If you’re looking for questions about invasions hopefully you’ll find them answered here. Don’t forget to also add your own tips or insights into the comments below.

Contents:

1. What Are Invasions
2. When Invasions Appear
3. Defeating Invasions
4. Invasion Events
5. Invasion Participation
6. Invasion Rewards
7. Conclusion

What are Invasions

In Rift, an invasion refers to a group of enemies which invade Telara. In particularly, invasions have a specific destination that they seek to attack. This is usually one of the quest hubs marked on the map. Once they appear, invaders will head towards their destination and attack anything (both player and NPC) that gets in their way.

Invasions can be both Planar (i.e. elemental enemies) or faction-based (Guardians invading Defiant territory and vice versa). The largest invasions are Planar based.

When Invasions Appear

Invasions do not simply occur out of thin air. They have an origination: either Rifts or Footholds. The strength of each invasion depends on what it was spawned from and the number of players in the zone.

When a Rift is active but undefeated, it will occasionally spew out invaders. Invaders will then go on a crash course, usually for the closest quest hub. Major Rifts tend to spawn more powerful invasions than Minor Rifts.

Sometimes an invasion force will set up a foothold. Footholds are simply structures which appear on the ground and are defended by a small force. Defeating a foothold is much easier than defeating a Rift. However, Footholds spawn invasions much more frequently then Rifts. A foothold will pump out a new Invasion every few minutes! Faction-based invasions always seem to spawn from Footholds as well.

If an invasion force (Planar) overtakes a quest area, they will set up a foothold there and all the NPCs will disappear. The quest NPCs will not reappear until the footholds have been taken out.

Defeating an Invasion

Every invasion is led by some sort of commander. This is always the most powerful opponent in the invasion force. This opponent is much stronger than all of the other enemies within the invasion. As soon as you finish off the leader, the invasion is considered to be “defeated” regardless of the number of subordinates running around.

As mentioned above, if an invasion establishes a foothold in a questing area, you must first defeat that foothold and any invasion forces before the quest hub returns to normal.

Invasion Events

Frequently in a zone (especially the starter zones) the sky will change colors and an announcement will go out that a certain element is invading. When this happens, Rifts all over the map will spawn. These Rifts will spawn invasions at an accelerated rate. These invaders are much more likely to summon footholds as well which will then summon more invasion forces.

Unlike normal invasions which tend to go for the quest hub, the enemies will usually bee-line for 2-4 points on the map. You can see where the enemies are going by opening up the map and holding your mouse over the sword icon. The arrow indicates where the invasion is headed.

Invasion events have different goals. However, most of the events involve protecting a few Wardstones where you try to accomplish a goal such as defeating 40 invasions, collecting items to buff the Wardstones, or closing rifts.

The key thing here is to protect the wardstones rather than go after rifts. If the wardstones fall, the event ends and you miss out on the big rewards. Pay attention to where the invasions are raiding and protect those locations. Do not let the enemy take out the Wardstones!

Once you complete the initial goals of the invasion, a boss will spawn. Players will then have to take out the boss to complete the event. The reward is that players who contribute to the downing of the final boss (see below for contributions) will get top-quality planar currency.

The boss can be tough to find. Usually, the boss has a special icon on the map, but sometimes it looks just like the sword icon. Hold your mouse over each icon and you will eventually see the boss’ name on the map.

Invasion Participation

Before we discuss what the rewards are, it is important to know how to actually get them. When you are fighting an invasion, rift, or foothold, a “participation bar” will appear in the right side of the screen right under the mini-map.

As you deal damage to the invasion or rift objectives, the participation bar will increase. You need to hit at least the first “rung” on the meter to get the experience and planarite bonus. Building up this participation bar is important. The higher you get on the participation bar, the better your planarite reward will be. Note that everyone in the party gets faction for defeating an enemy, regardless of participation. Players only have to hit the first rung (1/4 of a bar) to get experience points.

Note that attacking monsters that do not fulfill invasion or rift requirements do not cause you to build participation points. In other words, if your group is fighting two invasions at once, you might only get credit for one invasion if you only attack enemies from one force while your group takes out the other invasion.

I have found that the easiest way to ensure you get credit for all the invasions is via some sort of AoE healing. When using the Bard’s Cadence ability, I seem to have high participation from all nearby invasions.

As you can see, you need to make a concerted effort to attack every invading force (or heal the group) of an to get the most exp and rewards from Rift invasions.

Invasion Rewards

No Rift invasions guide would be complete without mentioning the rewards. There are three rewards you get for participating in invasions: planar currency, experience points, and faction points. Planar currency can be used to purchase various rewards. See the planarite guide for more information.

As mentioned in the previous section, players get experience points for completing rounds in Rifts or defeating invasion bosses. Since you only need to get 1/4 a participation bar to get experience, the best way to get exp from invasions is to get in a large group during an invasion event (with hordes of invaders). By doing this frequently you will be leveling up rather easily.

This way, your group will take out multiple groups in succession and you will get the full exp reward for each one. This is great when there are 20+ invasions around! Faction is awarded just by being in a party where an enemy planar monster dies, regardless of participation. Again, the best way to do this is go get into big groups. As you earn faction, you can buy rewards from the faction vendors in Sanctum and Meridian.

Conclusion

After reading this Rift invasions guide, you should now have a clear idea of how invasions work and what to do during invasion events. Good luck!

Contents:

1. What is Planarite
2. Uses for Planarite
3. Earning Planarite
4. Sourceshards and Sourcestones
5. Conclusion

What is Planarite

Planarite is a special type of currency in Rift. It comes from sealing Rifts, defeating Invasions, and destroying footholds. While the primary source of Planarite is from planar invasions (hence the name) you can earn some for destroying enemy PvP footholds as well.

Uses for Planarite

Planarite can then be exchanged for goods at the planar vendor. Planar vendors can be found both in zones and in the main cities of Sanctum and Meridian.

Different planar vendors provide different rewards. For example, just south of Argent Glade in Silverwood, Guardians can exchange Planarite for low-level rare and epic pieces of equipment.

I do not have a complete list of Planarite vendors as I do not feel it is necessary. This is because the best use of Planarite is to exchange in Sanctum (Guardians) or Merdian (Defiant).

In town, you can exchange large quantities of Planarite (up to 7500!) for an upgraded planar focus (the best one currently in game). The planar focus lets you equip planar essences, which provide nice stat bonuses.

Note that Defiants have a different name for this item (they are called sourcestone engines instead of planar foci) so just keep that in mind as you read this article.

Your starter planar focus only lets you equip 2 lesser planar essences. The fully upgraded one will let you equip 4 lesser planar essences (which provide stat buffs) and 2 greater planar essences (which often have cool effects like +damage on melee hit).

As a result, you will want to save your Planarite for this upgraded planar focus. Do not waste it on lowbie gear which you will just replace shortly.

After getting the best planar focus, you can buy ascended powers and other items which will come in handy.

Earning Planarite

As I said above you can earn Planarite from sealing rifts and killing Invasions, but there is a little more to it then that. First of all, you wont get any Planarite for just being in the right spot at the right time, in other words, you’re going to have to participate in the rift or invasion. You can do this by attacking enemies and increasing your participation bar which will be located under your mini-map.

You will need to fill your participation bar to at least the first notch, there are four total notches. The bar goes up relatively fast as long as you’re attacking enemies whenever possible and the higher you raise your participation bar the more rewards you’ll receive.

Sourceshards and Sourcestones

In addition to Planarite, you can earn other currency types known as sourceshards and sourcestones. While planarite is awarded for any type of invasion, you can only earn these types from tougher enemies.

• Sourceshards are of rare quality and drop off of small bosses. In particular, these seem to be common from beating the final boss of a Rift in the second bonus round (stage #5) and end-bosses of smaller invasions.
• Sourcestones are of epic quality and only drop off of large bosses. The only time I have found these is when beating the final boss of an invasion event. By final boss, I am referring to the special enemy which spawns after completing all of the objectives of an invasion.

In particular, though, I have only gotten sourcestones when killing the final boss of “big” invasion events with at least 1/4 of a participation bar. As a result, when doing invasions it is important to find the final boss as soon as he spawns (check the map), and then race over to the right spot so you can get your participation up other players finish the boss.

Note that not all events are the same. For events where you just defeat some invasions and then a final boss spawns, you usually get a sourceshard. For events with several waves, you usually get the sourcestone.

Soureshards and sourcestones a tiered as well. You will get a different type of sourceshard off of level 15 enemies then you will off of level 25 enemies. There are multiple tiers of these items. These high-quality rewards can be used for various items. For example, you can exchange 15 higher-end sourceshards in town for powerful lesser planar essences which you can equip to your planar focus for massive stat boosts.

Additionally, in each zone, there is a rare planar goods vendor in each quest hub in the zone (Argent Glade, Gloamwood Pines, etc.). These sell rare and epic goods for players of that zone’s particular level and use the tier of stones that drop off of rift enemies in that zone.

Conclusion

I hope you benefited from this Rift Planarite guide. To summarize, do invasions to earn planarite, and then save it up. Once you get 7500 you can buy a really good item which you can use at any level and is the best-in-slot even at level 50!

After reading this article, you should have no problem picking a race. With that said, Rift racial abilities are quite minor compared to other games.

Contents:

1. Guardians
   1. Dwarf Racial Abilities
   2. High Elf Racial Abilities
   3. Mathosian Racial Abilities
2. Defiant
   1. Eth
   2. Kelari
   3. Bahmi
3. Conclusion

Guardians

The Guardians consist of Dwarves, High Elves, and Mathosians. If you want to be a Guardian, you have to pick between the following racials:

Dwarf Racial Abilities

Dwarves have what I like to think are the worst Rift racial abilities:

• Density – Dwarves can fall twice the distance of other races
• Bahlralt’s Mettle – +10 strength
• Miracle of Hammerknell – +20 water resistance

Density is what makes the Dwarven racials so weak. It just really is not that good compared to Angelic Flight and Motivational Roar.

While the Strength bonus is not bad for a PvE player, if you plan to PvP you should seriously consider the High Elf for Angelic Flight.

High Elf Racial Abilities

High Elves will be very popular as they have what is likely to be the “best” racials amongst the Guardians:

• Angelic Flight – Allows the High Elf to fly 30 in-game meters. It can be used every 15 seconds but cannot be used in combat.
• Tavril’s Grace – +10 wisdom
• Grace of the Forest – +20 life resistance

Angelic Flight might sound great, but it does have limitations. It usually does not let you fly anywhere you could not run anyway. If you use this ability at the peak of a “jump” it lets you jump over objects and sometimes up hills that you would otherwise not be able to climb.

While it cannot be used in combat, people fall in and out of combat rapidly in PvP. This ability will definitely help you get around the battlefield, especially with that very short cooldown.

Finally, the Wisdom makes the High Elf the best choice for Clerics and Mages.

Mathosian Racial Abilities

The Mathosians also have some of the best Rift racial abilities.

• Motivational Roar – +30% movement speed to the group for 10 seconds. 2 minute cooldown and can only be used outside of combat.
• Thedeor’s Will – +10 dexterity
• Legacy of the Shade – +20 death resitance

Motivational Roar does have a long cooldown but it is much more convenient than Angelic Flight. This is perfect for the lazy players out there who do not feel like using Angelic Flight every 15 seconds.

The dexterity makes the Mathosian the best race for a Guardian Rogue.

Defiant

Defiants can chose from the Eth, Kelari, and Bahmi. Here are your options as a Defiant for Rift racial abilities:

Eth

The Eth, in many players’ opinions, have the best racial ability set in the game:

• Agility – Increases movement speed by 70% for 15 seconds. 2 minute cooldown and cannot be used in combat.
• Sun’s Fortune – +10 intellect
• Desert Dweller’s Birthright – +20 earth resistance

Agility is really good. It does have limitations given that it can only be used out of combat, but it will really come in handy in PvP as it is quite easy to go out of combat.

The +intellect also makes the Eth the best choice for Mages and Clerics on the Defiant side.

Kelari

The Kelari have some of the most unusual Rift Racial abilities:

• Camouflage – turns the Kelari into a fox for 30 seconds. The fox has a reduced aggro range for enemies, allowing you to sneak through enemy encampments without getting attacked (as easily). This actually can save you a little bit of time as many zones are densely populated!
• Flame’s Ferocity – +10 dexterity
• Legacy of the Fire Islands – +20 fire resistance

The Kelari are the best choice for Rogues since they have the dexterity, however, many players would prefer having the Eth’s Agility ability over having a static 10 dexterity. This is understandable and reasonable, as 10 dex is small in the grand scheme of things.

Bahmi

The Bahmi have a nice set of racials that is quite ideal for the Warrior calling:

• Mighty Leap – leap up to 30 yards. 15 second cooldown; cannot be used in combat.
• Sefir of Strength – +10 strength
• Shalastir Heritage – +20 air resistance

Mightly Leap is good for getting to the action in PvP, and the +10 strength makes the Bahmi a good choice for Warrior.

Conclusion

All in all, the Racial abilities in Rift are fairly minor and just add a little flavor to each race. I would not say any racial ability is so good that I would recommend choosing one race over another based on class.

Don’t forget to read the rest of our Rift guides, especially this free leveling guide if you’re a newbie.

Contents:

1. Ascended Powers List
2. Acquiring Planar Charges
3. Conclusion

Ascended Powers List

Right now, the only place I have found that you can get Ascended Powers from the planar goods merchant in Sanctum and Meridian (right near all the elemental faction vendors).

You can purchase these powers for Planarite. While you may not want to spend your hard-earned planarite on something that does not increase your stats nor can be used in dungeons or PvP, these powers are actually quite good!

Here is the list:

• Planar Lure (earned from low level quest) – You use this ability near any tears to start a rift event. Tears appear on the map as “tears”, not Rifts. You cannot use this ability unless you are near a tear. This costs no planar charge.
• Guardian’s Flare (buy in Sanctum/Meridian for 50 planarite) – You can purchase this for a mere 50 planarite. This summons a group of NPCs to attack a Planar Idol (Burning Idol, etc). These NPCs seem to last a long time and about 5 come to attack the idol. For tougher idols, you should use this over Holy Champion. Uses 1 planar charge. Note: Known as Defiant’s Flare for the Defiant.
• Bless Wardstone (buy in Sanctum/Meridian for 50 planarite) – Bless Wardstone will fully heal and upgrade your target wardstone. You want to use this ability to help buff up any wardstones that are under attack during invasion events. Many events require you to defend a wardstone, and if it falls, you fail the event. Healing the wardstone definitely comes in handy if you let a few enemies slip by. Uses 1 planar charge. Note: Known as Augment Wardstone for the Defiant.
• Holy Champion (buy in Sanctum/Meridian for 200 planarite). This ability is awesome. It increases your damage by 100% and reduces damage you take by 75% for a full 30 seconds against any planar enemy (works against opposite faction invasion NPCs too). You can use this to take out a hard wave in a Rift easily when playing solo! Uses 1 planar charge. Note: Known as Anti-Planar Augmentation for the Defiant.
• Summon Rescue Medic (buy in Sanctum/Meridian for 15000 planarite) – This summons a medic to your location that you can use to heal up your soul’s vitality. Convenient if you have died a few times in a row and do not want to use the spirit healer. It seems more like an end-game thing; would be convenient for raiding but for newbies it is not worth gathering up 15000 planarite! Requires 3 planar charges.

While I have only found 5 total Ascended powers so far, I am sure more will be added to the game over time.

Acquiring Planar Charges

As mentioned, each ascended power costs 1-3 planarite in order to use. You earn planar charges from sealing rifts and sealing rifts only. You do not get planar charge for defeating invasions or destroying footholds.

Conclusion

You now know exactly how the Ascended powers work so you can finally start using your planar charges. I recommend that everyone pick up Holy Champion / Anti-Planar Augmentation right away, as the 200 planarite will quickly pay for itself in the amount it will increase your soloing power versus Rifts and invasions!

Almost everyone in Rift is going to want to try out another soul combination at some point, and really is going to need to in order to be as effective as possible in raiding and pvp.

Contents:

1. Getting the Quest
2. Completing the Quest
3. Unlocking PvP Souls
4. Final Thoughts

Getting the Quest

The first step you need to take is heading to your major city, which will be either Sanctum for Guardians or Meridian for Defiants.

Once you’ve arrived at the city you should notice a lot of quests available, the quests you are looking for are the ones offered by people who have a tag with your desired soul under their names. These are often in small groups of 2-3 that offer the quests to start unlocking rift souls you do not already have.

Keep in mind that once you’ve started a quest for one soul and the rest of the quests disappear, do not panic, this is because you can only take one of these quests at a time and after you have completed it and unlocked the soul you can pick up another quest and repeat the process.

Completing the Quest

After you have started the quest, you will see that you need to receive a plane shard from a rift, this is pretty easy to do. First head out of the city and open your map, start looking for rifts on the map (these look like little suns, and can be different colors like purple, blue, etc) and head towards it. Hopefully there will be a handful of people at that rift and you can start the event, simply follow the quest details that you are given, usually to kill some enemies and proceed through all of the phases.

Once you have completed the rift check the loot bag and if you have received a plane shard you can move on, but sometimes you may not receive it and will need to proceed to another rift and try again. If you have the shard, make sure you stay within the rift as it will remain on the ground for a while and use the item from your quest menu on the right side of your screen.

Use the item and soon an enemy will appear, this mob is relatively easy to kill, so simply use your rotation to kill it as you would with any other enemy you were fighting for a quest and it will die and you will have completed the quest.

After you have done this you can go back to the city and find the quest giver you got the quest from and turn it in and you will have unlocked the soul! Now you’re able to move on to the next soul by picking up another quest and repeating the process again. This really doesn’t take too long, and typically you can unlock all 5 of your extra souls within 60 to 90 minutes or possibly even less depending on how close the rifts are and how fast you defeat them.

Unlocking PvP Souls

Right now, each class has one additional soul they can get: a player versus player-based soul. This soul can be purchased in Sanctum or Meridian for 2500 favor points. I have not yet experimented with these, but it is rumored that more will be added over time.

The PvP souls have less abilities and talents available to them then your standard souls, and have a lot of abilities that are PvP oriented (-% healing debuffs, snares, and the like). If you want to get one, just save up favor and purchase it from the primary honor vendor in town!

Final Thoughts

Unlocking all the souls for your calling in Rift is quite easy just by repeating a simple quest and saving up 2500 favor points. I try not to rush it and just grab a new quest every time I head back to town. When out questing, I will seal a Rift at some point so I do not have to go out of my way to get more souls.

We’ve covered all aspects of unlocking rift souls, and you are ready to go out there and do these quests. If you have benefited from this guide please check out our other free Rift guides that may help you in improving your gameplay even more, because we have more guides then just unlocking rift souls!

Contents:

1. Solo Play Builds
2. Group Play Builds
3. Leveling & DPS Builds

Solo Play Builds

First lets look at Rift Warrior Builds for Solo game play and then group. As you may have guessed the Warrior class is one that will be used for either tanking or DPS and is not a viable healing class.

From the eight available warrior souls there are 3 tanking souls, 4 DPS, and another soul that would be considered a tank soul but is also used to sort of buff other players in a party instead of focusing mainly on tanking. Of the three tanking souls we have Paladin, Reaver, and Void Knight, all with different abilities used for tanking. As for DPS we have Beastmaster (which allows for you to have a pet) Paragon, Riftblade, and Champion. The tank/buff soul I referred to earlier is called the Warlord soul.

In rift you’re able to purchase up to 4 different roles, so it’s easy to have multiple Rift Warrior builds for multiple types of gameplay. If you’re going to be doing a lot of solo tasks like questing you’re going to want to select the souls Reaver, Beastmaster, and Riftblade. All of these focus on two-handed weapon abilities. The reason Reaver is so important for soloing is because it has several self-heal abilities. One of these being a talent that will heal you every time you kill a mob, which makes it great for kill quests.

You also may want to consider using the Paladin soul in combination with Reaver if you want to try doing a lot of AOE leveling as you would have a lot of healing as well as AOE damage. In any case, for soloing you will want to put as many points into Reaver as you can, but if you choose Beastmaster and Champion as your off-souls they have some fantastic first tier abilities you can put to use whenever you have points that you can’t spend in your main soul. Also there are 0pt abilities such as the ability to have a pet with Beastmaster and the Charge ability with Champion that make this such a great combination early on.

Group Play Builds

Now let’s look at Rift Warrior Builds guide for group or team play. As for playing in groups as damage you’re going to want to use the souls: Riftblade, Champion, and Beastmaster. You will want to make a choice between Beastmaster and Champion as for which soul you want to put the most of your points into, Champion offers great single target damage as well as good AOE for trash pulls, whereas Beastmaster offers some nice group buffs.

One thing to keep in mind as a warrior is that you should always have at least one of your roles using the Paladin soul, there is always going to be a time where you’re the only one alive and you need to use that resurrection spell and as long as you’re able to switch over to a role with Paladin it won’t be a problem.

Now for tanking in groups you’re going to want to use Reaver and Paladin and it doesn’t matter which soul you put your points into, both of them are going to be fine and it all matters on how you want to play your character. As for your third soul you’ll want to choose between Warlord for the 0pt debuffs, and Riftblade for the increased damage. I think this covers different kinds of Rift Warrior Builds for all the scenario.

Leveling & DPS Builds

After experimenting with all the builds, I have found that without a doubt you will want to go with either Paragon or Riftblade as your primary soul. I recommend you read Rift Warrior leveling guide for a more comprehensive list of builds and info on this calling.

Paragon

In particular, I think that Paragon is the best soul for leveling up. They deal excellent damage and have a variety of powerful ranged attacks.

Personally, I have always been a fan of big two-handed weapons, but the truth is once I switched over from Champion to Paragon, my damage increased exponentially.

Not only that, but my character was a lot more durable (due to the extra Parry) and had significantly improved ranged abilities.

The Paragon itself excels though in melee damage, and none of the other souls do nearly as much damage as the Paragon when it is meleeing.

For support souls, you want to get Champion and Riftblade. Just by having Riftblade equipped as one of your souls, you get access to the Air Blade ability, which is a passive buff that significantly improves your damage.

Additionally, with Champion you get access to Raging Bull, which makes getting from monster to monster a lot easier. Slayer’s Bearing is a passive buff that increases damage by 5% and only requires 4 points in the Champion tree.

As a result of these passive buffs which are easy to get, you can significantly improve your Paragon’s damage with little investment. Both of these buffs are well worth it.

As you level up further, I recommend climbing the Paragon tree as much as you can and putting any leftover points in Riftblade. The passive abilities Elemental Touch and Elemental Blade massively increase your damage, so they are well worth getting.

Riftblade

Riftblade is a very unusual class that involves using casted abilities to deal primarily elemental damage. This class actually does a surprising amount of damage without any caster-oriented gear.

While you do not deal quite as much damage as a normal caster, the damage is very comparable. Additionally, you have a lot more HP and can wear plate, making this class very durable. Furthermore, you do not have to use mana, which means you can cast basically forever. You have an instant ranged snare and this class can actually kite melee monsters very easily.

While this class does not deal as much damage as a Paragon, it can deal a lot of damage from range. This has one particular benefit: Rifts and PvP. If you are dealing melee damage, you are much more susceptible to getting attacked when dealing with Rifts, Invasions, or in group PvP.

The Riftblade can sit back and safely pick off monsters with the casters. It can also snare and kite elite monsters, making it very powerful for Rift encounters.

–

My recommendation is that for typical players, go for the Paragon build with Riftblade and Champion as your sub-souls. However, if you primarily want to participate in invasion and rift events, try out Riftblade for a safe and effective leveling build that will allow you to participate in rifts.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Solo Play Builds
3. Group Play Builds
4. Leveling Builds
5. DPS Builds
6. Healing Builds
7. Other Builds

Introduction

In Rift you will be selecting three souls which will be the basis for all of your character’s abilities, generally you will have one main soul and two other souls which will mainly be used for the starter abilities they give. In this guide I will be discussing the Mage souls, what they do, and which ones I suggest that you should use.

Mage is definitely a DPS based class, but you do have the option of getting some healing in there as well with the Chloromancer soul, which can be used to effectively heal lower level instances. Another cool thing about the mage is that it has two different souls that have pets, the Elementalist and the Necromancer. The souls that are going to dish out the most mage-based damage are the Pyromancer, Warlock, and Stormcaller. There is also a crowd control based soul which is the Dominator, and the Archon is the buff/debuff soul.

As with any other class you’ll want to decide before you pick your souls whether or not you’ll be doing a lot of solo gameplay or grouping. These can be changed later on of course or even whenever you decide to switch it up as you’re able to purchase up to four roles which allow you to use different souls in each.

Solo Play Builds

With soloing you’ll want to go with Necromancer as your main soul, the Skeletal Horror makes for a great tanking pet and you’re also able to heal it which makes this a really fast and easy way to level.

As for your off-souls you’ll want to pick up Chloromancer which has a debuff that gives you a chance to heal on hit right away, as well as a 2 second cast heal later on which can be specced for instant cast.

The best option for your third soul with this combination is Dominator which you can use to CC targets for situations where you pull too many or are trying to get out of a tough spot without dying.

It should be noted that every mage should have a role with Chloromancer for the resurrection in case you’re the only one able to Soul Walk and then you’ll be able to resurrect dead group members.

Group Play Builds

Now for the grouping Rift Mage builds, there two routes you can go with here at a lower level. First of all is obviously the DPS, they are all highly effective for doing damage in groups excluding chloromancer of course, however, the top would be using Pyromancer as your main soul with Warlock and Necromancer as your off-souls. The 0pt ability to get a pet with Necromancer is a great help to your damage as your pet is always there constantly doing it’s own thing.

The other way you could go with a mage is healing as mentioned earlier, for this you will need to use chloromancer as your main soul. It’s takes a bit of research and getting used to to be an effective Chloromancer healer, you’ll want to keep Radiant Spores up on preferably the tank’s target as it gives them a chance to heal on hit. Bloom is the main healing spell you’ll be using, when spec’d it is instant cast and heals for quite a generous amount, but does have a few second cooldown, but it hardly uses any mana which is very nice. You also have an AoE heal which hogs up a lot of mana and shouldn’t be used if only one or two people are getting low unless everything else is on cooldown.

Leveling Builds

Out of all the Mage builds available in Rift Planes of Telara, I think the most effective Rift Mage leveling build is the Necromancer / Warlock / Dominator combo. I discussed this at length in the Rift Mage leveling guide, so you should check out that article and the guide for more information on that soul combination.

However, if you do not want to use that build, I also consider the Elementalist (main), Chloromancer or Warlock (second soul), and Dominator (third soul) to be a good combo as well.

Basically your Elementalist spec will give you a solid pet and a lot of spell damage. However, how you work your second soul is up to you.

Chloromancer would give you a lot of self-healing power without much extra damage whereas Warlock would give you some self-heals but also increase your damage significantly. If you feel like you are dying a lot, consider Chloromancer. If you are doing great but want more damage go with Warlock.

Your third soul as a Mage should almost always be Dominator. Transmogrify and Neural Prod are powerful spells which require no skill points investment; it only is natural to pick these abilities up by choosing Dominator as your third soul.

DPS Builds

If you want to max out your damage (and have a lot of burst damage), you will want to spec Pyromancer and Elementalist. You will want to put at least 32 points in each tree, maxing out these key talents:

Pyromancer: Ignition, Improved Fireball, Fiery Concentration, Combust, Flicker, Improved Flame Bolt, Burning Bright, Fire Storm, Wildfire, Pyromancer’s Armor, Backdraft, Improved Ground of Power, and Heat Wave.

Elementalist: Biting Cold, Ice Shield, Exposure, Improved Exposure, Tempest, Force of Nature, Greater Elemental Affinity, Fiery Assault, Synergize, Intensify Elements.

Theoretically, you could get Archon as a third soul and add 5 points into Soul Fire, but if the game allows it, I think grabbing both Elementalist and Pyromancer 31 point talents is ideal.

What you get with this build is all the powerful fire damage talents of Pyromancer. Your main method of dealing damage will be with the Pyromancer’s Fire spells.

However, with Elementalist you also get a lot of great +damage talents like Exposure and Improved Exposure (combine for +10% elemental spell damage for the whole group), Tempest (which stacks wonderfully with the Pyromancer’s naturally high crit-rate), and Intensify Elements, which is a massive damage booster.

You also get mana regen abilities with Elementalist. You also get the benefits of having a high-powered pet that can dish out a lot of damage. Your damage will increase more noticeably by adding the Elementalist’s powerful pet rather than going 51 points in Pyromancer (which is a waste of points).

For your third soul, remember that Dominator is nearly always the best for any of the Rift Mage builds; you pick up a few good abilities without any skill point investment.

Healing Builds

While healing may not be your reason for selecting a Mage, every Mage should have one good healing Rift Mage Build as one of their off-specs in case they ever have to heal.

Thanks to the “role” system, once you unlock alternate roles (purchase from trainer), you can swap freely between up  to 4 roles. Properly talented (and played) the Chloromancer dishes out great damage and healing.

Chloromancer truly is an incredibly strong soul. A Chloromancer with good skills should be able to heal an entire small-group dungeon (perhaps not until higher levels) and still dish out nearly as much damage as a normal caster.

They also can dish out plenty of healing to help keep up the melee group in raids, all while dealing damage like a normal caster. You actually have few direct heals but rather your spells deal damage. Definitely get this as an off-spec and your allies will thank you for it.

Chloromancer is one of the few souls where nearly every skill really shines. I recommend maxing out Chloromancer for those who want to heal, grabbing every talent in full.

For your second soul, I recommend getting Elementalist, and placing your remaining 15 points in it: 5/5 Biting Cold, 1/1 Ice Shield, 4/5 Elemental Link, and 5/5 Tempest.

Note: If you do not find yourself using the 51 point Chloromancer ability, you can always pull 6 points out of Raised in Nature and Unleashed Abandon. You can then put them into Exposure and Improved Exposure. This would be useful to have for groups with other Mages.

Other Builds

While not previously mentioned, I suspect many raid groups will have an Archon (or at least an Archon/Chloromancer hybrid). Additionally, a well-played Dominator will go far in PvP.

The only soul that does not have a well-defined role in my opinion is Stormcaller. It definitely is outright weaker than Elementalist or Pyromancer when it comes to damage output and soloing power.

Stormcaller does have a lot of escapes and snares however; it is possible that a Dominator/Stormcaller hybrid will be quite effective at group PvP or kiting large amounts of enemies (such as during Invasion events). Time will tell.

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As you can see here, Mages have different options based on whether they are looking for the best Rift Mage leveling builds, best Rift Mage damage builds, or best Rift Mage healing builds. You can also find several example mage builds with recommendations here, as well as discuss them or add your own. Additionally you can get tens of different builds and recommendations in this guide.

It seems that the Elementalist finds its way into a lot of builds (as it is a great spec), whereas the Necromancer and Warlock are great for solo play and leveling. The Chloromancer is also very strong and should not be overlooked.

By using the powerful soul combinations recommended in this article, you will be able to level up quickly, deal a lot of damage, dominate in PvP, and even tank!

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Solo Play Builds
3. Group Play Builds
4. Leveling Builds
5. DPS Builds
6. PvP And Dungeon Builds
7. Tanking Builds

Introduction

In Rift you will be selecting three souls which will be the basis for all of your character’s abilities, generally you will have one main soul and two other souls which will mainly be used for the starter abilities they give. In this guide I will be discussing the Rogue souls, what they do, and which ones I suggest that you should use.

The Rogue is a pretty versatile class, but should mainly be focusing on DPS. However you can actually go for tanking with the Riftstalker soul. You also have an option between ranged and melee dps, the ranged being the Ranger and Marksman and the melee being the Saboteur, Assassin, Night Blade, and Blade Dancer. There is also a support type soul that offers healing and buffs which is the Bard, but doesn’t quite give you enough to be the main healer.

Solo Play Builds

When playing Rift you’re able to purchase up to four roles so it is good to have a grouping role and soloing role at the very least. First we’ll look into the best soloing option for the Rogue class. You’re going to want to use Blade Dancer as your main soul and the Ranger and Bard souls for your off-souls. When these three souls are combined it gives you a ton of survivability along with damage. The ranger will give you a pet for a good source of extra DPS, and the bard gives you a 30 second heal over time which is great as it’s long enough to where you can just keep refreshing it every 30 seconds of combat.

Group Play Builds

For grouping it gets a little more complicated, you can go the route of the tank if you want to, this is using the Riftstalker soul as your main as mentioned earlier. You will be wanting Blade Dancer for the dodge buff as well as Assassin for the poison buff. When you have extra points you can’t put into Riftstalker put them into Blade Dancer for the increased dodge.

Second is the DPS, you’re able to go with the same build mentioned above for soloing with Blade Dancer as your main soul but you’ll want to switch out Assassin for the Bard off-soul, unless you want to hang on to it for some extra group healing. You’ll also want to tweak it a little bit from your soloing build to get rid of some of the damage reduction and such and replace it with more DPS oriented talents.

Another option to keep in mind is that Assassin is actually a pretty viable main soul build for DPSing in groups if you don’t like the Blade Dancer or just want to try switching it up from your soloing build if you’re getting bored of it.

Finally you’ve got the possible role of the off-healer. You’re going to need to use Bard as your main soul and pick up all of the talents that help with your buffing and healing. For your off-souls you’ll want to take Ranger and Saboteur, though they aren’t going to make too huge of a difference. Now it should be noted that you simply won’t have enough healing to be a main healer for groups in this build, so I would suggest not even going for it unless you really like healing and happened to pick the Rogue class instead of the Cleric class for some reason.

Leveling Builds

For leveling up, there is no better combination than the Bard, Marskmen, and Ranger. This class has self-healing, a pet, and some of the best damage in the game – it just does not get any better than this!

The first thing you want to is get 10 points in Bard as you can pick up Invigorated soul. This lets you use Cadence any time you want to heal you and your pet.

Additionally, with two points in Bard, you can get Anthem of Competence, which significantly improves movement speed. This makes leveling faster than any damage boost could as it makes you move faster.

Next, grab Ranger. You do not have to put any points in this role; just get it so you can have a pet.

Finally, for your third soul, get Marksman. The Swift Shot and Hasted Shot allow you to move very quickly between monsters, significantly improving leveling speed. Deadeye Shot also becomes the best use of combo points in the game once you get to rank 3.

You can use Cadence to heal and generate combo points, use two Swift Shots, then finish the enemy with Deadeye Shot. This will kill most enemies outright and leave you with a full health pool.

For more details on this Rift Rogue leveling build and how to progress it so a higher level, see the Rift Rogue leveling guide.

DPS Builds

If maximal damage is your game, then you will want to go straight for Marksman and put all ancillary points into Ranger. Ignore all the movement speed talents in the Marksman tier and only focus on ones that help you do damage.

For example, Repelling Shot and Improved Swift Shot are soloing and PvP abilities; there is no need for them in a dungeon. Instead, Increased Fire Power and Sharpshooter are much better talent points.

Your pet, when controlled well, can actually be a nice extra source of damage. In dungeons I recommend keeping it dismissed as sometimes the pathing can draw aggro; it is much easier to only use it on boss fights.

As a third soul, you can consider the Bladedancer; six points will get you some nice passive stats and the Combat Pose dexterity buff. More time and testing will be needed to see just how effective each 31 point talent is to know whether this is ideal or not. For now, just know that Marksman and Ranger deals the most damage.

PvP And Dungeon Builds

Strangely enough, out of the Rift Rogue Builds, I consider the best PvP and Dungeon build to be one and the same: Bard and Marksman.

Cadence is incredibly powerful in PvP; the group healing is massive since your team is clumped up and multiple players may be taking damage at once. To make things even better, Cadence generates quick combo points which you can then dump on Deadeye Shot or Hasted Shot.

The movement speed upgrades in Marksman allow you to chase down dying players very easily and allow you to escape as well. When you are in trouble, fire off Repelling Shot then a Hasted Shot and run for it. If that does not work, you have On the Double and Crossfire to get distance on an opponent.

Tanking Builds

There are two builds I would recommend for Rogue tanking: Riftstalker and Bard (low-level) and Riftstalker and Blade Dancer (high level).

At a low level, many healers do not have high-powered spells yet, so you will benefit immensely from 9 points in Bard for Anthem of Glory and Invigorated Soul. Put the rest of your points in Riftstalker. This way, after you have hate established, you can use Cadence to help heal yourself and the group.

At a higher level, you will want to put points into Riftstalker and Blade Dancer. I recommend putting a lot of points (31) into Blade Dancer. Pick up all the important mitigation talents and be sure to grab Improved False Blade and Disengage.

Improved False Blade means that every time you use False Blade (a Blade Dancer skill), you gain 5% dodge and 6% parry. This is a massive amount for a tank.

Additionally, given your dodge and parry rate with this Rift Rogue build, you will be able to use Disengage practically every 20 seconds. Keeping your enemy stunned 20% of the time is great for tanking!

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While the level cap has prevented us from exploring this possibility just yet, I think that the Rogue will be one of the best classes for soloing tough monsters. I am under the impression that a 26 Blade Dancer, 25 Bard, 14 Riftstalker (or 22 Blade Dancer, 26 Bard, 18 Riftstalker) build will be very effective at soloing tough enemies.

You get a lot of great mitigation talents from Blade Dancer and Riftstalker yet you get a lot of good self-healing abilities from Bard. More details on this spec to come! You can also visit this lens to view some example rogue builds, or add your own for discussion as well.

No matter what you like to do in Rift, the Rogue is a highly versatile calling. By using these Rift Rogue builds, you can experience the best of what the Rogue class has to offer!

Don’t forget to contribute to this guide by posting a comment below.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Solo Play Builds
3. Group Play Builds
4. Healing Builds
5. Tanking Builds
6. Leveling Builds
7. DPS Builds
8. PvP Builds

Introduction

In Rift you will be selecting three souls which will be the basis for all of your character’s abilities, generally you will have one main soul and two other souls which will mainly be used for the starter abilities they give. In this Rift Cleric builds guide I will be discussing the Cleric souls, what they do, and which ones I suggest that you should use.

If you’re looking to be a healer in Rift you’re going to want to choose the Cleric class. However, there is also the route of melee DPS, ranged DPS, and also the ability to tank which makes this the most versatile class of them all. Of the eight souls the Cleric has one possible tanking spec which is the Justicar, however it is not recommended to attempt using this for tanking right now. The Cleric also has the Shaman and Druid souls for melee DPSing, the Inquisitor and Cabalist for ranged DPS, and finally the Warden, Sentinal, and Purifier for the three healing souls.

In Rift you’re able to purchase up to four separate roles for your character, and when setting up these roles you’ll want to make at least one for soloing and one for grouping. When playing a cleric it is wise to have a group healing role, a solo dpsing role, as well as a group dpsing role.

Solo Play Builds

When soloing as a cleric you’ll want to choose between ranged or melee DPS. If you choose ranged you are going to want Inquisitor as your main soul with Warden and Purifier as your off-souls as these provide 0pt abilities that give you a heal over time as well as a damage absorption shield. Inquisitor has great nuke spells which when coupled with the DoTs make it a very efficient damage soul.

Now you don’t want to forget all about the melee option, you’ll want to go with Druid as your main soul and have Warden and Shaman as your off souls. Druid’s are given a Faerie pet that will heal you whenever you take damage which makes this a great soul for soloing. You’ll want to disable your pets auto ranged attack that does not do a whole lot of damage and eats away at your pets mana which you’ll want to reserve for the healing it will do for you. One thing to note is you will want to use the Shaman’s base ability instead of the Druid’s. Overall this build makes for a lot of damage along with a great amount of self healing making it the best soloing build hands down.

Group Play Builds

Now if you’re going to be playing in a group and you want to stay as damage, you can simply use the same souls I mentioned early and tweak them to give less healing and more damage. As for healing however you’ll want to choose what kind of healer you want to be before picking your souls. Purifier has a lot of really big heals and shields, the Warden is a heal over time healer, and the Sentinel has some instant healing and a lot of aoe group healing. You will want to use all of these together for healing as they all come with great 0pt abilities for healing.

Healing Builds

The Cleric is by far the best healer in the entire game. With that said, there are two primary souls you will want to invest in: Sentinel and Warden.

In particular, you will want to put 32 points into Cleric and 26 points into Warden. This allows you to pick up Life’s Return, Cascade, and Refreshing Communion. Life’s Return is a combat-enabled resurrection spell (highly useful) while Cascade and Refreshing Communion ensure you never have mana problems.

You have a few options for this Rift Cleric healing build: you can continue to put points into Wardento pick up Healing Showers (powerful AoE heal), or you can put some points into Purifier to get extra crit, reduced spell push-back, and an endurance buff. It depends on the encounter.

With that said, here are key talents to get:

• Sentinel: Benediction, Light Concentration, Light Efficiency, Embolden, Protect the Flock, Healing Invocation, Refreshing Communion
• Warden: Aquatic Affinity, Surging Rapids, Fluidity, Ebb and Flow, Orbs of the Stream, Cascade

After that, it is up to personal preference and gear. For example, when leveling up your critical hit rate with spells will be very low. As a result, a talent like Serendipity is not very useful. However, once you get better gear and start critting more, you may find that it gets a lot better.

Tanking Builds

When it comes to Cleric tanks, no soul is better than the Justicar with a Shaman back-up. There are a few viable Rift Cleric Builds:

• Rift Cleric Build #1: 51 points in Justicar, 15 points in Shaman, Purifier equipped (but no points). This gives all of the Justicar talents and abilities while giving you the +15% healing, -5% damage reduction and elemental resistance from Shaman. Equipping Purifier gives you access to self-shield.
• Rift Cleric Build #2: 51 points in Justicar, 13 in Shaman, 2 in Druid. In this build, you pull out points of the “Heart” buffs in exchange for Oak Shield from Druid. Useful for enemies which deal in physical damage, as Oak Shield absorbs a lot more damage than the Purifier’s Shield of the Ancestors.
• Rift Cleric Build #3: 45 Justicar, 21 Shaman, 0 Purifier. Pull 6 points out of Justicar (3 from Healer’s Creed, 2 from Forced to Kneel, and 1 from Commitment). In Shaman, pick up Heart of the Twilight Forest and Shared Purpose. This allows you to get resistance for you and your raid for all schools of magic damage.

With that said, all builds require these Thick Skinned and Favor of the Valnir in Shaman. Reducing damage taken by an extra 5% and increasing healing received by 15% is necessary for making a good tanking Rift Cleric build.

Leveling Builds

For leveling, I prefer a combination of Shaman, Justicar, and Druid. There is a lot to this build; more details can be found in the Rift Cleric leveling guide.

DPS Builds

While Clerics are not meant built for damage, there is one interesting spec you can go that makes Clerics an exceedingly effective area of effect class. In other words, for any encounter that requires you to deal damage to multiple enemies at once, Clerics might even outshine Mages with this spec.

The recommend Cleric DPS build is actually 33 Cabalist and 33 Inquisitor. You will want to pick up the following key talents:

• Cabalist: Death’s Grasp, Explosive Energies, Broad Strokes, Deep Water, Maelstrom, Death’s Dominion, , Negation of Life, Undertow, Surge, Sigil of Ravaging
• Inquisitor: Inner Focus, Armor of Devotion, Fanatics Faith, Aggressive Renewal, Clinging Spirit, Fanaticism, Corporal Punishment, Circle of Oblivion

The applications of the AoE of these classes is significant. Between talented Maelstrom, Grasping Waters, and Binding Waters, large numbers of enemies will be stuck in place.

Combine that with powerful AoE and healing abilities like Sigil of Decay (with Broad Strokes), Devouring Mist, Engulfing Shadows, and Circle of Oblivion, this class becomes an AoE damage-dealing machine.

This spec also does good single-target damage, but not quite on par with the other damage-dealing callings (Cleric is the primary healer, after all).

PvP Builds

There are a variety of viable PvP builds. With that said, PvP souls are still under development so I do not currently have a list of the best Rift Cleric builds for PvP. With that said, amongst the 8 souls that are available:

• Purifier is the best PvP healing tree
• Inquisitor is the best PvP damage-dealer for 1v1 and small scale battles due to the large number of self-heals
• Cabalist is the best damage-dealer for AoE
• Melee Clerics are not effective in PvP

Odds are the some hybrid of the PvP Cleric soul will combine with the one of the three souls above. For example, it is extremely likely that the Priest PvP Soul plus Inquisitor will make the best 1v1 class, whereas Purifier plus the PvP soul will make the best PvP healer. We will see as PvP souls are released!

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You can also find example cleric soul builds here. When all is said and done, you now have a lot of great Rift Cleric builds that you can test and try out to your heart’s content. There are a lot of great talents for the Cleric, so be sure to test them all out and see what works best for you.

Hopefully you will find this short guide useful. Don’t forget to read our other Rift guides, submit your own or add your thoughts in the discussion below.

Contents:

1. What are artifacts in Rift
2. What are artifacts used for
3. Where to find artifacts

What are artifacts in Rift

Artifacts in Rift are rare items found throughout the world which you can use to complete “collections”. These items are found all over the world, both as objects you can loot of the ground in the most unusual locations and additionally as drops off of enemies.

Artifacts in Rift are like a mini-game of sorts. Players can travel all around the world to find them and it is a nice surprise when you bump into these while questing. Think of these as incentive to explore the world and to keep your eyes open when questing.

What are artifacts used for

When you collect an Artifact, you can “apply” it to a collection. Simply right click it and one (or more) collections will open up to which you can apply the item.

Once the item has been used on the collection, it will disappear. Each artifact can only be used once on a collection. Most collections require 6 Rift artifacts to complete.

However, there are some “rare” collections in the game (there seems to be one for each zone). This basically pulls 1-2 artifacts from each collection which can be completed in that zone and compiles them into a big, master collection (much larger than the standard 6 pieces).

Any artifact which belongs to the rare collection can be used twice (once on the master collection, and once on the artifact’s normal collection).

Once you complete a collection, you can turn these in for a reward in Sanctum (Guardians) or Meridian (Defiants). Once you enter town for the first time, you actually get a quest which introduces you to artifacts and directs you to the artifact collector for your faction.

I do not have a list of rewards in this Rift artifacts guide as the rewards seem to be a bit random. You get a bag which contains a few random items, a few gold, and a lucky coin.

Sometimes, the random item can be something really good (I have seen people get BoE epics out of these before!) so collections are indeed worth turning in. The lucky coin is a special currency which can be used to purchase cool rewards.

Save your coins as the best rewards cost a lot of lucky coins! There is a 110% speed mount which requires 100 lucky coins. I believe most players will be wanting this at some point!

Where To Find Artifacts

Many players are looking for the specific locations of all the artifacts in Rift. Unfortunately, I do not have a complete list of all of the artifact locations as all of the artifacts have simply not been found yet as there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) in-game.

However, there are a few locations where you can be practically guaranteed to find artifacts:

• From Rift invaders. Each element has its own collection, and this collection is tiered. For example, level 10 Fire plane invaders in Silverwood drop different artifacts from level 20 Fire plane invaders in Gloamwood.
• Along the roads, especially at the foot of trees and behind logs. Keep your eyes peeled when walking down the road; there is a surprising number of artifacts along the road in Rift. You usually have to pan your camera to look behind rocks and logs; they are usually hidden in some way. I have found about a dozen this way in Silverwood and Gloamwood alone.
• Near any “boss” quest mobs. Any time you fight a single monster for a quest, especially one at the end of the cave or at the top of a tower, there is a very good chance you will find an artifact nearby. Check behind all the rocks at the end of every cave in the game and you are likely to find one.
• Near static quest objectives. Artifacts always seem to be nearby certain quest objectives which do not move locations after being used. For example, I found 2 artifacts atop the towers at the Aelfwar fort while doing the quest which involved looting the tablets at the top of each tower.

After reading this Rift Artifact guide, you should have a pretty good idea of what Artifacts are, what they are used for, and how to find more.

Keep in mind that you can buy and sell artifacts by trading with other players, so you actually do not have to find all the artifacts yourself! By applying the tips above, you should get enough artifacts to trade with other players to complete all your collections!