So, Fae Yule is back for another round! I am pretty excited for the holiday after seeing all the awesome new things introduced in the holiday livestream, but also because I really enjoy this holiday in particular. All the in game snow, the cheer, the fun quests, I dunno, I can't explain it but there's just something I really enjoy about Fae Yule in particular. This year, I was definitely more active in the Fae Yule activities. I spent so many hours doing the sledding quest so I could get Snowflakes, and also quite a few days were spent tracking down all the dozens of holiday artifacts so I could add them to my collection. I really like artifacts. Mostly because when you complete them, there's always the chance of getting a really interesting lore book to read that will tell you something new about an aspect of the story of Rift, but also because I'm a collector and there's just something innately satisfying about seeing the little green checkmark and the "complete" that shows up in the corner of your artifact window when you've completed all the artifacts for a given set. So I went around to various zones and collected as many of the holiday artifacts as I could and I even managed to complete one whole achievement for some. There are a lot of artifact sets listed in the Fae Yule achievement column actually, and I am quite proud that I was able to complete so many before the event ended. Anyway, on to the actual details!
You can earn currency on your alts, buy the item you want, and mail it to your "main" or the character you want the items/achievements on. All Fae Yule items except the holiday minks are BoA (Bind on Account) and can be mailed to a different character!
Do not spend any of the Dark Icicles until the 3rd phase when you've gathered all of the Icicles you can. This allows you to plan out how best to spend your currency, since you only ever get 30 Icicles per character, unless your exceptionally lucky to gain 1 or 2 from Minion missions.
If you are a Patron, or are willing to buy a Patron Pass, you can use the Currency Token item gained from Patron boxes to increase the amount of snowflakes you gain from quests.
The easiest and fastest way to gain snowflakes is to do the Sledding repeatable quests, since you can do as many as you want every day, and you gain at the least 10 snowflakes per slide down the hill and at the most 25 (With Patron status token as well as going through each of the portals at the top of the last ramp!)
There's a Fae Yule Store located in Iron Pine Peaks that has items for sale that IS NOT found on the Rift Store! Go check it out!
When doing Stocking Stuffers Achiev, move between shards, even the pvp one, to gain an extra chance at finding an item! Have patience with this one, it will take a while.
Don't try doing all of the achievements/events on the same day. You will get desperately frustrated and bored fast.
If you plan on collecting the Fae Yule Artifacts, use Opie if you have him, Artifact Tracker if you have that Patron ability, or purchase something along those lines. It will save you so much time! Keep an eye out for the Artifact zone events, and ask guildies/friends to swap or give you duplicate artifacts so you can have a better chance of completing the sets.
Log into as many alts as you need/want in order to do the Dark Icicles quest so you are able to purchase all the items you want from the store.
Try to do at least a few Fae Yule IA's each day to ensure better odds at gaining some of the items needed to finish the achievements.
The PvP portion of Fae Yule is impossible to complete unless you have a character that can get into the end game brackets of warfronts, since low lvl pvp is dead and gone. Also, Whitefall was removed from Rift and only added back with the holiday event later in the Fae Yule event, so if you don't see it on the Warfront list, that's why.
Details on quests and event activities have already been mentioned in those links above, so I don't feel the need to go into that. There are a few new things, or additional things I'll add here that were removed/changed, or added to the Fae Yule holiday event in 2016. For one thing, I've got more of a handle on how the Minion cards work, and as such, I was able to start the Fae Yule minion quest chain and complete it! It took some time, and I had to buy the starter Minion with store credits in order to get the others, but I got a few rewards along the way to help with my efforts. Here's the list, in the order that I received them: **The quest chain starts with the minion card "Grish" that you need to purchase from the s tore for 250 snowflakes and 3 Icicles, or 450 Credits**
Fae Yule Is Here! Grish Has Come To Bring The Hate
Spread some Fae Yule cheer to stop Grish
Duration: 1 minute
Locate Clues to Grish's Whereabouts
Duration: 4 hours
Prove Your Might and Gain the Help of Sundereth
Duration: 8 hours
Rewards Minion Card: Sundereth
Deliver Alcoholic Beverages to Atrophinus
Duration: 8 hours
Rewards Minion Card: Atrophinius the Festive
Show Everyone the Festive Festivities with Atrophinius the Festive
Duration: 8 hours
Xharlion Joining Grish? Convince him to join you instead!
Duration: 8 hours
Reward Minion Card: Xharlion
Seoras Must be Stopped!
Duration: 8 hours
Rewards Minion Card: Seoras
Gather Food and Set a Trap for Grish
We've Located a Village that Needs Cheering Up
Grish is Near, Hunt him Down!
Use Fire to melt the Ice Blocking the Way to Grish
Duration: 15 minutes
Gather Food for the Poor Villagers
Duration: 5 minutes
Subdue the Grendelkhan
Duration: 8 hours
Rewards Minion Card: Grendelkhan
Someone Get Atrophinius a drink
Return Stolen Gifts
Duration: 4 hours
Requires Adventurine or Credits to launch
Build up Siege Camps
Duration: 4 hours
Requires Adventurine or Credits to launch
Another change this Fae Yule is the fact that last year's holiday currency carried over to this Fae Yule! So all the hard earned snowflakes and Icicles I had last year that I never had time to spend, or never found anything I wanted, added up this year, and combined with the currency I got this year. This helped quite a lot for buying all the companion pets I needed for the "For Whom The Jingle Bell Tolls" achievement. Even then, it took quite some farming to be able to buy all those pets!
Since I took more of an active interest in this Fae Yule and participated in a lot of the achievements, I also have a list for a different achievement, named "Stocking Stuffers" This one took a while too, since it doesn't even really explain what it means. What you have to do is click on little dimension like items that will pop up over the Mathosian content. You need 50 of them in all, so you need to find 50 of these items, and they can be anywhere in the old world. The easiest places to find them of course, are in the 2 capital cities, Sanctum and Meridian. Another handy thing to note about this particular achievement, is that if you happen to find one of these items, you can shard hop to a different server and with luck, find the same item in the same place, and still get a point towards the achievement. It's definitely worth noting the places you found these items and come back to them every few hours to check to see if they have respawned yet. Here's a list of where I've found them, but I'm sure there's tons more, it's hard to predict where they will pop up, and they are sometimes in out of the way locations, hidden in discrete spots. Very tricksy Trion, very tricksy! Stocking Stuffers Locations:
4552, 1489-Candle-Chancel of Labors (Iron Pine Peaks)
3727, 1737-Gift Box-Whitefall (IPP)
3703, 1766-Candy Cane-Whitefall (IPP)
3602, 3796-Grove Keeper's House (Scarwood Reach)
Another change to this year's Fae Yule was one that annoyed me a lot. The achievement that rewards you the black Vaiyuu mount, "Nightmare before Fae Yule", had a few of the requirements removed, so now there's only 3 achievments you need to complete in order to get the mount. These 3 achievements are such a pain in the butt, it's not even funny. And the frustrating thing is, they all rely on luck of the draw to complete! It requires you have completed the Snowmancer achievement-collecting all 4 of the clickable snowmen you can set on the ground, the 25k Lights-collecting all the little glowing ball companion pets, and lastly, the Puppet Master achievmenet- collecting all the puppet pets. I've gotta say, I worked on the Fae Yule activities for a long time this holiday, logging in just about every day to try and complete just a little bit more, and I never once saw any of the puppets, lights, or snowmen that I needed to complete the achievement. I'm not sure if that was because they were super rare, or because of some lame glitch that prevented me from finishing it up. I was pretty depressed by it though.
I put all that effort in specifically because I was hoping to get that black Vaiyuu, but no dice. Sad panda!
While we're on the subject of frustrating Fae Yule activities, I'd like to point out another that really irritated me. The PvP one! Because pvp is like dead in Rift, it is literally impossible for me, as a low lvl character (lvl 40 at the time I started the Fae Yule) to complete the Santa Claws pvp Fae Yule achievements and get my little festive werewolfy pet! I was pretty sad, not going to lie! I even debated spending the Credits/money on getting a boost to lvl 60 JUST So I could participate in the pvp activities. Although it turns out, that didn't even matter because Trion, for silly reasons that did not help the pvp situation AT ALL, removed most of the warfronts, Whitefall included. Since Whitefall Steppes was the warfront needed to complete the pvp achievements, all of us Fae Yule achievers were screwed over. Finally, after a lot of forum talk and such like from players, we were able to get info saying that the warfront would be added in the ....was it second or last phase? of Fae Yule. This was rather frustrating.
There were a few cool new additions to this year that sort of made up for it though. One of those was the Fae Yule Costume Bundle, which was a really neat long winter coat, a fur hoodie, and warm gloves and boots. It was the perfect set for when my character starts doing the Iron Pine Peaks story arch, since I can dye it an appropriate color and say it's her cold weather gear! There was also a really pretty mount that was like the Levitation mount, but it lifted you in the air with a spinning ring of brightly colored gifts. So cool! I want one so badly, but unfortunately, you have to spend real money to get one since they are in the lock boxes. And I have horrid luck with the lock boxes, so I guess I won't be getting one of those! :( There were also 2 new pets, "Tags"-a floating gift box, and "Chibs"-a little Greenscale looking dragon with large eyes and tiny wings. There was also another new set of wings added to the Rift store, which I NEEDED to have since I absolutely love wings. Like seriously, I love wings! I can't remember what they were called in game, but I call them turkey wings because that's what they look like. They dye really nicely, but sadly, it's a completely solid color, with no way to dye say the secondary or tertiary feathers a different color or shade. We also got a hat costume item that gave us beards, even the female characters. This was an item put in game because of one of the Trion peeps, who really wants her female dwarf to have a beard lol.
Yesterday I did a bit of a commentary/summary on the new patch that went live! It included the winter holiday that always appears around this time of year, Fae Yule. Since there's so much going on during Fae Yule, and it's so cool and fun, I wanted another post dedicated just to the in game holiday event! I'll give a header for each section so you can know what to look for. I will cover the lore/story behind Fae Yule (what there is of it that I can find anyway) the quests, the rewards, and anything else I can think of! I also have a video that I took myself of my character Raeslyn as she goes about trying to stop the bad guys from ruining the wonderful holiday spirit! If you want to know what would make us apathetic Ascended, Guardian or Defiant, stop in our endless quest for glory, epics, and new mounts just to sing around the tree, guzzle eggnog and mead, and participate in silly events....well, I'll try to convey how much fun I find Fae Yule!
Lore Behind Fae Yule:
It's really hard to find any definitive lore behind Fae Yule. From what I've been able to gather by reading quest dialogue and doing the activities, is that, ever since the beginning of Telara's creation, the Rifts have always been present. It wasn't until the Ward was erected that the Rifts were unable to interact in such a strong way with Telara. But even after that, there were dark things that stirred upon the land. This was never more evident then when the months shortened, became colder, and the land took on a more "darker" aspect. Long periods of black would overtake certain areas in these shorter months, where evil could gain a stronger foothold. Adventurers would become lost and confused, and many would never be heard from again. Until one winter, a determined young High Elf hunter by the name of Illuminaria decided to do something for the poor unfortunate souls that became lost her home of Silverwood. By setting out small, magical candles that burned brightly despite the darkness and refused to go out no matter the wind and the cold, she was able to guide lost travelers back to the safe roads that led throughout the wood. She saved many lives that winter, lighting candles wherever she went to help those less fortunate. As the winter wore on, the story of her heroic deeds became more widely spread, and it cheered people's spirits. Eventually, this gift of setting out magical candles became commonplace among the sentient beings of Telara, leading to other such traditions like handing out special gifts, performing fun activities, singing holiday carols, and drinking spiced beverages to ward off chill. All these activities and traditions eventually became known as a festival, which was simply named Yule, after Illuminaria the "Yulemother" as she had become known as. Through the years, the people of Telara kept up the tradition of the Yule festival, setting out candles for lost adventurers, giving gifts of cheer and joy to their neighbors, partaking in special drinks, and having a merry old time. By doing this, they were able to forget about and push back the dark despair that was the winter months on Telara. Especially in the northern regions of the world, where the mountains and the snow ruled over the passes and the locals became trapped in their small towns.
During all these years, the Fae, creatures of the Plane of Life, were under the thumb of Greenscale. When Greenscale was finally defeated by the combined might of the Ascended just recently, the fae were finally freed from his iron control. Being the fun loving, trickster types that they are, the Fae immediately fell in love with concept of festivals and holidays. One such holiday that they became heavily involved in was Fae Yule. Now, a bogling by the name of Greatfather Frost and a whole host of Fae creatures, including satyrs, have decided to make Yule a holiday that no one-Ascended included-will likely forget! From the green grasses of Freemarch to the distant peaks of Iron Pine, you can hear the tinkling of bells, see the brilliant colored lights, and smell the delicious scent of rich foods. As the days grow ever shorter and darkness again crosses the land, you can find Telara sprinkled with festive lights and packages, beautiful sparkling trees and dancing Fae. Even the poor treants that have become native to Telara over the millennia haven't been left out of the festivities, being festooned with strings of blinking red and green lights.
Unfortunately, all is not as merry as it seems. Crucia, the dragon of Air, has developed an intense aversion to everything Yule. Subtle manipulation being her forte, she's been moving behind the scenes, sending her Storm Legion troops in secret to destroy the Yule decorations, wreak havoc in the northern towns, and turning the weak willed treants against Telara. One such treant, a powerful, mighty creature named Yulelogon, is now rumored to run amok across the land, stomping through the forests and mountains of Telara, crazed by Crucia's insistant whispers and mindlessly killing any creature he comes across, forcing the reluctant heroes of Telara to take up arms against him. In previous years of Fae Yule, Atrophinius, the famous Satyr that Trion seems to love plunking down everywhere, was also rampaging around, blaming the festivities on his lack of mead and furiously smashing up all the decorations and presents he can find. This year it appears like he's finally come to his senses, although sadly his mead is still gone. Seems some thieves stole it or something. But Greatfather Frost is determined that Atro be part of the holiday cheer, even though he's nothing but an ornery drunk. Did I say that out loud?
The Phases of Fae Yule:
There's 3 phases to Fae Yule. Each one will be unlocked on a specific date. You have until that date to complete the previous phase's quests. Some repeatable quests, though, will carry over into the other phases. As the phases unfold, they will reveal more information on the story of Fae Yule and what Crucia's plan is about ruining it. For this year, here are the phases:
Phase 1: Remembering the Yulemother (December 10-16)
Each new phase will introduce a story quest that awards 1 Dark Ice Bell (with a chance at a special mount, mini pet, or other goody) as well as 10 Dark Icicles. A rather interesting addition to this year is 2 real money specials. If you buy credit through the rift store on your account, you can gain a holiday item in game.
20$ worth of credit will give you the reward of a Jolly Hellbug Pet, which sounds really cute.
100$ worth of credit will give you a Jolly Hellbug Mount reward. Pretty steep cost though.
Fae Yule Quests:
This isn't a complete, comprehensive list, cause that would take too long, it's no doubt been done already on more popular sites, and I'm a firm believer in using your own brain and doing something for yourself. So while I'll give basic instructions for each quest, I'm not going to sit down and draw you a step by step diagram for everything. Where's the fun in playing a game if everything is done for you? Might as well just make a bot and go draw a stickman somewhere....All the quests marked with (Random Daily) are just that. Quests that are cycled at random and can be repeated once a day for the duration of the event.
Phase One Quest List:
Gifts of the Yulemother (Random Daily)-Use a Yulemother's Gift on those who are less fortunate. Just wander your capital city until you find a "humbug". Hint: they also have grey clouds above their heads.
Reward: 1 jingling bell (a container with random Yule rewards inside) and 25 Unique Snowflakes (Yule's main currency in Rift)
Cheer Up (Random Daily)-Collect stolen holiday cheer from Rift creatures that grant experience. Go out in the world and kill Rift critters. Don't forget to mentor yourself to the lvl of the zone you are in, if needed!
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Season's Greetings!( Story Quest)-Invite Atrophinius to the Fae Yule Celebration. This is a story quest, which gives you a bit of background for Fae Yule. You need to go find Atro and go through a little conversation with him about his mead(or lack thereof) and convince him to participate in the festivities on behalf of Greatfather Frost.
Reward: 1 dark ice bell and 10 Dark Icicles (the bell has a chance of giving you a cool pet and not sure what the Dark Icicles are for yet)
Sled Slalom (Repeatable)-This quest you get after you first gain the quest "Sledding and Snowmen", found with the other questgivers in Sanctum/Meridian that tells you to go through the portal into Iron Pine Peaks. Once there, follow the road of candy canes to another quest giver, who gives you this quest, which is repeatable as many times as you want in a day. Grab a sled at the top of the hill(follow the flags up the hill to find the platform) and slide down through the gates(again, flags, alternating Guardian and Defiant themed) and over the final jump. You will be flung a ways, be knocked off your sled, and land in a snowbank surrounded by candy canes. Just get up, follow the candy cane road back to the questgiver, and start over, or take the giant portal back to Sanctum/Meridian.
Reward: 5 Unique Snowflakes
Snowman Snowpocalypse (Repeatable)-Grab your sled at the top of the hill and hit snowmen on your way down. Explanation on how to get there is in the previous quest description. Note that this quest can be kind of a pain because every time you go over a slight bump or a turn, your sled has a tendency to shoot you miles over your intended target, forcing you to backtrack if you want to complete the objectives. You need to hit 10 snowmen as WELL as complete the sledding course for this to count.
Reward: 5 Unique Snowflakes
Note: After the first few times, I don't find these quests entertaining enough to be worth the 5 snowflakes. The novelty wears off after the first few quest completions.
Light the Way (Random Daily)-Not marked as a story quest but gives you some lore info on Yule and Illuminaria. The objective is to use a special candle to lead 3 lost travelers to safety out of the darkness. This quest kind of confused me a bit at first. What you do is go outside the city and find large patches of black smoke. Inside the black smoke is a terrified lost traveler. Just place the candle near or on top of them, and it will dispel the dark cloud. Can only be done in Freemarch or Silverwood.
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
A Frosty Free For All (Random Daily)-Celebrate Fae Yule with a fun snowball fight. Hit 8 combatants with a snowball. You can hit players or specific npc's that run across the snowball "arena", called Brazen Reveler(Guardian) and Fearless Celebrant(Defiant). You have to be in a specific area of the capital city in order to do this quest, probably because otherwise it would just get annoying for anyone else...you'll know when you're in the right spot cause you'll get a snowball icon on your action bar and your character will glow green. It's a small area marked off by a line of snowboglings
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 5 Unique Snowflakes
Dashing Through the Snow (Random Daily)-Collect 10 white flowers(called Icebuds) located around your capital city to feed to Greatfather Frost's Vaiyuu. The icebuds are easy to spot, they are sparkling frost covered white flowers found all over in Sanctum and Meridian. Grab 10 and done!
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Holiday Thievery(Random Daily)-Collect stolen gifts from Air Rifts that grant experience. You need to collect 2 of the gifts. Don't forget to mentor down if applicable so you get credit!
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Stormproofing The Wardstones (Random Daily)-Use your character's Ascended ability "Nexus Infusion" on a Wardstone. There's one right outside Sanctum across the bridge and outside Meridian once you go down the steps. Just target the Wardstone, and click on your Nexus Infusion spell. You do need to have at least 1 Planar Charge though in order for this to work. Planar Charges are those little blue crystals on the far left side of your character portrait, at the bottom. You can commonly hold 3, but characters can extend that with PA lvls and other things. When you use the Nexus Infusion ability, one of the Planar Charges will be lost and you'll have to close a Rift to recharge.
Phase 2 Quest List:
Surely Sober Satyr (Story Quest)-Atrophinius is mad that he's sober and he's not enjoying himself, so wants you to go fetch some things to make some alcohol for the poor satyr. Collect some Wassail from Greatfather Frost, then go to Freemarch (Guardians and Defiant both have to go to Freemarch. Seems only fair since Atro was in Silverwood for the 1st part) and collect:
5 Frostblossoms, 5 Nutleaves, and 5 Winterglory
Reward: 1 Dark Ice Bell and 10 Dark Icicles
Wassail for Atrophinius (Random Daily)-Collect 5 bowls of Fae Wassail located around the capital city. They are easy to spot. They are small stone dishes with green liquid that sparkle to indicate they are quest items.
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Baffling Crucia's Winds (Random Daily)-Close Air Rifts that grant experience. Exactly what it says. Go find some Air Rifts, which are the pretty silvery Rift markers on your map. Don't forget to lower your lvl if in a low lvl zone.
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Deck the Halls (Random Daily)- Go to the Lodge of the Planes (Guardian) or Spirit of Rhaz'ade (Defiant) and place holiday wreaths on the walls. These 2 places are the capital cities' taverns/Inns, and aren't hard to find, especially if you play on an RP server.
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
The Safest Way (Random Daily)- Kill 15 Rift creatures that grant experience. Just go out and beat up some Rifts. Just remember to mentor down!
Reward: 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Phase 3 Quest List:
Gift For a Bogling (Story Quest)- Rescue the 5 stolen presents that Crucia's forces have made off with. You'll have to travel to Iron Pine Peaks for this quest. The location is the Howling Caves, which is north of Whitefall. Inside the cave, the piles of presents will just be laying around for you to click on. Keep moving as you pluck up the presents, because they don't have a normal respawn timer, instead appearing elsewhere once picked up at that location. Kind of weird.
Reward: 1 Dark Ice Bell and 10 Dark Icicles
Yuletide Exchange (Daily)- This quest is a bit different than the others. For one thing, the quest giver is in a random spot. In Sanctum he's up on the top balcony of the Inner Sanctum and in Meridian he's located in the same part of the building as Orphiel is. Just go inside, and go up the ramp behind the Wedding Co-ordinator. He's located just above our heads in that main room. You don't need to use the little portal thing in the center of the room. The quest wants to take a present from the pile next to the questgiver (a bogling named Rellop) and deliver it to someone in need in a random location around Telara. But don't worry, you can take a shortcut to get there. Next to Rellop is a giant magical wreath portal. Just jump through it and you'll arrive next to who you need to deliver the present to. Once done, just jump back through the portal again.
Reward- 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
That's the Fae Spirit (Daily)- Drink from a bowl of Fae Wassail, which as far as I can tell, is a really cool alcoholic drink that also has the benefit of transmogrifying your physical state into something else. In this quest, that happens to be a Faerie, or a Satyr. Once you've drank from the bowl, which can be found in a few out of the way spots around the city, you need to go kiss someone in 3 separate locations. This quest was actually the most annoying for me because I couldn't figure out how it worked. Just walk over to the spot you need and type /kiss. You don't need to target anyone. You can tell your at the right location because there will be a big red bow and some mistletoe above you. It's neat seeing the interaction of the Fae NPC's as you perform the deed.
Reward- 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Nightmare Tide (Plane of Water) Quests:
Bring Me Gifts! (Daily)- Bring Captain Jack Skyeling (located at Port Scuddra) a gift off the corpse of a random mob. Just go out in the surrounding area, kill the specific mob, loot the gift, and return it to the questgiver.
Reward- 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes, with the addition of 50 rep points for the Cerulean Rhenke
Spirit the Kindling of the Season (Daily)- This quest is located at Ghar Station Rosh in Draumheim. You need to go out and slaughter some treants that are causing trouble and bring 8 pieces of kindling back to the questgiver.
Reward- 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes, with the addition of 50 rep points for the Atragarian faction
Visions of Sugar Plums (Daily)- Located at Ghar Station Mem in Goboro Reef. You need to jump up onto a bed and dream up a present for a specific NPC. The NPC will differ from day to day, and could be located in a different spot, at the Temple of Ranri. You have to interact with an item in order to begin dreaming.
Reward- 1 jingling bell and 25 Unique Snowflakes
Faeblight Sparkle Returns (A High Level Quest)- Collect 500 Faeblight Sparkles from various tasks around Telara. Once you have 500, you can turn them in and get a Faeblight Sparkling Shard of Wonder, which you can then turn in for a piece of Nightmare Tide gear. You'll have to be pretty dedicated if you want any of these. Here's where you can get the Faeblight Sparkles:
6 from lvl 65 random warfronts, or 2 if you don't have random charges left
6 from lvl 65 random expert dungeons, or 2 if you don't have any daily charges left
4 from a few Nightmare Tide daily/weekly quests. These are Spirit of Adventure (weekly instant adventure quest) Five If By Sea (weekly Nightmare Tide Zone Event quest), Cerebral Catharsis (weekly raid rift quest), Sea of Ladon (daily Raid Rift quest).
10 from Conquest if you win
1 from Zone Events
Reward- This is a one time only reward, and it will be either a DPS/Healing Nightmare Tide item or a Tanking Nightmare Tide item. Once you choose which one you want and click accept, you can't take it back and you can't get a new.
Fae Yule Minion Adventures:
This Fae Yule, you can buy a specific minion from the World Event tab in the store called Grish. You'll need him in order to do any of the Fae Yule minion stuff or gather more Fae Yule minions, because the start of the special Fae Yule minion adventures can only be completed by him. You can purchase him with 10 Dark Icicles and 500 Unique Snowflakes or 750 credits. Yes, that is a little steep. After you buy Grish, he can be sent on the first Fae Yule Minion Adventure, which will reward you with another minion as well as a chance at other Fae Yule things like:
10-20 Unique Snowflakes
Dark Icicles
Jingling Bells
Fae Yule dimension items, both previous years and current
Fae Yule mini pets
Fae Yule wardrobe armor and new weapon looks
Festive holiday food and drink
Also available, if you were interested, is last year's Fae Yule Minion Adventure questline. This one starts by purchasing the minion card: Rudy from the Rift store. It's thankfully not as expensive as Grish. 3 Dark Icicles and 250 Unique Snowflakes, or 500 credits. This works the same as the 2015 mission setup. You need to have Rudy in order to start the missions off, because it's a minion adventure that only Rudy can complete. Once you've done that, you'll gain a sequence of missions that will eventually lead you to gaining the other cards. You have to go in order, and each of the missions will help you with their titles.
Don't lose track of which missions you've done if your aiming on getting the minions, because sometimes its hard to remember which missions you've completed or not. For me, I just write stuff down in my Rift journal. Of course, not everyone has a gaming journal like I do cause I'm a crazy nerd...
2015 Minion Cards:
Grish
Sundereth
Atrophinius
Xharlion
Seoras
Grendelkhan
2014 Minion Cards:
Rudy
Ivory
Slobberjaw
Atrophinius
Yulelogon
Greatfather Frost
There's also a 10 hour long promotional adventure that you can do to earn additional Fae Yule rewards. As anyone who plays with minions knows, this will cost you 250 Adventurine to participate in. Which should be fine as long as you've done anything with your Minions to gain enough currency.
Fae Yule Instant Adventures: These can be found in IPP or by hitting the > key on your keyboard to bring up the IA window, where you can than click on the Fae Yule holiday ones, which will take you to the designated area in IPP. Like all IA's you can join and leave as you wish, and mostly revolves around killing mobs or grabbing things off the ground to complete the task. These IA's are narrated by various Fae Yule NPC's, and it's actually pretty funny listening to them, especially Atrophinius, who is so drunk he can't even narrate for you properly lol! Above is a short video clip of a part of my IA experience. I won't write a list of all the IA's, or what you need to do, because that's rather obvious once you join the queue. At the end you will face a random, holiday themed boss and gain a cache with a chance to win the Fae Yule currency and/or other item. Fae Yule Achievements:
There's also a ton of Achievements relating specifically to the holiday time! A lot of these achievements are easy to earn, just do your Fae Yule quests and you'll get the achievs along the way. Here's a list of the achievs and their requirements!
For Whom the Jingle Bell Tolls- Collect and summon the list of holiday mini pets from your reward bags or from the Rift store. There are 10 critters in total. You need to summon them as well as just collect them!
Reward: Snow Ki Rhin. A white dragon horse mount thing.
Snowmancer- Collect and use 4 snowman clickable trinket things that you can earn throughout the holiday. There's Satyr, Bogling, Holiday, and regular Snowman. Click on them to use them to gain credit toward this achievement. They are easy to obtain and can be gotten through any of the Fae Yule activities.
Reward: "Snowmancer" title and a "Call of the Snowmancer" clickable item that lets you strike fear into the hearts of Ascended everywhere with your mastery of fluffy soft snow by calling up a blizzard.
Snow Puppet Master- There are mini pets you can gain through Fae Yule called puppets and you can summon them like regular mini pets. There are 5 of them and you need to collect and summon all 5 in order to complete this achievement. The puppets are Tasuil (who is an adorable tiny corgi with a giant head), Faceless Man, Dacia, Fae Yule Caroler, and Fae Yule Spirit Singer. The pets aren't soulbound immediately, so you can actually use the AH to collect them too if you need to!
Reward: A Grandfather Frost puppet. Interesting how that is GRANDfather Frost, and when you see the NPC in the cities, it's GREATfather Frost. I also seem to remember previous years, the guy being Grandfather Frost....I'll have to check back.
25 Thousand Imported Twinkle Lights- Collect and use all of the Lights of Yule from Fae Yule. There are 4, green, blue, red, yellow. They are little bobbing motes of light mini pets that you can collect and summon like other mini pets. They do get annoying after a while though, just to warn you! You can get them like the other mini pets.
Reward: White Light of Yule. I'm assuming the same design as the others, except white?
Winter Homemaker- Buy any 3 of the Dimension Fae Yule kits from the Rift Store. Pretty self explainatory, and easy achievement! Also, if you don't want the dimension items and need the snowflake currency for other things, a sneaky thing to do is buy the dimension kits, then return them to the store unopened and refund yourself the currency. It will work for all 3 kits and net you an easy achiev!
The Nightmare Before Fae Yule- A meta achievement that requires you to complete specific achievements in order to complete this one. These achievements are:
Snowmancer
Snow Puppet Master
Winter Homemaker
25,000 Imported Twinkle Lights
Reward: The Nightbringer. This is a really cool and pretty black Vaiyuu mount with glowing green eyes.
There are also 6 PvP Achievements:
Victory: The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Win 5 Whitefall matches during the Fae Yule special warfront
You Shouldn't Have...No Really, You Shouldn't Have
Receive a Fae Yule Cake in Whitefall during Fae Yule
He Knows When You've Been Naughty
Kill Santa Claws and take on his form
A Wintery Winning Wonderland
Win a Fae Yule Whitefall match
You Are On My List
Kill 5 players while under the effects of "Santa Claws"
A Bloody Fae Yule
Complete all the Fae Yule Whitefall achievements
Reward: The Santa Claws mini pet. A cute little white werewolf with a santa hat
There are around 12 Other Achievements that aren't on this list, because they require doing a whole bunch of tasks or aren't really spectacular in the rewards department, although a few of them give you a title or some tiny award. These are:
Fae Yule Grande Cape
Stocking Stuffers
Fae Yule Feasting
Sled Race 2000
Naughty, Definitely Naughty
New Silent Night
Inappropriate Gifts
Sometimes The Thought Is Not All That Counts
Making A List, Checking It Twice
Seasonal Work
Things That Go Bump In the Night
Like Every year, I'm having a lot of fun so far this Fae Yule. It's a nice break from trying to save the world every day to relax, enjoy the holidays, drink Wassail, and go sledding on the mountain! There are plenty of adorable mini pets to snag, cool mounts to shoot for, and neat zone events to participate in. If you turn your in game volume on while doing the Instant Adventures in particular, you can hear Greatfather Frost and Atrophinius talking about their experiences. Atro in particular is very funny with his drunken commentary on the Storm Legion. He really hates those guys, eh? As soon as I've done checking everything out for the day I'll post some pictures to go along with this summary. Actually, I think this is the most detailed summary yet of an in game holiday! This is in part, thanks to research on the interwebs about Fae Yule and that I actually have free time to sit down and write up an extensive guide to the holiday! (AKA I'm broke from BlizzCon and Christmas and therefore can't afford to make any new cosplays or go shopping or do any of the other millions of things I'm always working on instead).
So, happy holidays everyone, enjoy your Fae Yule, but don't drink too much Wassail (or eggnog hehe!) and try not to get on Atrophinius's bad side. I can't believe that 2015 is already ending. It feels like it just got here. It's so shocking that as we get older, the years seem to just blur by. But I had a great year, nothing that I regret too much, and I'm looking forward to the year 2016! Especially BlizzCon 2016! Although I plan on adding a few other cons to next year too, if I have time and money! I have so many non Blizzard cosplays I'd like to try, including a Rift one! If you're curious to see any of my cosplay, by the way, you can find a link to my page in the About The Journalist tab of my blog! :)
So, it's that time of the year yet again! Wow, time does fly by, does it not? It's crazy how it feels like just yesterday I was beginning to write this blog! And now it's Christmas. Or rather, Fae Yule! I've got my tree at home all decorated with shiny lights, I've got my stockings hung, and I've got holiday music playing in the background. Now it's time to settle down with some hot chocolate and write info on this year's Fae Yule!
It's rather exciting this year, mostly because I've got a bit of a handle on how the quests work now, and since I have more free time also this year, I can enjoy the festival instead of just logging in quickly here and there! Most of things are the same this year as they were in 2013, except for the introduction of some new quests, and of course, more and new achievements! I like that they update each year's things, because otherwise it would get boring for those who've already done it previously!
The two capital cities, Sanctum and Meridian, have gotten more snowy this year, and appear to be stuck in a winter wonderland. Which I very much like! It looks so pretty and snowy! There's also snow falling softly.
The currency for this year is Dark Icicles and Snowflakes, which you get from doing the quests and dailies and you can then turn them in for nifty rewards!
Fae Yule started on December 11th this year, and ends January 8th, so we have tons of time to do each of the phases, of which there are 3, as well as enjoy the holiday spirit in the game and out!
The 3 phases of Fae Yule are called:
Remembering the Yule Mother (Dec 11th- Dec 17th)
Reclaiming Fae Yule (Dec 18th-Dec 24th)
Fae Yule Celebration (Dec 25th-Jan 8th)
If you log in to your character and want to do Fae Yule stuffs from Tempest Bay, just go up to the main area/plaza place and look for the mass of most players and/or where the wreaths and snow and holiday npc's are all located. If you click on one of the snow critters of your faction (they are specific to each faction, ya) it will magically whisk you away back to your home city, where you can then begin your snowy, wintery adventure!
If you're Guardian, the quests are all located by the steps in Sanctum, near the giant winged statues. If you are Defiant, the quests are located where all the holiday stuff is located, in that one little nook on the far side of the city, across from the warrior and training dummy area.
As well as the myriad quests and daily quests you can do in Meridian and Sanctum, you can also go and do Nightmare Tide holiday quests! There's 1 weekly and 3 daily quests you can do for Fae Yule in the Nightmare Tide zone/expac thing. They are located in Flargle Plaza, Ghar Station Mem, and Port Scuddra. Some strange names, these places have eh?
And you can use the portal in the faction cities to go to Iron Pine Peaks and do the sledding quests. I always liked these ones, they are pretty fun. Although I always miss the gates and end up shooting myself off the side of the mountain every time!
Annnnd, there's also Fae Yule Instant Adventures(IA)! Once you complete the little chain of IA's, a "Fae Yule Village" will appear with vendors and npc's who can sell neat holiday themed things for snowflakes and icicles. Also, after the IA's are over, you have a set amount of time, I'm not sure how much, but definitely at least an hour, where you can find Fae Yule Artifacts. There's a bunch of artifact sets you can complete and you get an achievement for finishing them all. They don't look like normal shinies though, they look like adorable little gift boxes that you just clicky on! You can track them too just like normal artifacts! It's soooo fun!
As well as all that, there's also some kind of world boss during Fae Yule. I think it's called the Golden ...something or other. I don't remember. I only came across him at the last moment. He can be found in Dendrome, at Greenscale's Crater, and he drops some good loots. You get a minion card with his face on it, you get some dark icicles, and you get a whole buttloat of 'fragments of horror'.
There's also a really cool zone event that spawns sometimes called "There Arose Such a Clatter" that you can help complete in the zone and get cool holiday rewards from. Just like with other zone events, you have to do certain things before you can complete it. Like destroy rifts and rift creatures. After all that is done, a rift boss appears, but this time it's Fae Yule themed! Yulelegon is his name. He's a giant treant decked out in lights.
Another thing is lumps of coal, you can get from the zone events. You can take it to the brazier where Grandfather Winter keeps his hut and turn them for the event currency.
Rewards:
Merry Mink Mounts! New this year are adorable white mink mounts with adorable little hats on. They are so...adorable! Omg! Sadly, I never got one, because my RNG luck is the pits. *le sigh*. But seriously, so cute.
Fae Yule Portraits: Well, I am not really a fan of changing my portrait, but it seems to be something that's becoming popular now in Rift. There's all kinds of portraits cropping up now, most of them relating to the rift store or to raiding. But you can get these holiday ones too now!
Fae Yule Minions! A whole bunch of new minion cards, all themed for Fae Yule. Oh joy! Personally, the minion system confuses me and I don't really use it lol
Festive Winter Sweaters: Come on, who doesn't love those "ugly Christmas sweaters" that at least one family member digs out during the holidays. Personally, I find it amusing that we can now wear them in Rift! If only they had a wider selection of pants or skirts that could match!
New wardrobe items: You can get a beautiful festive cape, which I really want, as well as some weapons that are holiday themed! A few of them are actually quite pretty! Like the Ice scythe. I definitely want that one.
Companion Pets: Some new cute little mini pets are now available. There's a duck with a santa hat, which is so cute, and a penguin! Personally, I don't much like penguins (gasp! I know....) but the duck is cute.
Achievements: There's a ton of achievements as well, and I don't feel like trying to find them in my achievement list and listing them all here, so suffice is to say, ya, there's achievs! Go get them! :)
And, that about sums it up this year! Go out there, participate in Fae Yule, and HAVE FUN!!!!! Merry Christmas, Happy Fae Yule, and we'll see you in 2014 neh?
This is a special event that occurs every now and then that grants Ascended of all levels extra rewards when you are in a specific zone on the Mathosian continent. These are the original "vanilla" zones, nothing to do with Storm Legion or Nightmare Tide.
Rewards for this event include:
Bonus Planar Currency
Bonus Loot
New Achievements and Title
Sapphire Ki Rin Mount
Defiant and Guardian Crest Capes
Twilight Jester, Crimson Gothic hats
Lesser experience vial and lesser token tablets
Riot Torch
Lavender Hellbug mount
Hellbug companion pets
The Mathosian Mayem event usually ooccurs in the lower lvl zones, so those who are higher lvl can easily mentor down in level and join their fellow Ascended in defending Telara from the invasion of the planes. According to Trion, it's going to harken Telara back to the early days, with frenetic, ever-changing experience that brings players together to fight foes on a massive scale. I wouldn't know, I don't have time to log in right now and check it out. The event will have 4 phases, and will move around in Mathosia through different low lvl zones, starting at the lowest lvl and moving up as the phases change. Each phase will last two days and involve unique objectives, achievements and loot that will also change with the phase.
According to the lead designer's letter on Mathosian Mayhem, the idea behind this event was to bring back the feeling that "vanilla" Rift had. If anyone who played back then remembers, the Rifts were crazy out of hand in the beginning. Everywhere you turned there were Zone Events, and most people were so focused on questing and doing other things that they kind of ignored the events. This led to a buildup of planar foes in the zone, which then took it over, destroying towns, quest hubs, NPC's, etc. At times it became so bad that two zone events would piggyback each other in the same zone, creating twice the madness. I remember seeing my zone map being literally lit up with Rifts and other things. Not even joking. It was just a big whirling mass of Planar chaos. While it was incredibly fun and distracting and frantic, it was also quite frustrating if you just intended to log in for a bit and work on your professions, or do a dungeon, or something. You couldn't go anywhere or do anything, because the invasions were so bad. So I kind of like the Mayhem event if it brings back that kind of chaos like they promise! I hope it works like they want. It will give players fun ways and incentives to rejoin friends in early zones and experience one of Rift's hallmark features as it was intended: planar foes as far as the eye can see, hundreds of players at your side and your rift loot bag full to the brim. Of course, my loot bags are always full because I'm a hoarder, so that's not a problem...
This isn't the first Mayhem event that Rift has launched. There were two others as well, but I was too busy with work to log in for those, or mention a blog post about them. The events, as was their intention, allowed players in various states across Telara to shift focus back to the low lvl zones, allowing noob players and hardcore players alike a chance to join together and beat up some bad guys. This breathed life into the zones and let players experience the one thing that makes Rift unique: it's Rifts. There's even a special incentive to be the first one to complete the quest objectives for the event. The first 20 or so odd players to complete each objective for each of the phases will earn special achievements and awards. And an all new, unique zone event will begin appearing in the final phase and offer an all new set of achievements, titles and a chance at the Hellbug mounts and pets. I think the introduction of the hellbugs is pretty cool. I love watching Defiance so I have no problem seeing it in Rift too. Well that's all I have to say so far on the Mayhem event, since I haven't had a chance to log in and experience it first hand yet.
Wow, I can't believe it's been a whole year since the last Summerfest already! (Duh, obviously it's been a whole year, Verhysa! Summer only comes once a year, after all). I remember doing last year's awesome Summerfest events and quests and fun stuffs! I also remember all the frustration and irritation lots of peeps were feeling during last year's event. Thankfully, I never experienced any of the problems that a lot of others were facing during 2012's Summerfest, although I do remember having some difficulty with a quest in Moonshade Highlands during Summerfest. I'm pretty sure it was that holiday anyway. But anyway, on with the new stuffs! Speaking about being an entire year...It's been an entire year nearly to the day since I started this blog! Can you believe it!!!??? I started it on July 25th of 2012 and here I am an entire year later and still going strong! I'm so proud of myself for sticking to it, and I'm glad I started this blog because I've learned a lot about Rift and had a lot of fun writing it! I look forward to another whole year of the same! :)
I am a bit late in updating this post, despite having put it up on the day the event came out, mostly because I was dead tired on the 26th and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep, and also because I hadn't had a chance to experience anything of this event yet so there wasn't much to write. Now though, I can happily say that I'm eager and ready to have fun during the fest! First thing I noticed when I logged in was that the daily and weekly patron gift thingies have changed to now say "daily/weekly Summerfest patron gifts". Note the Summerfest part of that. I'm still a little confused on the whole patron/credits/rex/loyalty stuff. Actually, I'm dreadfully confused, so I just ignore most of the stuff that I find in my gift box. It doesn't make any sense to me and maybe at some later date when I have time or the inclination, I'll go through my entire bags and my bank and organize everything and figure out what all this stuff that I keep getting from the store is. But in the meantime, onto the actual Summerfest stuffs!
When you log in on the day that the Summerfest event goes live, you get a little note in your mailbox from Shyla Starhearth that goes like this:
" Greetings (name),
Blessings of the Vigil upon you. Through the grace of the gods, the summer season has arrived.
We Guardians celebrate this season in a variety of ways. But by far most popular is the annual scavenger hunts! Come see me in Thontic's Row for more details!"
Key Features:
Kargath: Apparently this big, creepy lookin' dude named Swarmlord Kargath is on the warpath. His name is quite befitting his appearance, which resembles the outcome of a splicing of human and insect DNA. Surprisingly, it doesn't look that bad. Maybe because I have a thing for guys with wings. So sue me? Anyway, apparently Kargath has decided to swarm. He's gathering all his minions and unleashing hell on earth-rather Telara-and we Ascended have to stop him. Typical. Us Ascended are always solving everyone else's problems.
Scavenger Hunts: I remember those from last year! Those are what I was talking about with the quests in each zone. There are multiple tiers of hunts, each being released in different phases and should be tons of fun to experience! You get to do fun events in each of the hunts, with unique clues and interesting results. I remember one of last year's scavenger hunts was to kiss Prince Hylas. He didn't like that very much though...
Rare Mini Pets: Woot, I am an avid collector of mini pets in any game. In WoW I have like 500 of em. In Rift, only about 10, mostly because I've been so busy doing a billion other things that I don't have time to go hunting for lil pets, cute though they are. Apparently the pets are back this Summerfest! Last year, I believe I only was able to find 2-3 of the rare pets that were said to be roaming each of the zones. I hope I can spot more this time around! Gotta catch em all, dontcha know?
Summerfest Gear: Apparently, we get swimsuits and other interesting beach-side attire this year. Swimsuits, bikinis, a special avian pet, all kinds of fun things available at the Rift store. This actually makes me happy and sad at the same time. I love that we can wear swim clothes now! Yay RP at the beach. But at the same time...the Rift shop? I hope that that's not the only place you can find them because I'd really love to get my hands on at least one type of swimsuit, but I'd rather not pay money or credits or whatever they cost in order to have one. The only game I actually paid real money for (excluding a subscription) is Forsaken World and I regret that lol.
Spoils of Summer: Apparently there's rewards and titles/achievements for camping out with your mates in the wilds during the Summerfest event. Sounds really cool and a nice way to get some RP going! I love any excuse for RP. :) Also, as you complete each of the Summerfest quests and missions, and close rifts and participate in the zone events, you can earn merit badges and friendship bracelets, which you can use to buy special rewards and seasonal items! Yay for neat seasonal rewards!
Win Credits: Apparently, if you log in during the first week of Summerfest, you have a higher chance of earning credits in your daily gift box/reward thingy. Also, if you're a Patron, you have an even higher chance of earning credits! I guess that explains the change in my gift box name now that I think about it.
There's two phases to Summerfest. Phase one is Beat the Heat and Phase two is Lazy Summer.
Phase One=Beat the Heat
During Phase one, you have available lots of dailies, which you can complete to earn merit badges, which you can then use to buy stuff.
The main attraction though, is the Scavenger Hunt:
The Little Scavenger Hunt Part 1 (available during both phases, don't worry!)
Freemarch: Pucker up! - Find and kiss Jakob (Freemarch's main bad guy).
Silverwood: Hylas Need's a Hug - Find and give Hylas Aelfwar a hug (Greenscale's number one cultist guy and former leader of High Elves)
Stonefield: Troll Treasure - Find something valuable to a Troll...
Gloamwood: Tree of Wisdom - Exactly like it sounds
Scarlet Gorge: Human Barrel Ride - Go down a waterfall at the bottom of the map
The Great Scavenger Hunt Part 1 (This one is for higher levels!!)
Scarwood Reach: Plant Trees - self describing
Moonshade Highland: Swim With the Fishes - Swimming obstacle course
Iron Pine Peak: Missing Mountaineer - This one is a pain
Shimmersand: Deliver Ice Cream - Pretty easy if your high enough level
Stillmore: Lap Around Stillmore - Run around the zone
The Little Scavenger Hunt Part 2 (available during phase 2!)
Freemarch: Fabulous Fun Fishing in Freemarch - Here fishy fishy!
Silverwood: Save the Spirit Guide - Rescue mission
Stonefield: Grave Courage - I don't remember what this one was
Gloamwood: Delouse the Itchy Werewolves - Clean the infested wolf critters (there's never enough for everyone)
Scarlet Gorge: Gorging on Gold - I don't remember this one either
The Great Scavenger Hunt Part 2 (only available during phase 2!)
Scarwood Reach: Harpy Chow - I didn't do any of these challenges
Droughtlands: Puissant Paleontology
Moonshade Highlands: Attitude Adjustment
Iron Pine Peak: Locate the Book of Riddles- I actually remember this one, it was kinda fun in a way, but confusing
Shimmersand: Beachcombing for the Discerning Vacationist
Stillmore: Stillmore Sparkles
Achievements for Summerfest:
Summer of Love- Complete Silverwood and Freemarch Part 1 Scavenger Hunt challenges.
Stillmore Thoroughbred- Complete Stillmore's Part 1 challenge
Riddle Me This- Complete Iron Pine Peak's Part 2 Scavenger Hunt challenge.
Live Strong- Complete Moonshade Highland's Part 2 Hunt challenge
Reward: the title "the Aggressive"
Flea-Bitten Menace- Complete Gloamwood's Part 2 challenge
Fun in the Sun- A meta achievement that requires a completed list of things.
Summertime Scavengry- Complete all the Summerfest Scavenger Hunts
Not So Lazy Summer- Complete 20 Summerfest quests
Angling for the Top- Catch 100 summer sunfish
Exterminator- Squish 300 bugs while doing the daily quest "Bug Squishing"
There are also a bunch of mini pets to find in the open world of Telara. Here's a list of the ones that I know of. I don't know if there are more or not.
Spotted Snake-Freemarch
Black Bunny-Silverwood
Brown Rat-Stonefield
Tamed Deepfang Hatchling-Gloamwood
Scoots-Scarlet Gorge
Black Coyote- Scarwood Reach
Tabby Cat-Moonshade Highlands
Mini Mordant-Droughlands
White Squirrel-Iron Pine Peak
Green Cobra-Shimmersand
Jewel Scarab-Stillmore
We have various daily quests available in Meridian (and Sanctum if you're Guardian) that have you do all sortsa random things. Even Sylver Valis has joined in all the fun, although it appears he's not too happy about it. It seems he's been forced into coming outside to get a bit of fresh air. Imagine that. Dailies involve making Sunfish Po'boy (Raeslyn's favorite treat but not mine), fishing for summer sunfish near sunfish plants, making sunfish lures-presumably to catch the sunfish with-, and doing a race outside of Meridian. There's also quests available from Sylver, titled "Little Scavenger Hunt Part 1" and "Great Scavenger Hunt Part 1". Obviously there's going to be a Part 2 when the next phase of the event hits. I remember that much from last year. I wonder if I get to do all the same quests all over again the same as last year, or are they varied slightly maybe? Are there different achieves and titles too I wonder?? I think last year I got the title beach bum. I think. Not a very inspiring title, to be sure, but meh. I love titles. I'll go more into detail into the event itself later when it's not 2am and when I don't have to work 12 hours the next day.
Yay, Patch 2.2 of Rift brings back the Carnival of the Ascended and I'm quite pleased because it was one of my favorite world events! I loved the parades and the games and puzzles as well as the neat cosmetic rewards. Let's see what this patch holds!
Key features:
Carnival of the Ascended: Rift celebrates its two-year anniversary! To honor this, Trion is giving us the second Carnival of the Ascended, a month long festival to celebrate the return of the Ascended to Telara and the defeat of most of the dragon gods, as by this time in Rift history, most have been successfully vanquished by the high lvl Ascended heroes!
The Carnival this year brings you fun new puzzles and games in Meridian, Sanctum, Shimmersand, and now in Tempest Bay.
You can earn new masks, mounts, and costume pieces, as well as end game gear and rewards and other "shiny" goodies
The parades have also returned, although somewhat changed, as well as the piñatas.
Wheel of Fate: A new alt mode pvp battle in the Codex. Challenge and excitement await in this warfront! Try your hand and see if you can spin the wheel of fate.
T3 Planar Attunement: For those who eagerly await it, Tier 3 Planar Attunement is coming with Rift 2.2, unlocking a whole new system of perks for Planar Attunement, with more rewards to come.
Attunement of War: T2 of the pvp Planar Attunement, another highly awaited feature that a lot of players have apparently been asking for all over the forums. Let's just hope it lives up to their expectations.
Cape: A new, unique, 2-year celebration cape that you can buy from the carnival vendors to show off your Rift pride!
Free to Play for March 21-25. Like all major patches/world events, Trion is giving us a weekend to play the game free without the penalty of subscription bonuses.
New addition to the Rift mobile app lootables. "Carnival Candy" lets you scratch 3 in a row of the carnival rewards. If you get cake, you win carnival themed rewards.
From what I can see, this patch is mostly a filler patch while they (hopefully) work on more content, as there wasn't any new and interesting content added this time! Although I don't really mind as I've been so incredibly busy with real life things that I'd be sad if I missed out on some fun new content because I didn't have the time. Also, the Carnival will no doubt prove quite the successful distraction by itself. The game in Tempest Bay to remember the colors all in a row, for instance, is incredibly fun. I love memory games.
I've decided to add a special entry on February 14th due to an interesting event in game today. I checked my email today and got a newsletter from Trion detailing a unique event, called the Festival of Mariel-Taun. Mariel-Taun is one of the gods of the Vigil, which makes me wonder how the Defiant would pull off the festival, but oh well, let's not pick apart the semantics of that eh? From what I've read about the event in the newsletter, it's going to be only a few days in length, if not only for today. I'm not sure on that yet but I'll check later. The point of the Festival is to celebrate Valentine's Day of course in the game. It's also for in game married couples. A few rewards I received in my mailbox in game were 4 Mariel-Taun flower stands, which look very pretty, and 2 Mariel-Taun pillars, which also look very pretty. I can see that being a spring themed design as well!
The exact nature of the Festival is unclear to me at the moment, but it seems that select Ascended will receive a letter in their mail from Mariel-Taun herself celebrating the Festival named after her. Mariel-Taun is long thought of as the "heart" of the world. The goddess blesses all those who's love is true and selfless. She is the center of community, the one who keeps all together. She shows us love and compassion and care. Mariel-Taun is also the patron of the arts and healers. Every year at around this time, all Telarans celebrate a festival in her honor.
Those who receive a letter from Mariel-Taun are infected with a harmless and loving virus. The "love bug". Infected Telarans are then able to spread the infection to other Telarans. The point is to infect as many as possible, to bring light and love to this war torn time. The Festival is also a popular time for weddings and romance.
There are unique achievements and titles we Ascended can earn by participating in the Festival. Infect others with the love of Mariel-Taun and be ready to receive it yourself. A couple of the achievements I've seen so far are "Quantity over Quality" "Quick on the Draw" and "Try Not to Look Too Desperate". Those are achievements I've seen around me while in Meridian. It appears that most of the achievements center around the two capital cities, Sanctum and Meridian. That's probably because when they did it last year, those were the only two major cities available, as Tempest Bay was added just last November in the expansion.
So, rewards include dimension items, titles, achievements, and perhaps more that I'm not aware of yet. I've only just found out about this so haven't had time to investigate yet. I'll update this entry when I have time to play more.
Before I begin, I wanted to give a heartfelt shout out to all the families that endured the horrific massacre at the Connecticut school Friday morning. That was the most horrible, sacrilegious thing I've ever heard about and I'm pretty sure everyone was in shock to hear about it. And before Christmas too....just disgusting.
I'm not a big celebrator of Christmas. It's not my thing. In fact, it's not even my religion. I do love all the pretty lights and ribbons though, I admit, and having a pretty decorated tree in your living room is a nice addition to brighten things up. Not to mention you can feel the mood change as it gets closer to Christmas. People start getting more excited, more stressed, more short tempered, more crazy. It's like a big knot of...tension. Good and bad tension. For me, Christmas is a time to look forward to having fun and performing activities with guildies in game. Last year I celebrated Yule Tide with friends in Rift and I also celebrated Winterfest with my good friends and guildies in WoW. We had a lot of fun doing all sorts of unique once a year quests, crafted interesting wardrobe items, and got a bit drunk off the eggnog. Yep, that was my Christmas!
This year is all about Rift, and I'm happy to say that Fae Yule is back! Now, I'm not sure if this is an actual official holiday for the world of Telara, or if it's just a fun non-canon activity that Trion has given us as a fun side activity. Either way, I love the idea, although I'd really like to know what holidays Telara actually does celebrate. Anyway.
For Fae Yule, there are 3 phases to the event. The first phase, which is happening for...well I'm not really sure how long it will go on for since when I looked at the date and other info in the world event panel they still had last year's date on it. Doh! So I'm not sure about that. The first phase though, is called "Remembering the Yule Mother". The second phase is "Reclaiming Fae Yule" and the 3rd phase is called "Fae Yule Celebration". I can't wait to do all the stuff for all of them! Oh...I wonder if the tavern will have hot chocolate??
First Phase: Remembering the Yule Mother=So far, this is the only phase available. When the other phases become unlocked I'll add them to the list below. I've spent the day running around doing the various tasks given to me in Meridian by Grandfather Frost and various other helpers he has working for him. He has us participating in free for all snowball fights, sledding competitions, closing Rifts, and a yearly tradition that involves using candles to help a lost traveler find their way home.
According to Grandfather Frost, you are to reenact a honored event from times past. The quest says "Long ago, a shy elven hunter would, in the dark of winter, place candles in the forest to light the way for lost travelers. This kind hunter became known as Illuminaria, the Yulemother. It is said, even now that on the darkest of dark winter nights, her spirit shows the way to the lost travelers most in need of her light." Isn't that awesome? A little piece of lore added to the season to give it some Telaran significance. Of course, I still would like to know if I can take it as canon lore! And why do all the holidays revolve around the Fae? I'd like to know that too. Along with lighting candles for travelers and random snowball fights, I also went sledding!
Wheeeee. It was really fun and I did it like 50 times lol. There's a quest giver in Meridian that tells you to go through the portal behind him. When you do, you end up in Iron Pine Peaks somewhere up in the mountains. There, a woman tells you that if you step on the jump pad she'll boost you to the top of the mountain so you can slide down.
So I stood on the little stone square and whoosh! Up to the top of the mountain I went. It was pretty fun being boosted through the air like a long distance trampoline. I always love free flying/falling in a game. Not sure why hehe. Than you get a sled leaning against the railing and down you go.
Thankfully, its fairly easy to control your sled as long as you pay attention to the trees and other things. You have to slide through some banners/gates and also hit snowmen along the way that are for some reason ambushing the place. Although how snowmen can ambush a sledding race is beyond me. It was fun all the same though.
A few things I haven't gotten to experience yet but will definitely be doing, are the festive themed Instant Adventures, the Fae Yule Rifts, and the festive Whitefall Steppes warfront. It just seems like I never have time to do all the fun stuff I want to do. Even with an entire day off to play Rift, I can't seem to get it all in lol! Rift you outdo yourself with keeping a player busy! *shakes fist at Trion*.
Another thing I was curious about but haven't gotten to do yet is the extra stuff outside the game. Like the cape deal, and the dimension presents for the Facebook thing. Not sure how that works but I should probably check it out at least! Maybe later tonight! Well that's it for Phase One things so far!
Phase 2: Reclaiming Fae Yule= The second phase started today, December 20th, and it's just as fun as the first phase! As I thought, there's all kinds of new and neat things to do! The first thing I did was check out the new quest givers over in the Fae Yule section of town. I noticed that this is where all the World Event stuff goes, is in this dedicated section of the town. Neat idea! Anyway, I went over there and I noticed that all the Fae Yule decorations were ruined and torn down! Who did that?! I didn't have to wait long to find out. It was Atrophinius. He just keeps cropping up all over the place! First the GSB Chronicle (where I first saw him) than in the Autumn Harvest event, and now here! Cept this time he's in a realllllly bad mood cause apparently Crucia mind controlled all the people who make his mead and he's sober. A sober satyr is not a happy satyr. So he got mad and trashed everything. Tantrums much?
So in order to make Atro feel better, I had to hunt down a faery selling Fae Wassail in Meridian and pawn some off her so I could give it to Atro and make him drunk. He said that he might feel good enough to restore all the stuff he wrecked if he was drunk again. Well, I gave it to him and it didn't get fixed. Apparently it turned into a daily now. You find him 5 of the Wassail and you get the snowflake rewards. That's okay I spose. I can always use more snowflake currency! The other new quest available now is the one from the yeti that was standing in front of those cool looking reindeer Vaiyuu. I wanted one sooo badly! Well now's my chance. The yeti gave me a quest that told me that his precious Vaiyuu loved a flower called snowbuds (or was it icebuds?) and I had to roam around Meridian collecting them for the mounts. Once I'd gotten enough, I turned it in and squeeee mount time! It was the most easiest mount I've ever achieved in the game! It was awesome!! But also kind of a let down cause I expected a long and complicated quest. But oh well!
I chose the gray reindeer Vaiyuu cause that one looked the coolest in it's festive armor. I rode it around Meridian, lookin' so fine! Still haven't been to do the festive Rifts or the festive PvP though. Ugh, I work too much! Oh, but I did see a tree spawn in Freemarch that had presents around it and circling faeries and satyrs. There were presents under the tree that were clickable and I got some interesting buffs and snowflakes. Nothing more than that though, I'm afraid. Oh well, it was fun to see anyway.
I did go to the Facebook page (after I created a Facebook account) and like Rift. I would have liked it anyway if I'd had any desire to go on Facebook...and than I went to the presents tab and got my present pile! Woot so happy! My sister also just bought SL earlier this evening, so I'm hoping that that counts as an Ascend a Friend buying SL, which means I'd get that neat cape! But I haven't got it yet and I got the other stuff...hmm I'll to read it again more carefully see what it says. I hate restrictions that aren't obvious!
Phase 3=Celebrating Fae Yule: Celebrate and exchange gifts! This seems to be what this phase is all about. The new quests involved delivering gifts to various random types around Telara. There were also random gifts laying around Meridian that if you clicked on them you got a snowflake and/or a buff. I clicked on a present lying in the center of Meridian and got turned into a reindeer! So cute! I did get into a few of the Whitefall warfronts, and I have to say, it was a lot of fun! Apparently you have to get presents from a tree in the middle of the battlefield and take it back to your own faction's tree. The first faction to gather 3 presents wins. There was also random side things going on too. Like for instance, I'm not sure how you get it started, but someone becomes a werewolf in a Santa hat, called Santa Claws. If you kill that person, than you become Santa Claws. Gets you a fair amount of achievements for doing it too. There was also another one with a satyr. You can pass it on to another person too, you don't have to die for that one to go away. I think that achievement was called "You shouldn't have...no really, you shouldn't!" Or something similar. Oh, I also finally got the neat winter cape when my sister bought SL. There was just a few days delay is all. I didn't mind! Me and my sister both got capes for all our characters, it was super exciting! They looked really nice too. I spent time doing the dailies and gathering up snowflakes. I still need so many *cry* and I'm afraid it's almost over now! When the 3rd phase started I actually ended up really sick with a fever and everything and spent all my time in bed. From Friday until Tuesday morning I just mopped around my apt and slept and took drugs. I tried going to work but I felt so awful I just couldn't! So I missed out on some good opportunities to get some more flakes. I want so many more things yet before the Winter stuff goes away for the year! Waaaaa!
I really liked the dimension winter themed stuff. There was a village just outside of Meridian that I stumbled across, run by boglings and Greatfather Frost. There was a dimension vendor there, but all the items were so expensive!! I bought what I could though. I had this idea for a frozen wasteland themed dimension, just for funsies. Perhaps for Night's dimension, (My RP main) since she's such a hard hearted Kelari. But now I'm afraid I won't get everything I need before it all goes away. Alas...I suppose I'll have to wait till next year.
Well that's it for the Fae Yule event. Long enough post eh? I had to keep adding on as the other phases were introduced so I could give an accurate description! Hehe. I really enjoyed it, and I loved that it extended on past xmas. Perhaps that means that the Telaran new year is a bit different than Earth's new year? I shall have to investigate that! I look forward to more Fae Yule next year!
A screenshot from the Rift website, of Defiant and
Guardian working together!
The Calm Before the Storm
I've had some time to look over the things that came out with patch 1.10 and I figured I'd like to put down my thoughts and opinions on what I've seen so far.
The night that they implemented the patch, I logged into Rift like usual and got the update button. Woot! While waiting for the update to complete I read the patch notes, and like I'd seen on the forums, we will definitely be seeing some cross faction co-operation. Is that a bad thing? No, of course not! I've never played a game where factions would unify for a common goal and it makes a lot more sense than duking it out simply because of differing views while all around us the world goes to pot. (Of course anyone who knows me knows that my only experience with computer games stems from WoW anyway so that probably doesn't count!) Doesn't that make more sense? Everyone knows the Dragons are here to destroy all we hold dear and the strife and antagonism going on between the two sides is nothing but petty sandbox disagreements compared to that. I've always thought it was rather silly that we argue and fight over morals and methods when Crucia is plotting our total subjugation. (You know she is....) I just wonder, game mechanic wise, how it's going to work.
I already know from comments in the guild that I, as a Defiant, can't enter Sanctum, despite faction friendliness, and vice versa. But I guess it's the minds of individuals who have changed, not the faction as a whole. That makes sense. I haven't actually tried for myself yet, mostly due to not having any time to spend playing casually, and a little due to the fact that I'm too scared to get my butt whupped by the "bad guys". When it's all over we will still be Guardians and Defiant, not one unified force. There will always be conflict in Telara and there will always be those on both sides of the fence in that conflict. That's how it is anywhere, in any situation so I guess both sides need to keep their base of operation to themselves. Wouldn't do to let Cyril see Orphiel's tower workshop or let Orphiel see Cyril and Shyla's inner sanctum now would it?
One thing I found kind of glaring and distracting, as well as a bit glitchy, is the little faction symbol icons in the guild roster. When you look at the guild roster of the guild, all Defiant characters have an overly large red Defiant seal next to their name on the left hand side. All Guardian characters have the Guardian symbol next to their name. It's a good concept, I can see where it could come in handy in telling the difference between your Defiant and Guardian guildies, but it's rather outrageously large, those symbols. I hope they can skim them down to size, they don't need to be so big. After all if we are a close guild who treats our guildies with familiarity and friendliness, we should know for ourselves which faction we belong to. And isn't the whole point to blur the lines? Than why glaringly point out which faction each one is from?
Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention was Trion's sales of Storm Legion. They have a billion different ways to buy it and get cool things. For one thing, you can buy a years worth of Rift and get SL as a bonus reward added on. With this comes that strange looking Landslide mount that everyone and their dog has as well as a title...Stormbringer I think? Than, you can get the Infinity edition, which is like the collectors edition. This comes with a strange pink, ground skimming mount with strange reptile like wings (that's actually pretty cool looking), your own personal porticum gate and a rather creepy and disproportionate little baby Regulos mini pet. I know, I can call him "Lil Reggie"....But it does seem like a pretty neat deal! Unfortunately it is rather pricey. I'll have to wait till I can afford it sadly. On top of that, if you pre-order just SL, there are a few different places you can pre-order it from and get an extra neat reward: A beautifully designed cape. Each cape is unique and very visually pleasing! I already know a few that would look good on several characters. Too bad I can't afford to buy all those editions just for the capes. Depending on which major outlet you buy it from, you get that unique cape design. I'm not sure if it goes to all characters or only just one, or if it is a costume item, BoA item, or what. I don't know at this point. All I know is darn it, I want all of them!! I hope they put them up in their little shop they have going. Which reminds me of the next thing...
Trion also added a shopping cart to the in-game system bar down at the bottom at the end. From there you can supposedly buy SL, game time, the tiger mount, a name/guild name change, and a lot of other things. In a way I can see how that would be handy, but on the other hand it reminds me a lot of those stupid F2P foreign games that I despise. Why do we need this in the game, seriously? We can just go online and check our accounts. I like that a lot better. When I log into the game, I intend to play it, not buy things. If I wanted that I'd go to the website. I don't like that extra little icon. Grrrr. But of course that's just my 2 cents worth and in the long run, I'm just a pebble among many other bigger rocks. Oh well, it's there, might as well get used to it. Although I'm not sure what key bind it is but all of today I keep accidentally hitting the key that brings up the shop and it's driving me nuts. One of those things I need to get around to is filter through my key binds and modify/remove those that I never use or find inconvenient.
Some bugs so far on 1.10 are Rogue ranger pets hitting like babies and thus reducing ranger dps by a large chunk. The in game shopping cart won't let you buy anything from it. The vet rewards vendor of the opposite faction are blank, Some characters who were Guardian that joined our Defiant guild had their icon display them as Defiant, despite their being Guardian and sitting in Sanctum. The world event quest won't consistently stay on your screen. Every time I log in, I keep expecting info on the world event on the right side of my screen like normal but it's never there this time around.
Edit on the bugs: Today there was an update and supposedly it addressed all of these issues. Yay Trion, that is why you get my money! Cause your so amazingly awesome. Also ps....there are a lot of spelling errors on the world event info stuff....
This is one of the lootable games on the Rift mobile App available to you during the World Event only.
The World Event of 1.10:
My opinion of the world event was rather reserved at first. I wasn't sure if I was ok with another seasonal event that seemed to mirror WoW's seasonal events so closely. So for the first few days I just ignored it's existence and went about my daily Rift life. Than a guildie asked me to join him in doing world event stuff and I mustered up my courage to see what it was like. Apparently most of the world event stuff happens in the Realm of the Fae. Or the Autumn Harvest realm. In order to get there, you find little mushroom icons on your map. According to my guildie they disappear after a time so you need to be quick getting to one.
Otherwise you have to run across the zone again to get to another one. They are called Faerie Rings, which totally tickles my RP/Lore fancy! I love getting more into the Fae lore. They have always been my favorite fantasy race, of all creatures/races of fantasy creatures ever. And the Fae in Rift are so cute. The satyrs are always amusing, and the little faerie tricksters so silly! I love the butterfly faerie too! (random side tangent: I almost wish they had kept cleric Fae pets the same...I rather liked my fae with the overly large butterfly wings!)
There are a buncha daily quests, and one quest that persists throughout. That quest is called "Fight for Life". To complete it you need 15 Autumn Harvest Signets. The reward for this quest is one of 4 ghostly mounts. A croc, a raptor bird, a Namjok, and a spider. The actual names of the mounts escapes me at the moment. You only get 1 signet per day apparently, by completing a daily quest given to you by Atrophinius, who is apparently running the show. I only know Atro from doing Greenscale's Blight chronicle earlier on with a guildie. I found him rather hilarious in that chronicle and he's no different in the Realm of the Fae. Standing next to him is always a hoot because of the things he's always ranting about. He's such a cute satyr! But so tall...And here I thought Kelari were tall! Other quests for the World Event include helping Atro about the Realm of the Fae with odd tasks, like kicking those little compost shamblers back to their pen (they are constantly getting out ugh!), saving minions from frostjacks (it took quite some time to figure out why I kept getting turned into a snowman..), freeing trapped life forces (rather confused by that one...), and finding Autumn Fungus Caps, which are apparently radioactive green mushrooms that can be found everywhere in Telara. I actually wrote a rather amusing story about my main character's experience in tracking those shrooms. I used to have a link to it, but it seems to have been lost, I'll post a link when I relocate it!
My take on the World Event this time around? I'm rather liking it so far! Of course I've loved all the world events! Yes, even the summer festival one! I love special little events that send me out on tasks!! It's most of the reason I play Rift.
This event has a lot of interesting things to do around the alternate realm. In addition, I drank one of those autumn eyes potions and lo and behold I suddenly was in shiny heaven. There were like thousands of artifacts ALL OVER!! My shiny senses were going through the roof. I drank all of my potions in rapid succession trying to get my hands on all the shinies I could see. Unfortunately I ran out of potion and inventory space before I was able to collect even half the shinies I wanted. I'll have to go back often and hunt for more!
And that's it for now!
While we're on the subject of frustrating Fae Yule activities, I'd like to point out another that really irritated me. The PvP one! Because pvp is like dead in Rift, it is literally impossible for me, as a low lvl character (lvl 40 at the time I started the Fae Yule) to complete the Santa Claws pvp Fae Yule achievements and get my little festive werewolfy pet! I was pretty sad, not going to lie! I even debated spending the Credits/money on getting a boost to lvl 60 JUST So I could participate in the pvp activities. Although it turns out, that didn't even matter because Trion, for silly reasons that did not help the pvp situation AT ALL, removed most of the warfronts, Whitefall included. Since Whitefall Steppes was the warfront needed to complete the pvp achievements, all of us Fae Yule achievers were screwed over. Finally, after a lot of forum talk and such like from players, we were able to get info saying that the warfront would be added in the ....was it second or last phase? of Fae Yule. This was rather frustrating.
