Seeing Red

Dimension Stashes

Transcendent dimension item, Morban Meat Tree.

The new minion dimension boxes went up on the Public Test Shards today and a bunch of us  had fun opening the six-star premium dimension stashes.  I blinked my eyes a few times ’cause I saw red.  Yep, we now have transcendent tier dimension items.  You thought you lacked sufficient platinum with all the wonderful Uncle Stan items?  Just wait till these beauties hit the auction house.

The stash loot tables are not yet finished and only contain relic and transcendent dimension items so it’s impossible to determine frequency of drops.  Numbers wise, we discovered 12 transcendent items, 46 relic items and 8 music boxes.   Word from Tacitus says that transcendent dimension items will drop at half the frequency of relic items.Both the transcendent and relic dimension items are meant to be centrepieces.  The bread-and-butter items, those we use in bulk or use to morph, will be our uncommon, rare and epic items.   There’s gunna be lots and lots of pillars, walls, doors and other decorative bits. Keep an eye out for a list of the new items at Rift Dimension Addicts.

The new premium box will have 4-6 items plus an additional 1-3 tiles.  The higher the star rating of the box, the more likely it will contain an epic or transcendent item.  So far I’ve had transcendent items drop from both the 5 and 6 star premium stashes.

The Top 1000

There may be another reason for seeing red on March 29th as changes occur to the public dimension listings.  After the patch, the All Time and Weekly dimension listings will reflect the top 1000 dimension for the region (North America/Europe) instead of individual top listings for each shard.

Statue, Seated Justice, another fantastic transcendent item.

The good news is that, no matter what shard these dimensions are on we can visit them from our home shard; no more need for tourist alts to visit those dimensions in the top 1000.   This is great for the Weekly listings since new dimensions will be easily spotted and visited.

The bad news?  As the top 1000 for each shard is condensed into the top 1000 for the whole region, thousands of dimensions will be lost from the listings.  For example, live in the North American region,  we can browse through each of the 7 shard’s top 1000 listing  looking for interesting dimension names.  After patch 4.1, there will be one listing of the top 1000 dimensions to browse through.  Effectively, 6,000 dimensions will sink into obscurity. Finding those now unlisted dimensions will require logging into the shard the dimension is on (as the search function does not yet work across shards) then using the search function.  You’ll need to know the owner’s name or the title of the dimension as well as it’s shard, which won’t be easy to find as the new, combined top 1000 doesn’t state the shard the dimension is on.  If you find a dimension you like then visiting more dimensions by that builder will be challenging.  Better hope that all their dims are popular!

After the All Time and Weekly shard list merge, a dimension in the NA region will need around 100 recommendations to appear in the top 1000, slightly less for Europe.  Around 140 dimensions from each shard should make it into the top 1000, more from popular shards like Greybriar, less from under-populated shards like Laethys.

I’m hoping this is just a transitional stage in changes to the top 1000 listings.  I’d much rather have kept the original shard All Time listings and added an extra button for the ‘Regional Top 1000’.  That way we could have the best of both worlds.

Cross-shard Trading

More red goodness, Ancient Druidic Monument

Yes!  No more transferring poor, lonely toons across shards to pick up or deliver items and coin and waiting a week.  Cross-shard trading is a quick way to transfer dimension items or coin around the shards, making it so much easier to ninja items from other shard auction houses.  If you can run two Rift clients on your computer then make a second F2P account or find a trusted friend to take advantage of this new feature.  So far this feature is only available for toon to toon trades, it does not work with mail … yet.

If you do make a second account, look up the benefits for Ascend-A-Friend  (or, in a shameless plug, use my code DWJFXJRLXQGERC7XQEMZ).   Don’t forget, you’ll need to unlock access the auction house for cross-shard profiteering.

The official notice for this new feature can be found here.