Why You Should Be Playing Rift: 04 – A Dusty Sack

Over the last few weeks I have become some what of a “Rift Evangelist”, as I have spent hours preaching to my friends why they should come over and play this new game.  It is not something I have really consciously done, but I seem to have a constant stream of “isn’t this cool” moments to share.  This series is devoted to these little sometimes overlooked features of the game, that all help to add up to such a rich experience.

Episode 04: A Dusty Sack

I think I first heard rumors about my friend the dusty sack, a few weeks from the launch of the game.  My guild has a fairly active server forum, and someone posted about its existence and the wonders it contained.  I’ve commented in other posts about how this game has some ideas that just make you sit back and think, why has no one thought of this before now.  I will admit, I didn’t quite believe that the rumors were true until at some point during head start I encountered one myself.

What pray tell is a dusty sack, and why am I being so ambiguous?  It is a wondrous bag of loot that can contain, at any level a green, blue or epic item tailored for your class.  Granted some of the items you get are less than stellar, such as the way too prevalent “of the fortress” endurance items (which I am convinced are the default in the switch case statement).  How does one get one of these magic portals to loot?  Well there are several ways.

How Puzzling

Honestly it was late in beta that I heard hidden within the game were a series of puzzles.  These puzzles when completed gave you a treasure chest, that when opened produced the mythical dusty sack.  The picture above shows the first puzzle obtainable by Defiant players.  Part of the challenge of the puzzles is getting to them, and the above is located on the bottom of the deep Lake of Solace. 

This puzzle is deviously simple, in that you just have to turn on all of the lamps.  The trick is, that the lamps phase in and out at different intervals, some phasing every few seconds, and some considerably longer.  The finite resource is the amount of breath that you have.  If you locate the puzzle first, and then swim down with a full bar of air, you should have more than enough time to complete it.

As you move through the levels the puzzles get more and more devious.  The above puzzle, located in Moonshae Highlands was both difficult to get to (guarded by elites) and extremely difficult to figure out (without using a guide).  At the point in which we solved the puzzle as shown here, my friend and I had probably spent an hour and a half trying different ways through the problem.

If they keep getting harder you might ask yourself are they worth the effort?  Hell yes they are.  When you finally click the solution into place, you are rewarded with this triumphant explosion that causes the treasure chest to show up, along with an achievement and a title.  So far my favorite of the titles, is “the Hare Brained” but I am a little off in the head. 

The most beautiful thing about these puzzles is that you are guaranteed a piece of blue or purple loot from completing them.  Each set of puzzles has a different maximum cap for the level of loot you can receive.  So if you want to optimize your gear, you can wait and complete all the ones of a certain range when you ding the cap level.  I did this for Iron Pine Peaks, Stillmoor, and Shimmersand which all can reward level 50 epics, but for the others I simply did them as I got to them.

Paying Your Respects

In addition to the puzzles, there is another way to obtain the illusive Dusty Sack.  Above is an example of an Ancient Cairn, this one located in Gloamwood.  They are always hidden in locations well off the beaten path, that usually involve extreme mountaineering to reach.  In addtion to this you sometimes have to dodge extremely dangerous creatures along the way.  The cairn in Shimmersand for example, was guarded by a level 50 elite dragon along it’s high mountain path and required deft maneuvering to keep from aggroing it as you continued up the path.

As I mentioned before, the payoff for reaches this long forgotten places is a dusty sack.  However these seem to be a little less lucrative than the puzzles.  Instead of a blue or a purple, you can get a green, blue or purple, which by nature means you will probably see a good number more greens than purples.  Nonetheless they are fun to try and get to, and worth the bragging rights and an achievement if you visit them all.  I know personally I still have a handful left to visit.  The one in scarlet gorge is especially rough as it is on top of one of those bluffs, and involves some Super Mario like reflexes to get up there.

A Wet Sack

There is a cousin to the dusty sack, the wet sack.  These can be found hidden in items strew on the bottoms of lakes in the game.  Currently I only know of them existing in the Lake of Solace, and according to the achievement there are 8 of them.  Personally I have only found 6 of the 8 without using any of the guides available.  These often require extreme control over your ability to descend quickly and ascend after looting, as at least one is extremely deep within a trench.

When opened the wet sack produces similar results as the cairns.  In the six I opened I received 1 epic, 2 blues, and 3 greens.  I am uncertain if there are more out there in the world than the ones in Lack of Solace, but the ones there seem to have a maximum level cap of 25, as when I completed them on my lvl 35 warrior each item was a lvl 25.  Now that I have reached my level cap, I hope to go exploring more looking for more sunken treasure laying around the waterways of Telara.

Wrapping Up

This is another prime example of why I love this game.  Like I said, this is a “why did no one think of this before” features.  There are other games out there with puzzles, but to this date I have not played one that has turned them into such a fun and valuable mini-game.  I can only hope as we move forward additional puzzles and hidden items will be patched into the world for explorers to find.

I’ve heard many complaints from friends that this game is just not revolutionary enough for them.  To me, it is little things like this that are very much innovative and evolutionary that keep me enthralled.  I am anxious to see how this game evolves over time.  Based on the number of little tweaks and content updates we have already seen in two patches in the last 3 weeks since launch, I have great hopes that Trion is a company that truly cares about its customers.