Levelling – CADRIFT

In this guide you will find information to help you figure out how you want to level to 70.

If you are new to the game then I recommend you read the New Player Guides first.

A new free to play player can level all the way to 70, play every zone, every dungeon and raid. There is no game content locked behind a paywall. You can pay money to speed up the process, but money will only reduce the amount of time you need to level up and gear up, it will not make you more powerful than another player who is willing to put time into the game instead of money. You can find out more in the Purchasing guide.

A quick note about Patron: If you can afford to pay for a patron sub while you are levelling then I highly recommend it. Patron will give you an extra 40% Experience from everything as well as many other boosts, this will help a lot while levelling!

XP Vials: You will get a couple of Vials from the free cache that you open every 10 levels. You can also buy them in the store. You should use your vials while levelling from 65 to 70. You can only use one vial at a time, the vial timer does not count down if you are logged off.

Using a 65 pot: There is a Level 65 boost item for sale in the services section of the store for credits only (giftable). This item will boost any level character to level 65, it also gives you a full set of level 65 gear, some bags for your character/bank and 3 crafting skill boosts. Using this item will give you a character that is ready to start questing in the Prophecy of Ahnket lands (current content). You will still need to level from 65 to 70. As a new player to the game this will be a huge learning curve and you will miss all the tutorial content of the lower zones. If you plan to use a 65 pot as a new player then you should at least work your way through the starter zone and then to your main city (sanctum/meridian) before you pop the 65 boost. This will teach you some basic aspects of the game that will make your final journey to 70 a little easier.

Gearing as you level: If you are questing then your quest gear will see you through all the way to 70 with no issues. Some slots (such as seal and synergy crystal) will stay empty til you get the level 70 ones, this is not a problem. If you are doing instant adventures and switching to questing every so often then you may find yourself a little undergeared (wearing level 20 gear at level 53 for example), as long as you are managing to kill things with ease then this wont be a problem, eventually you will get more gear.

Help I cant kill stuff! Some of the questlines can be quite challenging, with more difficult ‘boss’ mobs towards the ends of some of them, you can ask friends to help you (or just use them to sidekick), or go to another zone and go back when you are more powerful. If you are finding it difficult to kill normal mobs that are the same level as you then first check your gear, if the majority of your gear is within a few levels of your character then its likely to be your spec that is letting you down. If you are massively undergeared then you can fill out or upgrade gear slots by buying gear with void stones on the rift store (or at adventure vendors). If it is your spec, then you should look up a proper levelling spec for your class and ensure you follow it.

XP Required to Level: You can find information about the XP required for each level on this page.

Levelling Specs

When you first create your character you will be asked to choose a preset role. As you level up with that role, you will gain new abilities that you can add to your bars. These presets and random abilities will have you killing lower level mobs with ease, but as you get up to higher level maps you may find yourself taking a long time to kill mobs or simply dying before the mobs do!
At this point you will want to turn to a proper levelling spec.

You can find levelling specs on the Ghar Station Forums

Mage – Cleric – Rogue – Warrior – Primalist

For help with Dungeon/Raid quality specs, please see the Raid specs guide page.

Questing vs Instant Adventures

Why not both?

There are 2 main ways to level in Rift.
Solo questing through the zones in the game or Grouping for Instant Adventures.
The main differences between Questing and IA are levelling speed and gear drops.

A player that mostly levels using IA will find that they level much faster, but gear drops will be very random and less frequent. You will constantly be with a group of people questing in IA with you, however you may not find them very talkative as most people in IA are levelling an alt while watching TV! IA is very easy, there is very little challenge to the content, this means it can become boring, being the same few quests over and over (or at least that’s what it will feel like!) so you may want to mix it up with some questline or other activities anyway. – Make sure you pick up the Instant Adventure weekly quest from your main city every week (explained below).

A player that mostly levels with questing will find that the levelling is slower but they will be constantly getting gear items. You will explore a lot of the map, open up portals and be able to enjoy the storyline.

You will have to quest anyway! Levelling through IA will only get you so far, from level 65 onwards you will have to start levelling through questing. This is because you will need the notorietys from all the level 65-70 zones, you will need to complete the story quests in these zones to be able to pick up the dailies needed to farm the notoriety.. also, IA will be hellishly slow by this point!

Levelling 1-70

Which zones you should be in!

1-50 - Mathosia

Fastest = Intrepid Instant Adventures (Available from level 10)

You can find full guides to all the Mathosian Quests here.

You will start in a small tutorial zone, Mathosia for Guardians and Terminus for Defiants. Work your way through the quests and you will be sent through a rift to the game zones. A Defiant starts in Freemarch, a Guardian starts in Silverwood. I highly recommend you continue to quest until you reach your capital city, Meridian for Defiants and Sanctum for Guardians. During your questing you will pick up a lot of tutorial quests that will explain many aspects of the game to you, so make sure you are reading and learning from these!
Once you are in your main city you can sort out your bags and bank, start doing craft dailies and then decide how you want to continue levelling. By this point you should be around level 20.

You can continue questing, going through the zones, following the story quests. This is slower than Instant Adventures, but you will get much more of a feel for the game. If this is your first character then I really do recommend you stick to the questline and try not to rush to end game content. If you really are desperate for speed then Intrepid Instant Adventures are the fastest way to solo level.

While Questing visit your main city regularly and pick up any quests you find there too, a lot of these will be ‘breadcrumb’ quests that will take you to other areas on the map.
When you look at the map you will see ‘suggested levels’ for all the different zones, try to make sure you are in a zone that is roughly equal to your characters level, this will give you the best XP while questing and ensure that you get gear drops from quests that will be useful to you.
If you find yourself ‘outlevelling’ a zone then feel free to move to another zone to start questing there. You can always go back when you are much higher level to blitz through any quests that you have missed. (Be careful of your max quest storage limits tho).
You can see information about the different types of Quests available in the new player guides.

Puzzles: Completing a puzzle that is in the zone of your current level can give you a nice item of gear to boost you a bit. The Mathosian and Nightmare Tide puzzles are easy to do. You may want to wait til you are fully levelled before attempting the Storm Legion and PoA puzzles.
Cairns: It is a very good idea to grab as many cairns as you can while levelling through the Mathosian zones.
Ember Isle: You will pick up a quest in your main city to take you to Ember Isle once you hit level 48 – Ember Isle is a level 50 zone with very tough mobs, you will likely find it easier to just move onto Storm Legion zones and go back to Ember Isle when you outlevel it.
Planetouched Wilds: This is a level 65 zone! Don’t go there yet!

Once you hit level 48 you can then move on to Storm Legion zones.

50-60 - Storm Legion

Fastest = Intrepid Instant Adventures – You will find the Levelling will start to slow down.

You can find full guides to all the Storm Legion Quests here.

To get to the storm Legion zones, when you reach level 48 you will get a letter in the mail asking you to speak to the Lycini Ambassador. (This mail is not required)

Defiants – Go to the Lycini Ambassador in Meridian at /setwaypoint 6140 5187
Guardians – Go to the Lycini Ambassador in Sanctum at /setwaypoint 7454 3059

Talk to the Ambassador and select the ‘front lines’ option.. here you will be given a choice of Brevane or Dusken, these are the two continents of the Storm Legion zones.. it does not matter which you choose to go to first! Pick one, go questing there til you get to a quest that takes you to Tempest Bay, then go back to Meridian/Sanctum, speak to the Ambassador again and pick the other continent, then you will have portals in both continents opened up and can choose where you would like to quest. You will not have to do every quest in these zones to reach level 60, you can skip some of the zones, look at the level indicators on the map and choose the zones closest to your characters level.

The zones all have different scenery, so pick the prettiest ones if you like! I highly recommend not missing the Eastern Holdings questline though, as this is one of the most fun questlines in the game!
Once you hit level 58 you can then move on to the Nightmare Tide zones.

Tempest Bay, the main city in the
Storm Legion zones, continues to
be the main city for the rest of the game.

60-65 - Nightmare Tide

Fastest = Pretty much equal XP with questing or Intrepid Instant Adventures.

You can find full guides to all the Nightmare Tide Quests here.

To get to the NIghtmare Tide zones (the plane of water) when you hit level 58, go to any portal and select the first portal in Goboro Reef. You will also get a letter in the mail asking you to go there.

When you start questing in Goboro Reef you will be in an underwater area, this may fool you into thinking that the whole of the plane of water is underwater! Rest assured it is not! In fact, only about 15% of the quests in Goboro Reef are underwater, while Draumheim and Tarken Glacier don’t have any underwater quest areas.

Planetouched Wilds is also part of the Nightmare Tide expansion, you will get a letter at level 65 asking you to go to Droughtlands to start the Planetouched wilds quests. This zone is a lot of fun to quest in due to the low gravity, but you will find the gear and XP in the Celestial lands to be much better for continuing your journey to 70.

Advice before you enter 65-70 zones

When you reach level 65 and enter the Prophecy of Ahnket zones you may find that you are undergeared especially if you have been levelling using mostly IA. You will also probably find that your ‘single button afk spec’ that has suited you just fine in IA is no good at all for questing.
So, your first job will be to find a decent solo levelling spec, you can find links to solo specs towards the top of this page.
To gear your character up a bit you have a few options..

You can buy level 65 armor on the Rift store using Void Stones
You can complete the Planetouched Wilds questline, this will give you the best quest gear for a level 65.
You can complete the Rust Bucket 2 cheevo in Tarken Glacier (rewards random dungeon ready gear for level 65)
You can craft some level 65 gear items
You can have a Level 70 friend run you through some level 65 expert dungeons
You can pop into Celestial Instant Adventures and loot some starter planar fragments that will boost your stats. Don’t bother upgrading these fragments, just equip them as level 1.

65-70 - Celestial Lands / The Comet / PoA Zones

Fastest = Questing

You can find full guides to all the Prophecy of Ahnket Quests here.

The Celestial Lands are the zones that will take you from level 65 to 70.
When you hit level 65 you can simply take any portal to Alittu (the main hub of the Celestial Lands) or go to the portal in Tempest bay at /setwaypoint 12824 11726 here you will find a quest to tell you to go to the Celestial Lands.

Instant Adventures are no longer the quickest way to level, however there is now a new type of IA available to you called ‘Celestial Instant Adventures’ you should try to do some of these each day (14 a day is a good target) and be sure to complete the weekly each week, while doing the Celestial Instant Adventures you will be earning Planar Defence Force Notoriety which you will need later.
After you have done your daily IA you can go questing in the zones.
The recommended order for questing is Scatherran Forest, Gedlo Badlands, Xarth Mire, Ashenfell and then Vostigar Peaks. If you are able, you will find it much much easier to sidekick and start VP at level 68, preferably finishing the questline before you hit level 70. Sidekicking to level is explained below.

Check Alittu each week for weeklies and complete as many of them as possible.

Planar fragments: You will now start looting Planar Fragments.. you can equip them to fill up your slots, but dont waste plat upgrading any of them.. you will loot much nicer ones from the level 70 content which you can then upgrade. You can find a Planar Fragment guide on the Level 70 gear guide,

Level 70 and beyond

Once you hit Level 70 you can start concentrating on your gear so you can be ready for Dungeons and Raids.
You will find a full guide to Level 70 gear here.

Instant Adventures

A small guide to IA.

Joining Instant Adventures

The default button to bring up the Instant Adventure UI is [ . ] (the full stop or period key), you can also access the UI using the activities menu on the bottom left. Choose your Adventure by hitting the join button, after a few seconds you will receive a teleport prompt, click OK to join the adventure!
During the adventure you may be teleported to many different areas, you will receive a teleport prompt each time you need one. If you miss it then you can open the IA UI again and the ‘join’ button should now be a ‘teleport’ button (if you are still far enough from the next objective).

Leaving Instant Adventures

When you are ready to leave the instant adventures you can right click your character portrait and select to leave group (even if you are the only person in the IA group) – or you open up the IA UI and the ‘join’ button will now be a ‘leave’ button. When you leave you will be automatically teleported back to the location where you were when you joined the IA.

Dont go AFK!

The Instant Adventure system is always checking to see if you participating. If you go afk, even for a short amount of time, then you will get kicked from the IA and given a debuff for 15mins that will prevent you from re-joining. This debuff will not count down while you are logged off.
It is always best to leave the group if you need to afk and rejoin when you get back.
And, ensure you are actively participating while you are in the IA!

Types of Instant Adventures

Featured: Celestial Adventures

Available from level 65 onward.
Takes place in the plane of life/fire or in Gedlo Badlands.
After each quest you will get a small amount of Planar Defense Force Notoriety.
You will get small amounts of Captured Intel (currency) after boss kills.
You will also loot Celestial Adventure Caches containing..
- Celestial Remnants
- Planar Fragments
- Chrondritic Planar Dust
- Cosmic Cores (for upgrading fragments)
- Gear items.

Instant Adventures

Available from level 10 onward.
Takes place in many of the open world zones. Best for variety.
You will loot Adventure Caches containing Void stones, gear and various consumables.

Intrepid Adventures

Best for levelling.
Available from level 10 onward.
Takes place in copies of the Hammerknell and Mind of Madness raid instances. These adventures have a small chain of normal quests followed by a boss quest, the bosses are similar to the raid bosses.
You will loot Hammerknell Adventure Caches containing Void stones, gear and various consumables.

Featured : World event

Special Instant Adventures will sometimes run during world events.
The adventures are in one small location so can get repetative quickly.
The loot from the adventures will include the minor event currency and other items such as pets, costumes and consumables.
There will usually be a daily quest to pick up to run a certain amount of these Instant Adventures.

Weekly Instant Adventure Quests

Pick up weekly quests for Instant Adventures from the main cities.

Level 1-50 – You need to complete the tutorial quest for Instant Adventure before you can pick up this weekly. The tutorial quest is automatically given to you when you reach level 10.
Quest: Spirit of Adventure
Guardian – Argent Glade from Sergeant Heilig at /setwaypoint 6034 3142 or Sanctum from Marshal Ceryk at /setwaypoint 7402 2965
Defiants – Outside of Kings Retreat from Optio Hagan at /setwaypoint 6434 4667 or Meridian from Legate Drakin at /setwaypoint 6171 5150

Level 50-60 – Quest: Spirit of Adventure – From Tacitus the Elder in Tempest Bay (Hunt Room) /setwaypoint 13103 11518

Level 60-65 – Quest: Spirit of Adventure – From Ralph Willflond in Tempest Bay (Plaza) /setwaypoint 13040 11632 – or From Ralph Willflond in Margle Palace (Draumheim) /setwaypoint 5472 5596

Level 65-70 – Quest: Planar Assault – From Strike Force Commander Korel in Alittu (top floor) /setwaypoint 4145 6346

Loot and Rewards

During Instant Adventures you will receive ‘Sigil of Valor’ currency, you can only hold 5 of these at a time, to spend them, open up the Rift store, go to the boosts tab and then click the Notoriety tab on the left menu. From here you can buy Notoriety in exchange for your Sigils of Valor. You can do this once per day for each Notoriety type. You will want to concentrate on Uttila Resistance and Planar Defense Force, both found under the Prophecy of Ahnket section. You can only boost Utilla once a day, PDF notoriety can be boosted multiple times a day, but make sure you always have at least 1 or 2 Sigils in stock so you have the next days Utilla boost ready. Once you have maxed the PDF notoriety you can then spend spare Sigils on the other PoA notorities.

You will also loot Adventure Caches, these will have a chance to drop gear and currency, they will mostly contain Void Stones and Planarite. The Adventure Caches will give you gear up to a certain level (it says on the cache which level) you may want to save up your caches and open them once you hit this max loot level to maximise your rewards.

PAXP

Planar Attunement Experience

While you are levelling you will be earning normal character XP which goes towards your characters level.
You will also be earning Planar Attunement XP, you wont be able to see this or spend the points til you hit level 50.

After level 50 you can open up the Planar Attunement UI to spend your points – The default key binding is U
You will eventually completely fill the hexagons with 1709 points (the current max) so it doesn’t matter too much which order you fill them.
You should try to concentrate on utility (planar charges, mount speed, teleports etc) and on your characters main stats.
PAXP is shared across the entire cluster (NA or EU) so you will be adding to it while you play on alts too.

If you feel you have spent your points poorly then you can go to your class trainer to reset them, there really is no need to do this though as you will eventually get every hexagon filled up.

Dungeons and PVP

Low level group content.

As you are levelling up you may start wondering about dungeons and PVP. You will even find a bunch of quests in your main city asking you to complete the low level dungeons and to win some PVP matches.
If you are levelling with friends or in a busy levelling guild then you should group up to do each dungeon at least once.
Unfortunately the LFG queue system is very unlikely to create a group for you at these low levels. Its best to find your group using friends, guild or public chat channels. You can of course get a high level player to just blitz through the dungeon for you so you can get your quests done and a bit of XP.

A lot of players dont bother to do any of the group content at low levels. There are a few reasons for this..
— Players are low level for a very short amount of time, building a tank/heal/dps spec to be able to complete a dungeon at your characters low level will take time.. time which could have been spent levelling.
— The gear from the dungeons will be worn for a very short amount of time, thus not really worth the effort.
— High level players have no incentive at all to do low level content to fill up the groups.
— Players looking for that ‘group content fix’ just queue up for Intrepid Adventures, which include raid like bosses to quench that thirst too!
— It can be difficult to find enough low level players to form a group, especially at off peak times of the day.

The good news is that when you reach higher/max level you can go back and solo most of the old dungeon content, so you can still complete the quests and pick up the wardrobe skins from them. Its best to leave the quests on the NPC rather than have them fill up your quest log while you are levelling.

At level 65 you will be able to start queuing for Warfront matches, you will be placed in matches with level 70s. Your character will be sidekicked up to level 70 and your gear will be boosted.
Unfortunately for dungeons and raids you will need to wait til you are 70. Once you hit 70 and have 2000 HIT you can create a tank/heal/dps spec and start your gear progression journey with expert dungeons.

I highly recommend you find yourself a nice guild to do group content with.

Sidekicking

Using Sidekicking to your advantage.

Sidekicking is very very useful on the journey from 65 to 70!
You can find more info about sidekicking here.

The general idea is.. if you are sidekicked then you will be more powerful than if you were not sidekicked, so, always be sidekicked!
This means, when you enter the PoA lands as a level 65, group up with a level 70 and head straight to Gedlo Badlands and start questing there, this will sidekick you up to level 67.. once your real level becomes 67 you will no longer be sidekicked in Gedlo, so you will want to move to Xarth Mire or Scatherran Forest to be sidekicked up or down.. The goal is to get to level 68 ASAP and then start on the Vostigar Peaks questline. In Vostigar Peaks you will be mentored up to level 70, this will allow you to complete the questline with ease. Aim to finish the entire story questline in VP before you hit 70, then go back through the zone and finish everything else. Finish levelling in the other zones if required, always staying sidekicked up or down from your actual level.

You can ask guildies, friends or even in public chat for people to sidekick you. You will stay sidekicked even if the player logs off, but if you leave the group then you will no longer be sidekicked.

Using an alt account!
If you already have a level 70 and are levelling alts then you can create a second account to sidekick yourself. Simply log your main character and a character on your alt account at the same time (your alt account character can be any level), group up, then log off your level 70 and log the alt you want to sidekick. Invite that alt to the group to sidekick them up.

Power Levelling

The fastest ways to level.

You can get another player to power level your character. This will usually involve repeating a dungeon over and over again, with you mentored/sidekicked to the same level as the mobs and the higher level player just blitzing through and killing everything for you.
Generally peeps will start in Charmer’s Caldera and then move on to Unhallowed Boneforge and then Gyel Fortress at higher levels.
Power levelling is only going to get you to level 66 before it slows down a lot and you will be better off questing again.
Peeps who offer this service will generally accept payment in REX.

*Hint* you can find a quick power levelling guide here.