Welcome Back -- a guide to what's changed.

[Tufelhunden]

Great guide and should help a lot of returning players. Actually helped me as I didn't start until ~1.3.

Thank you.

[Warbs]

Great post

[the_real_seebs]

Updated OP with 1.7 stuff.

[Painstouch]

Excellent topic! Should definitely refresh what's up to newcomers or returners of Rift.

[TimeBomb]

Very nicely laid out. May I suggest linking the Patch 1.7 and the like to the actual full patch notes thread? This obviously is not necessary nor efficient to do for the hotfixes.

[the_real_seebs]

Very nicely laid out. May I suggest linking the Patch 1.7 and the like to the actual full patch notes thread? This obviously is not necessary nor efficient to do for the hotfixes.

That is an idea with which I suspect a number of us would like to have babies.

[merrier]

Ooh, I love the new version. Well done!

[h0tmess]

Hi and thank you for this.
I am just getting back in game and I am so overwhelmed. I appreciate this guide, but I do have some questions.

What are we doing at level 50? I left after 1.3, had a 50 mage...and that was it. If I remember correctly, I am in mostly T2. See, what confuses me is that WoW is my game of choice. I enjoy it a lot for what it is, but a game like Rift really makes me see how much is handed to us in WoW. Because of this, I am a little confused on item ranking. What exactly is the gear level? I'd imagine the level 48-50 normal dungeons, to get us ready for T1..and you do T1 (which is heroic, or "expert" in Rift)...and that gets you geared for the T2 experts? This is correct, right? How do you know when you are ready for the next tier?

Like I said before, I should.. SHOULD be T2 geared. What am I "supposed" to do now? I know I can run my dungeon finder 7x a week..but what am I aiming to earn? Plaques still?..from what vendor?

Are there still daily dungeon quests or have they been merged with the LFD now? I was around for crafting rifts..as well as crafting dailies, and even weeklies. I remember raid rifts...and now slivers? There are.. 3 20 man raids, and 3 10 man raids, which are the slivers...right?

As you can tell, my mind is all over the place with this. Before I start a new toon, I want to get into the swing of things again. You know, "what I need to do today" and "what I need to do before the week resets". In WoW, I do my jewelcrafting daily, I make sure the toons I want have completed LFR and get select toons valor points capped...and I show up on Wed-Fri for raid nights.

Before I look for a guild in Rift to start raiding...what can be my..um..daily/weekly Rift agenda? Note, I already remember the PVP dailies. I liked PVP, but I am not focused on that right now.

Sorry if this is confusing..I am. LOL!

[Altira]

Hi and thank you for this.
I am just getting back in game and I am so overwhelmed. I appreciate this guide, but I do have some questions.

What are we doing at level 50? I left after 1.3, had a 50 mage...and that was it. If I remember correctly, I am in mostly T2. See, what confuses me is that WoW is my game of choice. I enjoy it a lot for what it is, but a game like Rift really makes me see how much is handed to us in WoW. Because of this, I am a little confused on item ranking. What exactly is the gear level? I'd imagine the level 48-50 normal dungeons, to get us ready for T1..and you do T1 (which is heroic, or "expert" in Rift)...and that gets you geared for the T2 experts? This is correct, right? How do you know when you are ready for the next tier?

Like I said before, I should.. SHOULD be T2 geared. What am I "supposed" to do now? I know I can run my dungeon finder 7x a week..but what am I aiming to earn? Plaques still?..from what vendor?

Are there still daily dungeon quests or have they been merged with the LFD now? I was around for crafting rifts..as well as crafting dailies, and even weeklies. I remember raid rifts...and now slivers? There are.. 3 20 man raids, and 3 10 man raids, which are the slivers...right?

As you can tell, my mind is all over the place with this. Before I start a new toon, I want to get into the swing of things again. You know, "what I need to do today" and "what I need to do before the week resets". In WoW, I do my jewelcrafting daily, I make sure the toons I want have completed LFR and get select toons valor points capped...and I show up on Wed-Fri for raid nights.

Before I look for a guild in Rift to start raiding...what can be my..um..daily/weekly Rift agenda? Note, I already remember the PVP dailies. I liked PVP, but I am not focused on that right now.

Sorry if this is confusing..I am. LOL!

I believe they changed the rewards for the normal 48-50 dungeons to be something equivalent to T1? While all previous T1 and T2 experts are now just "expert" dungeons, all the same difficulty of T2.

Expert dungeons give plaques(6?), or Marks of Ascension(2), or Greater Mark of Ascension. The Marks of Ascension are for the blighted gear, while the Greater Marks are for Hammerknell gear. At your stage of gear and progress in the game, you want to collect Marks of Ascension. You get more Marks of Ascension from the starting raid zones like River of Souls and Greenscale's Blight.

Important to note, and what is missing in this thread, is that as of 1.7 you can turn in plaques, marks, sourcestone, and inscribed sourcestone, for exp shards.
6 Marks of Ascension = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight (100K exp) - From "Major Relics" merchant of your calling.
30 Plaques of Achievement = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight - From "Consecrated Relics" merchant, T1 gear.
12K Sourcestone = 1 Pure Crystalized Insight (50K exp) - From Quartermaster Ootalme <Planar Vouchers>
20 Inscribed Sourcestone = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight - From Quartermaster Ootalme

[h0tmess]

I believe they changed the rewards for the normal 48-50 dungeons to be something equivalent to T1? While all previous T1 and T2 experts are now just "expert" dungeons, all the same difficulty of T2.

Expert dungeons give plaques(6?), or Marks of Ascension(2), or Greater Mark of Ascension. The Marks of Ascension are for the blighted gear, while the Greater Marks are for Hammerknell gear. At your stage of gear and progress in the game, you want to collect Marks of Ascension. You get more Marks of Ascension from the starting raid zones like River of Souls and Greenscale's Blight.

Important to note, and what is missing in this thread, is that as of 1.7 you can turn in plaques, marks, sourcestone, and inscribed sourcestone, for exp shards.
6 Marks of Ascension = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight (100K exp) - From "Major Relics" merchant of your calling.
30 Plaques of Achievement = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight - From "Consecrated Relics" merchant, T1 gear.
12K Sourcestone = 1 Pure Crystalized Insight (50K exp) - From Quartermaster Ootalme <Planar Vouchers>
20 Inscribed Sourcestone = 1 Eternal Crystalized Insight - From Quartermaster Ootalme

Thank you. This helped a lot!
I remember there were 3 vendors that sold gear. If I remember correctly 2 of them sold the same gear, but one was just better? I think that may have been T1 => T2? Could you (or anyone) explain those 3 gear vendors?

Also, what about Chronicles? What are they = to? Do they all share similar gear level, or are they different?

With my question about Chronicles on hold at the moment, and while I am not quite ready to look for a home (server and guild)..it looks like I should be doing random experts and choosing the Marks of Ascension as my reward? Now once I collect enough marks for actual gear, what is that gear equal to? Argh, I really do appreciate WoW's item level. I know people make big deals about it (positive AND negative, but it makes it SO easy to understand what gear is from where.

As I aim to do those 7 per week (if I'm correct that is), and possibly doing Chronicles a few times a week if they are worth the time (gear wise, not so much enjoyment :P..i havent tried them yet and they seem awesome)....What about raid rifts? I understand for the most part the raids (slivers and 20 mans) I'm going to need a guild for (usually, at least)..but I'm pretty sure raid rifts at the time where easily puggable. Are they something that's worth it? I know they give notoriety with the faction associated with the element and I do want to get that eventually..but I guess I'm just looking for "what am I mainly focusing on farming"..and it seems that earlier raids (eventually) and LFD and collecting the marks.

The raid rifts..they could only be done if someone had..something to open them up, right? What was it/how did you earn it? You also got rewards from daily (or weekly??) raid rift quests. What was it..and again..worth farming?

SO, SO SO sorry for these 38048048 questions.. but, I am very excited to get back in..and I'm really anal about this kind of stuff.

IF there's some website/blog/guide that has even more info out there, you can just link me to that =)

Thanks so much!!

[Chaosoul]

Thank you. This helped a lot!
I remember there were 3 vendors that sold gear. If I remember correctly 2 of them sold the same gear, but one was just better? I think that may have been T1 => T2? Could you (or anyone) explain those 3 gear vendors?

Also, what about Chronicles? What are they = to? Do they all share similar gear level, or are they different?

With my question about Chronicles on hold at the moment, and while I am not quite ready to look for a home (server and guild)..it looks like I should be doing random experts and choosing the Marks of Ascension as my reward? Now once I collect enough marks for actual gear, what is that gear equal to? Argh, I really do appreciate WoW's item level. I know people make big deals about it (positive AND negative, but it makes it SO easy to understand what gear is from where.

As I aim to do those 7 per week (if I'm correct that is), and possibly doing Chronicles a few times a week if they are worth the time (gear wise, not so much enjoyment :P..i havent tried them yet and they seem awesome)....What about raid rifts? I understand for the most part the raids (slivers and 20 mans) I'm going to need a guild for (usually, at least)..but I'm pretty sure raid rifts at the time where easily puggable. Are they something that's worth it? I know they give notoriety with the faction associated with the element and I do want to get that eventually..but I guess I'm just looking for "what am I mainly focusing on farming"..and it seems that earlier raids (eventually) and LFD and collecting the marks.

The raid rifts..they could only be done if someone had..something to open them up, right? What was it/how did you earn it? You also got rewards from daily (or weekly??) raid rift quests. What was it..and again..worth farming?

SO, SO SO sorry for these 38048048 questions.. but, I am very excited to get back in..and I'm really anal about this kind of stuff.

IF there's some website/blog/guide that has even more info out there, you can just link me to that =)

Thanks so much!!

Hiya and welcome back!

Just wanted to set you right on the 7x thing, that's per day. You can get those rewards 7x per day for expert runs (resets at 4am server time (PST)).

As said, it sounds like you'll be wanting to collect Mark of Ascension now. Also, be on the lookout for a guild or group of people (or a PuG) that is actively doing the raids River of Souls (RoS) and Greenscale's Blight (GSB). I think that should set you right.

The Chronicles are designed for 2 fresh 50's, or can be easily solo'd by someone in okay gear. The drops are likely to be of no use to you, other than vendor fodder or salvaging if you're a runecrafter. But, they are still fun to do (at least I think so).

Ember Isle is another good place for you to go. Amazing area, quests, gear. As far as the Inscribed gear versus the Mark gear, I would just compare and see which currency you would rather be actively going after (if not both).

That should, hopefully, help you get going with things. I understand the want for some sort of gear score in this situation.. But I'm not sure that such an addition would be more good than bad. That's just my opinion, from what I've seen and heard. But I do sympathize.. It must be difficult figuring all this out, not having been here.

Best of luck!

[Nofreee]

I'm extremely impressed with the work the Dev team has put into Rift over the year. I played a bit in beta, but didn't feel Rift was ready for the way I believe an MMO should behave. I picked it up again last night and was blown away with how far it has come.

I didn't want to log off last night after playing for a few hours and can't wait to put more time into this weekend. I was so impressed that I bought 3 copies for my co-workers to jump in with me. (Thank you steam sale)

Thank you for this guide, I was ecstatic with the changes I saw from just the dozen or so levels I've seen so far. Everything listed here make me excited to dig in deeper to Rift.

[Emrendil]

I'm back to, at least for a month! Then I'll see

[Drbuffer]

hello I was thinking about coming back to Rift but I'm worried there isn't much to do. I haven't played since around november 2011

I was raiding Hammerknell, but didn't get very far past the first boss though. I had completed all the story quests i think, I know i have the croc mount

I have all RoS and GSB gear, don't remember the names of it but I know I had the 4 piece rogue relic that makes a shot instant

I remember quitting around the time that Ember Isle came out, I remember thinking that questing on the Isle was useless since I had all that raid gear.

i read over all the what's new stuff but I didn't just see anything that made me say "wow I should sub to try that"

I'm mostly interested in the old T1 that are now T2, but i'm guessing that my gear is still better then what drops there?

thanks!

[the_real_seebs]

I would guess your gear would still be better; there'll be more in 1.8, though, with Infernal Dawn releasing.

I am not much of a gear-chaser, so I am not very clear on the gearing options.