Rift Leveling Guide

Rift is a new and very exciting massively multiplayer online game developed by Trion Worlds. It features beautiful graphics, competitive PvP gameplay, high-level instances and raiding, a unique class system and much more.

On this page I'll try to provide a beginners leveling and strategy guide for Rift, explaining the game's fundamental elements and helping new players get started more easily in the world of Telara.

The Guardians and The Defiant

During the final moment of the Mathosian Civil War, the place that protected the Telara that protects them from other destructive convergence has weakened the by they commonly known as Shade, it is a catastrophic event that ever happened to their civilization. Since then, the rifts of the plane and Telara has enormously been increasing the dreadful effects in their land. Because of this, the enemies from the bay has made a way to be free from prison and spread the violence amongst them.The Telara's system is divided into two rift factions: the Guardians and the Defiant.

The guardians are composed of dwarves, high eleves and mathosians. They consider Sanctum as their Holy City. They portray as the people of Sanctum that has a good deeds. They are also a great example because they believe that they will be cleansed once they will redeem from the world of corrupting officials in their community. On the other hand, The Defiant faction consists of Eth, Bahmi and Kelari, they are fund of using technology as their piece to lift up their land from fortuneless civilization. This faction believes that they will save the land but not the gods. One of the thing that the defiant do not want from the gods is that, they are wasting their time for building temples and shrines for them.

The Telara's terrible enemy, known as death god Regulos, is making his way to enter back into the Telara to finish what He has started. In the other hand, Telara's own god has become more silent regarding the upcming great chaos. And the world has greatly became a disorganized and deceitful civilization. The innocent people of Telara is more convinced that the end of the world has finally come. In their treasured final days, the two rift factions has increasingly got mad at each other, and decided to arise a battle between them to save the upcoming apocalyse. Though each of the factions intands to save the their world, but the thing that differ them from each other is their belief and culture.

Both factions are making sure that their land will be saved from the upcoming disaster and end of the world. But what can they do for them to succeed in their chosen beliefs and endeavor? Maybe they should better talk to each other, fix their different conflicts. And they should work hand in hand to save their world in a positive idea. In this way, they can surely make a bright and prosperous new future that waits them.

Playable classes and the soul system

The soul system in Rift is highly praised as it allows players enormous customization options.

In Rift, there are 4 main class archetypes (callings): Cleric, Mage, Rogue, and Warrior. By choosing a particular calling you don't get any abilities, but rather access to eight (plus 1 PvP-oriented) classes. These souls determine your characters abilities. By the time you're level 10 you will have all three souls. Later on you can also switch them when you learn new ones, thus enabling you to for example level up with a DPS warrior souls but quickly switch to tanking when needed.

Below are a list of all souls currently available:

Cleric:

Cabalist, Druid, Inquisitor, Shaman - DPS (damage dealing) souls

Justicar - defensive soul (tank)

Purifier, Sentinel, Warden - healers

Mage:

Archon, Dominator - support

Chloromancer - healer

Elementalist, Necromancer, Pyromancer, Stormcaller, Warlock - DPS

Rogue:

Bard - support

Riftstalker - tanking

Assassin, Bladedancer, Nightblade, Saboteur - melee DPS

Marksman, Ranger - ranged DPS

Warrior:

Beastmaster, Champion, Paragon, Riftblade - DPS,

Paladin, Reaver, Void Knight, Warlord - tanks

How the soul system works

Before you even reach level 10 you will have 3 different souls already picked. It's recommended go for the offensive, DPS souls for leveling as it will be the easiest for you. You won't do any dungeons before level 17 at least, at which time you can get quests to unlock additional souls in your factions capital city.

Each level you gain in Rift will give you 1, or sometimes 2 skill points which you can distribute in your soul trees as shown on the picture above. By putting skill points into a particular soul, you gain new and more powerful abilities. You can only put one skill point per level into one soul tree: for example at level 20 you can only have 20 points in one soul tree. This is the way the game's forcing and enabling you to use those additional points you gain into another soul tree.

What makes this system special is that there aren't really any cookie-cutter souls or soul tree builds. Of course there are better ones, but every soul has great synergy with most other souls and you don't have to be afraid to experiment with it.

Each class in Rift has its own combat style, making this game fairly reactive and dynamic, especially if you're playing different characters. Style of gameplay is also different from one class to another, for example if you're playing a cleric your main spell casting resource is mana, but in addition a Justicar (DPS oriented cleric class and great for leveling) also builds Convictions, which are consumed by some other abilities.

More information on how combat works for each of the callings can be read below:

- Cleric Combat System

- Mage Combat System

- Rogue Combat System

- Warrior Combat System

This video will show you the basics of combat in Rift, and how action points and combo points work.

Rifts are, as you may have already guessed, what this game got its name from. Rifts are basically fractures or tears that frequently appear randomly in Rift, from which various powerful monsters come through that players have to fight.

Unlike similar events in other games, defeating invasions and closing down rifts is almost always necessary, because if you don't the monsters will set footholds in the zone which makes them even harder to defeat. For example the monsters may attack a camp or a town and annihilate all your quest NPCs until players defeat them. Such a system allows for a very dynamic world in which you always have to keep an eye on the map and make sure invasions don't spread.

A couple of additional notes: monsters from the same type of rift (there are six different types) help each other, while monsters from different types of rifts battle each other. Use that to your advantage whenever you can.

This video does a good job at explaining the basics of rifts.

Note: you might want to mute the sounds as it's NSFW

When it comes to leveling you fortunately have more than one option available. The current max level players can obtain is 50. While the first few levels can be gained rather quickly, it gets increasingly more difficult and time consuming to get to the level cap, which is the reason why many players use a Rift leveling guide to reach the cap faster. I won't be doing a step-by-step leveling guide containing every quest (for that, check out the website I just linked), but rather focus on giving you a few basic pointers on different ways you can level up in this game.

QUESTING

The basic way to level up your character in MMORPG games, including Rift, is by doing quests. Throughout the world the are NPCs giving you missing you must complete in order to get rewards: items, reputation and most importantly experience. Quests are always a decent source of experience, but the biggest downside is there's never enough of them. That's why you will often have to mix different ways of obtaining experience.

WARFRONTS

Warfronts are Rift's version of player versus player combat / battlegrounds. These are special instanced areas in which you can engage other players, fight over different objectives and gain experience points. Even though the experience gained in Warfronts isn't that great, if you're looking for a change of pace from questing PvP is a good option.

RIFTS

Rifts, being the namesake of this game are of course a very fun thing to do (for awhile). Personally I don't like participating in rift events all the time, but every now and then, just as PvP, it's a welcome change from the usual questing. Rifts are a decent way to get additional experience points and items.

GRINDING

Griding in MMORP games is when you repeatedly kill the same monster(s) because they yield high experience and are typically easy to kill. Most players including myself dislike grinding as it's very tedious and repetitive. Sometimes however you may run out of quests to do and need a couple of levels before you go to the next area, so grinding can be your only choice of getting experience, especially if you're tired of rifts and warfronts.

DUNGEONS

Dungeons or instances are special areas where you, along with a group of typically 4 other players attempt to defeat more difficult opponents and bosses which normally can't be defeated in solo gameplay. These monsters do give out a lot of experience, but are impossible to kill alone: the experience gained is shared with four other players in your team so overall it's not a preferred choice of leveling. Instances are however a very good source of powerful items, so if you want to upgrade your equipment and get some experience while at it, this is a good choice.

There are two main profession categories in Rift: Gathering professions and Crafting professions.

GATHERING PROFESSIONS

Gathering professions are Butchering, Foraging and Mining. They enable players to gather raw materials which are used for producing useful items with crafting professions.

Butchering

Butchers collect hides and leather from various monsters in Telara, and can then craft different equippable items. Butchering is almost necessary to have with the Outfitting crafting profession, but some materials are also used by Armorsmiths and Apothecaries.

Foraging

Foraging is another gathering profession which is based around collecting plants, herbs and wood spread throughout the zones. If you want to create potions with Apothecary craft foraging is extremely beneficial to have. Additionally, some items are used by Artificers and Weaponsmiths.

Mining

The last gathering profession is mining, which allows players to gather ore/minerals. It's particularly useful if you have Weaponsmithing or Armorsmithing.

CRAFTING PROFESSIONS

Crafting professions allow you to make various items using gathered materials. Crafting professions are Apothecary, Armorsmithing, Artificing, Outfitting, Runecrafting and Weaponsmithing.

Apothecary

With Apothecary you can create Flasks, Potions, Philters, Tonics and Vials. Best gathering professions for apothecaries is foraging.

Armorsmithing

With armorsmithing you can craft plate and chain armor, as well as shields. Armorsmiths can also salvage crafted items, which is great because you can get about 1/3 of the invested resources, and also you can salvage various quest items you don't need. Best gathering professions for miners are mining, and butchering to a degree.

Artificing

Artificing enables you to craft necklaces, staves, totems, rings and wands. Best paired with mining and/or foraging.

Runecrafting

Runecrafting doesn't create any items, but is instead used to improve the stat bonuses of existing items. Runecrafters don't even need a gathering profession to go along as the resources are gained by using the Runebreak skill on existing items.

Weaponsmithing

With weaponsmithing you can craft swords, maces, bows, axes and rifles. The best gathering profession which goes well with weaponsmithing is of course mining.