Starting a Defiant Mage in Rift Prime

For my foray into Rift Prime, I decided I wanted to try out both sides of the faction war. There’s the Guardians and the Defiant (actually, Rift calls them the Defiants but that sounds a bit wonky to me so I take off the ’s’). The Guardians are religious and are destined to become celestial heroes while the Defiant feel like they are more self determined. They use magic and technology in the fight for Telara. Of course both factions think they are in the right and the other is evil…I’m gonna work a bit with both of them to see if I can save Telara without really taking sides.

Looking for a Companion

For my first journey I decided I wanted to see what technology has to bring to a sword and sorcery fight so I headed over to the Defiant. The Defiant has 3 different races to choose from, the Kelari, the Eth, and the Bahmi. The Kelari are the Defiant’s version of the Elves while the Eth are more humanlike. Finally, the Bahmi hail from the Plane of Air and they seem fairly humanlike if not a bit bulkier. In any case, I chose to look for a Kelari as my traveling companion. While there’s not too much difference between the races ostensibly, they each do get a few perks specific to themselves. Kelari get a Camouflage ability that allows them to appear as an animal for a short time and it looks like it might help in getting into or out of sticky situations. They also get an increased fire resistance since they are related closely to the Plane of Fire.

Along with the technological aspect of the Defiant I wanted to see what secrets the magical realm held in Telara so I decided to look for a Mage companion. Rift Prime has 4 different classes (Mage, Cleric, Warrior, Rogue) to work with and it’s actually a quite unique system. Each class has the opportunity to play any role in the game. You will see sword wielding mages, rogue healers, ranged warriors and tanky clerics. And the fun part is you can mix and match different ‘souls’ to compile the perfect companion to take on your journey. Since I’m just starting out in Rift Prime, I don’t know everything there is to know about these different mechanics but I will make sure to comment on things as I run across them in my travels.

So with my parameters laid in, I went in search of a Defiant Kelari Mage to start my journey on Telara with.

And I found Xoma. She looks to be a good traveling partner for my time in Rift as a Defiant.

So we set out together to see what adventures were before us…and learned about the situation in Telara.

Apparently the Guardians didn’t like the technology of the Defiant so they destroyed it one day. And of course they did it right before the rifts started opening. Invaders from the rift started pouring through into the world and quickly stomped all over the Guardians and once they were ground into the dirt they took out the Defiant defenders. With everyone defeated, Regulos the Destroyer showed up to claim Telara as his world.

Fortunately the few scattered Defiant that survived got together and were able to design a new Ascended to fight against the forces of Regulos. And that Ascended is Xoma.

Now that I know what we’re up against and I’ve got a decent idea of how to work with Xoma, we’ll head out into Telara next time.

Daily Ramble 246.2 | Gaming – Rift Prime – Starting a Defiant Mage in Rift Prime