Rifts Our take on the beta

Aneer and I managed to get into the 3rd beta courtesy of Kingexiled. It was 7.44 gig download and it ran fairly well on this old laptop that is at the minimum settings if the server pop was low to medium, at high the fps would drop to 1-3 making it unplayable.

If my knee was not busted up would have installed on the desktop (it is downstairs), from the response with high end machines the graphics were amazing. On my low end laptop the graphics were still better than WoW and a hell of alot better than LC.

If you are interested in the storyline riftgame.com is the place to check it out, I iwll not recap it here. I will post our experience.

I made my first toon a justicar and promptly died 3 times without trying to kill the beginning mob. I then switched sides to defiant, played with the video settings, got fps to 13-20 and rolled a Champion (Warrior offensive build). I killed everything I need to and quickly lvled to 6, in fact I went in an mob encampent through the front gate and after clering and getting a foothold (mob do not spawn non stop like LC) several toons then came in and we finished our quests. Repeated playthroughs stood on clifts and picked the mobs off at the gate before we could enter.

At lvl 4 you get your second soul, I added beastmaster, another offensive soul that gave me a warrior cat pet that does solid damage. At 6 I added the Warlord, a support, group buff soul for party playability. I really enjoyed the warrior class.

I went back and tried the Justicar (cleric melee offensive) again and I rolled through the first 4 lvls and added Purifier (healing, support) and things get very interesting. I used a single handed weapon and shield and was a dwarf with a self heal ability. Add in the justicar heal over time and the purirfier shield spell and I literally became a tank. I mobbed 5 creatures my lvl or higher and survived. This is not LC, anything a lvl or 2 higher than you is very,very hard to kill.

Aneer then made a Justicar but with a shaman second soul (melee offensive) with a 2 handed weapon and she rolled through content very quickly. Her melee damage was only 10 points less per hit then my offensive warrior. In all likely hood the clerics are going to get the nerf stick before release, hit as hard as a warrior, with healing. In fact at least 50% of players were playing clerics by the end of beta.

Aneer tried 2 rogue melee offensive builds, nightblade, and then blade dancer. The damage was poor compared to the cleric and warrior so they were out. She added the saboteur soul (ranged offensive) to the nightblade but the damage was pitiful.

I made a Warlock (ranged offensive), and added Chloromancer (ranged, healing), and the damage was less then my warrior but higher than Aneers cleric, but so very squishy. If I kited it was not bad, but to be honest I am not a mage type, get in get messy and have a go at it. I did find that there was too many offesive ranged spells and really you do not need more than 2 to cycle from cool downs.

My last toon I made was a rogue marksman (offensive ranged) and it killed relatively well. I added the ranger (offensive ranged) and things turned out very well. The pet can hold mob and allow you to pick the mob up at distance, very effective.

I then went back to my dwarven justicar and played it until I was out of the noobie area. This game was very fun to play, quests for everything, no grinding. Even did a rift with a lvl 20, which was handy because when I tried to lure mob to slowly work through it the hole front line of the mob charged me and was insta wiped. It was a sight to behold at least a dozen mobs coming down the hill and the realization I was utterly screwed.

We only did the original spawn, not enter the rift and try to close it, that would have just ended up us getting killed, this game is meant to be played in party.

If enough people are joining us in the game, we will form our own guild. Maybe Tua in Rifts, I will not spend another dollar in LC, it has cost around way too much to play, a subscrition will be much cheaper, even if I have to buy 1 more computer. Not entirely sure Aneer's will play Rifts well, her laptop is faster than mine but no where near as fast as the desktop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB8-sUNWouU&feature=player_embedded

Here is a video of a group of lvl 20 Gaurdian's going to raid the Defiant. You can see they pawned the first group and left hunting for more. A dragon "mysteriously" spawned which they ran from and when they found the next group of Defiants lvl 50 gaurds again "mysteriously" spawned and well you can see what happened.

Cool deal man. I am definitely interested in getting this game. I don't know how many people from LC would be interested in joining but I would like to see many of them get a fresh start on a game worth putting money into. We could all be noobs together. Hehe

By the way that was a pretty funny video. Those guys got rolled by that second group. Knowing me I would've stopped to fight that dragon. That's just how I roll... Ooh look at that badass thing.. I wonder if I can kill it... *dead* LOL