Ding 30, Thanks Dina, and Tweetpic macro button!

YES! So the other day at the end of this post I reported my "score" was 145. My new score? 180!


That got bumped up a few by dinging level 30 and for having my buddy Dina run me through a couple of instances with her high level rogue (with me healing), and you saw this all if you happen to follow my new achievement spam Twitter account. Hehe, I have a whopping four followers of my achievement spam on @stingite. ;-)

So, here I am dinging 30, which apparently looks like I'm simply just peering off into the distance contemplating how killing that boar bumped my score and why rhyming is all in the timing. (not that great of a screenshot)

And here I am at Deepstrike Mines running toward the loot as we finished that off. (kind of a meh screenshot)

And here I am as Dina and I finished off the Iron Tomb (which actually isn't a bad screenshot at all -- go figure) . . . and here we are one second later as I earn the Champion of Freemarch badge because I'm all that and a bag of potato chips. (Looks like Dina just decided to totally butt in front of me in line for the free potato chips! ;-))

If you look at my @Stingite Twitter spam however, you'll notice that I have a lot more pictures going on there. What's up with that? Well, I'll tell you what's up with that, I set up a cool Twitter screenshot macro button so I can take pictures and send them directly to Twitter. It's just basically one line "tweetpic"


Now I just need to figure out another macro for toggling between hiding my UI and showing my UI when I tweetpic. hmmmm. Anyone got any tips? :)

Happy Dueling!

Couldn't Resist This Offer--Collector's Upgrade

I originally bought my copy of Rift at Walmart, which meant I also got a free Lil' Wally pet to run around with and be my best buddy.


Lil' Wally doesn't do much, but he definitely opens a new door of opportunity for me to be featured on PeopleofWalmart.com every time I summon him.

I didn't spring for the more expensive collector's edition at that time, and now I'm kind of glad I didn't since I just got an e-mail that I could upgrade my regular account to a collector's edition for just five bucks.


Not bad!

In most MMOs, you'd only be able to redeem this cool two-headed turtle mount and pet on one character, but there's no decision like that to make with Rift. Check it out, every character on your account has access to this mount. Every stingle stinking one. :) That's just the way Trion rolls.

The ultimate selling point for me though was the expanded bag space. I swear bag space is my number one problem in any MMO I play.

Such a packrat here.

OH, btw, did you hear about this?



Man, free character transfers back in the days of World of Warcraft and Everquest would have been awesome (and completely mind-boggling to perhaps someone who plays Wizard101 where you can just server jump at will). Unfortunately I'm not high enough level in Rift (or with enough scattered friends who play the game) to care much yet. Still, that's a nice move on the part of Trion. :)

Happy Dueling!

Rift's Twitter Spammage

There was a time when Rift first came out of beta that my Twitter stream was spammed to heck by people who played Rift. I'm a couple months late to the party here and this doesn't really seem to be the case anymore. People that I followed seemed to grow tired of the spam and turned off their automatic updates to Twitter. (or, you know, they're not playing Rift right now . . .) One of the blogs on my blogroll even seems to be a Tumblr blog dedicated to achievement spam.

Anyway, from what I can tell, setting up your Twitter spam feed works one of two ways.

1) Log in to Twitter manually when the occasion strikes you (the log in is kind of hidden back in a tab of your settings dialog box).



2) Set up your social media from the patcher and log in automatically when you log on to Rift.


You can't hide that Twitter login from me! Now that I'm playing Rift . . . MUHAHAHAHA, it's my turn to spam!

But in all seriousness, I love this feature. More MMOs should develop social media feeds because, you know, MMOs are social games. In fact, all Trion needs now is a simple way to Livestream, and they will have effectively dominated social media even moreso than they already have.

On the other hand . . . as incredibly smart as this feature is, some of these updates when I accomplish something in game become immediately recognizable and ignorable to the people who read it on my Twitter stream (because it is spam after all). I'd take (and I'm sure they'd take) a blog post with a nicely written description over Twitter feed spam any day.

On that note, here's my Twitter spam accomplishments from my Rift play yesterday with just slightly more information to help describe what's going on.

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Stingite: I earned this achievement: All Things Defiant! http://yfrog.com/0v20110520132104j



You earn the All Things Defiant achievement when you wander around and find eight locations in Meridian. Easy achievement. I just happened to wander into Orphiel's observatory yesterday and BLING! ACHIEVEMENT SPAM FOR MY FOLLOWERS! WOOT!

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Stingite: I earned this achievement: Roamer of the March! http://yfrog.com/4220110520140156j



You earn this achievement when you wander off the beaten path in Freemarch and finally fill in your map. Nineteen locations in total. In this picture you see me strafing around by a not too often visited location that has a couple of group quests that were easily soloable at level 26.

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Stingite: I earned this achievement: The Long March! http://yfrog.com/eu20110520141930j



You earn this achievement when you complete all 103 quests that Freemarch has to offer. Yay me!

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Stingite: I earned this achievement: Verily Downstream! http://yfrog.com/0f20110520210755j



You earn this achievement when you complete a rift event in Freemarch where you banish Veras, a water boss in Freemarch. Verily get yourself downstream with doth badeth selfeth we saideth to the Veras!

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Stingite: I earned this achievement: Apprentice Crafter! http://yfrog.com/0e20110520215001j



Basically, this is the achievement you get when you craft an unknown amount of items. Yesterday was the first time I really fiddled around with crafting, and I made a number of Tin Boots and turned a bunch of hides into leather.

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All of these achievements eventually tally into a "score" for your character. My total score so far is 145, which if you were to compare Rift to say Pacman, then I guess I've just beat the cherry and strawberry levels and I'm about to go on to oranges. ;-) ONWARD TO THE KEY LEVELS!

You know, part of me would like to set up a separate Twitter account for all my Rift spam, so I could continue to catalog it though because I think it is valuable information, well for me at least. I like collecting things like this for information purposes and possible blog post fodder. In fact, I may do that. Thanks for helping me decide to do that. :p

Happy Dueling!

Roc, Rock, Drake! Yes, I Stood and Delivered!

Heya! Well before I talk about this cool quest I completed this morning, I just have to say DANGIT! My wife has a song in my head now all because of this blog's title. LOL. She says every time she thinks of "Guard and Defy" that she thinks of the song "Stand and Deliver" by Adam and the Ants.


Sorry about that . . . but it's now this blog's official theme song. hahaha!

Ok, so I fought a few bosses in The Stonefield this morning that were pretty fun fights. These were the three bosses you fight as a part of the Roc, Rock, Drake Quest.

The first boss I encountered was Dyrek the Talon. The fight was so fun the first time, that I had to run back and try it again. Much to my excitement, he even dropped a blue weapon for me as a reward. Check it out:


The next boss I ran to was Gruum the Earthbender. Gruum was fond of splitting into little angry baby pieces of Gruum, which again, made the fight fun and interesting.


After the tricks of the last two bosses, I was expecting this dragon to have something amazing up his sleeve! Unfortunately it was the tamest of the three fights all around. I guess looking cool is a good enough perk . . . and justification for destruction at the hands of Stingite. Goodbye Zexyl the Tainted, I shall miss your prettiness.


I continue to enjoy my time in the The Stonefield. There's been a lot of awesomeness that's happened while I've been here. Flash pick up groups are totally the norm in Rift. I'm loving it!

Happy dueling!

Cool Rift Screens 13-May

Just wanted to share a few screenshots from Rift that I took yesterday and talk about them a little bit.

This view was just stunning the first time I came upon it. (Click on that to make it bigger btw.)


That's totally Desktop background worthy right there! :) This is one of the bigger getaways in The Stonefield called Granite Falls. As beautiful as this place looks, it's horribly haunted, which also mean EXP goodness in the early 20's here for Stingite (currently level 22). This location has been much more inviting than the horribly mountainous Coterie Camp. I feel like I could stay here for a while and get a spa treatment (like Tony Hawk at the Blue Lagoon, yo).

Next up is this picture of a Stonefeather pecking the heck out of me.


. . . and here I thought I had sucked all the rage out of him with my rage vacuum machine. (Strange quest.) ;-)

Third screenshot comes from an area of The Stonefield called Titan's Rest.


As you can see, it's called Titan's rest because it's the remains of a giant titan. I ran all over the top of his remains and gathered information about it (no, the million other rift players scanning the remains for information didn't stop this scientific endeavor or make me feel like a cheap date). Inside the skull there, you can steal a bag from some miners and get the title "the red handed." They all instantly turn on you and attack you btw . . . just be ready . . . dirty thief.

Good times in The Stonefield so far! Hope you liked the screenshots.

Happy Dueling!

Closing a Fire Rift and THINGER!

I haven't shown a video of me closing a rift yet (or any rift for that matter), so I thought I'd film some video of it. You may notice at the beginning of the quest I look slightly butt ugly. This is true because I was just finishing up a quest where you had to inspect stones while "trollified" to decipher them. But, of course, it's me, so I make ugly look gooooood. Check it out:


If I had worked a bit harder or buffed myself a bit, I might have killed him within the timer limit and caused a bonus round, but I wasn't really concerned about that. I just wanted to video myself closing a rift. XD

Also, since I felt so dirty from that whole transformation into a troll, I figured I'd do a little HULK SMASH to the most insane troll boss out there, THINGER!


THINGER THINGER THINGER!

It got pinchy there when I got an add, but I managed to pull out a win at the end there.

I'm extremely close to level 21 now! Woot!

Happy Dueling!

Refer a Friend Program

I gotta say it's great to see Trion following suit as with so many MMO companies before them and providing a "Refer a Friend" program for Rift. I also gotta say, the rewards are pretty awesome (although free game time is always appreciated as a a refer a friend reward . . . jus' sayin' . . . read on!)

All the details about the refer a friend program can be found here.

Basically if you get your friends to sign up you can earn one of three rewards depending on how many of your friends take the bait!

1 friend = Lassie!

2 friends = Pirate hat!

3 friends = FLAMING HORSEY OF POWA!


And now the moment you've all been waiting for!!! MY REFER A FRIEND CODE WOOT! ;p

click me and join!

Just think, it's the perfect opportunity to get on my friends list and auto-port to me every 30 minutes to bug me.

Happy Dueling!

Couple of Boss Fight Videos: Level 18-19

Here in my late teens, I'm starting to understand that in boss fights with my character, outlasting is the name of the game. This doesn't always make for the most interesting of combat scenarios, but on Bosses with high hitpoints, at least it doesn't mean I'm taking a dirt nap early.

Here's a good example of a fight where I just needed to outlast the boss: Jacob the Iron Tyrant. The fight was one of the more interesting I've run into solo out in the world. Basically you needed to destroy four idols and then just slowly bash away at Jacob until he gave it up.



This next video is of a boss that just looked awesome. Once again, the fight was pretty straight forward . . . he just looked cool. :) I present to you, Legul, Mr. fiery devil horns:



Good times. I'm really enjoying leveling in Rift so far. There have been challenging moments mixed with interesting changes in my play style. Things went from mana dumping nukes to trying to play a bit more conservatively.

. . . and it could very well just be my class choices and build . . .

Anyway, I should ding level 20 later today and move beyond the entrance to Stonefields. See you in Telera!

Happy Dueling!

5 vs. 1 PVE noobie Rift Cleric battle FOR THE WINS!

Heya!

Just cross-posting a video from Rift yesterday. Earlier in the morning I was fighting in Lakeside and got overwhelmed by adds (and managed to survive), and I had so much fun with that survivability, that I decided I needed to come back after work to this spot and try to recreate it. Check it out!



Haha! That was awesome fun. :) I'm just starting to understand my character's play style a bit more. It's going to be interesting to see how he turns out because I honestly have no idea.

Happy dueling!

Spoils of War Update

I went to go log into Rift this morning, and I was greeted with a cool new picture in the patcher I hadn't seen before and an update button for Patch 1.12: The Spoils of War!



This led me to the patch notes and the prelude to the Spoils of War Update, which I hadn't read yet:

RIFT 1.2
May 4-9

Shell of mystery, rain of richesStrange things—stranger than usual, that is—are emerging from the rifts of Fire and Earth. Fragments of ancient golden dragon eggs lie scattered wherever the Flame- or Earthtouched set foot. Even stranger, coins have been raining into both Sanctum and Meridian, inspiring unusual greed in the locals. Neither Guardian nor Defiant scholars can solve this mystery without studying these shells and coins, so the Ascended must collect as many specimens as possible.

Beginning May 4 and lasting until RIFT 1.2: The Spoils of War goes live on May 10, these golden shells and sinister coins will spread a hint of mystery and the lure of easy riches throughout Telara. Your faction will offer several daily quests to gather samples of each.

The gifts of burning greedEach of the four daily quests to collect these strange relics will grant you a unique item containing a random treasure prized by the Ascended. Rare artifacts, crafting currency, and plaques of achievement can all be found within.

Hmm, I'm quite young in the game, so I've yet to run into an Earth or Fire rift. I've only seen Death and Water rifts.

Guess I better get leveling! Sounds like fun. It does sound like I might get the chance to race for coins though. You know what that means, right? More Mario music videos! ;-)

Happy Dueling!

Striped Vaiyuu!

Hello visitors and future subscribers!

I'm Stingite, curator of this fine establishment. I currently plan on writing a little bit about my adventures while I nuke my way through Rift, an MMO by Trion. From initial impressions, this is a great game and one that's definitely worthy of a few words.

So far in the game I'm a level 15 Kelari Defiant Cleric riding on a level awesome zebra thing.


(Thanks again to my friend Dina for floating me a loan of a couple plat so I could buy this thing)

I do believe the technical name for that mount is the Striped Vaiyuu, which came from Stryper being mixed with Steve Vai.





mmhmm! Somehow those equal this:



Yeah, I don't get it either . . . I'm just making crap up now.

Anyway, welcome to the blog! I'll try to post at least once a week for a while. :)

Happy Dueling!