Rift Update 1.5: Ashes of History is adding a ton of content to the game next week. Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff attended a press conference to get all the details!

Master Dungeon Mode

Update 1.5 will include a Master Mode for the Darkening Deeps dungeon for elite players. “We understand there's a desire for an ultra-hard mode. This is our experiment to see if the audience exists,” Hartsman said. He acknowledged that they'd be happy to expand the mode to raids, but said that Hammerknell is already “pretty damn hard” after looking at its completion stats.

There will not be a prerequisite for the Master Mode because they're not part of the Looking for Group tool. "It's a 'bring your own well prepared group' kind of effort. Think of it as 5-man raiding,” Hartsman said. The cooldown on the mode will be twice weekly since it can be difficult and time-consuming, so Trion doesn't want it to take up all of your time.

Hartsman said he's not worried that other raids may become less attractive to players once they get their hands on Master Mode. “If you look at a reasonably geared Drowned Halls group, it can take 90 minutes or less. I'm not worried about people not wanting to play more after 90 minutes. We know there's an appetite for more of that content,” he said.

World Event

Hanlin and Hartsman didn't talk much about the upcoming world event, but they did confirm that it won't kick off until a couple weeks after the release of Update 1.5. “We want you to have a chance to catch your breath,” Hanlin said.

Hanlin wouldn't give any details on how long the event will last, but did mention that it “has an interesting story.” It's all about seeing how players are getting to a new portion of the world and will require them to rebuild some traveling stones.

"You'll get hints with what's progressing with the world event. It's a story that does have a couple of different chapters over different updates,” Hartsman said.

AddOns Beta

Player-created AddOns will be available in Update 1.5, and Trion Worlds has targeted buff management as the first set of information to expose to the community. “It has a high utility value and low potential gamebreaking value,” Hartsman said.

Hartsman explained that AddOns will not need to be approved by Trion, but they do have security abilities in place to disable anything that may go wrong. "We expect users to pretty rapidly going after improving their own experience,” he said.

If you'd like to become a part of the Rift AddOn community, head over to our RiftUI sister site.

Miscellaneous Topics

• The addition of Warfront Accolades came straight from the design team. "We wanted a sense of accomplishment without constantly looking at leaderboards,” Hartsman said. “It was something we just liked a whole lot, especially since we have the ability to make callouts based on gameplay on specific maps. Hopefully it will make players aware of the map goals.”
• Trion is adding new content to make solo players feel more powerful when invaders take over an area. “We want you to look at these not as hindrances, but as opportunities to feel awesome and reap good experience,” Hartsman said.
• The rogue changes for Update 1.5 are focused mainly on PvE options. “Right now in PvE, rogues have been shoehorned into two to three specific builds. This is about giving them more options to get them to that same level of power,” Hartsman said. They also want to reduce their reliance on cooldowns in PvP and improve their energy regeneration.
• It's not part of this update, but they're looking at tanking in general across the game.
• The barbershop is something they'd definitely like to do, but it's not coming in Update 1.5.
• They're streamlining event currencies. “They can get overwhelming,” Hartsman said.
• Trion is still experimenting with the optimal rate for the pace of updates. "In general, what we've been setting up for the first six months of Rift are new gameplay systems that we can add content to,” Hartsman said. Now they need to hone in on the right update rate. “I don't think we've honed in on that perfect number yet,” he said.

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief