We got an early look at Update 3.4 launching today in Rift.

The Planetouched Wilds will open for players to explore in the next big content update coming to RIFT today, October 7. While Trion Worlds is not labeling the update as an expansion, its contents—a large zone, an expert dungeon, a new raid tier launching sometime after Planetouched Wilds, a new warfront and an all new calling—certainly make it feel like one.

The Planetouched Wilds have been an inaccessible area on RIFT’s core world map since its launch, and players may be surprised that the area is a lot larger than the map previously implied. The reason for both the the map’s inaccessibility and its increase in size will be told through the zone’s storyline as players discover that the zone has gone on a journey through the planes and time itself, picking up some additional real estate and some interesting creatures on its journey.

When players discover the new zone, they will find that the zone has only recently come back into alignment with the rest of the Telara, due to the mighty footsteps of a large plane-traversing creature. As you venture through the zone, take another look at those large sinkholes and valleys, as they may in fact be footprints left by the Cosmic Rinenahyracaros. This shift back into our plane has also had a few side effects, including the ability for players to jump much higher than normal throughout much of the zone.

The zone itself is a beautiful expanse of grassy plains that trail off into the distance, giving lines of sight to the new landmarks players will find, including the silhouette of the zone’s main hub Shal Korva, commonly referred to as the kite city by the natives.

It is under Shal Korva that players will find the entrance to the new dungeon, Rhaza’de Canyons, which takes players into the large ravines that snake across the Planetouched Wilds. At the bottom of these ravines players will need to defeat Teth Mornta, the final boss of the dungeon that has corrupted an enormous Ascension machine to use for his sinister purposes.

The new warfront coming to RIFT is the Assault on Bronze Tomb warfront. It will introduce a new assault game type, an asymmetrical matchup which features one team on offense and the other is on defense for the duration of the match. For Assault on Bronze Tomb, the assault puts players in the role of either tomb protectors or looters.

What is probably the biggest addition to this content update is the new calling: the Primalist. This is the first time RIFT has added a new calling to its game since its launch. A calling in RIFT is what other games would call their classes. Since launch there have only been four callings—Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage—that players pick during character creation. So players will have a decision to make when the Planetouched Wilds comes out as to whether they want to venture into the new area on their current characters or start a new Primalist character.

Within these callings are souls, which are the ability trees that unlock the majority of skills available to the character. Since launch the number of souls available to each calling has been slowly increased to the current 10 souls per calling. The Primalist won’t reach this level quite yet—starting with only 6 souls available—but will have the souls available to it increased over upcoming patches to align it with the rest of the callings. The current souls however, will give players a wide spread of playstyle options including tanking, healing and combinations of range, melee, single-target and AoE damage.

One of the core mechanics of the Primalist is displayed as the new Harmony Bar UI that will appear above the primary skill UI. As the Primalist uses skills, the harmony will shift from its resting place in the middle of the bar to either Fury on one side or Cunning on the other. Primalists will need to keep track of where they sit on their bar, as their current state can affect the skills they are using. Some skills might not be usable at all without the appropriate level of Fury or Cunning, while others might gain additional effects. For example, one devastating spell had a six second cast time, but if the player was over 60 fury, the skill would become instant cast.

The update will also bring many smaller changes. One small addition is a new progression to collecting the fan favorite artifacts within the new zone. Collecting an artifact has a chance to give a debuff that slowly damages the player but will also reveal more rare artifact nodes to collect.

Stop by the official RIFT website to check out the series of previews Trion has released for even more information on this update that launches later in the week. For those veteran players who might not be looking at Primalist, I highly recommend taking the time to level a new Primalist character as the calling was fun to try and definitely worth playing.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

Follow me @MattstaNinja