The Rift Guide

With the launch of Book 11, Middle-earth received a new raid instance known as "The Rift of Nurz Ghashu." This new raid instance offers a new burst of high level content for patrons of Middle-earth. The Rift, as it is called for short, has many new raid boss targets. These bosses have a chance to drop a variety of gems that can be exchanged to specific merchants at the Ranger camp near the entrance to "The Rift" in Angmar. These gems can be exchanged for class specific gear from these merchants, so all gems are useful to every class as each can be exchanged for a different section of armor.

The gems are not the only currency of barter, but they are certainly the most valuable. Inside the rift there is a giant camp that you can exchange Scraps of Rift-Iron Ore and Obsidian Rock Shard's for Rift-Iron coins. You will need to speak to the giant named Utrygg to barter the ore for coins. These coins can then be used to barter with merchants at Iorelen's Rangers camp near the entrance of "The Rift" in northeastern Angmar. The exchange rate for the ore and coins are as follows...

Here is the exchange rate site: [Clicky]

The really popular items from "The Rift" are obtained with a variety of gems that can be earned by slaying the many raid bosses that dwell deep within this dark dwelling. Successfully defeating one of these many creatures can earn you a well deserved chance at acquiring one of these gems. The gems can then be taken to class barter merchants found at Iorelen's Ranger camp located near the entrance to "The Rift."

The first thing you need to know about the gems is where to find them. Below, I have listed the known confirmed drops of each gem and its carrier...

This site not only gives a list of the gems that each monster drops, but also gives us a detailed list of the New Rift Armour for Guardians and Champions: [Clicky]

This site gives a detailed list of the New Rift Armour for LM's and Minstrels: [Clicky]

Here's the list of the Rift Armour for Hunters, Burglars and Captains: [Clicky]


So, now that you know what armour pieces you want, lets take a look at who you need to take down to get those pieces of armour. Remember, you need to know ahead of time what gem you need, so make sure you do your research ahead of time.


The Bosses

(In order of Appearance)
1.Barz..................................Boots
2.Zurm.................................Boots (Yes, Boots twice, it is not a mistake)
3.Fruz..................................Gloves/Gauntlets
4.Zogtark..............................Leggings
5.Narnulubat..........................Chest
6.ShadowEaters.....................Random Teal or Purple Item
7.Thrang...............................Helmet
8.Thaurlach(Balrog).................Weapons/Shields, Shoulders, and the turn in for the Glorfindel's Band

Here's a few general tips for the rift:

1) If you see doors & gates anywhere and I don't mean instance doors with the shimmer, make sure your group moves together through the door, there's plenty of them that close & can separate your group

2) Quickly loot all chests

3) Check all status effects....and I don't necessarily mean the ones on your party. Even in the middle of a fight you might see a mob throw out a status effect that is important to know what it does and how it effects the pull.

4) Interrupts.....and I don't necessarily mean your party members getting their skills interrupted. Turbine apparently did not like that many players ignored their interrupt skills and they saw fit to make us pay if we failed to recognize & interrupt some mobs skills in The Rift. And I really mean pay.....I never though I'd see the day an Uruk and some Pale Folk wipe out a 12-man party

5) Bring a balanced team. The Rift, more so than anywhere else in the game, has situations that call upon each class to perform to the best of their ability. Do not gimp your party before you even start by failing to bring along a Lore-master, a Burglar, enough Minstrels & Guardians. The Rift is definately not a place to go "haha lets see if we can do this with 8 hunters & 4 champions lulz".

6) New Skills! Several classes just got or recently got new skills! Do not overlook these & make sure they are implimented when necessary, they are very useful! Also note: minstrels' new +armor/+hope aura....the hope doesn't stack with hope tokens. Personally I think this is a bug since captain's hope standard stacks, but we'll see. File a /bug on it if you also think its a bug. Cool Lava! This may be a shocker but lava isn't a instant-killer. It REALLY hurts, but its not touch-it-and-die like the green water in Carn Dum. I'll have to post my screenshot of my guardian naked, hip-deep in lava. Good times.

7) Outfitting! Make sure everybody on your team is well-outfitted. +4/+5 hope tokens, HoT (heal-over-time) food, Stat-buff food, Morale & Power pots, Wound/Fear/Poison potions, Lore, Bow-chants, Lute strings, Shield spikes, Oils, Celebration Beer, etc. Outfitting goes beyond food & items, there's also class traits. Pay attention when you make runs in there....if you find a problem that you cannot overcome, identify the problem first, see if there's a class trait one of your raid members can slot that will solve it.

8) Think outside the box. There's plenty of ways the old "Tank & Spank" method will get you killed in The Rift if you don't use your head. Not saying Tank&Spank never works in The Rift, but there's plenty of situations it shouldn't be your first strategy because it will get your party wiped. You may have to do something first in order to allow T&S to work. Anybody who goes into The Rift expecting the same old, same old is going to wipe and they're going to wipe a lot. Case in point, very first pull in The Rift on the first night of the patch, a single troll & uruk wiped out the entire No Quarter raid. It was about then that we realized this is not going to be the same old shizz, just different area & different skins on the mobs.

Hopefully that helps a bit. I know a lot of that is generic tips for running any instance but I agree with Dal, figuring out the instance is the greatest fun for me and I know we're not alone in it. Its nothing malicious, I'd just prefer to give other kins the opportunity to have that same fun we all had the first week, plus, as Dal pointed out, many of these encounters have only been run 3x. The only way somebody would have more experience is if they had multiple 50s to lead raids in there with (and enough people w/out raid locks to make up another group). Many of the currently working strats need extreme refinement and a few encounters even have some bugs and are easier as a result. I'm sure in the next few weeks we'll see guilds tweaking their strategy & we'll see new guilds do their runs who may come up with a fantastic new strat that's completely different.


Also:

Found a GENERAL walkthrough for the Adds and the Main bosses #3-#7...read up!
I have offered a DETAILED walkthrough only for bosses #1 and #2.

TRASH MOBS (Boss 1-2)
You will deal with several types of trash mobs on your way through the 1st and 2nd boss. Here they are:

Troll+TrollMaster
-The trick is to keep them close together. If the Troll gets too far from its Master he screams "Master is far, ME SMASH!" and he will ravish you with the might of a thousand infants. Since you are wise and have 2 Guardians raiding with you, off-tank on the TrollMaster, tank on the troll. Kill the TrollMaster first, which drops the buff on the Troll that makes it so you can not keep aggro, and you kill the Troll. Easy.

Slave Master+HealyWoman+Slaves
-The trick is to have your Special classes (You should have 2 of these, one in each group. A Special Class is a Burglar/Loremaster). The Healywoman (which will be the only female slave) needs to remain stunned the entire fight and be killed last, otherwise she heals and the only way to stop her from healing her boyfriends for 2000 a pop is if a Burglar uses a spell on her to stun her spellcasting. So have your Special classes Stun the Healywoman and the Slave Master, this is so you don't have a healer and a 24,000HP or so mob. When you Stun those two people you will get about 6 or so Slaves, each with 10,000HP. Group them together and smash them to bits, kill the Slave Master, Healywoman last. You can do some little tricks like have hunters place traps on the healers, so if they pull aggro the mob will get caught and the minstrels can move over a bit to avoid attacking and the raid knows there is a little dude stuck in a trap and he wants to smash the healers.


Barz
(Facing Azmulf guarding the door Burz will be off to the RIGHT)
This boss has about 140,000HP and hits semi-hard, nothing to worry about. You will want to spread your members out, not too much, but enough so you can see who may pull aggro. There are several things you do not want to do during this fight.

1) Be within melee range after he says "I'm going to Gnaw on your bones". When he says this, he will go stationary and sit there and swing around. BEWARE! Back the fcuk up, or you will get one shotted while he's doing it. While he's doing this attack you have time to heal up the raid and reposition yourselves to grab aggro. So keep an eye out for "Gnaw on your bones", and when he says it you get out of melee range.

2) Another thing, he will yell "No power is stronger then Barz" and he will steal power from a random person. If a Minstrel heals anytime between the time he says that and the time he's done stealing Power they will automatically get aggro, and you will really pull your raid across a bumpy trail if you have to keep fighting aggro off our squishy healers.

Now if you can keep those two things down, you'll be good. Barz is not immune to slowing effects such as a Hunters slowing spell, or a Burglars dust in the eyes- its all good joo joo, but not necessary. During the fight as you bring his health down, mobs will spawn to the left of you, and two times behind you.

-First Spawn, 94,000 or so-
This will be off to a cave to the left, and out will come a Troll+TrollMaster. Use the same strategy listed above to defeat them. You will get a warning when they are coming, Barz will yell something like '"Come to me slaves!". Off-tank will be standing by that cave as soon as Barz reaches 100,000 (to pick them up early) Kill the TrollMaster then the Troll. Remember to keep them together or you die painfully. Now while the whole raid is concentrating on them, the MT will kite Barz around. You can take him up the stairs of the pavilion-like stone building to the right of Barz's start point. Sticky Tar can be placed to slow him down. Also use a hunter to slow him down and deal minor DPS. Make sure you don't pull Barz near your other team members, in case he starts his hammer-pounding. When Barz does his "Gnaw on your Bones" the Guardian can get his health up, and it also lets the Guardian rest from taking damage- easy stuff.

-Second Spawn, 70,000ish-
This will be behind you, and they will spawn Healywoman+Slaves (Minus a Slave Master, so don't worry about him). You will have to keep the Healywoman stunned the whole time and keep the Slaves together. Now you really have to keep your eyes on your Minstrels, they will take a punishing during this and it is not pretty, so Champions should be helping by pulling aggro and Burglars should be enraging. Once you kill the slaves, finish the Healywoman and get back to Barz. MT will Kite as before.

-Third Spawn, 50,000ish-
Same thing as the Second Spawn. Just make sure you have two Special Classes (listed above) when you fight the first and second boss, or your going to have a lot of problems defeating them. Power conservation, Potions, and paying attention is key to success here.

Defeating Zurm Before Barz
If you take down Zurn first and Barz second, Barz gets an additional special ability. Periodically throughout the fight, he will shout "I'll bring the cavern down on you!" which causes a few "cave-ins" to occur. Each cave-in has an approximate 5 meter radius and does damage to all players standing in it. Before it happens, a dark area on the ground will be visible and it is possible to move out of the cave-in before the rocks start falling.


Zurm
(Facing Azmulf guarding the door Zurm will be off to the LEFT)
This fight is much similar to fighting Barz. The only difference is he will not "Gnaw on yours Bones" or "Steal your Powers", he will do a knock-back attack and does AOE damage (so stand behind him) and will randomly vomit green stuff on somebody or in a random direction, just try to avoid it. There will be Three Spawns, and they will be the same types as before.

-First Spawn, Troll+TrollMaster-
They will appear behind you, instead of to your left like during Barz. Deal with them like before, Off-tank should be standing at the back of the raid by 100,000HP. All the while the Captain+Guardian+Minstrel Support handling Zurm.

-Second Spawn, Healywoman+Slaves-
They will appear behind where Zurm first stands, so make sure the Special Classes are ready to stun the HealyBich and the Off-tank is prepared to grab as many of the slaves as possible.

-Third Spawn, Healywoman+Slaves-
See Second Spawn for more Details. Make sure you conserve Power just like during Barz, it is key and the raid will soon be drained and slowly fall a part without lots of juicy Power.


Fruz
It is imperative you use everything at your disposal to keep the adds from Fruz; use tar, riddles, roots, mezzes, and the kitchen sink to keep them away! Do everything in your raid's power to keep Fruz as far away from the stairs and the fire as possible, in order to decrease the chance of this boss encounter bugging. I also wanted to add that if Fruz gets near the fire, he will start 1-hit-killing everyone nearby. (We are waiting to find out if this is a bug or an intended encounter. I will keep you posted.) The hope for this battle is to have the guard tank Fruz in the corner away from the stairs while the entire raid burns him to the ground before the adds can get a heal off to him. This is your hope...I say this because most of the posts have stated that this encounter is almost a 50/50 chance of getting bugged...and these posts are as of 11/18/2007. The bugs are as follows: either Fruz anti-exploits and you cannot regain his attention...game over...or the adds anti-exploit but are still able to heal Fruz...game over. Some raids are now saying Fruz is possibly the hardest to take down since the 11/14 update. No matter how good a raid may be, this encounter is still left to chance. Many raids have said, "it was an easy take-down!", others have said, "there were no problems at all and found him to be easy." I hope that you follow in their lucky footsteps!! May chance be on your side!


Zogtark
Clear the room of adds, using los and pulling them behind the wall seems to work best. The fight starts with 2 green drakes, you hit them for a bit then they take off into the air and range with fire from there and Zogtark comes down. Do as much dmg to the drakes as you can before they go airborne. They will land once they get to 8k. As long as you keep them off the minstrels you can leave them airborne for the whole fight. Or range them down to 8k so they land and you can finish them off, depends on how the groups are set up.


Narnulubat
Fight the 3 mobs at the start, then get the whole group up to the ledge before the first main platform. Minstrels bubble up and everyone run acrossed to lava to the other side. DONT JUMP it makes you die faster. Once over there, hope up. When you start the fight the Ever-Seer will
leave. put a dpser on both sides to kill the little shadow guys so they dont get to t vortex, if you dont they turn into 10k mobs. Tank goes on Narnulubat, everyone else focus fire on the summoners. Once the summoners are down its a burn fight, keep killing the shadow slugs and burn down the boss.


Shadow-Eaters
Tank on the Shadown-Eater, rest of group burn down the other guy. Not sure but the little shadow slugs seem to turn into 10k guys if they get to the shadow-eater so again put 2 dps'ers on killing the little slugs.


Thrang
The giant is not the boss, put a tank on him and healer for the tank. Kill the four waves of adds, nothing special with them just your standard mez some burn the rest kind of deal. Thrang shows up when you kill the last summoner on the last wave. He pops with 4 shamans who put HoTs on each other. Burn them down ASAP then on to Thrang, the Volcano things seem to put a debuff on him so that you can hit him.