corpsegrinder is, so I couldn't help with suggestions on where to look for him even if it was one that I remembered the location for.

That said, since we spent the entire River of Souls event in Scarwood, and on two characters for me, I burned out on the zone before I could muster the will to finish that achievement.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Well, corpsegrinder was just the one experience I had. If you believe the oracle, his spawnpoint is just off the path to the right as you are heading up to sagespire. There is a cave there, and he supposedly spawns just outside.

One of the times I went looking for him, right after the announcement at Kains, there was an unattended death rift in the area, so I'm assuming the rift mobs got him. I cleared the rift and went back to Kains they were announcing him again/still... so I went back and used a tracking potion. I covered the entirety of Timar Foothills looking for him, with no luck. I assumed someone got him, so I went back to Kains... Corpsegrinder came up again, so I went back... still couldn't find him.

It's possible I'm looking in the wrong area (the oracle is wrong, or his spawnpoint has moved).

I guess this is what I'm looking for. If this is 'typical' of the rest of these mobs, I'm not interested. Otherwise, this kind of quest is why I like to play the game, and if the experience is not unreasonable, it would be fun to get the title.