Rift: Gloamwood Area

Posted by Wolfen in Rift

Gloamwood is a dark, spooky place to visit. It reminds me of the World of Warcraft zone called Duskwood. The setting and ambiance are very similar. Gloamwood is full of ghosts, undead, and evil cultists, which will occupy most of your time.

The visuals in this zone are very nice. I want to compliment Trion on how great the game looks. While they took ideas from WoW, I much prefer the more realistic look of Rift over the cartoonish style of WoW.

The quest hub is the town of Gloaming Pines. It is fairly large, with plenty of buildings, shops, and trainers close to hand. It even has a huge tree that you get to visit via running up a street made of wood and rope. Be warned, however, if you make the journey to the top of the tree, that it is guarded by evil cultists that are higher level than most level appropriate players.

There is a huge number of quests in the Gloamwood area, but there is one in particular that I wish to mention. As you venture along the various quests, you’ll eventually get one that wants you to confront an evil hag that has been causing lots of trouble in the area. I fought my way through all the guards and entered her house. I confronted her and then she started talking some smack and then teleported me out of the house to a spot a good distance away.

I immediately realized that something was wrong. I was no longer human! The old hag had placed a curse on me that had turned me into a werewolf! To add insult to injury, I was now KOS to all NPC’s! I could not go to town, get or finish a quest, or train up my character.

 

As you might imagine, this made things rather difficult. Every now and then I would turn back into a human, but I would always change back into a werewolf. I suspect this transformation correlated with the day/night cycle in the game. I was given a hint that to break the curse I must either kill the hag or find someone in town to cure me. Going to town, however, was a tricky thing since I could change back into a werewolf in an instant.

So, long story somewhat shortened, I continued to run the quests I had and eventually got one that sent me to find and kill the hag (in a different and more difficult location than where I first met her). The curse lifted when she died. It is an interesting quest, but I found it to be annoying rather than fun.

You can also find the Deepstrike Mines instance in this area. A couple points of interest would be a huge werewolf boss fight where you need to keep him out of the moonlight, and a very large and nasty spider encounter.

Other than the werewolf problem, I enjoyed my time in Gloamingwood.