[Off Topic]: Patch 1.11

    
Tempest Rising

     This patch was pretty major. I mean, it actually took some time to download on my computer too. That usually means to me that it's going to be big. I guess I knew that the soul changes and modifications were coming because SL is only weeks away now, but it took me completely by surprise I gotta say! Here's the details on Update 1.11.

     Telara as you know it is coming unhinged. Familiar souls grow strange, while new souls lurk in the shadows. Machines and demons battle through the streets of the capital cities. Worse, a messenger delivers dire tidings from a distant shore: Crucia's imprisonment is a façade. Soon she'll break free of the Icewatch and join her massed legion in the conquest of the planes. **

     **Totally took that from the update page for the Rift official site. It was just such an awesome intro to Patch 1.11 that I had to. This new update brings massive changes to all 4 callings, and completely changes the gameplay of all souls. It also introduces a new world event, which hasn't been set up as of yet, the time I'm playing this in game. Perhaps tomorrow?

Key Features:
     Major class changes. They completely redid all the talent tree systems and all roles got a complete soul reset. They also added new custom builds, a whole lot, and new spells to certain souls, as well as modifying existing spells and sometimes even removing them. They changed the role of some souls as well, to accommodate the new Warrior support soul. Yay warriors! This also means that people will have to relearn how to play certain souls, and how to best fit secondary souls in with it. Works for me.

     The new world event, and the stuff leading up to it. Apparently it's going to be a major event this time around. I'll definitely be participating in this one!!

     Play Free for the weekend! For any character, any lvl, you can play free for the weekend to try out Trion's new update. I guess that's a good way to get old players to return to resub. Or to garner new attention from potential players. On that same subject, I'm seeing a lot more advertising for Rift recently. It's literally everywhere on the internet! Makes me happy! I'm quite proud to be a part of Rift and I hope I never have to seek a new home.

     My opinion of the new patch? Well, I can't say I hate it. It's pretty cool and it definitely shakes things up. But playing my warrior while trying to test out a new build for her, I'm not liking it so much. I miss the way she functioned before. I was so used to it, and now they took away what I liked most about her! The ability to solo as a tank. She was quite effective because, while she didn't do any good dps, she could survive tons of encounters just by herself. She could easily tank up to 5 mobs solo out adventuring or questing, and while it took some time to kill the mobs, I didn't have to worry about her health. Now I'm afraid that she dies all too easily, even in tank spec. I don't like that. It makes me feel like I'll have to rely on a healer to do anything as a tank. I guess I'll have to do a bit more experimenting and tweaking before I'm fully satisfied on that front.

     Aside from that, I didn't notice anything different with Rae's style of play because I hadn't even put points in her soul tree yet. I never put soul points into a tree until at least lvl 10 so that I can get a feel for those souls abilities and see if I like them or not, or to find a better suited soul to accompany the main one. Although with Rae, she's most likely going to be a Nightblade for main role and the story. That just suits her personality and her play style better! lol look at me, thinking of my characters as thinking individuals with separate personalities! Silly Rpers...

     Well that's it for Patch 1.11 folks! Here's some more cool stuff happening in Rift!!

     I was finally able to get the Storm Legion expansion. I've been wanting to pre-order it for weeks but I've just not had the money or the time to get it done. Because of random circumstances, the only way I can pay for things online is with a visa gift card. So I had to actually buy a gift card with enough money on it to pay for SL. I wanted to buy the years worth of Rift and get SL free cause that was the best deal as far as I could see. So when my latest paycheck came, I promptly had my sister take me to the store (I don't drive, never have, never will) so I could buy a gift card. And home I trotted. It was so fun finally being able to buy it! I even had enough left on the gift card to buy the Infinity Edition!!!! Squeeee I'm so excited right now I could start dancing. But I won't cause my sister would think I was odd. The Extra Life gaming marathon thingy is also going on this weekend! I wish I had paid more attention to what it was earlier cause I would totally have taken the weekend off to enjoy it. Because it was pretty fun, what little of it I got to see!

     I downloaded Beta and copied Nightfever, my warrior, over to the beta server. And then I spent the next 4 hours in dimensions. No joke. That's all I did. A really awesome guild mate named Sepheria escorted me through the SL stuff until I could get to Tempest Bay, and from there I bought up so much dimension stuff that I had to delete everything in my bags to accommodate it all! There was that much stuff! And that was just the vendor stuff!!!! I can't even begin to comprehend how much OTHER stuff there is out there. Seriously. Trion is A-mazing!!!! Seriously. *serious fan girl face*. So I stayed up most of the night playing in dimensions! I even tried my hand at making my own lol.

     It's quite the experience. I can see Telara being an empty world for the first couple of months...the stuff you can do in those places?! Amazing! Awesome! My inner creative child just goes crazy in there. It's so awesome in fact, that I felt pretty overwhelmed. All that time, and the most I accomplished was building a cabin on a rock. It's just so...omg. I've never played a game with dimensions/housing before, so this was an entirely foreign concept to begin with for me. And the way Trion set it up for us, was just the gooy center! Suffice is to say, from what I've seen so far of SL (which admittedly isn't that much...) I give it 5/5. Hell, let's make it 6/5!!! It's just that awesome. I haven't been this excited about an expansion since WoTL for WoW.

     Another awesome thing I saw this weekend, that I totally missed out on because I got sucked into dimensions on Beta...was the Extra Life marathon Life Rift party thing. I logged on in live Rift and had a guild member ask me if I wanted to do the Rifts in Freemarch with him. I'm a pretty clueless person when it comes to updates and things like that, and they usually catch me my surprise when I go to log in, so I had no clue that anything different was going down. My guildmate invited me to group and I headed to his location, which was a Life Rift.

   

 But instead of the usual Life Rift I'm used to, with stages and mobs and all that stuff, this one....was full of puppies. Corgi puppies to be exact! There dozens of corgis! I was so confused. And they were so cute!!!!! They all had names like "Corgi Herald" and "Corgi Lord" And they all were part of <House Fluffington>. Omg it was so incredibly cute and awesome! I can't believe Trion would do something that cool. Apparently, they were there in Telara to save the sick children, but they were hungry. If you fed enough corgis, you got an achievement called "Suddenly, Corgis" and you got a title. Like "Nightfever of House Fluffington" or something like that. I didn't actually get the title because as I was still trying to understand the corgi thing, my guildmate asked me to come hang with her in Beta and she'd show me how to do dimensions, which I was totally in love with. *sigh* I totally regret not staying to get my fluffy title though. Darn it. Maybe next year! That's the only thing consoling me right now.

     Oh ya, and then there was the world event. Which was totally awesome too! It started out with a letter in the mail from Asha. She wants me to go investigate some strange and violent storms that are cropping up along the coastline and to investigate a strange ship that had wrecked to the North of Freemarch. So, like a dutiful little Defiant, I ran over to see what's what. I'd been to the Wreck of the Endeavor before for an RP gathering, as well as to just check it out, so I knew right where it was. Only this time, the area wasn't deserted!

     There were NPC's all over the place! It was actually pretty neat. The ship itself totally blows me away. The art and creativity that goes into making this stuff in Rift is amazing and I totally love Trion for their awesome dedication to us players! Everything is so smooth and seamless...it's awesome. Seriously. So anyway, up top on the ship, I had to turn in my quest from Asha to a strange, exotic looking woman I've never seen before. Her name was Queen Meila. Or was it Miela? I dunno. I also like to read the chat channels too and I remember reading earlier about how someone said she's the sister of Crucia. Well, wow, that blew my mind. I wonder if it's true....I've been reading all the quest text she's given so far and no hint yet. Maybe in future content?

     She does sort of look like Crucia's model that's plastered all over anything related to SL. Which is totally cool. She looks pretty just like Crucia too. Although she's wearing a slightly different get up. Meila's has white spikes or white feathers? on the shoulder armor, and a white tail feather thing. She's also wearing a gray-blue bodysuit under that scanty silver Crucia armor. Her hair is also brown. As you can see, I took a lot of time studying her lol. I wonder if she's a full dragon or a half dragon? Sister by blood? By marriage? Do they know their sisters? Do they get along? Naw, probably not on that last one...How'd they end up on the opposite sides of the battle? So many questions about her!

     From the shipwreck, Meila had me tell Asha that the Storm Legion was coming and to prepare for assault. Than I had to go play middleman to the Icewatch in Iron Pine Peaks. Cause they are the ones watching Crucia's prison so they needed to know that she's bustin loose. I opened a portal for Meila to come through, she chatted, rather quickly I might add...and then went out to wait I guess. I couldn't do anymore on the quest chain until Phase 2 apparently. Oh well I can wait! It was pretty cool, the whole thing, and a nice little diversion from normal Rift activities. Personally I've loved all the Rift world events. They've all been rather fun and distracting. Good job Trion.

Edited for Update:: Tuesday 23rd. The 2nd Phase of the world event hit today! It's so confusing lol! I had to talk to Queen Meila again, and when I went back to Meridian, it was under siege by Storm Legion mobs! All kinds of air based critters. Side note: Those griffons are absolutely stunning. Amazing creature art! I want one as a mount...or a pet...or a mount and a pet. It took like half the night to figure out that I could queue for Instant Adventure in Meridian to kill off the evil SL mobs, and then the rest of the time to figure out that the queue for it was broken! Doh! So I just followed advice I saw in the chat channels and ran around till a "join adventure" button popped up. The first one took me to Stillmore, but the second one got me into the defense of Meridian. I completed the quests for the 2nd Phase successfully, had a lot of fun doing it, and now eagerly and impatiently wait for the next phase!! Oh, also I forgot to mention. I got some really cool costume pieces too as rewards for these quests! And planar attunement levels, which doesn't concern me as much as the costume armor, RPer that I am. I can't wait for the rest of the set! I hope we get the rest of the set anyway! So far I have gloves, boots, and helmet. It's a rather odd looking set, but kinda neat too! I guess I'll have to wait for the next phase to get the rest of the pieces.