It’s that time of the year again, another massive update is out on the PTS!

Summary:

1,070 New Achievement Points.

“Return to Deepstrike” Level 60 Dungeon.

Planebreaker Bastion: Aftermath and Intrepid: GSB, RoS and HK chronicles.

Intrepid: Drowned Halls Tier 1 Level 60 Sliver.

New Planar Attunement (PA) – Tier 3 War PA + Attunements of Nature, Cinder and Storm.

Ember Isle Underwater Questline with underwater Rifts, new companion pets/etc.

New PvP Gear.

New Dimension: Infinity Gate + Dimension Items

Heaps of new Dungeon Artifact Sets and Dimension Item rewards

Unstable Artifacts.

Other stuff. (Cash Shop wishlists; Escalating Mounts; Notoriety update; Quest Limit Increase; New Target Marking Icons)

Datamined Dimension Keys, White Ki Rin Mount/etc by TehFrank

Click below for details + screenshots:

New Achievements

There’s quite a few new achievements. You’ll find the below meta achieve under your Achievements -> Dungeons main category:

Dreams of War

There’s now a Sinister Presence mob in every Level 60 Expert dungeon as well as Level 60 Chronicles. Defeat them all to get “The Sinister” title.

Infernal Dawn: Laethys Hard Modes

Hard Mode achievements have been added in for the chronicle Infernal Dawn: Laethys.

Ember Isle Achievements



New Ember Isle Achievements in the wake of the new underwater questline to the west of the area have been added in. Note the “Rising Depths” zone event and the “underwater rifts”.

Also contains a meta achievement with some Ember Isle-themed dimension lights.

Daglar’s Duck

Achievements -> Dungeons -> Ceremony of Attunement (the Level 50 starter solo chronicle) has an interesting achievement. “Creative Mechanic Collector” for collecting the “Creative Mechanics” artifact set in the chronicle. You get a “Ducklar the Sploiter” which apparently is a slayer of unicorns (thus all the unicorn masks!).

A Sinister Rift

A new rift called “Sinister Tide” will spawn in both Mathosia and Storm Legion zones as a water rift with an achieve and a title “the Dark Tide” attached to it.

And this little tidbit – ‘something blue’. What could it be? A blue Kirin mount?

Return to Deepstrike Mines

As mentioned before, Deepstrike Mines was the ‘winner’ of a poll done by Vladd to see which Level 50 dungeon people wanted revamped for Level 60.

As such this is the revamped Level 60 Expert version of the Level 50 dungeon “Deepstrike Mines” or DSM for short.

The achievements up thus far for the dungeon seem incomplete, both in amount of points compared to previous dungeons as well as in the type of achievements up. That said, it does give us an indication that at least the bosses are named something different from the Level 50 version.

If this dungeon is anything like Realm of Twisted Dreams, then the fights should be relatively fresh.

New Chronicles

Just as Daglar mentioned, Patch 2.5 (and in the weeks following its release) will contain several new chronicles.

The Intrepid Chronicles



Firstly, it seems Trion is using the “Intrepid:” prefix to denote some of the content that is simply a Level 60 version of previous content. In this case, Intrepid: Hammerknell Fortress, Intrepid: River of Souls and Intrepid: Greenscale’s Blight are simply Level 60 versions of their Level 50 counterparts.

Still, it provides updated experience and loot and should be a welcome addition, especially for new Level 60s looking to gear up. All the new chronicles should help push them faster towards gearing up for Expert dungeons.

Planebreaker Bastion: Aftermath

Luckily there is a brand new Chronicle in the form of a Planebreaker Bastion: Aftermath chronicle. Here you are tasked with cleaning up the mess that the other Ascended have left (the raiders) after destroying the Planebreaker Abominus.

As you can see from the above achievements list – there’s a lot there with several bosses, include hard mode versions of each boss.

Besides the bosses, there’s also your usual rare mob Azoan. If this mob is anything like the rare mob in Infernal Dawn: Laethys, then it will be an interesting fight.

Usurper Esal

You’ll find Usurper Esal as your first boss. He casts a large platform-wide AoE where you need to keep running to avoid any major damage.

He’ll also cast Grit Blast which is a channel that you can avoid by staying on top of vents in the room. A vent will give you a temporary buff that prevents you from taking damage from Grit Blast, but will lower your outgoing damage and heals. As such, you should only go in the vents during Grit Blast, and then leave afterwards.

He’ll also cast an emote “Usurper Esal redirects his enemies’ motion.” When this happens, make sure to stand still. If you decide to move, he’ll knock you back in the opposite direction. (unsure if you can be knocked off the platform, but just don’t move and you should be fine!)

Sharad X9

Sharad X9 is the next boss. He stays stationary in the middle of the platform and will alternate between a Standard Blast and a Massive Blast. They are interruptible, but my advice is to interrupt the Massive Blast if you can’t interrupt the other one due to cooldown timer on your interrupts.

He’ll also cast a Laser Field that looks kind of like a pentagram that will rotate in a random direction. Avoid them.

The other ability he has is “Blast Ring” which covers a large AoE radius. To avoid being damaged from it, you need to run into the small White AoE underneath him. Usually he does Blast Ring whilst he has his Laser Field up – so you’ll need to avoid touching the Lasers whilst running into the White AoE.

Note that in his current state, he seems to reset a lot if you are ‘too far’ away from him (which is about the middle ‘ring’ of the platform) so it is best to stay close to him.

Tesni the Ravenous

Tesni the Ravenous’ main ability is Toxic Blast and Toxic Spit. Toxic Blast you can avoid by destroying Bug Mounds (there’s only 3) on the platform. Each one will temporarily give you immunity to Toxic Blast for a few seconds when you destroy a Bug Mound.

Toxic Spit on the other hand is a continuous shower of small AoEs that you have to avoid that Tesni throws at you which remains on the platform for a decent amount of time. Avoid them all and destroy a Bug Mound whilst she is casting Toxic Blast and you’ll be fine.

Mistress Inyra

Mistress Inyra is back in her human form!

She has a Planar Overload mechanic where you will explode after a few seconds unless you cleanse yourself via vents that appear such as the small white AoE vent you see above. These vents cleanse you of Planar Overload but reduces your outgoing damage and healing whilst you are inside them so you should only go through them when you have Planar Overload on you.

Mistress Inyra will also summon 3 Empowering Blobs to aid her. They’ll appear at the edges of the room and begin to make their way to Mistress Inyra. If they make it to her, they buff her. You can knock them back/etc which can help out.

She also has an inner and outer-ring type AoE mechanic. So sometimes you’ll want to move away from her, and other times you’ll want to move towards her. Just know that Red = Dead and you should be fine.

Intrepid: Drowned Halls

This is a Level 60 version of the Level 50 Tier 1 10-man, Drowned Halls. It seems all the bosses look more or less the same (haven’t tested mechanics out yet, but the achievements seem to be a mirror of the old version). Hopefully gives decent enough gear to help gear Tier 1 raiders into Tier 2.

New Planar Attunements

There’s new Planar Attunements for everyone to get! 200 in fact, bringing the total PA to 1,279.

Tier 3 Attunement of War

81 total points. Following breakdown for Clerics:

30 Vengeance

20 Endurance

15 WIS

40 Armor

6 Resist All

Reduces the Cooldown time of Overload by 3secs

Increases your Health Regeneration Rate by 2

Unsure what “Increases your Health Regeneration Rate by 2” means, but I’m assuming by 2%? Also, “Overload” is a Cleric War PA ability in the Tier 1 Hex. As such, the other classes probably get similar cooldown reductions for one of their Tier 1 War PA abilities.

Wisdom is probably replaced by other class’ Main stats for their class.

Attunement of Nature

The Attunement of Nature is a brand new Attunement. It requires that you first complete your Attunement of Earth and Attunement of Life before you can start putting points into this Attunement.

41 points. Breakdown:

8 SP

15 END

40 Armor

12 Life Resist

12 Earth Resist

Increases STR, DEX, INT, WIS and END by 1

Increase Coin gained from looting mobs by 1%

Attunement of Cinder

New Attunement that requires you first complete your Attunement of Fire and Attunement of Death before it unlocks.

39 Points. Breakdown:

8 SP

15 INT (secondary stat)

12 Fire Resist

12 Death Resist

Increases STR, DEX, INT, WIS and END by 1

Increase Coin gained from looting mobs by 1%

Increases your Health regeneration rate by 2

Attunement of Storm

Another new attunement that requires you complete your Attunement of Air and Attunement of Water before you can unlock this.

39 Points. Breakdown:

8 SP

15 WIS (main stat)

12 Air Resist

12 Water Resist

Increases STR, DEX, INT, WIS and END by 1

Increase Coin gained from looting mobs by 1%

Increases your Health regeneration rate by 2

Ember Isle Underwater Questline

Off the coast of Ember Isle in the old pre-SL zones (Mathosia), there’s a new Underwater Questline slated for Patch 2.5.

You’ll find a new Porticulum to the west in a location called Breaker Point as well as a new underwater region off the west coast of Ember Isle. This is a Level 60 area.

However, to start off, speak to Keeper Ivan next to the Porticulum in Tempest Bay.

You’ll find a pretty interesting questline with new lore to boot and hints of traveling to the Plane of Water. Along the way you’ll get coin, exp and Ember Isle-based notoriety. You’ll get two smexy pets and a few PA crystals as well as a Bind on Account “Nightmare Touched Planar Focus” +20 Water Resist focus similar to the old Barnacle Encrusted Sigils/Source Machines.

Goodies

There’s underwater rifts (only found two versions thus far), a zone event as well as two special Dream lures with some interesting mobs:

For movement, underwater combat is decent although sometimes when you first engage an enemy in combat, if you aren’t facing them ‘level’, your camera might force itself in a ‘horizon’-style view which can be annoying.

The Atragarian Gifts however allow for 2hrs of underwater breathing and faster swim speed which is always a plus. It’s also a lot easier to escape enemies thanks to this speed boost.

Once you complete all the main storyline quests, you’ll be given a daily you can complete for notoriety.

Shi-Ming

Just to tease us further, Trion has added several mobs with the Shi-Ming tag on them. They are Fire mobs, so perhaps this could hint at either the next expansion (Plane of Fire expansion?) or perhaps some portion of the Plane of Water 3.0 content given the storyline. (or just a tease).

Zone Event – Rising Depths

As for the zone event “Rising Depths”, it will appear on a separate cooldown to the other Ember Isle zone events so it won’t clash with the lower-level zone events.

New PvP Gear

As mentioned in previous articles, Daglar has stated there would be new PvP gear. This is mainly in the form of Seals/Trinkets and possibly Esssences.

PTS has been updated with the following:

Trinket Upgrade

The Trinket Upgrade requires Warlord’s Conquest Cell. This does not exist currently as we have Freelancer’s Conquest Cells. Daglar has stated that when Conquest: Steppes of Infinity is added to Live some time during 2.5, they’ll remove Freelancer’s Marks of Conquest and add a new mark.

From the wording on the PTS, it seems like the new marks will be called Warlord’s Marks of Conquest and will allow you to purchase these Warlord’s Conquest Cells upgrade components.

Note: The procs don’t change.

Seal Upgrade

Again, requires Warlord’s Conquest Small Cell, not the current Freelancer’s Conquest Small Cell.

You won’t be able to stock up prior to these being released on Live (besides any favor/IS requirements).

No new Essences are up on the PTS, although my guess is they’ll come eventually to further incentivize people to continue participating in Conquest.

New Dimension: Infinity Gate + Dimension Items

The Infinity Gate dimension costs 900 Platinum and has 2,520 item limit.

The Dimension covers the entire Infinity Gate area. It seems to be an older version of the Infinity Gate though because it has some floating blocks at the center of the map that doesn’t exist in the current open world version. It also doesn’t have the floating Conduit – which is a shame. Would have loved an interactive laser that opens up and closes the Conduit!

Plethora of Music Boxes

Get your groove on! Tons of new music boxes to add to your dimension. If only they had a ‘max’ distance meter, that’d be great. Then you could put all of them in a single dimension and have people alternate between them!

Dimensional Distance Indicator

Under Dimensions -> Interactive; this item shows range at 5-meter intervals up to 30 meters as indicated in its tooltip. It basically shows the distances on your UI. Not 100% sure how useful this item is though but I’m guessing avid dimensioneers will probably find a use.

New Dungeon Artifact Sets

There’s a plethora of new dungeon artifact sets (and thus artifacts) to collect in the Storm Legion Dungeons with new dimension items.

Listed below are the dimension items, prices and images. Note as they are Trophies, you’ll need to unlock them by completing the respective artifact sets for each dungeon.

Archive of Flesh Empyrean Core Exodus of the Storm Queen Golem Foundry Realm of Twisted Dreams Storm Breaker Protocol Tower of the Shattered Unhallowed Boneforge

Unstable Artifacts

Unstable Artifacts (blue color) have been added in! Simon stated in a recent livestream that there was approximately 1,200 unstable artifacts and 150 unstable artifact sets. They appear during certain zone events.

Collect a full artifact set and you are given “A Planar Nut”. Collect a few of these and you can turn them in for Planar Squirrel Mounts from each of the Planes.

Other Stuff

Other stuff that doesn’t need its own header.

Cash Shop Interface Wishlists

There’s a new Wish List icon in the top-left hand corner of your Cash Shop and you’ll notice that every single item has a small tickbox next to it:

Yep! Now you can tick those boxes to add them to your Wish List so that all your friends/guildmates will know what to get you for your birthday/xmas/valentine’s day! :O

The new Wish List section of the Cash Shop Interface will allow you to view your wishlist as well as the wishlists of all your Friends via a drop-down menu.

Note that this doesn’t just help others know what you want – it can also help you keep track of things you wish to upgrade or buy in the future so you don’t have to search for them again and again in the Cash Shop.

Escalating Mounts

Trion have introduced “Escalating” mounts for the 60% mounts. You can now choose to either purchase a 60% mount, or a 60% mount that scales to your fastest mount.

The cost is currently very low (4 silver) for testing purposes. I doubt it will be this low when it hits Live, especially if you assume those are the correct Credits price.

These additions will allow people to ride 60% mounts without worrying about moving slower than someone running beside them. My guess is that if it is well-received, they’ll probably add an “Escalating” version to the 90% mounts as well.

Daily Mark of Notoriety Expansion

Huzzarians! Marks of Notoriety daily quest that you can turn in at Tempest Bay now has the Dendrome Notorieties (Achyati, Hailol, Empyreal Alliance)! Time to turn in your Marks of Notoriety!

For those who don’t know, Marks of Notoriety are gained from participating in zone events in Storm Legion. Note however that you can only have a maximum of 50 on your character at any one time (you can always send them to your alts so you can obtain more).

Daily Quest Increase

Patrons have a daily quest limit increase from 30 to 40!

Target Markings Icons

New Target Marking Icons to use! Thanks to captaincursor for modelling for this photo!

Some of the marks will be quite useful. The heal marks are perfect for PvP and the tank marks are great for PvE when linked with a macro.

Datamining by TehFrank

TehFrank has been at it again with this update, datamining a few lovely bits of information not yet officially accessible on the PTS but that appear in the data files.

Lots of new Dimensions:

pd_anywhere, pd_azcuazg_oasis, pd_bahralts_ascent, pd_daazez_wastes , pd_edgestone_ridge, pd_faering_woods, pd_fetid_plains, pd_harrow_crypt, pd_infinity_gate, pd_karthan_ponds, pd_malluma_track, pd_pus_swamp, pd_scarlet_gorge_cliff, pd_stillmoor_vale, pd_stone_grove, pd_the_black_garden, pd_tower_meadow

Infinity Gate key is up on the PTS, but the others don’t seem to be in the Store or anywhere else yet. The Black Garden key has been expected since it was mentioned as being a possibility for the PvP crowd and PvP Dimensions. The others are all new.

Depending on the release schedule of these keys, it’ll be fun times indeed for Dimensioneers!

White Ki Rin

A White Ki Rin mount skin is in the data files!

Promo Image

There’s a promo image for underwater combat, most likely a Rift front page image ready for the Ember Isle Underwater content.

Check out TehFrank‘s post! Thanks to TehFrank for this juicy datamined info!

Lots of stuff, and potentially more to come before Patch 2.5 hits! Stay tuned for next week as Patch 2.5’s release date will be announced!