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.

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 03: Wardstones

When you first roll a character in Telara, and you notice that there are these odd looking crystal structures all scattered throughout the various towns and camps.  Like all players, I thought they were mere decoration, since I had played through the Burning Crusade era of WoW, and lord knows the outland had gratuitous usage of crystals everywhere.  However these are far more than pretty baubles to look at, each wardstone at it’s most simple level represents control.

The wardstone is a physical extension of the Ward itself, and both factions use them to strengthen their outposts.  Players within 20 meters of a friendly or neutral wardstone receive a 20 minute duration buff that scales based on the level of the stone itself.  The base buff is that you deal 10% more damage and receive 5% less damage from planetouched or planebound enemies.  Because of this, the wardstone is the primary target enemy invasions as they sweep over the countryside attacking towns.

When We Fail to Defend

Player towns become the focus of huge battles and enemy forces attempt to batter down the wardstone weakening our “foothold” on the region.  Above is a picture from Lakeside Outpost in Freemarch.  Players have neglected the invasions as they swarmed the area, and in this case Abyssal Cultists have taken down our wardstone, and created their own foothold.  When one of your towns wardstones is destroyed, no only does it allow for the enemy to gain ground, but it also keeps your NPCs from spawning effecting shutting that quest hub down.

These enemy footholds begin to spread planar creep on the ground, which allows more invasion forces to spawn from them.  If players are not on top of the invasions, this can quickly get out of hand, as each new foothold will start spawning more invasion units until eventually even the capitol cities can fall under the influence of the invading army.

For me this is one of the great features of Rift.  We play in an unpredictable world, where at a moments notice your towns can be ransacked by creatures.  As players we are forced to constantly stop what we are doing, band together, and push back the planar forces to regain our territory.  Games in the past have tried to carry out the “world at war” theme, but none of them have really succeeded.  Warhammer came close, but the world you were fighting over left you wondering exactly why anyone would die over it.  In rift we have these magnificent landscapes, that are well worth protecting, and we the players are constantly called to do so.

Ancient Wardstones and World PVP

As you explore the land you encounter multiple kinds of Wardstones.  At the head of the article, the telltale green of a neutral ward is being shown.  Defiant footholds and towns are protected by the ruby red wardstone and Guardian footholds and bases are protected by the bright blue wardstones.  However once you reach the contested lands of Scarlet Gorge, a special kind of wardstone begins to appear.

To the right is a picture of an ancient wardstone in its neutral state.  Through a quest line you gain an ability called ancient wardstone activation, which allows you to spend one planar charge to activate an ancient wardstone to your faction.  You can gain up to three planar charges by closing rifts.

Above is an example of an activated Ancient Wardstone.  While towns wardstones were destructible by players in early stages of beta, they are no longer valid targets.  However these ancient wardstones become physical control points for PVP in any zone they are located in.  The victor faction gains access to lucrative daily quests as shown above while holding one of these stones. 

While I am not seeing a ton of PVP happening over them yet on my PVE RP server, I have heard they are extremely contested on the PVP servers.  Currently in most of the zones I have found them in, they are located in poorly defensible locations.  Which would make it hard to hold the stone against opposition for long.  But hopefully there will be some ancient stones in areas that can be held much in the same way as keeps were in Dark Age of Camelot.

The Future?

Since the wardstone is at is most simple level a control point for your faction, I think in the future these will be the way to work more world pvp into the game.  Access to daily quests is nice, but to get players actively controlling them there needs to be a bigger carrot at the end of the stick.  In Warhammer online, controlling keeps gave you access to the tier vendors.  While I am not suggesting going that far, I think holding an ancient wardstone should give the players access to something unique and otherwise unobtainable.

One of the concepts I have always liked is that of the frontiers from Dark Age of Camelot.  It would be nice as we go forward to see Trion implement a series of zones with towns and defensive structures that can be taken and held by a specific faction.  I agree mostly with their decision to make player town wardstones off limits from the opposite faction, I feel there should be an area of the world where that is completely viable.

One of the big things holding many of my friends back from joining Rift is what feels like only rudimentary support for the pvp community.  I am not saying world pvp or RVR is going to necessarily fix it, but I think with the existing infrastructure in place for taking and holding an ancient wardstone it is a logical step forward to implement something like that.  I am not the kind of player that can be swayed much by battlegrounds, but I have always enjoyed keep raids because of the epic feel of taking and holding a world objective as opposed to an instance that only lasts as long as the match.