Rano Pano (Day 179)

I spent the majority of yesterday feverishly playing Rift. I started a brand new character and got all the way to level 20, which took me something like seven and a half hours. I went with a Rogue this time, combining the Assassin, Nightblade, and Bladedancer trees. I'm not sure how viable that is, but it does seem like fun so far, even if I'm not really dipping into the Nightblade tree much at all. In fact, I might switch it out for something else at some point if the mood strikes me.

I really enjoy how the Soul Tree system work in the game. I guess it's somewhat similar to the Titan Quest skill tree combinations, actually--except in that case, you get to combine three of them! At level 20, I'm about halfway up the Assassin tree. It's unclear at this point how much I'll be able to dip into the other threes, but I'm looking forward to going through a lot of experimentation to figure out what I like best. As far as gameplay systems go, Rift really hits the mark here.

The majority of my quests from 1-20 were in Freemarch, the first non-tutorial zone of the game. I'm unclear whether or not the other faction starts somewhere else, but it would make sense if they did. Even though I was there for several hours (on two different characters), I didn't find the layout of the zone or quests to be at all repetitive. A massive city called Meridian takes up the central section of the zone, with the starter area Ark of the Ascended to the north. A swamp and great body of water lay to the south while a large fortress in the mountains is to the east. Over the course of my time there I visited each area while simultaneously participating with other players to close rifts that had opened up everywhere.

My only real complaint with the game so far is the amount of content that must be purchased with Credits to access--but I guess it's not a super valid point of contention considering the vast majority of the game is absolutely free to play. I like the game enough that I'd definitely drop money on it if I could, but unfortunately that's not possible at the moment. The bright side, of course, is that there are ways to acquire credits without access to real life currency. An item called a REX, which is equivalent to 1250 credits, can be traded between players. These items are frequently sold on the auction house for about 1000 platinum. Such an amount is difficult to acquire for a new player but according to some higher level players, it's not that unattainable. If it's anything like WoW, I'll have several thousand platinum once I'm max level and have valuable goods and services I can provide.

The other major bummer is the fact that I'm limited to two characters slots since I'm playing for free--but again, this restriction is limited once I have access to credits. I suppose I can grin and bear it for now until I have more platinum. With the amount of content in the game I shouldn't have a problem finding things to do on the two characters I'm playing currently.