Happy Holidays and a merry Fae Yule to all! RIFT's latest trailer is showcasing all those merry festivities you may be missing out on. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, well, you can also check out Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland's in-depth Fae Yule article or even Mike B. aka Fony's BFF Report on it! Also remember that today is the last day to enter ZAM's Fae Yule Screenshot Contest! Go upload your awesome holiday screenshots!

RIFT 1.6.1 Hotfix #3 - 8:00am PDT 12/21/11 [NA] - 2:00am GMT 22/12/11 [EU]

GENERAL

• Players completing Master mode dungeons can now choose between 6 Marks of Ascension or 2 Greater Marks of Ascension as their reward.
• Both Warfront and LFG dungeon daily quests now award significantly more experience for level 50 characters working on Planar Attunement.
• Reduced the cost of the 4th and 5th guild bank vaults.
• Random Fae Yule lootables should no longer be quite so farmable.
• Water Epic: Unworking the Ritual: Now any Air Rift that would grant you experience ('green' difficulty) should drop Air Sourcestone when closed.

ZONES

• Hammerknell: Reduced hit points of Jornaru, Lasher of Akylios, and Stinger of Akylios.
• Rise of the Phoenix: More General Silgen ability usage tweaks.
• Freemarch: Denegar's Stand NPCs should no longer be hidden by the tree that spawns in the area.
• Sanctum: The Meditating in Sanctum achievement should once again properly give credit for the Sanctum of the Vigil.
• Stillmoor: A Quiet Place: Hocott Warshaw now has more appropriate responses for characters on this quest.

Mead, mounts, and merriment! The Fae Yule Celebration is in full swing right now in Rift, and News Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland has been playing around with the festive fun for weeks. Read on to see his reactions, and check out our wikibase guide to cover all your bases in the newest world event!

GENERAL

• Rise of the Phoenix [Sliver]: General Silgen really doesn't like unreachable attackers.
• Instant Adventure: You no longer see a Join Adventure button pop up if you're in one Adventure group and a player from a different Adventure group comes near.
• Ember Isle: Slightly adjusted the appearance of the Bernie companion pet.

RUNEBREAKING

• Increased the amount of Kinetic, Perpetual, and Sentience materials obtained from runebreaking items.
• Decreased the amount of Powder, Shard, and Crystal materials obtained from runebreaking items.

SOULS

• Necromancer: Fixed an issue where the Symbiote ability was not affecting Essence Link.
• Necromancer: Heals from Essence Link now list the ability name in the combat log.
• Necromancer: Fixed an issue where Spell Power would not be properly considered for heals from Essence Link.
• Stormcaller: Lightning Burst now has its damage reduced by 30% in PvP.
• Stormcaller: The critical hit damage bonus provided by the Storm Shard buff is reduced to 25% bonus in PvP.

It's time for another BFF Report! In Episode 93, host Mike B. aka Fony decided to go venturing into the wintery world of Telara to experience RIFT's Fae Yule celebrations first-hand! It's hard not to have fun with these Fae Yule festivities, especially given the presence of the super adorable Corgi companions. I genuinely think if you add Corgis to any game, that game becomes the cutest game ever. And RIFT has done it first, so I suppose they can claim the title.

Corgis! Fae Yule! Throwing wreathes on walls! It's all here in this week's BFF Report!

RIFT 1.6.1 Hotfix #1 - 8:00am PDT 12/13/11 [NA] - 2:00am GMT 14/12/11 [EU]

GENERAL

• Increased the amount of experience a level 50 character receives for Planar Attunement when completing Instant Adventures.
• There is now a Porticulum in Quarrystone Basin in Stonefield!
• Justicar: Mien of Aggression: No longer reduces healing gained from items.
• Justicar: Mien of Leadership: General dungeon mobs who can mana drain will no longer mana drain Justicars with Mien of Leadership active.
• Corrected the zone meta-Achievements so they remember how to count properly.
• Fixed the calculation of the maximum possible Achievement score.
• Crafting: Characters can now train to the next crafting rank from within 5 points of their current skill level cap.
• Windstone and Stalactite-type Essences can now be equipped together.

Monday, December 12 at 8:00am PST the NA region servers will have some backend maintenance and updates that will impact logins to the NA shards. Downtime is expected to be an hour or less.

During the maintenance, characters currently online will be disconnected and unable to log back in to RIFT until the maintenance is cleared. New logins will also be unavailable during that time.

Watch this thread on the official forums for updates during downtime.

We want your best Rift holiday screenshots!  Grandfather Frost popped by the other day and left ZAM some game time codes to give away, and all you have to do is post your best Fae Yule screenshots.

The contest runs from Friday, December 9, 2011 through Wednesday, December 21, 2011. See the official rules here. Post your pictures here!

The NA region shards are down for about a half hour this morning, December 8, for a brief hotfix to address the disconnect issue and crafting trainer deactivation that was discovered today

At 12:00pm PST today, the NA region shards will be coming down for the 1.6.1 update. The estimated downtime is one hour.

This patch introduces Instant Adventure!  See the patch notes below the jump.