RIFT 1.9 Released

RIFT 1.9 has been released! You can find entire release notes in this post or over at the RIFT forums.

== FEATURES ==

• RIFT 1.9, packed with new features to go check out!
• For massive 3-way cross-shard PvP, take a look at CONQUEST!
• New MENTORING system allows you to play lower-level content with your friends or solo.
• A brand new set of INSTANT ADVENTURE comes to Freemarch, Silverwood, Gloamwood, and Stonefield.
• Give your character a whole new look with the BARBERSHOP!
• PRIMEVAL FEAST is a new 10-player Sliver featuring Fae Lord Twyl and his plans for Lord Greenscale.
• The Prestige rank cap has increased to 50, and along with it comes all new PvP Armor sets!
• Summer comes to Telara and the Ascended are encouraged to enjoy the outdoors with SUMMERFEST!

= CONQUEST =

• Conquest is a three-way, cross-shard, cross-Sliver battle royale where three factions of Ascended are caught in an ideological struggle for the future. Guardian or Defiant means nothing here – this is about the role of all Ascended on Telara.
• The lands of Stillmoor play host to epic battles, where war means fighting in large and small skirmishes for land control, Sourcestone reserves, crafted reinforcements, and PvE objectives.
• Access the Conquest menu by hitting ‘K’ and selecting the Conquest tab, or by selecting Conquest from the Activities menu.
• Temporarily align with one of three factions before joining Conquest – but choose wisely, because you cannot change your mind once a battle is underway. If the number of participants skews too much toward a single faction, that faction will be unavailable and greyed out.
• Win Conquest by taking control of 60% of the Extractors on the map, or having the most number of Extractors controlled after reaching a cutoff number of PvP kills in the match.
• Once a team has Conquered the zone, their faction will be the only one allowed to respawn within the instance – though members of other factions may still remain in the zone! Race to destroy Planar foes and foci to gain additional rewards during this phase.
• Gain Conquest Power by defeating your enemies or taking and holding Extractors. Conquest Power unlocks benefits for your character that are visible on the Conquest menu – these benefits remain outside of Conquest as well!
• Gather Sourcestone and return it to your base to allow crafters to create faction-wide buffs for your battle.
• New crafting recipes for Conquest are available on the Quartermasters inside the Conquest instance.
• New items are available from the Quartermasters as well!
• Check with the Defiant or Guardian Battlemasters in Sanctum and Meridian for a new PvP weekly quest for participating in Conquest.

= MENTORING: PLAY ANYWHERE! =

• New Mentoring system allows you to set your character’s level below what it actually is, whether you’re on your own or playing with a lower-level character.
• Mentoring is available to characters of level 15+ and can only be used to reduce your current level, not increase it. When choosing a mentor level, it must be 5 or more levels below your current actual level.
• The new Set Ascended Mentor Level menu option now appears when right clicking your own character portrait. You can choose what level you’d like to set your character to from this option.
• When right-clicking the portrait of another character, the menu option to set your mentor level to the target’s level appears.
• While mentoring, your stats, abilities, regeneration, etc. will be temporarily reduced in line with the target level.
• Grouped characters in a group where someone is being mentored will receive bonus experience as long as the Mentor remains within 3 levels of the lower-level character they are mentoring.
• You can also set your Mentor level using the /mentorlevel slash command.

= MORE INSTANT ADVENTURE LOCATIONS =

• New Instant Adventures are now available in the zones of Silverwood, Freemarch, Gloamwood, and Stonefield.
• The new Adventures are appropriate in level for the zones they take place in, but in a tie-in with the new Mentoring system, can also benefit higher level characters looking for a change of scenery!
• If your character is in one of the four zones listed above, and is mentored to the zone’s level range (either solo or Mentoring a lower-level character), you’ll be able to queue to join Instant Adventure in that zone. Characters who are naturally of the zone’s level will also be able to queue.
• Higher-level characters who aren’t already Mentoring can now queue for Random Adventure, which will automatically Mentor you to an appropriate level to take part in these lower level zone Adventures if a group is available. It may also place you into higher level Instant Adventure groups as needed.
• Random Adventures provide bonus rewards for the first 14 you complete each day.
• Experience and Sourcestone rewards will remain appropriate to your character’s natural level, even if you are being mentored.
• If Mentoring to a lower-level Instant Adventure participant, you’ll receive bonus Mentoring experience the same as non-Instant Adventure Mentoring would.
• Item Caches obtained through lower-level Instant Adventures can contain green-quality equipment scaled to your character’s natural level and Calling. Characters who are still leveling and taking part in these new Adventures will find these items comparable to quest rewards for their actual level, so you won’t be missing out on gear by leveling via Instant Adventure!

= BARBERSHOPS! =

• Long-awaited Barbershop NPCs have set up shop in Sanctum and Meridian!
• For a fee, characters can change any aspect of their appearance aside from character race or gender. The price ranges between simple cosmetic procedures – new hair colors, or new styles – up to significant, dramatic alterations such as height changes, facial features, and skin tones. You can see the total combined cost of your current changes while in the customization screen.

= NEW SLIVER: PRIMEVAL FEAST! =

• The new Sliver of Primeval Feast has been discovered in Droughtlands!
• As a companion sliver to Infernal Dawn, Primeval Feast is intended to be more difficult than the challenges of Rise of the Phoenix, and its rewards appropriately more powerful.
• Fae Lord Twyl, after consuming Greenscale’s power, is on the rise. The Plane of Life runs rampant, devouring all it can reach – running low on prey, they turn on Lord Greenscale himself, attempting to consume the dragon of Life and his essence. It’s up to the Ascended to give them a good pruning before Lord Twyl and his minions expand unchecked into other Slivers of Telara to feed their hunger!

= NEW PRESTIGE RANKS AND ARMOR =

• Prestige Ranks are now increased to 50!
• The added ranks offer new milestone titles and additional Planar Attunement bonus experience when attained – 2 Planar Attunement levels worth for each rank.
• A new set of PvP Armor is now available in line with the Prestige Rank increase.
• Added Hit and Focus to PvP Set 2-5 weapons. The values should fall about two tiers below comparable PvE weapons.
• Increased the effect of Bolstering in line with the addition of new PvP gear. Bolstering is now applied to all characters up to rank 36 in both Warfronts and Conquest.

= SUMMERFEST: 1.9 WORLD EVENT =

• Pack up your picnics and don’t forget your bug spray! Summerfest comes to Telara, and no Planar threats can keep people holed up in town.
• Enjoy the outdoors in this new annual event with activities anyone can enjoy. Go on a scavenger hunt, chase some friendly wildlife for pets, ride a barrel down a waterfall, or just picnic on the beach – but keep an eye out for the Swarmlord and his bugs!
• Summerfest event currencies can be used to pick up loads of fun new items – fun polymorphs and costumes, new pets, titles, summer gear, or tasty foods!
• Keep an eye out for hedge mazes in Sanctum and Meridian where many of the Summerfest events are being coordinated.

GENERAL

• Added a new ‘Bag Sort’ button to the inventory bag bar and the bank window. Bag Sort will rearrange the items in your bags to group them into similar categories (Artifacts next to artifacts, crafting items next to crafting items, etc.).
• Added a new visual warning that buffs are about to expire; the buff icon now fades out when the duration is getting low. This option can be turned on/off in the Settings > Display menu.
• New overhead icons for NPCs help show what they do at a glance! These icons are optional and can be enabled/disabled via the Settings > Misc option: Show additional overhead NPC icons.
• The Random Normal and Expert LFG Dungeon queues now give separate weekly rewards, meaning you can now get 7 Normal rewards AND 7 Expert rewards each week.
• Quests that allow party-sharing will now be offered to all Raid members.
• Experience locking has been removed now that you can set your level lower via Mentoring!
• Companion Pets no longer have a summoning/casting time or casting animations. They can only be summoned while out of combat.
• Merchants that sell items for large amounts of Planarite or Favor now have their sale value abbreviated if the cost is greater than 9,999. For example, 10,000 will display as ’10k’.
• Newly-created Guilds now have default permissions that allow all members to use Guild Rally Banners, if the guild has that perk.
• Fixed a bug where guilds would be listed in Guild Finder even after transferring to another shard.
• Fixed Call of the Ascended not working on players whose corpses were recently teleported.
• Looking For Group: Fixed a bug where LFG players not inside the dungeon when the final boss is killed would not receive LFG rewards.
• Warriors and Rogues should no longer receive Mana Potions from Ember Isle Reward bags or Tackleboxes from Fishing.

CHAT CHANNELS

• Tells can now be sent to any player on a shard in the same region (NA or EU). Use the Player@Shard format to send messages cross-shard (ex: /tell Asha@Greybriar). Ignore also works the same way – you can ignore someone cross-shard now.
• Chat channels are now game-wide by region – North America, Europe, etc. You can now join cross-shard channels on any other shard within your region!

– The channels have not been merged together; players can join specific Shards’ chat channels from a different shard. For example, a character not on Seastone can be in both ‘Healers’ – their local Shard’s channel – and also ‘/join Healers@Seastone’ to join the Healers channel on the Seastone shard..

• Friends can now be added cross-shard with any player in your wargroup and of your faction.
• Members of custom chat channels at the time the channel is set to private/’invite-only’ will now properly re-join the channel on future logins (the way it currently works for channel members added after the invite-only setting was enabled).

LEADERBOARDS

• Viewing a Leaderboard with the ‘Top 50’ filter selected now shows your actual score at the top instead of a ‘0’ if you’re not in the list, and will not incorrectly display your rank as ’51’.
• Fixed timed scores that ended in zero seconds so they don’t omit digits.
• New Leaderboards for Conquest have been added to the PvP and Crafting sections, and new Leaderboards for Primeval Feast are under PvE Raids.

SOULS

• Pets now have a maximum active distance from their owner that when reached, will cause them to stop what they’re doing and return to you.
• Slight tweak to Charge-type attack abilities; the only noticeable change should be that attacks involving a Charge can now critically hit on their own.
• NPCs: Riftblade NPCs no longer use Rift Storm.

MAGE

CHLOROMANCER

• Wild Growth: Fixed a pushback issue where Wild Growth could be cast faster if the Chloromancer is damaged while casting it.
• Wild Growth: Healing from Wild Growth now affects allies who are immune to crowd control effects (such as the Marksman’s Strafe).
• Essence Surge: Now triggers Natural Awareness when cast.

DOMINATOR

• Controlled Opportunity: Fixed an issue with how this is applied to targets when using mouseover macros.
• Haunting Pain: Effects that modify DoT damage, like the Warlock’s Neddra’s Influence, now properly affect Haunting Pain.

NECROMANCER

• Feign Death: No longer completely despawns pets. Pets will be invisible while Feign Death is active, and reappear as soon as the ability ends or is deactivated.
• Neddra’s Torture: Fixed a pushback issue where Neddra’s Torture could be cast faster if the Necromancer is damaged while casting it.

PYROMANCER

• Fixed Fire Armor and Pyromancer’s Armor being castable while Silenced.
• Backdraft: Will now deal damage to the target even if they are immune to the Stun portion of the ability.

WARLOCK

• Mortality: No longer affected by damage pushback when casting.

ROGUE

ASSASSIN

• Baneful Touch: Fixed a tooltip bug where tooltip indicated that this increased poison damage, when it shouldn’t.

BARD

• Virtuoso: Fixed a tooltip bug where the tooltip did not indicate that the effect only works on Codas and not all Finishers.

BLADEDANCER

• Fixed a tooltip bug for Keen Strike and Quick Strike.

RANGER

• Predatory Soulstone: The Attack Power buff from Predatory Soulstone should now be triggered when Shadow Fire is cast and not when Shadow Fire deals damage to the target.
• Diffuse: Fixed a bug where Diffuse was causing damage abilities with buffs (like Shadow Fire and Annihilate) to be redirected to your pet.
• Blood Raptor’s Razor Lash now deals damage to enemies around the target instead of enemies within a frontal cone.

RIFTSTALKER

• Rift Disturbance: Fixed a tooltip bug where the tooltip indicated the ability would grant a Combo Point when it doesn’t.
• Rift Barrier: Will no longer reflect damage after the absorption from Rift Guard has been consumed. Now generates threat from non-reflectable attacks received while Rift Guard is active.

SABOTEUR

• Increased the projectile speed of all Charges to reduce the occurrence of Detonate not triggering a Charge due to projectile delay.
• Removed the application delay of Charges from Rapid Setup.

WARRIOR

BEASTMASTER

• Fierce Strike: Fixed a bug with Rank 6 that caused it to repeatedly chain damage.

CHAMPION

• Destroyer’s Bearing: Can now trigger off of Deathblow.
• Cornered Beast: Now properly grants immunity to Knockback and Polymorph.
• Soldier’s Bearing: Fixed the tooltip not being updated with the effects of 3/3 Intense Training.

PARAGON

• Flurry: Now properly grants immunity to Knockback and Polymorph.

RIFTBLADE

• Rift Surge: Fixed a tooltip error where it reported that it was granting too few stacks.

WARLORD

• Intercept: Now has a range of 30 meters.
• Distractions now properly stack with each other so you can have two Warlords using different Distractions.

PVP

• The 2-piece set bonus on PvP Synergy Crystals now gives Endurance instead of Max Health.
• Players no longer drop random loot or consumables.
• PvP Daily Quests that involve collecting items will now flag you for PvP when updated.
• Wrath Stone, Mighty Wrath Stone, and Wrath Spikes are no longer available from Templar Whispers and Solomon Dewey. Existing purchased runes will not be affected.
• Reduced the notoriety requirements to Honored for purchasing Shoulder slot runes from Templar Whispers and Solomon Dewey.
• The achievement description for Warfront Veteran now mentions that Library of the Runemaster will give updates.

ZONES

• Bind-on-Pickup notoriety granting items that drop from some mobs in Gloamwood, Stonefield, Scarlet Gorge, and Droughtlands are now Common-quality items (used to be Uncommon).
• Various monsters and objects left over in the world after the War of the Wanton Maw will no longer appear. Ex: The Wanton Captain Urdal will no longer block players from accessing the Adorned Chest in the cave next to Fortune’s Shore for the quest ‘I Hope You Like Surprises’. He wasn’t the kind of surprise intended.

GLOAMWOOD

• Where the Moon Blossoms: Increased the quantity of Moon Blossoms in the Greybriar Hollow cave.

SCARLET GORGE

• A Bit of Subterfuge: Female characters will now get disguised as females while on this quest.

INSTANT ADVENTURE

• Updated the way the Join Adventure button is displayed when near other characters currently doing Instant Adventures. If you or someone in your group is not the right level range for the Adventure, the join button will not be shown. Also cleaned up the way Instant Adventure groups interact with Public groups, especially near Rifts.
• Ember Isle:
  – Greatly increased the number of gators available for Gator Wrestling.
  – Added better minimum population of Marine Lurkers for Bug Out.
  – Available targets should be easier to find for Unleaded Transmutation.
  – Completing objectives in Simmer Down now awards experience.

DUNGEONS, SLIVERS, and RAIDS

• A character attempting to log out in a Dungeon or Raid while anyone in the instance is in combat will now take 2 minutes to fully log out, rather than 20 seconds.
• Master Mode Dungeons and Raid instances are temporarily unavailable to cross-shard groups.

CADUCEUS RISE

• Rodiafel now goes underground only once at 50% health in both Master and Expert Caduceus Rise.

INFERNAL DAWN

• Dreaded Longshots now briefly pause after spawning before shooting someone in the face with their auto-attack.
• Laethys: Resolved a case where gold piles would fail to properly deactivate.

ITEMS

• Darkmetal Hauberk now has Focus instead of Hit.
• Life-Iron Chain Greaves and Hauberk can now be sold to vendors.
• Monastic Hammer, Curious Scarlet Hauberk, and Glacial Hauberk have been re-itemized for Clerics.
• Planar Vanquisher’s Baton now appears by default for Clerics viewing the merchant.
• Steel-Stitched Leather now sorts correctly in the Auction House.
• Tent Kit and Silk Tent Kit now give more accurate buff indicators of who they’re affecting in your group.
• Twilight Bloom Roots now have an appropriate vendor sale price.
• Vagabond’s Bow can now be sold to NPCs.
• Yeti Fur Trinket will now appear in the Auction House under Trinkets instead of Consumables.

FISHING AND SURVIVAL

• Fishing and Survival now have daily quests!
• Fishing: New Fishing and Survival recipes are now available!
• Inspired chefs have developed a new Feast recipe for more variety in feasting.
• The Survivalist and Fisher Artisan store NPCs have arrived. Now you’re cooking with MEAT.
• The Track Fish ability has been added. If you already have Fishing, you’ll find it in the Abilities window. Otherwise it will be granted automatically when training Fishing.
• The Undead Fish artifact collection has, at long last, been added to Hammerknell – both Chronicle and Raid. Even more reason to fish in Hammerknell!
• Fishing: The Rare Artifact Attractor now works in Hammerknell instances.
• The Rare Artifact Attractor will no longer yield common artifacts that existed in the game prior to patch 1.8.
• Adjusted drop rate of Fishing Artifacts so that the different rarities are more appropriately distributed. Low-level rare Trophies will now drop more frequently, as will common Fishing-related Artifacts.
• When fished, the pools at Scarred Mire and Harlan’s Lament will now only yield junk (though some lures will still allow you to catch fish there).
• Schools of Fish, Rare Fish, and Clever Fish now sometimes drop treasure chests.
• Don’t know what to do with your piles of common fish? Now you can turn them into Lures! Check out the recipes on the new artisan store NPC.
• Survival: The appearance of Feasts also got updated! ‘Feasts’ is also a strange looking word when you type it enough. Feasty feast.
• Fishing: Tacklebox and fishing treasure loot have been adjusted.

CRAFTING

• The Crafting Daily quests for 300 skill have been updated!
– Added a new reward chest to 300 skill-level Crafting Daily quests. This Master Supply Chest has improved rewards and a chance for a Master Craftsman’s Mark.
– The Planar Attunement experience crystal reward will now only be available to level 50 characters.
– Adjusted material costs for the 300 skill-level Crafting Daily quests. In general, they’ve been reduced. Material requirements now have more variety and variance between different quests.
• Turning in the Armorsmith and Weaponsmith 300-skill crafting dailies when you have both will no longer remove the Wondrous Flux needed for the second daily.
• Salvaging items now takes 75% less time per item.
• Weekly Quest item recipes now sort under the Quest category on the Crafting window.
• Costume item recipes now sort under the Costume category on the Crafting window.
• Apothecary: Items in Apothecary Daily reward bags have been adjusted to better match ingredient demand.
• Apothecary: Reduced the Drakefoot Seed requirements in some Apothecary recipes. Slightly increased Drakefoot Seed drop rate.
• Butchering: Ironhide drop rates increased.
• Outfitter: Bulk Recipes have been added to Outfitter Trainers for base materials. These new recipes allow you to process 40 cloth directly into 20 bolts.
• Outfitter: Spellspun Cowl recipe now requires 260 skill to learn, to match the skill required to make the item.

AUDIO

• Fixed Sliver portals so they should always make noise instead of sometimes being eerily quiet.

COMMANDS AND MACROS

• Ctrl-C and Ctrl-X now copy and cut text, respectively, from the chat input field.
• An away/AFK message entered via /afk or /dnd that is longer than 80 characters will now be shortened rather than causing your character to disconnect.

UI/SETTINGS

• Added all recurring World Event currencies to the Currency tab – Unique Snowflake, Prize Ticket, Glass Beads, Pyrite Doubloon, and 1.9 World Event currency.
• Active buffs/debuffs with durations now show specific time remaining amounts on their tooltips.
• Abilities that are on cooldown now show the time remaining in the ability tooltip.
• Soul Vitality at 0% now displays a pulsing animation on the portrait Soul Vitality icon. The hover tooltip on the icon now also describes the negative results of dying while at 0% Soul Vitality – stats will be penalized until you visit a Healer.
• Fishing Lures now correctly appear under the Misc > Fishing section in the Auction House.
• Successful Auction messages now include the stack size of the item sold.
• Combat Log text now more closely matches the on-screen combat text color formatting.
  – There are two new types of damage shown in the Combat Log now: Block and Deflect. Combat Log textfile parsers will likely need to be updated.
• Fixed a case where Nameplates could show class mechanic UIs for classes other than your own.
• NPCs with very large models will now have their Nameplate anchored at their feet if the normal position is not visible.
• Nameplates now show casting bars for both yourself and your target.
• In-Game Mail: Removed the subject text auto-complete suggestions since they generally weren’t very useful. Sending items will still generate a mail subject for you.
• In-Game Mail: Fixed a bug where mail with an invalid destination would sometimes give a conflicting error message and deduct postage.
• Several interactions that didn’t display text on the cast bar now do.

CLIENT

• Improved game framerate when inventory and bank bags are opened.
• The Screenshot and Movie save file location is now under the Windows ‘My Documents’ folder.

1.9 conquest released RIFT