Continuing from Part 4.
1:57 am GMT, 31st of December
We’re coming up after another patch, and Osgard has just arrived in the main Rift world at Divine Landing in Silverwood.
Osgard arrives at Divine Landing in Silverwood
He approaches the Messenger for instructions.
You have been gone for two decades, and much has changed. Being Ascended is a great gift, but all power has its price.
Orphiel and the Defiants you fought in Mathosia have now replicated Ascension. Regulos, his avatar shattered, still reaches through the weakened Ward.
You are a Guardian. Your people and your gods need you.
20 years!!! I hope someone’s been watering his orchids. The angel smiles, and gives him his first rifle, and suddenly the orchids don’t seem quite so important any more.
It appears that 20 years on, the Defiant have resumed their power-hungry and treacherous ways. In their eagerness to steal the power of the gods, they have once again allowed forces from the planes to invade. The fools!!!
I have arrived in the aftermath of the Defiant’s latest heinous act. They destroyed a bridge leading to Port Scion, causing the Guardian forces upon it to fall to their deaths. Osgard is sent to swim out to see if he can rescue any survivors.
Swimming works quite well, with you being able to submerge fully with a breath counter.
Osgard helps the survivors out a little more, then is informed that Maelforge, the Dragon of Fire, is sending his forces against the Silverwood. He is sent up to his first proper quest-hub. Here we not only find the class trainers and general vendors we’ve seen previously, but some new facilities. Harvesting trainers, and a mailbox!
You can only have 3 tradeskills, but as the crafts are not represented here, just the three harvesting professions, I’ll learn them all for now.
Butchery is used to gather hides and other parts from fallen animals.
Foraging is used to gather wood, and other plant materials, such as herbs.
Mining will allow Osgard to gather the bounty of the earth, the metals, rocks, and gems. A right proper dwarven tradeskill.
Each harvesting teacher has a simple quest involving you gathering 5 of a related ingredient for them. I’ll do those while I also do some quests involving thwarting the rather demonic-looking minions of Maelforge who are running about setting fire to everything.
3:46 am GMT, 31st of December
I’m going to be blunt. Harvesting is identical to World of Warcraft. You have some tracking skills to make the resources appear on your radar. The nodes are single use before they are exhausted and vanish, and there are only a small number of possible locations for any given node. The icon for the soft hide I just skinned from a wolf was so similar to how WoW depicts leather that I’ve just spent several minutes going through WoW’s different hides to see if the icon was taken from there. It wasn’t, but the artistic inspiration for a great many of the crafting item icons (and often the items themselves)is painfully obvious.
Oi! Coarse Grinding Stones are only 10 copper each in Azeroth!
I really hope Rift’s crafting goes beyond WoW’s. I genuinely don’t know if it does or not, as I tend not to read too much about a game before I can get my hands on it so I can approach it with slightly less hyped expectations. I’m definitely a member of the crafter demographic, so this matters a lot to me.
Anyway, the harvesting quests were easily dealt with, as were the first couple of quests against the denizens of the plane of fire. I think that’s just about enough for one night.
Osgard’s journey through Silverwood continues in: The Rift Beta Bonanza Part 6!