Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland switches from Guardian to Defiant in the fourth Rift closed beta event. Follow along as he tries out the Warfront PvP maps and the Iron Tomb dungeon.

Another weekend has come and gone, and Trion released their fourth Rift closed beta event. The major features in the newest phase boasted a level cap increased to 27, new world events and the grand opening of Warfronts, which are instanced PvP zones with specific objectives. Unable to stay away, I dove back in to explore these features as well as the dungeon system.  

Until this beta event I had been playing my Guardian character, currently a level 18 Reaver/Warlord. I soon figured out that I had set up a tank character without realizing it. As I had played the Guardian starting areas thoroughly, I made a new Defiant character, a mage who started off as a Necromancer and eventually added the Warlock and Chloromancer souls into the mix. The tutorial zone seemed to go much faster on this character, especially since I used a skeleton minion and pet health regeneration is currently bugged so my pet would fully recover within seconds once out of combat. I soon found myself questing through Freemarch.

Server stability in the fourth beta event seemed a bit worse than the last two phases I played; the server crashed once, was reset once and lagged badly several times. I imagine this is due to the beta keys received by those who have pre-ordered the game, but it could also be due to the more frequent zone events this time around. Over three days I saw four zone events going on; however, one lagged the server terribly and was ended prematurely by the Game Masters, which made the pace of my leveling heavily dependent on what questing locations were free of rifts or invasions. It seemed like every time I finished a batch of quests, my quest-giver location was overrun by invasions and I would have to wait for a group to form to take them out.

Unlike rifts, which can be minor with non-elite enemies, all invasions are solely comprised of elites and the enemies cannot be lured away one at a time. This makes groups a necessity, and thus the quest-giver are areas off-limits until a full group or raid comes along. This feature is quite balanced against the fun and surprise of the dynamic rifts and invasions, but it got tiring after the third or fourth time.

Iron Tomb Dungeon

The server reset during my first dungeon run, which took place in the Iron Tomb dungeon. I was invited to a guild and went with four of my new guildmates to the dungeon in western Freemarch. Luckily I had just finished the quest lines leading to the dungeon, so the story flowed pretty well into the area.

The enemies were single elite enemies, elite groups of 2-4 or non-elite groups of 4 that could be easily downed. The regular trash packs didn't pose much of a threat until after the second boss, where our unprepared party was slaughtered. The bosses themselves were pretty straightforward, with some strategy involved. The first boss was a basic tank and spank; the second involved fighting three bosses separately, and then all together (one is a cleric, one is a mage, one is a warrior), and the end boss involved rushing to a friendly ghost to avoid a massive damage spell cast at certain intervals.

The trip through the second half of the instance was probably the most difficult part – both of my groups wiped at the demonic stones and the “ghost room” before figuring out the strategies. The gear was very nice and the quest rewards were also high quality, making the experience fun... even though I had to do the dungeon twice, due to a server reset just after the second boss.

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