I have spent a week getting down and dirty with Storm Legion.  Mostly with the 50-54 content and dimensions.  My new motto is “Must…Stop…Decorating *eye twitch*”.

I will touch on the content and stabby stuff in another post.  This post, is all about dimensions.

I started gaming in Everquest, but really got into EQ2.  EQ2 was the housing game at the time, no one did it better (not sure anyone does do it better still).  I was very excited about Dimensions, and guess what, theres no But in this sentance.  I love them.

There are a few complaints, which I will touch on below, but I will say this.  RIFT is my home game, and now I have a home within a home (within a home).

Those who know me from EQ2, know that I love finding ways out of my house.  I broke out of all of my houses in EQ2, I built structures where we weren’t supposed to travel….I broke out my guild as well in our guild hall.

When I was at PAX this year in 2012, I spoke with the Project Lead? about dimensions.  My guild mate who was there with me said that I broke out of every house I owned, that i’d probably do the same in RIFT.  She kind of got a funny look like…oh no, but we laughed about it…then I realized maybe she thought I wouldn’t be able to break out.

Within the first hour I bought my first dimension, Empyrean Mill.  Beautiful but small zone, with no outdoor areas.  It wasn’t for me.

I then bought Plaza Aurentine.   This one had everything I was looking for…a good structure, a good outside….and a lot of places to get in trouble.

Within minutes I was already climbing my pirate ladders….Could I reach the causeway above? No…damn that would have been an awesome house…stupid ceiling.

So I started testing roof tops looking for holes.  I found one, and then I found that my house has a basement.  A square area fairly large that I could convert into a room.  I only had to find a way to get people in and out as painlessly as possible.

I kept falling but couldn’t find a way to get back up.  So I scrapped the idea for the moment, and built a roof top garden near the place where I fell in.  Once the garden was completed, I started exploring on what else was solid enough to climb up, and lo and behold I found another hole down to my basement.

Placing items carefully not to block the narrow passage, but to keep people from wandering around in the dangerous underworld of my dimension, I worked my way down.  I used stone walls to block in my room, and create a tunnel out.  The pirate staircases (Thank you Trion for adding these last minute!), were my savior.

2 days later my house was finished.  My Dimension has a 2 story house, a basement that is outside the realm of my dimension and a rooftop garden.  I had a blast.

If you would like to see it I am on the Greybrier Shard, the house is under Starseeker, labeled: Starseeker’s Sanctuary.

Now to the nitty gritty.

What I like about dimensions:

• The tools to move items, this is a huge upgrade from the dark ages where we had to stack items to get them to float.
• The varity of zones we can choose from for the dimension.
• Building blocks- OMGWTFBBQ awesome.
• The +1 system
• That items drop in rifts, quests, off mobs and can be bought/made.

Things that bug me:

• Not being able to move the natural geography of the zone.  Example: Not being able to move the cabin in stonefeild, not being able to move the palm trees in Faen’s Retreat…I find this very anoying….remove the trees/rocks if we can’t move them, sometimes that crap just gets in the way.
• Low item count – I have so many ideas and have already maxed my 400 max count.  I don’t even have every area of my dimension filled.
• Small amount of items to choose from.  This will change with time, but only having 4 chairs or 4 beds or 1 dresser is irritating.

Things that I hate about dimensions:

• The green wall of You Shall NOT Pass….make it a clear wall so we can see our views if we build corner to corner. Most of us are smart enough to know when our character stops moving it means we can’t go that way.
• Alot of the best features are skimped. Example; Necropolis- there is one building and a whole waterfall that would have made this dimension awesome, but you can’t get to them.  Plaza Aurentine would have been cool if you could reach the causeway and build on it (Jetsons anyone?) but it’s out of reach.  it seems alot of the cooler features were cut off by the green wall of YSNP.

My Wish List:

• Animals.  How can I build a fish tank without any fish? (I did, and even have fish in it, but still).  A forest with no deer or squirrels.  Convert the planar squirrel pets from the planar merchants into dimension models.  Give us the standing mounts that hang out near the mount merchants so we can build barns.
• Nature tiles: One of the big things that I feel we are missing is grass, snow, sand, dirt, glass tiles. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to make a disco dance floor with planar items below floating and bobbing around? Can’t do it without a see through floor…Want to make a grassy yard? Not possible without grass tiles.
• More flowers, trees, shrubs.  More of everything I guess.

Also…MAKE GLOAMWOOD COTTAGE A DIMENSION…thank you that is all.