Rift Dimension building project: Tempest Island

For weeks, I’d been waiting for patch 3.3 to arrive in Rift. With it came new dimensions and I had set my eyes on “Tempest Island”. I used to build in “Faen’s Retreat” but some things in there annoyed me a bit. While I do like the “oasis feeling” that it gives, I would have loved to have the actual sea nearby and not just a tiny little lake. Additionally, I really did not like the giant raptor bones in there and even tried to hide them under some huge rocks. Tempest Island is just one flat island in the middle of lots of water. No bones in sight. It’s perfect! I even did crafting dailies which I hardly ever do. You see, the dimension is crafted by the Dreamweaving profession and you buy the crafting recipe with three different marks that you get for doing crafting dailies. The recipe itself (seen on the left) isn’t too demanding. So, once the patch had hit the live servers, I owned the dimension within a few minutes.

In Faen’s Retreat, I only have the small Shimmersand house (it’s in there by default and cannot be removed). I’d been looking forward to “upgrading” in this new dimension by placing a medium-sized Shimmersand house in there. But as soon as I had done so, I realized how much work I have ahead of me now. It was so daunting, that I left the dimension without doing anything. It’s huge and so very, very empty right now waiting to be filled with life by me. It really does look like a personal oasis. A place for eternal solitude without a living soul anywhere close.

The gallery below shows three “before” pictures. The poles you can see where placed by me, so that I can see where the dimension ends. At one point, when you were in building mode, some grid appeared that showed that this is where the dimension ends. It is no longer visible, and instead, you just run into invisible walls. Of course, it’s nicer to look at, but at the same time, it’s also harder to build when you want to judge how much space you have left in any given direction.

After I had gathered all my courage, I went back in there and placed the spawn point in front of my medium house, because where it is by default is very far away from where I want to start building. In fact, even after I had placed the house in there, it could not be seen from the spawn point because the building isn’t loading in until you walk a bit closer. And that medium-sized house that did not fit in Faen’s Retreat because it’s too big? It turns out, it really doesn’t look medium at all in this dimension, even after upscaling its size!

Then I went and built a harbor, placed a few palms and rocks and… well, still feel overwhelmed. I am far from being a good or at least, experienced builder. I don’t even know half of the items that exist in Rift. But, I guess it will just grow over time. Slowly, very slowly. It’s just a tiny bit frustrating when I realize how much I already built in the other dimension and how empty this one is now. Then again, having a filled dimension is actually the “end” of the journey. But what I like about dimension building is the journey itself. I just wonder if I can finish it before they turn off the servers one day… :p