The Adventures of Lef the Elf Murder Hobo

I occasionally play MMO games – usually one at any given time, and usually old games, mainly because the computers that I have tend to be old hand-me-downs that are happier with older games. The past few years I’ve alternated between private customized WoW servers and Trion’s Rift – games that are about 8 or 10 years old and have no issues running on old hardware.

Last week, I came back to Rift, just to see if the game even existed anymore. It was at the tail end of its popularity when I left around 2015, and I had heard weird news about Trion selling all their game properties to a “maintenance mode” company galled “Gamigo” who tended to buy games and just keep them going without creating new expansions. This led to wails from the userbase about the game dying, but if you ask my opinion, I think it’s just fine. The old content was really well-written and interesting, and there’s *lots* of it – in fact, as a “Free-To-Play” game, it’s pretty great. You can play the whole thing without spending any money at all – and if you want some conveniences and extra utility, you can spend the cost of a boxed game to pick up all of the extra “souls” and unlock the few barriers to convenience they do put up (mainly just access to the in-game auction house). Even then, there’s no monthly subscription fee. It’s a thrifty game to play casually, and I like the fact that not much is going to change in the future.

So, once I found it still existed, I started a brand-new character in order to just slowly enjoy playing through *all* of the content, without having to worry about levelling quickly for raids and all that stressy end-game stuff. I want to enjoy a leisurely stroll through the storyline. These are my adventures and advice for new Ascended…

Hi, I’m Lef, a High Elf Guardian of Shard Hailol. I’m a Plate armor wearing Warrior class called “Tesla Knight” that shoots lightning at range, rather than getting up close and sweaty in melee combat. You might ask how an elf encased in metal armor can possibly use electricity as a weapon without electrocuting themselves, and the answer seems to be “hey, it’s Air Magic. deal with it.”

The planet all of this is happening on is “Telara“, and like any fantasy/sci-fi world, it has a bunch of races evenly split between two opposing factions which are usually at war for some reason. This is in spite of the fact that the planet is under constant attack from alien “Rift Invasions” that threaten us all. Fortunately, as this world matured, the two factions have ceased being quite so hostile and now generally co-exist in a peace that enables us to set a simple flag and *never* have to worry about being ganked by a member of the opposite faction. You do have to avoid the opposite faction’s city guards still, though. No big deal.

I’ve been in town about a week – done all the quests in the local beginning area of Silverwood, done some fishing and gathering, and did the first few of the “Dimension” quests in order to set up my first “player housing”. From my adventures so far, I’ve gathered some items and furniture to decorate my Dimension with. Technically, the fact that I do have a plot of land that is *mine*, that I can decorate myself and invite other players to means I’m not actually a “Murder Hobo“. I have a home, so I’m a “Murder Homeowner” on Telara. Yeah, I’ve killed at least a hundred or so other creatures (including other elves) in my first week’s worth of questing, and nobody has sent the cops at me – I guess it’s okay then. :D

Let’s set down some of the furniture I fished up in my starter dimension. Sanguine Shores is the first free Dim Key you get, and it’s small but quite pretty. I’ve been stacking up the miscellaneous Dimension items I’ve gotten this week in here.

This brings me to my first bit of advice for you: When you get to your first main city, there’ll be a Dimension Engineer who will offer you a quest line that teaches you how to set up your first home.

Start this quest line and complete it up to the point where he offers you the “Placing Dimension Items” quest. Take this quest and set Gartyn’s Amphora down in your dimension, but *DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES COMPLETE THIS QUEST BY CLICKING ON GARTYN HEJME’s BLUE QUEST CHECKMARK!* If you do click on it and complete the quest, you’ll get a bag of assorted boring dimension items, but *YOU WILL LOSE GARTYN HEJME* as an NPC in your dimension! If you resist completing the quest, he will stay there forever as a unique NPC that you can’t get any other way. That’s a Protip you can use, because getting Dimension-placeable NPC characters is very rare, expensive and takes a lot of work, and usually something you can only do at higher levels.

He doesn’t do much except stand there and breathe, but you won’t get another chance to get a free dimension NPC pretty much *ever*.

Haha, Gartyn! You came here to teach, but I am never going to let you leave!

As you adventure, you’ll also occasionally pick up companion pets that you can have follow you around. They’re not very smart, though.

Hey, let’s go check out one of the major cities!

I was really surprised to see how many players are on at any given time of day. The main cities are pretty full, and even when adventuring in the open world it’s not hard to find other people close by to group with, especially during Rift Invasions. There’s always loads of players running around and fighting the invasions with you.

Another thing I should mention about Rift is the “Wardrobe” system. Basically, any item of clothing, armor or weapon that passes through your inventory (you don’t even have to equip it), gets its appearance added to your Wardrobe, and you can then apply that appearance to whatever item you’re actually wearing in that slot. This means you will roam around Telara and probably *never* see a player toon dressed exactly the same as someone else. There are *thousands* of different wardrobe options to choose from, and the variety is really extreme.

Today, I finished the last of the quests in Silverwood and took care of a few Fire Rift invasions with my fellow Telarans. Tonight I will venture into Gloamwood to set up camp and ready myself to murder a bunch more things at the behest of Gloamwood residents.

Wish me luck, or if you’d like, you can even join me. If you use that link, it sets up an “Ascend-a-Friend” relationship between us which does some in-game coin rewards that can be spent on costume items, pets and mounts. Be sure to set up a “Guardian” faction character on the Hailol shard if you want to gang up with me. (: