This patch brought a lot of fixes to Conquest and Conquest queueing.

The North American region shards will be coming down July 18 at 6:00am PDT to take care of some additional server-side maintenance. The estimated downtime is 2 hours.

Here's our Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan. Patch notes are available below.

RIFT 1.9 Hotfix #8 - 6:00am PDT 7/18/12 [NA] - 1:00am GMT/2:00am BST 19/7/12 [EU]

RIFT 1.9 Hotfix #8

SUMMERFEST

• Beachcombing for the Discerning Vacationist has had the objective count properly set to 5 rather than 25. Also increased the amount of active Treasure Spots.
• Puissant Paleontology: Now has more descriptive objective text.
• You can now trade the Summerfest pet *items* (the inventory item before adding the pet to your character's collection) between your own characters.

CONQUEST

• The rewards and structure of Conquest have been modified, with the goal of increasing the fun and rewards from the core gameplay of objectives and map wins. Wholesale PvP slaughter can be fun, but there are other activities available in Conquest!
• When an Extractor is taken by a team, it now grants Shards of Conquest to players in range of the Extractor when control flips.
• - You can't just tag an Extractor and leave the area to receive these Shards.
• Shards of Conquest can be combined to create Marks of Conquest.
• The chance of receiving a Mark of Conquest for destroying an Extractor has been slightly increased.
• When an Extractor is taken by a team, it now grants Favor, Prestige, and Experience to characters in the area of the Extractor when control flips.
• - You can't just tag an Extractor and leave the area to receive this bonus!
• Teams are now granted bonus Favor, Prestige, and Experience at the same time that Conquest Power is paid out throughout the match. The value is based on the number of Extractors your team holds.
• Bonus Colossi no longer spawn at the time the map begins - these planar menaces now spawn after a match has run for at least 30 minutes. Colossi hit points scale based on the number of participants in the Conquest match.
• The added capture speed bonus for having multiple characters around an Extractor has been decreased slightly.
• The Planar Foci that spawn in the end phase of Conquest have had their hit points increased.
• The Archlich no longer spawns immediately at the start of the bonus phase. It now spawns only after all Planar Foci are defeated.
• Be warned - the Archlich's hit points increase depending on the population of enemies in the map during the end phase. It may be beneficial to remove opposing players before the Archlich spawns.
• The Archlich has relocated closer to Zareph's Return.
• The Archlich awards 5 Marks of Conquest on death.
• The number of Marks of Conquest granted for winning a match has been increased.
• The number of Marks of Conquest granted for losses or ties in Conquest has been reduced.
• Marks of Conquest granted from wins/losses/ties now go into the Rift Loot UI.
• The amount of Favor and Prestige granted for killing players in the open fields of Conquest has been reduced; Experience remains unchanged.
• Players that return Empowered Sourcestone to their resource depots at base now receive Shards of Power, which grant small amounts of bonus Favor. Shards of Power can be received for returning up to 70 Empowered Sourcestone at a time.

CONQUEST QUEUING

• Factions that are full now allow you to queue to join them - and if you're queued for a full faction, you have the option to leave that queue and select a different one.
• - Once you enter a Conquest match, however, you will be committed to the joined faction and cannot leave the map and join as a different one until the match ends.
• Selecting a faction on the Conquest UI now either immediately gives you a Conquest entry invite or put you in the queue, instead of using a second enter-Conquest selection.
• Group leaders now select a faction - either for queue or immediate joining - for their entire group when joining Conquest.

GENERAL

• LFG: Checking 'Queue as Mentor' now means you will *always* be placed in a dungeon as a mentor. Characters must now be at least level 25 to queue as a mentor via LFG.
• Instant Adventure: Adventures in low-level zones now grant additional Planar Attunement experience to level 50 characters that are mentoring. This should be most noticeable on Adventures that are not basic mob-kill objectives.
• Stonefield: 'Close Rift' Instant Adventures should work properly now.
• Item: The Flaming Heart of Maelforge is now a 100% drop rate.
• Item: Summer's Warmth: Tooltip now indicates the effect is on single target healing spells.
• Fixed Armored White War Tiger mounts not making sounds.
• Strafing with the Q and E keys while you have a ground target reticule up now works properly.
• Improvements to prevent false positives on the Addon Watchdog.

CRAFTING

• Save the bacon! Bacon Rolls and Dwarven Goulash now only require one Rich Bacon to make.
• Several Survivalist daily quests have had their meat requirements reduced.
• All meat drops have been slightly increased on mobs that normally drop meats.