Rift livestream: Information about the expansion (Blaugust Post 6)

I fell asleep yesterday trying to follow the Rift livestream with information about their expansion “Starfall Prophecy”. So I decided to read up on what was said, but I couldn’t find anything online (if there is, please point me to it!). I’m listening to it now and figured I could also just write down what I hear and share it with you here in this blog. This may not be a complete list as I may have missed something. Additionally, I had trouble understanding them sometimes (not a native speaker, so please keep that in mind – if I got anything wrong, feel free to correct it in the comments! :) ). Basic information about the expansion can be found on the official expansion’s website.

Dungeons and Raids

2 dungeons at launch: One for life and one for fire
They said “very very polished dungeons”
They do have plans for more future dungeons, but only two at launch
Dungeons will be shown on Gamescom and PAX (possibly the fire one?). Personal note: No show booth at Gamescom. They’ll be in the press hall only!
Raid: Will probably launch with 4.1, to give the raid team more time to polish. Along with the raid, they will release the “looking for raid” feature.
It’s going to be a 10 man raid. Focus will be on 10 man raids from here on. No 20 mans on the schedule
Some invite-only alpha tests for players

Maps

Alittu as starting point for expansion. First quests will be from here.
Not going to replace Tempest Bay. Tempest Bay will remain the city for players where you can find everything you need.
Size of the new zones: Will be shown at Gamescom. Personal note: No show booth at Gamescom. They’ll be in the press hall only!

Legendary Abilities

One point per character from 66 to 70 (5 points in total per character)
How deep you’ve gone into a soul determines how many points you can spend in that soul. 61 points = Unlock up to 3 legendary abilities in that soul
Modified upgraded versions of abilities, not completely new ones.
Website only shows a couple of examples – All examples are still subject to change!
Rogue: 61 points in Bladedancer allows you to have two rhythmic actions going at once with a legendary ability
Warrior’s Bull Rush (Champion Soul): Teleports and roots the enemy for 1.5 seconds. The new version can only be cast within 3 metres, but it will knock the enemies back and then you charge to them
Not every ability has a legendary ability, but they’re targetting for 5 to 7 per soul.

Fortress Sieges

New zone event mechanic
Purely PvE, no PvP. Chat asked a few times whether it could be made into a PvP feature – no reply to that question as far as I could hear
For a lot of players at once
Event starts with a lot of solo content (“do some stuff with walls, fight some stuff back”). Further through the siege the content becomes group-based, then raid-based (for public groups) with a boss at the end

Planar Assault Mode

“Basically rifts 4.0” (Archonix got that wrong and called the Fortress Sieges “rifts 4.0” at first, then Julia came into the room to correct that a few minutes later)
You’re not directly going to the other planes in the expansion until you do Planar Assault adventures.
Similar to instant adventures: you queue up and you’re dropped into the planes to fight a rift or many rifts. We’re basically doing some invading back
There will be a whole livestream dedicated to the Planar Assault Adventures later on

Prepurchasing the expansion

If you purchased the expansion, starting on Wednesday you will get 5 extra Starfall Prophecy tickets to make up for the 1 or 2 missed ones on August 4/5
40 slot bag for Starfall Prophecy Tokens is unique
Opie is one per character. Opie’s jump ability helps you in reaching artifacts, but there won’t be artifacts that require Opie to reach them!

PvP

New bracket for levels 65-70
I don’t think anything else was said about PvP at this point.

Items/Gear

Planar Fragments: customize your gear, tweak the stats.
New way to upgrade equipment: Activities out in the world, similar to a quest. E.g., for a helmet to upgrade you’d need to close 10 rifts or do 10 warfronts.
New item rarity: Eternal items. Special but rare items as in there won’t be that many in the world. Colour will be Aqua-blue, new tooltip frame just for this rarity. Not much information what exactly this will be or where/how you can get it.
How big is the gear jump? Should players still try to get T3 raid gear? It’ll give you a leg up. Maybe you’ll be able to upgrade these items to get even more of a leg up.
Crafted 70s replacing 65 transcended gear? – too early to talk about that yet

Monetization

Why the change to “buy to play”? – They need to earn the money, of course, but did not want to monetize on things like earring slots as they did with Nightmare Tide, or charge for pieces of the expansion. Vladd added in the chat: “To be clear, some planar fragment slots will need to be unlocked but it will be through in-game means, not paywalls.”
Lockboxes and other monetization will stay.
Expansion will not be sold for credits
Earring slots unlocked with buying this expansion? – Currently no, but they are discussing it internally!

Miscellaneous

Everything you need to know about the lore will be in the expansion. You’re not missing out if you didn’t do the raid “Comet of Ankhet”.
Some of the old world heroes will be accompanying you: Shyla, for example
They don’t know if the level 65 boost will be tradeable
Crafting, dimensions, stuff for guild – not talked about, but they will talk about these later
Players without the expansion: If it’s e.g., a new crafting recipe to craft a dimension key, then they will be able to get that dimension (and the recipe, too, if it’s tradeable)
New Sparkle quest for 70s, but not directly at launch. You need to be level 70 to be using the rewards from the 70 sparkle quest.
Fishing: New 70 version of a fishing pole – no promise, but it’d be cool
They internally have a launch date and they are on track
64 bit alpha delayed, they gave a reason, but to be honest, I didn’t understand it, so I won’t write it down here (something with double build size and double build time)
Primalist souls: 4 still missing. They’ll be coming out next year