To date only a bit has been revealed about Storm Legion aside from it's tripling of Telara's known landmass. A couple weeks ago, we were treated to the new Mage soul and a bit of scenery within a future raid. Aside from a snippet here and a hint there, Trion has been relatively quiet with regards to what seems to be one of the largest expansions in MMO history with respect to actual content. With PAX this weekend, however, some new information has come to light. With this entry to the Ascended Chronicle, I'll discuss the newest information revealed about Storm Legion. Please note that I will not be covering anything that is already available on Trion's own Storm Legion minisite unless there is additional information to be shared. In avoidance of rambling, let's get started:
- World Boss: Volan
- An extremely massive technological feat in the form of a mechanical golem
- Multi-phase encounter that causes Volan to dynamically change tactics and move about the environment even crushing through walls or scaling bridges from below
- Multiple, targetable attack points where destroying one part of Volan changes how the fight operates
- Account-Wide Planar Attunement
- A very welcome change that essentially makes alts playable again for those who attempt to stay on the cutting edge of content
- The details are a bit sketchy at the moment but it is generally accepted that PA will be truly account-wide in that all characters on an account will have the same number of PA levels. In other words, if you earn a PA level on your Rogue, your Mage alt also earns a PA level.
- Planar Attunement Scaling
- Currently, every PA level is 500,000 experience points. In Storm Legion, PA will be scaled such that the less PA levels you have already earned, the less XP you'll need to earn one.
- Basically, with no PA levels, PA will be extremely easy to earn but towards the cap, it will be quite an effort.
- In-game Transactions
- Quite a fuss was made about this particular revelation when the following was noticed during a PAX stream:
- Tin foil hats were adorned and conspiracy theories of Rift Free-to-play abounded yet with no grounds. Per Scott Hartsman, the shopping cart icon opens up a UI within Rift itself that allows players to make any of the purchases they would otherwise have to open a browser up to do. Specifically, he called out that Storm Legion itself would be purchasable directly in-game. He also mentioned that the Collector's Edition upgrade, the White Tiger mount and any other currently-purchasable items will be available therein.
- Storm Legion Beta will be "Open"
- There's not much to say about this other than the fact that the beta has been confirmed as "open" thus allowing anyone and everyone to participate. Well-supported speculation points to a separate Public Test Shard specifically for Storm Legion that will be made available to which you can copy a character to.
- New Soul Revelations
- The remaining three souls will be revealed in the following order: Warrior, Rogue and then Cleric.
- It is widely believed that the new soul names for these three callings will be: Tempest, Tactician and Defiler respectively.
- Tactician has been 100% confirmed and is absolutely the new Rogue soul. Nothing else has been revealed about the soul but screen capture showed a build of 56 Bard, 15 Tactician and 0 Assassin for whatever that's worth.
- New Dungeon Names
- We already know that Storm Legion will ship with seven new dungeons but only a couple names had been up until PAX.
- The names for all seven dungeons are as follows:
- Exodus of the Storm Queen (50-52)
- Storm Breaker Protocol (52-54)
- Unhallowed Boneforge (56-58)
- Golem Foundry (58-60)
- Archive of Flesh (58-60)
- Empyrean Core (60)
- Tower of the Shattered (60)
- New Zone Names
- The map is still a work in progress but here are some zone names that were revealed at PAX:
- The Dendrome (sp? - the text was hard to make out)
- Ashora
- Kingsward
- Ardent Domain
- Kingdown of Pilldani (again, sp?)
- Stratos
- Cape Juli (sp?)
- Steppes of Ininity
- Tempest Bay
- The Fetid Planes
- Regulos Will Be Fought
- The raid itself is, which is currently called "Endless Eclipse" and is obviously heavily death-themed, so far seems as though you are inside pulsating, rotting flesh.
- Not much else to say about this so I'll repeat it: you will be fighting Regulos in this expansion
- New Quest Types
- More quests will be made available from world objects and drops.
- An additional type of quest called a Carnage quest can automatically appear on your screen when you enter an area and, for example, ask that you obliterate 20 nearby mobs.
- New Stat: Resist All
- This showed up on a screenshot of a cloak tooltip.
- Resist all will be available for cloaks and jewery
- Rogue/Bard Changes
- Motifs now automatically refresh when finishers are used
- Cadence can be cast while moving
- Combo points are now stored on the Rogue and not on the mob
- New ability called "Necrotic Core" which is similar to a Saboteur's Chemical Bomb that the Rogue "Tactician" soul brings to the table
- Bards are getting a direct heal
- Bards are not getting a battle res. Further, encounters are being steered away from the need of having multiple battle reses.
- City Core
- New "dense" zone that appears to be an old, destroyed city with a dense mob population and supposedly has quite a "lot" to do
- Cloaks
- We already knew about cloaks coming to Storm Legion but it should be noted that cloaks are part of the wardrobe slots and can be hidden or shown per taste.
- Onslaughts and Invasions
- Onslaughts and wardstone defense are now shown on the map and kept updated
- Hunt Rifts
- Similar to current Rifts except that each stage is more "objective" based. Further, Hunt Rifts often feature stages where you have to defend against increasingly difficult waves of mobs.
So that's what we have for now. As more information comes to light, I'll be sure to share it. My thanks goes out to the many astute players over at the official Rift forums whom have all contributed with screenshots, quotes and more to bring out as much Storm Legion information as possible. As new information comes to light, I intend to update this post so we can keep the information centralized for easy access.
Few things:
ReplyDeletethe Regulos instance is named Endless Eclipse.
See here: http://files.enjin.com/126654/uprising/rift/pax/sl_pax_regulos.jpg
Resist all will be found on capes and jewelry and will largely be used to make the process of gathering resist gear more painless. (Source: Hartsman on the stream)
Nothing in the new PA system will cost more than one level. It is, as Hartsman said, "one ding, one click." That still will probably mean stuff will have multiple levels to build up before you're done with that particular hex, but you'll be able to do something after every time you level.
Thanks so much for the update, Anon. I'll add it to the post now.
DeleteI took the picture linked in the comment before mine. The zone the Regulos instance is in is called Endless Eclipse. The raid instance itself was not named and just said Interior - Regulos Raid Hallway when the development team member teleported into it.
ReplyDeleteSargonnax
I think you are reading far too much in the offhand comment about Planar Attunement.
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me like all toons on an account earn PA levels for one pool. All toons on an account can use that pool to buy PA stuff.
What is not clear is if the pool can be spent multiple times, once per toon on the account.
It was not ruled out, but nor was it explicitly stated that it was in.
Based on Scott Hartsman's own comments, which extend beyond just the one offhand comment, I believe that PA levels are going to be account bound in the sense I've previously alluded to. However, you are right that we can't rule out the chance that it is a shared pool from which points can only be spent once on one character.
ReplyDeleteIn one of the videos it has been said, that there will be two new speeds for mounts.
ReplyDeleteHow do I access the RIFT Public Test Shard or the Storm Legion Test Shard?
ReplyDeleteAll active subscribers have access to the Public Test Shard when it is available; however, we may bring these shards offline without notice for frequent updates unless there is a scheduled testing event. We'll be sure to announce them in this forum when we have one. Note, in order to access the Storm Legion Public Test Shard you will need to have been invited to the Storm Legion beta first.
Always expect the unexpected when accessing the Public Test Shard. There are no guarantees that a patch or new update won't cause everything to break, but take comfort in the fact that you're helping us to discover issues before they can impact players all around the world - thanks!
To download the Public Test Shard or Storm Legion Test Shard
You'll need a special Public Test patcher to access the Public Test Shard. You can download it here:
Click here to download the Public Test Client
Click here to download the Storm Legion Test Client
Copy the patcher into a new directory (create a folder where RIFT is installed called "PTS" or "Storm Legion PTS" for example) and log in using the same Username and Password you normally use.
The patcher will need to download the latest version of the Test client, this may take some time and requires additional space on your hard-drive (roughly the same amount as the Live client.)