New player with some questions

[Denegrah]

So i am a veteran MMO player from everquest, to DOAC, to WOW, to DC online i have tried and maxed leveled a character in most MMO's and now its Rifts turn. My first question is i noticed some of the classes are blocked behind a paywall which i understand game needs to make money but are these character significantly better then the base warrior, rogue, mage characters?

Are there servers that would be recommended for a new player i guess one that has more characters in the lower to mid range or is everything really top heavy?

Does the game use a cross server looking for group que for dungeons?

Is the game up until max level primarly solo?

Thank you in advance for all answers.

[Yakmir]

So i am a veteran MMO player from everquest, to DOAC, to WOW, to DC online i have tried and maxed leveled a character in most MMO's and now its Rifts turn. My first question is i noticed some of the classes are blocked behind a paywall which i understand game needs to make money but are these character significantly better then the base warrior, rogue, mage characters?

No, they are mostly just different. For example, if you want to be a rogue healer, you need those paid talent trees. If you want to be rogue dps, tank or support, you don't.

You still get a lot of free talent trees. You can only use 3 at one time, so the number of possible viable combinations just from free talent trees is huge.

Maybe after playing some time, you will get bored of the free ones and decide to buy the other ones to try them out. Or maybe not. I have those paid ones, but I never use them.

Are there servers that would be recommended for a new player i guess one that has more characters in the lower to mid range or is everything really top heavy?

All are pretty top heavy. Bigger servers of US side are Greybriar, Deepwood and Faeblight, but they are bigger across the level scale, not just at low levels.

You won't meet a lot of people at lower zones. But you will meet some. There are other new players, and high levels return there too occasionally to hunt artifacts, to take part in various events, instant adventures.

By the way, servers aren't really servers like in most games. You can switch between them by right clicking on your portrait and choosing where you want to be. Whichever server you choose as your home, you can do your quests or whatever on another server.

Your home server does matter a little, because you can only join guilds from your home server, and you can only use Auction House from your home server. But you can even change home server once a week.

Does the game use a cross server looking for group que for dungeons?

Yes.

Is the game up until max level primarly solo?

Mostly. But there are instant adventures, which are like short quests with a bunch of other people, there's a LFG for that too. You can level there too, and it's fast. But there's not much talking in there, you just run around doing stuff next to a bunch of other people, so it's sort of group play, sort of solo play.

Other than that, there are warfronts (PVP), there are instances. But instance queues at low level take a while, if you want to dps.

[Golden]

One note about the soul packs - they add new flexibility to your builds so that all callings can fill any role in a group or raid.

For mage, they give a melee dps soul and a tank soul, for clerics another healer and a support, for rogues another support and a healer, for warriors a single target ranged dps and a healer.

[Kadeth]

Also, there is sidekicking and mentoring, so if you make friends that play, you can sidekick up to their level or, they can mentor down to yours to do things together. It isn't a big deal that most of the servers are a bit top heavy.

It also doesn't take too long to get there, just depends on how fast you want to level as to how you do it. IAs are fast, questing next, then PvP. Toss in some dungeons, rifts and world events for variety and, you're 65 before you know it.

[Denegrah]

Thanks for your guys help hit level 10 last night and already overwhelmed with more skills then can fit on my bar. Sort of confused as none seem to have their own cool down just a global one.

[Kadeth]

In Setting - Interface you can add more action bars so that you can put combat skills one place, insta buffs another, 1 hour buffs another and so on. Makes it easier to get things at a button press or mouse click as you need them.

[Yakmir]

You don't need to use all those skills. You get a couple skills from each of your 3 souls, but some of them are very similar, and some of them are clearly better than others. You should mostly be using 2-3 skills at lvl 10, maybe 4, depends on your souls.

At higher levels, if you put most of your points into one soul, you will mostly use skills from that soul, since they will hit hardest.

Also, yep, you can add more action bars and put some of your buffs or whatever in there, so you don't run out of space.

[palemoons]

My first question is i noticed some of the classes are blocked behind a paywall

Are there servers that would be recommended for a new player i guess one that has more characters in the lower to mid range or is everything really top heavy?

Does the game use a cross server looking for group que for dungeons?

Is the game up until max level primarly solo?

1. only some ROLES are locked for some classes behind a paywall. those being : warrior and rogue : healing ; cleric : support ; mage : tank.

without paid souls, warriors/rogues cant heal, clerics cant support and mages cant tank. they can do other things just fine. if you dont want to do any of those roles on those classes, you're fine without soul packs.

even if some premades roles on the select screen may be "locked out", you can use free souls to replace the paid souls. in this case, just make a custom role, you are not forced to choose a preset "calling".

2. almost everything is top heavy, since its in the middle of an expansion. expect to find few players in the open world, most low level content is empty since people have done it already and are max level. if you want more social contact, join a guild, ask for levelling partners, or join Instant Adventures.

3. cross server

4. yes, no, maybe. depends on you. if you like group play, make friends and play with them. i like to level solo because i find other people slow me down and distract me.

[Denegrah]

One more question is the high end raiding difficult? Requiring good coordination gear and skilled players or is it on the same level as say current WoW raids?

[Crithappens]

One more question is the high end raiding difficult? Requiring good coordination gear and skilled players or is it on the same level as say current WoW raids?

http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ers-happy.html

Does that answer your question?

[Yakmir]

There's no LFR type "beginner raider" feature.

I don't know though how Rift raids compare to current WoW's hardmodes, I haven't played WoW for around 5 years. From what I've seen, they aren't harder than WoW's hardmodes 5 years ago. But maybe that's changed.

[Denegrah]

After rising in level and some great advice by some helpful players i am starting to get the hang of some things but others seem completely erratic and crazy. So some questions about the crazy parts.

So after joining and doing a few dungeons they seem crazy its 5 people sort of doing whatever they want without consequence of losing. Are all 5 man dungeons like this just a rush to get to bosses and down them in your basic tank and spank style of combat? There just seems to be no regard to aggro or crowd control or coordination needed. Also no down time which is sort of weird to me.

Now as crazy as that seems to me the instant adventures are just plain insane, no idea what is going on people and monsters everywhere and then plop teleport to the next one. I do not know really the reason for doing them is there loot you can get or something? i don't think i ever saw loot pop up. People are dropping out of raid and more are jumping in again it seems like there is no fear of dying or losing at all. And on top of that no one is talking just seems like its complete anarchy. So i guess my question is what is the purpose of them?

Thanks for all your guys help and those that have in game i have my first alternate build i have been leveling as a void knight which seems pretty good i don't die very often but someone helped me with some macros and a new build around champion i think it was going to try it out tonight.

[Koraii]

Yeah, I guess dungeons are like that? I've honestly never done a non-max level dungeon in this game, so I don't really know. The latest round of expert level dungeons were pretty challenging when 3.0 came out and people had to learn the mechanics and were under geared for them. Now they're usually pretty fast. There's mechanics that have to be performed, but not so much that it slows things down (except Skylla...stupid Skylla). Long and short is that most of the people you're grouping with in random queues are probably alts, doing dungeons for fast xp, and know what they're doing enough to just blaze through. There's probably a method to the madness, but it might not be apparent if you don't know what's happening. You might tell them when you join the group that you're new to Rift and could they please explain what's going on.

As for IAs, they are, on the surface, exactly like you described. A hectic mess of people coming and going, running around, etc. The basic rundown is this. Each adventure has a goal of some sort, listed in the top of your quest log. It might be 'kill x amount of these things' or 'gather x items and bring them to person y', or 'kill big bad boss x'. There will be indicators on your mini map as to where to go. Most of these are rehashings of one time quests from that zone, and people that have done that quest (or lots of IAs) will know the objectives and hop right to them, so it looks like a bit of a mess, but most everybody is doing the quest. They're basically fast filler content that you can hop into and out of as you wish.

As to the why. IAs are decent xp while leveling, there's a weekly quest once you get to level 65 to complete 30 of them, and they do drop loot. The loot shows up in your Rift Bag, which is a circle with a little green dot at the bottom. Click the dot and it shows you whats in the bag and lets you loot it. Items range from planarite and zone currency to boxes with equipment to special stuff like mounts and minion cards. Mostly people are just doing the weekly quest or leveling alts, which is why they're coming and going so often. Once they're done, they drop and go back to doing whatever. Sometimes you'll get a chatty group, most of the time people just put their heads down and burn through them fast as they can.

[Yakmir]

After rising in level and some great advice by some helpful players i am starting to get the hang of some things but others seem completely erratic and crazy. So some questions about the crazy parts.

So after joining and doing a few dungeons they seem crazy its 5 people sort of doing whatever they want without consequence of losing. Are all 5 man dungeons like this just a rush to get to bosses and down them in your basic tank and spank style of combat? There just seems to be no regard to aggro or crowd control or coordination needed. Also no down time which is sort of weird to me.

Low level bosses are mostly tank and spank. At 50+ most of them require some knowledge of tactics, because there are more one-shot mechanics.

Trash is Rift's weak side, for reasons you mentioned, though I suspect that your groups were especially wild because of how easy it is in low level instances.

Generally though, trash isn't challenging, so there's no crowd control involved. Maybe an occasional saboteur will do some AOE disarm on the toughest trash groups, but there's no real coordinated crowd control. Aggro is easy mode, sometimes people have to let the tank gather spread out mobs, but once the tank has aggro, he typically doesn't lose it.

There are also lots of popular ways to skip trash in most instances at max level, some would say exploits. Trash is boring, so people are used to looking for shortcuts to skip it and make runs faster.

Now as crazy as that seems to me the instant adventures are just plain insane, no idea what is going on people and monsters everywhere and then plop teleport to the next one. I do not know really the reason for doing them is there loot you can get or something? i don't think i ever saw loot pop up. People are dropping out of raid and more are jumping in again it seems like there is no fear of dying or losing at all. And on top of that no one is talking just seems like its complete anarchy. So i guess my question is what is the purpose of them?

Thanks for all your guys help and those that have in game i have my first alternate build i have been leveling as a void knight which seems pretty good i don't die very often but someone helped me with some macros and a new build around champion i think it was going to try it out tonight.

Hehe. Yep, I remember thinking something like this too when I started to play Rift. People from another game convinced me to give it a try, and one of the things they advertised were instant adventures, a way to play with people with no waiting queues that even WoW was looking to copy. I tried the game, tried instant adventures, and I was left thinking "seriously? THIS is supposed to be good?"

Most people do them because they give good xp, some rewards (the best ones are in Hammerknell IAs), and there are some quests that ask you to do them.

[Illuyanka]

With 3.0 they buffed everyone's HP, but apparently they forgot to buff old dungeons. I was leveling my alt in dungeons and find out damage was minimal and DPs too high because of people being alts and knowing their classes, so I swapped from tank to healer and the rest went DPs.

A little bit more challenging dungeons start at level60, and 65 are kinda hard if all the group are fresh 65s or don't know the mechanics or don't meet DPs requirements.

The real challenge comes after dungeons: raids. Aggro may be easy mode, but raid mechanics are a real challenge. (Google a video for a Threngar kill to give you an idea)

You need to be good dps, heal, support or tank, AND keep up with all the mechanics AND have great group coordination.

As I always say, whisper any of my characters in game if you need help with anything.
My character names are on my signature.