Fair point regarding grinding. I didn’t notice the grind at all because I like warfronts anyway. Rank 2 just kinda happened without me noticing as I was making different specs then taking them out for test drives in warfronts.

Other things to do at lvl50. The dailies in Shimmersand will help with the Dragon rep grind. But you may max out on that doing the instances. On my first toon through, I neglected to do any instances at all. By the time I got to lvl 50, I was shit scared of doing any instances, let alone the experts. That was on a Cleric. I’ve rerolled a Mage, and I’m making a point to do an many instances, at level, as I can. Luckily, this was just as the LFG tool was introduced, so joining a group as DPS (or support! yay!) was a good way to learn the dungeons.

Then there’s raiding. Well, I’ve done one out door raid (Herald), and that’s about it, but I’m not really the raiding type, so I can’t help on that front. Unless they do something better about the amount of AFK leaching that happens in WFs, the point of RIFT at 50 is raiding, whether that be rifts or instances. I joined for the story and the PvP via WFs, and they’ve got about 4 months or so make whatever improvements need to be made, before I make a decision about my on going subscription.

As an aside – I got rank 2 in under a week, doing 3 warfronts per night. Make sure you pick up the PvP daily, that awards 1200 prestige each time (out of the 45000 needed for rank 2). Also, Port Scion is a great prestige mill – all of those people throwing themselves into the sausage grinder at the Bridge results in a constant stream of kills.

I’m not sure about it being quick to get to rank 2, I think I’ve done at least 10 warfronts and I’m only about 1/4 of the way. Now assuming I don’t really want to run more than 4 or so a night — and will prolly get bored after a couple — that’s going to be a couple of weeks away. (Because I won’t be playing every night.)

(I’m noting this because even though I know it’ll come across as a slacker attitude, I actually have no issues with raiding or expert instances and would probably like them. But I really have no interest in grinding ANYTHING just in order to do it.)

A couple of other things:

- you don’t have to heal but you really should be able to ress. You might be the only one able to Soul Walk after a wipe. By the same token if someone else is ressing save your Soul Walk.

- the damage meter I use is called ACT. While rubbing other people’s nose in how leet you are is horrible it is very nice to be able to monitor yourself. For instance I was doing a tough raid the other night and was a bit worried that I was under-performing. A look at the numbers showed that the weakness was elsewhere. It can be quite a relief to be able to check that.

- acceptable dps is about 400+. Some people will say more but they have forgotten how much they were doing at 50 in blues.

- a little pvp goes a long way. It’s very easy to grind to rank 2 and you should be able to buy a couple of nice epics. My epic rings, bought the day I hit 50, only got superseded this weekend, about 2 months after I hit 50.

- everyone is welcome at pug raid rifts and pug raids on the two outdoor bosses Krevic and Akala. No one will care if your dps is a little low. Doing the quest for Krevic gives you very nice epic trousers. If you see people rep grinding Order of Mathos rep, pick up the quest for Krevic and join them, they’ll probably kill him for you while rep grinding if you ask nicely.

We actually won a battle of port scion today in a warfront I was in. I still don’t really get that place, but I still think it’s fun (maybe it’s fun because I don’t quite get it? )

Oh, and I bought the fast horse. I have no idea where the money came from, although I sold a fair amount of ore. For those who are interested, my professions are outfitter, miner, and butcher. And I can see how levelling outfitter is entirely doable too.