Valour Rift Entrance Stabilized
After much careful and diligent research from Gnawnia's finest scientists, a means of stabilizing an entrance into the Valour Rift has been discovered! Hunters ranked Archduke/Archduchess and above who have recovered 2,000 Rift Distortions and acquired a map of the Valour Rift can now enter this new area within the Rift Plane.
If you have not yet obtained a map of the Valour Rift, doing so requires the rank of Grand Duke/Grand Duchess and access to the Bristle Woods Rift. Visit the Cartographer at the Bristle Woods Rift to purchase a Rift Chronometer which will allow you to recover the 2,000 Rift Distortions the Cartographer needs to issue you a map. Accessing the Valour Rift is outlined as the first step in the new Archduke/Archduchess adventure "End the Total Eclipse".
Preliminary Rift Gauntlet Research
During the stabilization research, the King's scientists collected some preliminary information on what awaits hunters within the Valour Rift. The Rift Gauntlet is an expansive area with powerful mice and no doubt rewarding secrets to discover. Although there's still much to learn about this new area within the Rift Plane, one thing is for certain: It's going to take a while to explore everything there!
Endless Tower
The Valour Rift is an especially twisted version of our reality, mirroring the King's Gauntlet in a sinister way. The tower appears to endlessly stretch into a starry abyss with no end in sight. The interior of the tower presents an even more baffling paradox. Early attempts at navigation revealed 8 uniquely themed floors within the tower. However, upon exiting the eighth floor, these early navigators found themselves back where they started, yet further from their destination. A truly confusing experience!
Gauntlet Elixir and Champion's Fire
Early attempts at navigating the Valour Rift Gauntlet revealed a timid, yet critical character -- The Terrified Adventurer Mouse. Despite a clear lack of prowess, this battle-hardened adventurer is determined to conquer its fear by climbing to the top of the tower!
This mouse appears throughout the tower and carries knowledge of shortcuts which can be utilized by hunters to traverse the tower more quickly. Capturing the Terrified Adventurer Mouse will grant x2 progress within the tower, helping you reach greater heights! However, the Terrified Adventurer has a very specific cheese taste. You'll need Gauntlet String Cheese which can be purchased from the local Cheese Shoppe by exchanging Gauntlet Elixirs collected outside the tower.
Champion's Fire can be used to light your way both inside and outside the Rift Gauntlet. Burning this fire provides +1 to many loot drops both inside and outside the tower. Additionally, while ascending the Rift Gauntlet, lighting Champion's Fire will move you forward +1 step with each capture.
- 250 Gauntlet String Cheese
- Attract the Terrified Adventurer within the Rift Gauntlet
- Adds +1 to loot drops and +1 step with each catch
Syncronizing with the Tower
The Rift Chronometer has revealed some secrets on how the Gauntlet Tower within the Valour Rift keeps itself out of sync with our timeline. Although the Chronometer will allow you to enter the tower, you'll fall slightly out of sync with the tower after each hunt. Eventually, the stairs below your feet will cease to exist in your timeline, sending you back down to the tower entrance.
Floor Caches
The hordes of Rift Stalkers within the tower appear to be guarding items of great value! Each floor within the tower contains a cache of gold, magical sigils, and other artifacts attuned to the energy of the tower.
Ascend to greater heights to reveal greater quantities of treasure!
Tower Augmentations
The magical markings on the Tower Sigils revealed some of the secrets of how the mice have managed to distort reality.
Recover Tower Sigils and other powerful artifacts from within the Rift Gauntlet to distort the tower to your own advantage. As you learn more about the tower, you'll be able to utilize this power in the form of augmentations that will transform the tower before entering it. However, these augmentations will only persist until you exit the tower.
Ultimate Umbra
Perhaps the most powerful tower augmentation is Ultimate Umbra. This augmentation will wrap the tower in utter darkness and summon more powerful mice which are sure to lead to greater rewards! Take warning: The pitch dark of an Ultimate Umbra will embolden the mice within the tower, giving them the ability to push you backwards on the stairwell.
Valour Rift Trapsmith and General Store
The intrepid Trapsmith and General Store owner at the Valour Rift have used the preliminary research to acquire a stock of powerful hunting equipment utilizing resources found within the Valour Rift.
Celestial Dissonance Trap
3,500 Rift Power, +10 Luck
A powerful upgrade for the Timesplit Dissonance utilizing Eclipse Cores. This formidable trap is the most effective Rift Weapon yet discovered!
Prestige Base
??? Power, ??? Luck
The Prestige Base is a truly unique (and potentially powerful) piece of hunting equipment. Although its stats appear meager at first, its special attunement to the hunter which owns it and the Rift Gauntlet itself will provide permanent stat bonuses based on how high you've climbed the Rift Gauntlet during Ultimate Umbra.
The Prestige Base stats increase based on the highest floor you've reached during Ultimate Umbra. The base will permanently maintain these stats throughout the entire Kingdom!
+10 Power per floor reached and +1 Luck for every 8 floors reached during Ultimate Umbra
Two Celestial Dissonance Skins
The Trapsmith has two unique trap skins for the Celestial Dissonance Trap. However, the exact schematics have been lost in the Rift Gauntlet. Search the tower for 1,000 Tattered Celestial Skin Patterns and exchange them at the Trapsmith for either of the unique skins. Both trap skins can be traded on the Marketplace and shared with friends.
Codex of Valour
Completing the End the Total Eclipse adventure will reward you with the Codex of Valour. This book binding is initially empty, however, the General Store owner sells 8 unique pages to add powerful power type bonuses that work throughout the entire Kingdom. Fully stock your codex to unlock different sets of 5% Power Bonuses and +1 Luck bonuses depending on the power type of your armed trap.
Gift Baskets and Supply Kits
- 500 Gauntlet String Cheese
- Jump start your tower exploration
- 30 Gauntlet String and 20 Champion
- 250 Gauntlet String and 250 Champion
- Valour Rift Large Supply Kit
- 1,000 Gauntlet String, 1,000 Champion
This research is only the beginning! The endless Rift Gauntlet is full of secrets to discover and rewards to unlock for hunters with the persistence to ascend to the greatest heights!
Some Scoreboards Recovered
Greetings once again hunters. We have another update on our efforts to restore scoreboard data that was lost during last week's infrastructure problems with the game.
Yesterday afternoon, after some more research, we were able to recover some scoreboards in their entirety. Although the scoreboard data backups were corrupted, we discovered that each scoreboard in the backup was either entirely lost or entirely present. This means we are able to restore a few of the scoreboards as they were on September 21.
- Scoreboards we were able to recover
- Relic Hunter: Treasure Maps Completed
- Relic Hunter: Season 3 Treasure Maps Completed
- Relic Hunter: Season 4 Treasure Maps Completed
- Relic Hunter: Season 5 Treasure Maps Completed
- Iceberg: Best Run
- Living Garden: Ultimate Charm Catch Streak
- Sunken City: Farthest Distance Traveled
- Fort Rox: Highest Monster of the Meteor Catch Streak
- Queso Canyon: Nachore Mined
These scoreboards should now appear as they were on September 21 and will actively update as hunters contribute to them.
Rebuilding Mouse Scoreboards
Scoreboards that track the number of times hunters have caught a specific type of mouse can technically be rebuilt by using hunters' catch statistics. This data was effectively being stored in two places, meaning we can use that redundancy to repopulate scoreboards for specific mouse catches.
We're a bit stretched for developer resources while working on infrastructure stability and wrapping up work on the upcoming Valour Rift release. However, once the Valour Rift is released and the infrastructure upgrade work is completed, we'll be looking into repopulating these mouse scoreboards.
Restarting Other Scoreboards
The final decision to make is what to do about all other scoreboards. We can either restart these scoreboards from scratch or retire them from the game. This is a decision we're looking for feedback on, so please let us know your thoughts in the comments section. If we were to restart these scoreboards, we would most likely place an asterisk next to those boards and note the date at which the scoreboards started on.
Some hunters may also view a subtle difference between scoreboards which may be worth feedback and discussion. Some lost scoreboards tracked one off "feats" while others tracked an accumulating stat over time.
Example: Sunken City: Highest Dive Catches tracked a "best record" of sorts from a single dive, while Oxygen Canisters Depleted tracked an accumulating stat across all dives. Due to their nature, re-obtaining the best record is feasible while accumulating stats will technically always be inaccurate.
If restarting some scoreboards is something you're in favour of, let us know if you think both feats and accumulating stats should be restarted, or if only feats should be.
Once again, we want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding while we work through this unfortunate loss of scoreboard data. We've taken the positive comments and constructive feedback to heart and going forward will endeavour to build a better scoreboard system for this amazing community of players.
