First Trip In..

[Sharnath]

After a few dangerous and aborted trips into OTF I have decided to move into the Rift. Currently in Pinefar about to make the trip in. I have a few questions before I take the plunge.

1. What's up with spells in the Rift, do they get stripped upon entry? Spellburst? Stripped every so often?

2. What are the chances of losing a weapon?

3. Any clerics in Mule or Pinefar that would like to bless a metric crap ton of arrows? The pay would be very good.

4. Can I ring from Pinefar to Rift entrance? I tried earlier today and didn't have any luck. Maybe I was just doing it wrong.

5. I have read the bit of information in the previous posts. Anyone have any advice before I go get myself killed? Words from a fellow archer would be appreciated.

Sharnath
Weed Mage

[Davenshire]

1. What's up with spells in the Rift, do they get stripped upon entry? Spellburst? Stripped every so often?

- Spells gete stripped on the swim in. once inside yer fine, but inside the rift you lose any spells you are unable to learn yourself. cept for disk.


2. What are the chances of losing a weapon?

-itchy curse form the casters in there. shoudn;t be to bad. that andmaybe weapon fire??? highlight the pertinent srings, the itchy curse sucks.

3. Any clerics in Mule or Pinefar that would like to bless a metric crap ton of arrows? The pay would be very good.

usually some pretty friendly cerlics up that-a-ways if ya can find em.

4. Can I ring from Pinefar to Rift entrance? I tried earlier today and didn't have any luck. Maybe I was just doing it wrong.

No idea. I am sure you can ring to the door leading into Koars shrine. but nothing any other way.

5. 5. I have read the bit of information in the previous posts. Anyone have any advice before I go get myself killed? Words from a fellow archer would be appreciated.

hmm. have web highlighted and be ready to immolate and room webs you see that a cysterei has thrown up. it shoudnt be to shabby. stuff got moved around in there, if you can deal with the fear, Id avoid 1 all together and go to 2 or 3. keep haste up at all times should keep you in good sted regardless.

[MotleyCrew]

The rift totally sucks for archers.

[Sharnath]

The rift totally sucks for archers.

How so?

Sharnath
Weed Mage

[Sylvan Dreams]

When you enter the pool to the cavern you are completely dispelled - both going toward the rift and leaving it. In the cavern there is no dispelling but GMs will sometimes make "fun" invasions so be careful going afk. In the rift itself, most spells you can't cast yourself or learn to cast will be dispelled from you with a flow of mana that comes around every so often

Vvreal Warlocks on 2 can cast itchy curse. I think something else can too. A few things disarm.

You can ring/fog from the rift cavern to pinefar but not into the cavern itself.

If you depend on hiding to hunt, the rift may no be the place for you.

That's all that I can think of for you right now.

[Sylvan Dreams]

How so?

Sharnath
Weed Mage

rift creatures tend to wear heavier armor. Honestly, I think OTF is the best place for you as an archer. Ithzir are squishy - even a bola wipes them out.

[BriarFox]

As an archer, csetairis, lunatics, caedera, aivren, and n'ecares are your main prey. Vvrael are squishy if you can muster the AS to get through their defenses - but stay away from the ones with shields. They're nearly impossible to hit for an archer. Vaespilons are puncture immune and seraceres and lost souls are non-corp. If you're a Fu-archer, the Rift is cake, and if you're a regular archer, it's not bad as long as you avoid a couple of the creatures. I had a pretty easy time of it, relatively speaking, up there.

[Hulkein]

I lost a shield when I was itchy cursed then had a void opened over me at the same time. Kaedra is a very helpful cleric there. Just hang out in the resting area and you'll figure out who will help. Wandering voids on the first few planes. Vaespillion cast voids on the fifth plane. Fourth is void-free but has the toughest critters (including the rift crawler).

[Archigeek]

Some rift advice:

Just about every "stationary" object you can interact with moves: doors, mirrors, threads, stairs, voids, the maw, the chute, the fissures, the organ grinder... they all move. So if you're looking for one of them, you may have to hunt for it a bit. Also, note where the stuff is while you're hunting, so you can make a faster exit when you need to.

You will get rifted. If you're hunting plane one, you'll get rifted to plane two. I'd suggest that unless you have very high TD, you have two choices: stow your gear and run like hell for the door/mirror, or risk losing said gear. On that note, it pays to get familiar with the next plane up, so that when you get rifted there, you can find your way around in a timely fashion. Plane 2 is difficult to navigate until you figure out the pattern. After that, it's a piece of cake.

Threads go to the next higher numbered plane, stairs go to the next lower numbered plane, (except the plane on 5, where there's no stair and the thread leads to plane 1).

Rift critters do not tend to wear heavy armor. Some of them do tend to have high DS though. Generally I would say the critters in the rift are softer than average.

A lot of critters in the rift dispell. In fact, there are dispelling creatures on every plane, including the scatter.

A number of gems in the rift have special properties. In fact, one of those properties only became known last year, (black faceted diamonds resist spirit drain in the sphere), which is crazy. I can't believe it was a secret that long. Other gems with special properties are aster opals, faceted midnight blue riftshards, Eye-of-Koar emeralds, doomstones, oblivion quartz, urglaes fangs, shadowglass orbs and firemote orbs. Be careful what you pick up, and what you look at.

Rescues can be a royal pain in the rift, but if you let people know where you're going in the cavern, people will come for you if you die. What comes around goes around up there. Also, if you're doing a rescue, get on the amunet and let people know you're working on it, where the corpse is and when you're hauling it through the door, so other people will stop looking.

On a related note, if you're able to self-raise, send out a thought so people don't go looking for your corpse that's not there anymore.

[DoctorUnne]

Some additional information from someone who has hunted planes 1 and 2 extensively over the past few months.

1) You will not be stripped of spells if you ring out from the sands to Pinefar, so you can safely exit the rift without losing spells.

2) Seracerises and Vvrael warlocks both cast itchy curse. The seracerises are on 1 and the warlocks are on 2. Usually if you get hit with it you can stow your weapon/shield quickly before the RT starts to avoid dropping and potentially losing them. However, if you get hit with it while incapacitated by something else, you could conceivably drop them and die before being able to pick them up. Usually a monster will pick them up and then you or someone else can track it down. That's happened to me once in 9 levels of hunting there, so I'll let you judge whether that's risky enough to avoid using your best gear. The worst outcome, which hasn't happened to me but happened to a friend of mine, is having this happen with a void in the room and the void sucking up the item, destroying it for good. Exceedingly rare, but it only needs to happen once to ruin your day.

3) The new plane 1 has naisircs (75U), raving lunatics (77), seracerises (78U) and Vvrael witches (80). Naisircs are non-corporeal rangers with decent armor and good DS. They cast thorny vine and call wind most often, but also sounds, that fear spell that makes you run away from the room, and other mostly harmless spells. They are moderately tough to kill but not too dangerous in and of themselves. To me the most annoying part about them is they are extremely very difficult to hide on. Lunatics are a joke. They do nothing except swing a short sword at you with a 350-375 AS. They are pretty fast and can also throw their weapon at you, but that's the limit of their bag of tricks. If you do a decent amount of damage to them but don't finish them off, they can split into two. Seracerises are non-corporeal sorcerers that can be easy to kill with the right build but are very dangerous. The good news is they have no armor and a fairly low HP total. However, they have great DS and frequently put up WoF. They have a slew of dangerous spells that they cast with a 340-350 CS, including disease, itchy curse, disintegrate, dispel, pain and bind. They also have a stupid bard spell that does nothing except give you a bit of RT and that equally stupid fear spell. They are also next to impossible to hide on. Finally, witches are the most dangerous. They have some warding spell that can kill you instantly even on a low endroll, as well as other dangerous sorcerer spells, dispel and an acid bolt spell. Their CS is 360 or so and they are completely immune to magic, making them impossible for pures to hunt. They have great DS and also frequently rock WoF, but like seracerises they have no armor and have the benefit of being corporeal and not too difficult to hide on, so they are easy to kill if you can get your AS high enough.

4) The new plane 2 has lunatics, caederas (82), csetairi (82) and Vvrael warlocks (84). Caederas are worms that have a high AS of 420-440 and can bite. That is their only attack, but each time they move from room to room they burrow. This is a maneuver that can knock you over and give up to 20 seconds of RT. It hits both the room the caedera is burrowing from and the adjacent room it is burrowing to. If it hits you when you're in stance offensive, you can be in trouble when they proceed to wail on you with that AS while you're prone. It gets a lot worse when 2 or 3 of them are together, and they also make you a sitting duck for the dangerous csetairi and warlocks. The only good news is they frequently knock the other monsters over too. They have 500+ HP, a decent DS and decent armor, so they can be tough to crit. They do give up great skins (1500-2000 each). Csetairi are like an easier version of witches, easier to hit and just as easy to crit when they don't have WoF up. They have some dangerous spells including bind and web, but overall not as deadly as the Vvrael. Warlocks I stay away from, so I don't know too much about them other than they are basically souped up witches, with similar spells plus nightmare.

5) With both witches and warlocks, if you sever a limb it will spray acid at you which is a maneuver attack that is very level-sensitive and can kill you outright. Best to go straight for the head/eye.

6) To give more detail on your spell question, you can safely wear anything your profession can potentially learn, so for rangers all the 100s and 600s. You can also use a disk and a statue. Anything else will get stripped soon after you cast it.

7) Mana fluctuates frequently, and you can find yourself gaining or losing 100+ mana randomly. It evens out in the long run, but can be a pain when you lose all your mana.

8) They changed it so you can hide in every single room now, but half the rooms have penalties to hiding. As a 2x hiding rogue I can hide pretty easily in front of everything except naisircs and seracerises regardless of whether or not the room has a penalty. Sometimes it make take me a couple of tries if to hide in front of a witch if the room has a penalty but it's not bad.

My general advice would be don't bite off more than you can chew until you're familiar with it. Start with lunatics and naisircs only, and don't fight more than one thing at once until you know what you're doing. You will die sometimes, but you don't want to be dying all the time because it is a pain in the ass to rescue someone from inside. Also once you see where the two wandering voids are, stay away from them. Don't get greedy and try to sneak in in between vacuums and kill stuff. They hit once every 30 seconds in that room and every adjacent room so if you run through quickly you usually won't get hit.

[Barundar]

6) To give more detail on your spell question, you can safely wear anything your profession can potentially learn, so for rangers all the 100s and 600s. You can also use a disk and a statue. Anything else will get stripped soon after you cast it.


Just a bit of clarification here, any of the arcane spells can be used by anyone in the Rift. So, on top of statues, stuff like arcane decoy out of coins and mystic focus from orbs will persist.

[Archigeek]

Just a bit of clarification here, any of the arcane spells can be used by anyone in the Rift. So, on top of statues, stuff like arcane decoy out of coins and mystic focus from orbs will persist.

Yeah, arcane decoy is pretty handy in there, since a lot of critters dispell. I picked up a couple of fully charged coins cheap and it's pretty nice.

[Cryheart]

Yeah, arcane decoy is pretty handy in there, since a lot of critters dispell. I picked up a couple of fully charged coins cheap and it's pretty nice.


Dull gold coins?

[Barundar]

Dull gold coins?

Those are the ones.

[Originate]

After hunting there for 20+ levels, I have found archery to be very viable in the rift. I have only used 5x bow +faewood arrows. I never found it to be worth it to mess with blessed arrows, instead I just used spike thorn against the undead. But, because of that, I went up to 60ranks of summoning lore as soon as I decided I was going to stay there.
Most other advice has been offered already. Definitely always carry a statue. You have to climb out of 4 and 5,so at that point white crystals are very handy.
Unless your extremely patient, I suggest to either get enough aura enhancives that give you an additional spirit, because then you can take them off once you get inside and have the min. before penalties. Or, if you have 650, assum owl,and then once your in, change it (I always go porc/wolf)
I don't know what armor your in, but I was fine wearing brig until now. Now that I hunt on 4, I realize I am going to have to move up to chain. You can find me in game if you have any other questions.

_Dinklz