What I like about the game is the soul system. I see downsides to it (class identity being one), but the way I play Rift at the moment, it works out perfectly fine. 80% of my time, I spend doing dungeons and rifts, and the chance to switch on the fly between pyro damage, chloro healing, and archon support, is very helpful. The rest of the time is spent crafting and exploring. At the moment, this looks enough to me to warrant another month.

There are a couple of things I’m still not sold on. One of the is them leveling speed. It’s just too darn fast! Doing lots of rifts and dungeons means that I do little to no questing. I stopped when I reached the middle of Stonefield, because I was outleveling them. I’ve done about 2 quests in Scarlet Gorge. At the moment, I’m 35 and haven’t done a single quest in Scarwood (I’ve explored about half of the map there, though, while doing rifts). The leveling speed is high enough that I’m completely surpassing the story content. That’s compounded by the fact that the cap for rested XP seems to be very high – I leveled from 30 to 34 in a single day using rested XP, and I still had a bit left over.

The downside is that I had problems getting the story in the first place; completely skipping quests in zones doesn’t help that. Of course, you could argue that that’s my own damn fault – and I agree, to a certain degree. Then again, the current world event makes rifting a very tempting pastime; and since I still need 13 egg levels to get my raptor, I’ll continue. Speaking of the event, I very much assume that it was perfectly timed to coincide with the Steam sale, so you won’t see phase 3 or the conclusion before your free month runs out. I have to admit that looks like their trick will work with me.

Considering dungeoning, you get presents for running dungeons once a day, and if you skip days, you might end up with as many as 7 subsidized dungeon runs. Add that to the fact that playing heal or support solo is quite boring, and you see where I spend a lot of my time. The result is that I end up in a dungeon, with two quest givers in front that I might or might not have seen before, and that give me quests along the lines of “kill X, use Y at Z, and kill whatever appears when you do so”. If I have time to read the text at all; the rush-rush culture certainly has its followers in this game too. So I go off, killing some stuff, without any idea why that would be a good or bad idea. I sometimes don’t even know where that place is that I’m fighting in. I guess someone must’ve hit me over the head with a club, put me in a sack, and transported me to a dungeon far away, where, after waking up, I’d find 4 strangers that share a similar fate, but we soon realize that our muggers at least were nice enough to take group composition into account before they dumped us into this deadly trial. It’s almost like the Cube, MMO edition.

I guess the only solution to that problem is to roll another alt that will purely focus on story line exploration via world questing. There’s some irony in that, seeing how I had planned to roll an alt on the Guardian side to see what the story looks like from their position. Now I’ll need to roll a Defiant alt too, to find out what their story is, despite the fact I’m about halfway through the leveling with one.

One last problem is that the dungeon finder seems to hate me (joking, but still). On Sunday, I was put into Foul Cascade as DPS three times in a row, at level 33. The rest of the group also being reasonably high, it was a genuine snorefest. On Monday, having just hit 34, I ended up in King’s Breach. As a healer. With a level 34 tank. Who pulled like a madman. Oh my. I am very thankful for the level 40 support who helped out with healing now and then, or we would’ve had several wipes (I told him afterwards, I want to make sure support feels appreciated). Still, that makes your contribution feel inadequate.

I admit I could probably be a much better healer. I sometimes lose track of my target, especially when I have to target the tank for a direct heal, and then have to go back to a mob to DPS again. Also, I picked up the warlock talent the other day that gives you a chance for an instant cast (opportunity), and it’s still confusing me more than it helps. In the heat of battle, I often miss the fact that I just instant cast, and then just stand there twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a cast to finish that has long hit the target.

Anyway, that’s the second time I was thrown into a dungeon as a healer at the low end of the spectrum, with a similarly low level tank. That is a bit more challenge than I would like, to be honest. It makes me feel responsible for wasting everybody’s time in case we wipe. I wouldn’t mind with people I know, but with randoms, I get the feeling I have to perform, or else. It probably doesn’t help that I’m a chloromancer, either; I assume clerics can get away with being low level more easily. If one of my damage spells gets resisted, I don’t do any healing, and stuff can get hectic. And of course, there’s that annoying veil bug: if another mage in your group has Lifegiving Veil, it tends to overwrite your Lifebound Veil/Synthesis, and if you don’t notice in time, you end up with a tank-shaped puddle on the ground.

Anyway, the frustrations right now are small enough, and the novelty factor is still there, so I guess I’ll stay another month. And isn’t that all that Trion would be interested in anyway? So I guess they’re doing it right.