Twenty Gold and My Sanity

Today is a fairly auspicious day for no real reason other than the fact that my wow account is officially dead now.  I feel like I should tell my characters to rest in peace or something.  I am extremely happy in that it means I can finally rebind the stupid accounts to the physical dongles, file them away in a drawer, and upgrade my stupid iphone.  I have been putting off an operating system upgrade for ages because of the horror stories of getting locked out of the mobile authenticator.  Now I can do so in peace and see if it improves the glitchiness with my stock iOS 4.0.

Have Rift Will Close

20g_DeathRift

Last night went nothing like I expected it to.  I had originally planned on being gone, I had originally planned on traveling to a nearby town to meet a seller from craigslist and buy a laptop.  However since the seller has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, and is no longer responding to text or phone call, those plans went out the window.  On a side note, I am honestly hoping that nothing serious has happened, considering the last I heard from the seller he was boarding a plane to come back to Oklahoma.

Since my evening did not follow its normal plan, I decided to hang out and work on daily quests and rifts.  Recently I just have not been in the mood to do anything serious, and by serious I mean instancing.  As a tank, you are responsible for a good bit of the success and failure of any group you are in.  I just have not felt like wearing the leader hat the last few nights, so as a result I have participated in whatever invasions that have come along.

In my search to “catch them all” for the event, I have managed to get the 3 companion pets, and the bauble that makes you look all shade touched.  I’ve gathered about 150 more otherworldly sourcestone towards trinket that makes you look like the necromancer rogue pet, which costs 500.  I figure a few more days of daily quests and closing rifts will let me get all the spiffy limited time doodads.  In all my rifting however I still have yet to see a mount or any of the shadetouched weapon caches.  Here is hoping for a pony before the event closes.

Wrath of Kain

20g_stillmoor

With yesterdays hotfix the level of intensity of the event was increased, and with it seemingly the frequency of major zone invasions.  I had heard rumor these existed, as a few of my guild members were in the server first level 50 major zone invasion last week.  However until last night I had not actually seen one myself.  I was carefully picking my way through my Order of Mathos daily quests when it hit.  Alsbeth was attacking Stillmoor, and we were about to be caught in the balance.

Within a few moments, the zone was lit up like a plaque victim with purple spots, each one pouring out all manner of nastiness.  The Defiant player-base formed up a raid and began working our way through destroying the pillars.  Each pillar, used in the summoning ritual was guarded by a zone boss, of similar difficulty to the normal invasion bosses.  The fact that the invasion had 4 pillars, and therefore at least four bosses was in itself impressive until we started moving across the land.

In our travels closing rifts, we managed to encounter 4 bone dragons, 4 giant constructs, and 4 archlichs.  There might have been more of these world bosses, but these were the ones I managed to see myself.  So that in itself makes a minimum of 20 boss type mobs up in Stillmoor at one time.  Each one of these bosses seemed to be capable of rewarding players with the rare quality Ancient Sourceshards.  With teamwork we managed burn through the rifts, destroy the pillars and shift the event into the next phase.

At this time, the map blew up with footholds, moreso than I have ever seen in a zone before.  While we burned through the invasions that were pouring out of the footholds, a group of players dedicated themselves to holding vigil at Zareph’s Return.  In this event, that was the key location that we had to keep from falling.  After all the fighting we managed to push into phase three, and face the invasion boss Kain.  This went as quickly as all rift bosses seem to, as everyone in the zone dog piled his location.  The reward for completing this epic invasion, was the fabled epic Ancient Sourcestone.

Wrath of Crucia

20g_chancel

The wild ride in Stillmoor was over in about thirty minutes and so shortly afterwards I was back to doing my daily quests.  After an hour of chatting with guild and picking through quests, I heard the call go out that a greater invasion was hitting Iron Pine Peaks.  Considering I needed more Ancient Sourcestones, I rode to the nearest porticulum and popped into Whitefall.  It was with some trepidation that I joined the battle in Iron Pine. 

Last week, as I said some of my guild had participated in a major invasion, that happened to be in this zone.  Problem is, that night the invasion took over four hours to finish.  I looked at the clock, knowing I had roughly two hours of playtime left, and jumped into the fray hoping for the best.  The main issue with the IPP invasion, is that for some reason when it reaches phase two, the number of air rifts that spawn in the zone are at a minimum.  In addition to this, there is one known rift location in the far north of the zone that never seems to count towards the quest completion totals.

Knowing ahead that we more than likely were in for the long haul, it changed the way we approached the event.  Myself, Caspian, and a healer that was in zone Aran, quickly organized the raid into three basic goals.  The idea was that to hold out as long as we could, we needed to stop invasions from spawning.  In order to do this we needed to kill all of the rifts as they spawned as well as destroy all of the footholds.

Caspian charged off with a group that focused on closing the rifts, Aran lead up the defense of the Chancel of Labors, and I broke off with a small team and began systematically destroying each of the footholds in a sweeping pattern.  Within an hour we had whittled down things to where the majority of spawn points were down.  Each time an air rift would spawn, coordinates would be linked to the raidchat and a party would barrel off in that direction, quickly dispatching it. It became a waiting game. 

Since we closed down most of the possible spawn points, it meant that the few remaining spawners were constantly streaming mobs out to attack us.  Caspian and I had both gathered force at Whitefall in an attempt to salvage the town, but we both noticed that a massive invasion wave was heading straight for the Chancel.  Over time the defenders that were there, had splintered off to attack other things in the zone, and our map was indicating that a fairly skeletal crew of “purple dots” remained.  Over mumble, in a last minute decision we broke for the porticulum, thinking it might be our only chance to help save the wardstone.

We sprang from the portal, rounded the Chancel and had just enough time to charge an onslaught of enemies that were streaming down the path.  Each of us in our tank specs, furiously tanked at the wall of death.  It felt exactly like one of those action films, when the reinforcements arrive just at the right moment to turn the tide of the battle.  Caspian and I were those reinforcements, we were getting to turn the tide.  This outrageous assault on the Chancel continued for another thirty minutes to an hour as we turned away wave after wave of attackers.

Epic Defense

20g_Essences

The event in Iron Pine Peaks was over three hours of constant fighting.  During this time I gained over 6000 planarite, and countless other doodads in the process.  I have to say this is precisely why I love Rift so much.  What would have otherwise been a down night, was turned into an epic fight against good and evil.  We didn’t spend time in an instance, or get amazing loot.  Instead we the players fought back and defended our allies as the world raided us.

The biggest thing for me at the end of the night as far as gains however was the fact that I managed to secure two of the precious ancient sourcestones.  With these I purchased two of the epic greater essences from the rare planar vendors in Stillmoor and Shimmersand.  They both proc amazingly often, and I am extremely thrilled to have them.  More importantly I have an epic tale to tell you all, about the journey.  I have said it before, Rift feels like a game that is more about the journey than the destination. 

At the end of the night it only cost me twenty gold, and my sanity.

1 thought on “Twenty Gold and My Sanity”

  1. That sounds amazing. I currently work second shift, so I am not getting a chance at participating in any major invasions, which makes me 🙁

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