Just as a friendly reminder, the third Rift closed beta event begins today at 10 a.m. PST and runs through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. During the "Enter the Rift" event, players will be able to create a character from either the Guardian or Defiant factions and play through the first 20 levels of content. Now that the beta NDA has lifted, be sure to let us know what you think about the game!

Trion Worlds has released the patch notes for the third beta event, which you can read after the jump. The lengthy notes feature a bunch of changes, including some major updates to the soul system. All souls are available at level 1, and you will leave the starting zone with three souls for your character. Trion has also increased the number of soul points awarded to characters.

Do you want to participate in the third closed beta event this week? We're still giving away VIP keys that will grant you entry into every Rift beta event, and all you need to do is contribute in our Rift forums. Winners are selected based on their activity on our new Rift site, so keep posting in our forums and commenting on our articles!

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Beta 3
12/27/2010

=== FEATURED ===
* Soul acquisition and soul point gains have undergone some changes -- see below under SOULS for more details!
* One new full-zone event and seven new Invasion bosses are available for Beta 3!
* You can now control-click soul icons in quest windows and get a full soul tree preview of the soul with all of its abilities.
* You can now rename your pet! Right click the pet’s portrait and select the ‘Rename’ option.
* Reactive abilities now have a special display when they are triggered and available for use.
* New game opening movie is in!
* Cyril has a whole new voice! This includes the Guardian intro movie voiceover.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY
* Respec costs have been temporarily disabled for Beta 3 to allow even more chances to play with soul combinations.
* BETA 3 TEST ITEM: Items are available on the Planar Goods merchants that will teleport you to the opposing factions’ zone (Freemarch-Silverwood).
* Lots of new mounts! Updated many mount vendors.
* Corpse despawn time is greatly extended for corpses containing Rare or Epic loot.
* Keyboard turning speed has been significantly increased.
* Falling out of the world should return you to the nearest graveyard alive, instead of dead.
* Daily quests can only be shared on the same day they are being offered.
* You will no longer see, nor can trigger, achievements flagged for the opposite faction.
* You can once again remove a title after adding one to your name, using the "No Title" button on the Titles collection pane.
* Rest experience has been enabled. If you log out in a Tranquil area (most major towns), you will get rest experience for each hour logged off.
* Monster and player kills while rested grant 200% experience.
* Players can no longer give characters names beginning with 'GM'.
* A number of client and server stability improvements have been made since Beta 2.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Added two new invader boss encounters in Silverwood.
* Added five new invader boss encounters to Freemarch.
* Many improvements to the Silverwood zone event.
* Freemarch zone event should now make itself seen for beta 3!
* Rewards are now available for successfully defeating zone events.
* Silverwood and Freemarch Invasion bosses now drop Champion's Emblems and sourcestone loot.
* Fixed the Defiant Commander to correctly award Invasion effort when attacked.
* Added loot to Guardian and Defiant invasions and footholds.
* Revised contribution for rifts and invasions, particularly so that contribution gains are more fair to healers.
* You should now be able to pull an Invasion without pulling adds from outside the Invasion group near a foothold.
* You should also be able to kite Invasion mobs without so many leashing issues.
* Interrupts no longer work on foothold-spawning abilities, like those used by Invasion Captains. (In previous betas, interrupting them would cause the spell to actually succeed faster.)
* Members of an Invasion who remain alive after the Invasion leader is killed now correctly take 1% damage per tick from being 'Untethered'.
* Once an Invasion succeeds in establishing a foothold and becomes Untethered, they will no longer continue to draw shifting planar creep around them on the ground.
* Invasion immunity upon spawn has been reduced to 10 seconds.
* Invasions will now award artifacts 50% of the time for gold contribution, and 10% of the time for silver.
* The Invasion effect 'Unbound' will no longer be removed if an invasion is pulled and then leashed (reset).

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS
* Party member pets will not appear if the pet owner is in a different instance of your zone. Other party members also shouldn't appear briefly on your screen if you leave the group.
* Instances now reset at the correct time. The /time command reports this, but it should be 4:00AM PST.

GUILDS
* Opening the Guild window while tracking a Guild Quest will stop de-tracking the quest.
* Changed some guild quest text so it didn't tell you to kill members of your own faction

DEATH
* Spirit walking characters should now appear transparent to others.
* Fixed a bug where you could get stuck in a dead state after respawning.
* Added resurrection NPCs to all graveyards.
* If you are dead, you must choose to respawn or soul walk before you will see any windows that pop to enter an instance.
* We made a number of changes to resurrection rules to improve overall gameplay:

Resurrection at Graveyard - Changes
* Players who resurrect at a graveyard will now take a 25% soul vitality penalty, instead of 100%.
* Players who resurrect at a graveyard now get the weakened soul debuff (50% reduction to all stats for 5 minutes), which can be removed by a Healer NPC.
* Resurrection NPC dialogue and options are updated to reflect the above changes.

Death Penalty Debuff - Changes
* Players will receive a weakened soul debuff if they die normally with 0% Soul Vitality OR if they respawn at a graveyard.
* The weakened soul debuff has changed to be a flat 50% stat reduction instead of a stacking 20% debuff.
* Weakened soul debuff now has a duration of 5 minutes.
* Weakened soul debuffs can still be removed via Healer NPCs.

Soul Healing Cost - Changes
* Soul healing has its cost reduced significantly for leveling players. Low level players will see a large reduction in the cost to heal death penalties. Mid-level players see a moderate reduction, and high-level players see a low reduction. Max level players do not have cost reduced.

COMBAT
* Pets now inherit a percentage of their owner's attack or spell power based on its type and the owner's Calling. This means pets' damage will scale better with your gear.
* Ranged and Melee abilities now play nice together, and will switch between them instead of showing an invalid weapon equipped error.
* The grace period before the end of global cooldown now plays nicer with procs that affect the next spellcast (instant cast, Life and Death Concord, etc.)

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