"Next to my Picture are these 1-3
planar charges, what are they?"
You earn these by closing rifts. Their most common use that
I know of is to activate either Call of the Ascendants which will
rez an entire raid or party, or get a medic to you for 3 minutes.
The first capability is a guild perk, the second is purchased
with planarite (from rifting) from the big building in Sanctum.
"How do we open our own easy rifts?"
Near the very start of the game past the starting area where we saw
our first mailbox, there is a guy named Olin Bancroft. On the second
round of quests the Wanton quest reward is a "Planar Lure". After
getting this you can activate it at a non-raid rift tear to start a real rift.
You do so by going to your abilities window and choosing that
ascendant power.
"How to do we open expert or raid rifts?"
(from forums)
Running Expert dungeons net you both Malformed Souls (from T1's)
and Corrupted Souls (From T2, and occasionally T1).
It takes 5 Malformed Souls and a Husk to open an Expert Rift. The
Husks for Expert Rifts require Decorated with the element of the Rift
you are looking to open. So for Instance, the Grim Disciple faction
is for Death rifts, and you use a Redemption of Perdeen Husk. You
buy the husk, have 5 Malformed Souls in your bag, then right click
the husk. This creates the Lure. The Lure will tell you which zone
you need to be in. For Death it's Stillmoor. You then need to find
a normal (non-raid) tear, and use the Lure next to it. The tear can
be minor OR major. This will open the Expert Rift.
Raid Rifts are very similar, but the Husks require Honored with
the faction, use 10 Corrupted Souls instead, and require a Raid
Tear. Raid tears are, obviously, much harder and are found by
mousing over the rifts on the map.
The party/raid that opens the rift gets extra rewards. You get 1 chest
for completing the rift, and an extra if you complete the bonus stage.
Only the opening party/raid has access to these. Anyone that just
shows up and participates still gets rep/planarite/random contribution
rewards. The person who opens the tear also gets an extra 2000
contribution. That may not matter after 1.1. From my experience, it's
MUCH better loot for completing the bonus stage, rather than just
completing the rift.
Expert rift loot is about the same quality as T1 instances. Raid
rifts have loot comparable to T2's.
If you have any ideas for additional info to add about
rifting or improvements in the above article let me know!
See "Contact Dwooid" on the sidebar for contact info.
Best Regahds,
Dwooid of Silverwood