Objectives- Rift

It always seems there is some objective to go after in Rift. I decided to mess around with Ember Island some this week, since I didn't get a chance to previously. It was pretty tough, from what I've heard, when it was current. At 51 with gear upgrades it was cake. I decided to go through the Kelari Refuge line and see what it was about. There are some cosmetic rewards I want from the vendor also, I should have everything I want after doing about nine more days worth of dailies.

The island is quite beautiful, the quests were fun, a bit bad for xp but these were not for leveling when they were current. I gained a ton of Planer Attunement points while I was here so that was a nice bonus. At the end I was rewarded with some epic pants, woot my first epic- which I will probably replace them tonight with another quest item within the week. I also got the cutest little pet- Embri, who is pictured up top. A little elemental fellow with rocks on his head. Sometimes a rock falls off and he picks it up and pops it back on, very cute. I was quite happy to get a new pet, especially him, I had been thinking what cool pets they would make and so I was surprised to get one! Upon entering the island one of these little guys ran up and attacked me, I suppose it is fitting, since he was with the welcoming party, lol.

I managed to cruise into level 52 yesterday. I would have much sooner if I hadn't taken the Ember Isle detour, but I am glad I did. I wanted to experience that content before I totally out leveled it, I could have mentored I suppose, but I decided not to wait. It was pretty rewarding IMO. Hopefully it won't take toooo much longer to hit 60. I want to finish leveling and explore, do collections and just catch up everything I've missed in my long absence.

I've been playing around with more DPS oriented specs and finding that I really like a heavy necro build along with the elemental build as well. Both builds have pets which take the hits for the mage, both have decent dps. The elementalist kills a tad faster but the necro is still pretty good, plus it has quite a few tricks up the sleeve when you get in a pinch, so that is probably how I'll level. I've been using a heavy chloro build with a decent amount into necro, which was great for healing and lasting but very, very slow with dps. I'm going to redo that soul to be for pure healing, for when I feel like doing some dungeons or healing with invasions and such. The other build did me quite well for leveling, it was very solid for staying power but with the amount of hit points mobs have in SL it is just too slow. Now things are moving at a better pace.

I also left my guild. I thought a bit on this, it was the right thing to do. It wasn't that I was attached. The guild was freaking huge. We always had about 100 members on at a time. When a guild is so massive it is hard to remember everyone, hard to get to know people. I prefer a smaller family type guild, even a medium sized guild. I miss those. Thus I decided to create my own. I was a bit dismayed to find out I had to have four other people to sign my charter but I actually ended up happy that I needed to, in the end. I actually met some great people. I sent them private messages, offering some coin, instead of spamming chat.

It turns out those were some really cool people. I wanted to try to create the type of guild I was looking for, since I am pretty invested in the game, I think it was a good choice. Just a small casual guild, it will be easier to do things together on a fun level with people as we get to know each other. If you're looking for a laid back family style guild, look us up- Stellar, we're on Faeblight. Looking for good friendly people. We already have some stellar peeps! Eventually I hope to have us a guild hall, all in due time!

That's all I have time for today. Hope everyone is having a great week! Enjoy the pics!

Face... Hands... come back! A graphic glitch I ran into, was quite funny.

Questing in Ember Isle.

A cool quest line scene.

Princess?? Is that you?!

The huge trees sort of remind me of Vanguard SoH. How I love beautiful trees within my games.

Crossing a bridge.

Getting to a good spot before server shut down! I'm NOT running all the way to hell, err, I mean this cave, and back

Always exciting to get into an invasion!

I've seen some hilarious fashion in this game, lol. 

One of my minions and I.

Rift- Will I Stay In Telara?

The lovely Tempest Bay.

I've been back to Rift for almost a month, next week it will be a month technically. Normally if I'm not into a game, or it just isn't clicking, this is about the time I start to feel myself growing bored. However, Rift just seems to keep surprising me, and surprisingly I'm really wanting to stick with it for quite a while. The developers seem to really want to keep players happy, they have all sorts of activities for all sorts of players.

I'm not so much into raiding these days, I don't have the patience anymore, nor the drive. Maybe one day in the future I will. I don't always feel like grouping for dungeons, I just cannot sit still for long periods where I'm feeling 'locked into' a session. I often need to get up and afk for RL stuff, so it just doesn't work out. But with Rift I can still participate in activities with others; Rifts, IAs, small group content, outdoor raids, chronicles. This caters to players like me. I love it. It is like a game that has evolved to offer content exactly for me. Add housing on top of this and I'm quite smitten.

Last night I found out that with Storm Legion the wardrobe slot now lets you wear ANY type of gear. For instance I have a warrior specific plate breastplate that my mage has on in the wardrobe slot. That is SO freaking awesome! This opens up so many alternate options for appearance gear! Very exciting, and I just found out after selling tons of plate over the last few weeks, lol. /facepalm

Fae Yule is on test now, I didn't get to participate last year so I am really excited about it this year. It seems new quests have also been added. Lots of good info about the event here. House decorations this year too, yay! I am excitedly awaiting the event XD

Is the leveling in SL too slow? I think it is alright. I didn't level yesterday, I was enjoying my birthday but I managed to poke in to decorate for a bit, hehe. More on that in a few. I'm already halfway through level 51. While it is slower than some games I'd say it isn't horrible. Once you start doing things, it starts adding up. I find myself doing a lot of invasion events, IA's here and there (I MISS THE LOWBIE IAs) questing, and I even have been doing some chronicles. Which at 51, even the two player chronicles are quite easy, and a nice change of pace. I did my first one over the weekend and made a few plat with it, plus it was real fun. I love chronicles, they are a welcome addition in my book. I am glad to finally have been able to try them out. I have read about them in the past wishing I was high enough to jump in and try them. But I'm not dreading the levels, they seem to just be going as I do things in the game. I really blew through the levels all the way to 50, so I suppose it had to slow down sometime ;)

Decorating... I actually learned that the starter dimensions, even if you max out your item count, have far less of a max item count than many of the others. I think it is 150 items, which you spend about 50 plat maxing that out. Instead you could just buy one of the 50 plat dimensions and max it at 400 items. The more expensive ones have 600 or so, maybe 1000, it has been a bit since I last looked. So I saved up 50 plat and bought a new dimension. It has a tiny house so I built a big one, I call it 'The Compound' because it looks like, well, some big imposing compound, lol. I've put trees around it, we'll see how it turns out with more furniture and (YULE!!) decorations. All in all I was so ecstatic to purchase a new, bigger, dimension. I will share pictures and maybe take a video later in the week.

Last but not least, in today's post- I love the fact that I don't have to reroll or play an alt to try out a different playstyle. I have been switching from my chloro/necro build to my harbinger build. It has been very refreshing, I don't even need to switch out gear sets for the melee spec from caster (like I did in WoW with my druid), which is amazing in my opinion. While I enjoy the talent changes in WoW, I really do- I like that Rift still has so many options for me to pick and choose from. I can tailor specs to my specific wishes. That in itself is pretty amazing, in the day and age of cookie cutter specs and builds, I like to think out of the box, do my own thing, I have the room to do that here in Rift.