Ember Isle is Rift's newest zone designed for players in raid gear... So what happens when you throw in a fresh level 50 who's never set foot in a dungeon? Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland finds out!
Recently I had the opportunity to test Ember Isle, well before its release. While I was playing an unfamiliar character on a new computer without my usual keybinds, we were also given incredibly powerful gear, multitudes of potions and optional GM powers. And we made use of them! Lead designer Hal Hanlin told us going in that the enemies would be tough, even for players in decent gear. So what's the first thing I did? Traveled to Ember Isle on my freshly minted level 50 of course!
Now, I've been relatively inactive in Rift lately. I stopped playing for about a month before the Extra Life event brought me back briefly; after the event was over, I played long enough to level from 48 to 50 on my Saboteur rogue, try out one Chronicle and finish the quests I had in Iron Pine Peaks. I used some planarite to buy the gear from the vendors in Stillmoor and Shimmersand, but otherwise held only items I've found or won during events. My poor rogue has not set foot in an instance in the last 10 levels, and our ZAM guild, Deus Ex Machina, is pretty much Dead Ex Machina at this point. After 50 levels as a Saboteur/Assassin, I finally made the switch to Marksman... because learning a new play style is a great idea while fooling around with new high-level content!
My main purpose for exploring Ember Isle on my character was to answer three questions:
- Can a new level 50 actually survive and thrive among the vicious inhabitants? And if so,
- Can a new level 50 still enjoy the Onslaughts and zone events offered on Ember Isle? And finally,
- Is it worth trying out the new content immediately instead of going through the traditional zones of Stillmoor and Shimmersand?
To that end, I hurried over to the stone tower on a hill outside of Meridian and teleported to Talos Landing, the introductory base for Defiants. I'll admit I was a bit disappointed by the beginning area. While all the quests advance the story and help explain the Kelari connection to the isle, there are only a few of them and they quickly send you away to Ember Watch, the home base of the neutral faction, the Keepers. From there, most of the quests available are dailies that reward some notoriety and either an inscribed sourcestone or a bag containing gold and perhaps some potions as a reward. The sourcestone is needed, as vendors in the main cities are offering new items for huge prices in inscribed sourcestones, but only getting one at a time is a bit depressing! Although I found a general lack of regular quests in the bases, I did discover many others scattered all over the zone, often near the Keepers' daily quest destinations. This allowed a good bit of streamlining quests, as I would go out to complete a daily and come back with a second completion to turn in.
Obviously, the quests require combating hostile natives of all sorts: spirits, planar enemies and the local wildlife. Most of the normal enemies seemed to be around level 52 and 13,000 health; sometimes there would be smaller groups of level 50 enemies with about 9000 life each. Trying out my new Marksman spec, I found my overall DPS much higher than as a Saboteur, at a slight cost to my kiting ability. But even with the boost, I often had to go through several cycles of attacks before killing a normal enemy; and assuming they could attack from range or get close enough to melee, I would often hit about 40% health by the end of the fight. Thankfully there is a brand-new drink to restore health and mana available from isle vendors, but this still made the going very slow. And almost all of my deaths came from getting additional enemies at the same time, or accidentally running into new foes while kiting my current target. Still, when kiting was successful I could often go three or four fights without needing to stop and heal, and the mob density was not thick enough to be overly worried about snagging additional agitators. As long as a player has some situational awareness and is playing a spec that is not completely inferior, they should have little trouble on most of the normal enemies.
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