Defiants - Stranger in a Strange Land (Rift)  

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Getting to the Zones Silverwood Gloamwood

< Growing Up Defiant (Rift)

Rift divides Telara quite well between the two factions at low levels. The Defiant-only zones are Freemarch and Stonefield; the Guardian zones are Silverwood and Gloamwood. Upon entering these zones, a rival faction will, at first, only find angry guards, absolutely no quests, and other characters that will try to murder you as soon as your attention is diverted. However, there remain hidden treasures for enterprising adventurers, especially when it comes to achievements and puzzles.

Being a completionist at heart, and OCD in real life, I wanted my Defiant rogue to fully complete these Guardian zones, for both bragging rights and achievement points! Read on to find out what I discovered... and how I made a fair profit off of my explorations!

Getting to the Zones

The first question a green Defiant adventurer will face is: how the heck do I get to the Guardian zones? The obvious answer is the incorrect one — it is impossible to swim directly across from Freemarch to Silverwood, as an invisible wall separates the two starting areas. There are two other routes — the more difficult one is by progressing through Scarlet Gorge, the first truly "shared" zone between the factions. This zone connects with Stonefield to the South and Gloamwood to the Northeast. This involves a Defiant character traveling through Freemarch, Stonefield, Scarlet Gorge (including past several mid-level-20s enemies and past at least two high-level 20s guards), Gloamwood and, finally, entering Silverwood. For the vast majority of my travels I tended to take this route — especially once I had the porticulums, as it seemed faster to get to Gloamwood (which can be entered without guard interaction as long as you can run past some level 28 goblins).

But by far the easier way is swimming out to the Shoreward Island out in the ocean off of Freemarch and Silverwood. This island currently serves absolutely no purpose besides housing some Freemarch artifacts and a hub to ward off fatigue from swimming in the deep ocean. A Defiant character can take off from the shore, (say, from Warden's Point) and easily make it to the island before succumbing to fatigue. From there, head north toward Silverwood's outlying islands and let the true exploration begin!

Silverwood

Once you've set foot in Silverwood, it's time to get cracking! The hardest, by far, are the artifacts and rare enemy achievements. There's a handy map available on the official forums that helped me immensely with the artifacts (full credit to Ailurion for this map). You can also check the individual artifacts in our database for logged entries of where they were discovered.

In short, the best places to consistently find green and blue artifacts seem to be Overwatch Keep's towers, the northern mountains bordering Moonshade, and the western mountain range bordering Gloamwood. However, from my personal observations, here are my "rules" on rare artifacts:

1. Any artifact has a chance to spawn as a blue artifact.
2. Specific spawns are much more likely to be a green or blue artifact.
3. These spawns usually have longer spawn times or are harder to get to.

The last rule doesn't apply so much to Silverwood. However, I can say that I received the vast majority of my green artifacts from the spots I listed above, and my blues were split about 60/40 between those spots and random artifacts found everywhere.

Also, some spots will not spawn specific artifacts. After canvasing Silverwood for about two weeks, I only had three collections left – and one was the Jerome Drift set, which contains only three common artifacts! I had found Jerome's Secret Ingredient several times, and the Journal of Untested Experiments a couple as well... but I never found his Amazing Hat in two weeks of picking up random artifacts. Why? Because it only spawns near Quicksilver College, which I always ignored (after the western mountains I would head south to Divine Landing and then work my way northeast). When I started searching Quicksilver College, I found Jerome Drift's Amazing Hat within two runs through the area.

As mentioned before, one of the best spots is the towers of Overwatch Keep. This also happens to hold the puzzle to the zone, called Puzzled at the Top of the World. To access this puzzle, I made my way to (6415, 3153) and clicked on a Mysterious Plaque. This puzzle, unlike many others, is ridiculously easy to complete. Simply head counter-clockwise from where you spawn to the next plaque. After about five plagues, the player will be transported to the top of the towers and given an ivy key, allowing him/her to open the chest there. Keep an eye out for artifacts at each tower — sometimes they cannot be seen unless the camera is moved, and several require death-defying leaps to nab.

There are several other easy achievements as well! Spelunking in Silverwood is fairly simple; the caves are at these coordinates:

1. Spider Cave (Cave of Seasons): (6182, 3115)
2. Tongue Chewer Cave (Overwatch Cavern): (6347, 3133)
3. Gutter's Cave (Snarebrush Pit): (5865, 2578)
4. Satyr Cave (Kelgnaw's Den): (6439, 3203)

A High Point is at (6333, 2329), along with an ancient cairn for extra goodies. This will probably be found naturally while hunting artifacts in the mountains, or completing Silverwoodsman. So Much Fun, I Did it Twice is relatively easy, but I recommend a higher level and/or stealthing ability to avoid being one-shotted by the guards! You need to jump off the bridge to Sanctum twice for it, but you won't take damage either time. The only other achievement is House Aelfwar Shall Fall, which involves killing High Elf enemies in the zone. And what good Defiant needs an excuse to slaughter High Elves? Not I, dear readers, not I.

Odds are many players will get stuck trying to finish the artifact achievements or The Foul Enemies of the Wood. The best time to get rare spawns is right after a server reset. I found Mok and Brod immediately after resets. I can say that Pandora does not respawn immediately after a server reset, however. And to date I've killed Pentheus several times, which awards him my "totally not rare rare spawn" award. As for the artifacts... all I can say is “keep looking!” I had an incredibly difficult time locating another Corrupted Fae Keystone Fragment – I ended up buying it for almost 10 platinum at the Auction House when I finally saw it come up. However, all blues are very rare – just keep at it!

See also: All Defiant-completable achievements in Silverwood

Gloamwood

Once Silverwood is done, a Defiant will head east to Gloamwood. This zone is a step up in difficulty, both in finding artifacts and in dealing with higher level enemies. I have not finished this zone quite yet, as I am about four artifacts from completion and I've only managed to find a single rare spawn. However, everything else is done, and I've mapped out a decent route for artifacts, so here goes nothing (again, all credit to Ailurion for the map)!

First of all, the "easy" achievements. In Dark Places involves exploring several caves throughout the zone. Two things to keep in mind – it's easy to drown while exploring the Millrush Pond cave (as it is entirely under water and you need to go to the very back of it for credit), and the Shadefall Keep cave at times has an elite at the bottom. This elite drops a random blue item, so it can be worth taking out if you can deal with it! The zone's puzzle is Shield Wall, with the plaque located at (4539, 2380). It can be difficult to solve, but there are various tutorials online – using one of them I managed to solve it fairly quickly (it's like a Rubik's cube). The last easy one is Wanton Destruction; similar to the Aelfwar in Silverwood, this involves slaughtering goblins, most of which are found in the northeastern part of the zone, near the Darkening Deeps instance.

Another achievement, presumably easy, is the Graveyard Shift. At Solemn Outlook (5455, 2837), there are many Restless Spirits. Normally these enemies are neutral, but at times there will be a zonewide message that Gloamwood is getting darker. When this happens, the Restless Spirits turn hostile. During this time, a player needs to kill 40 spirits (note that the kills don't need to be during only a single "dark" period, but they do not count unless the Spirits are hostile). This achievement also grants the title "the Undertaker," which is pretty sweet.

An amusing achievement that is open to Defiant characters is Silent Vigil. Who knew that the Vigil cared about us? A dangerous one, Are you Nuts! is available, although it is ambiguously worded. The "tree" is located smack in the middle of the Guardian town Gloamwood Pines, at (5244, 3098). Defiants will need to avoid the guards on the outlying areas, fight their way through, or go on a suicide run. Luckily, all the Guardian NPCs on the tree itself are neutral. There is a small deck/balcony at the top, and by mounting up and running off, I completed this achievement by hitting the water below without taking damage.

In the same vein as Silverwood, the final achievements for most players will be artifact or rare spawn related. As of right now I have encountered only two rare spawns. Dozer is located behind the Mathosian Mill; and Xaksha was found in Shadefall Towers (unfortunately being killed by a Guardian). I saw the giant tick on the ground level outside the towers, but rumor has it that it can spawn on top of the towers as well.

Artifacts are an interesting feature in Gloamwood. I felt they were more spread out than Silverwood – however, there were also more "sweet spots." Similar to Overwatch Keep, Shadefallen Keep hosts several artifact locations of good value. The towers have several spawns that seem to have a higher chance of being green or blue; and one location on top of a tent in the area has yielded two blue artifacts to me. Another sweet spot is in the mountains to the south, starting around a lake at (5166, 3491) and working to the east. I have found several blue items here as well, and the spawns are close together and enemy-free.

The last sweet spot is around the Darkening Deeps instance. There is a large waterfall outside the instance, and dozens of spawns around the area. Some of the best have been in the rocks near the top of the water, and the "goblin village" embedded in the mountains. By taking some fall damage and doing some creative exploring, I managed to find another blue artifact in a cave up in the mountains.

Also unlike Silverwood, there are several sure-fire green or blue artifacts. Several of these are found in the "spider cave" outside the Darkening Deeps. There are fantastical tutorials on YouTube to getting the toughest artifacts, but they still require some practice. I have received three blues from these so far... but most of the time they end up being Scotty's Research Paper, Page X (darn you, BoP artifact set!). There is another guaranteed green or blue on a tree branch around (4073, 2946). Hint for this one - climb the branch next to the one with the artifact! Took me 30 minutes to figure that out!

As said, I still have several artifacts and six (ugh...) rare spawns left to kill, so I'm not out of the woods yet (pun intended!). But I've enjoyed being "behind enemy lines" so far, and the best part about artifact hunting has been my profits: I've made about 90 platinum from selling off my spare artifacts. Blue Guardian artifacts easily sell for 5-10 platinum on my server; and even common artifacts sell for 20-30 gold. Another faction disadvantage is that there's no zone meta-achievement for Defiants in these zones — no nifty pet for us! Still, there are 90 achievements in both zones perfectly available to Defiant characters that are willing to risk life and limb!

See also: All Defiant-completable achievements in Gloamwood

ZAM would like to thank LockeColeMA for the original article that this guide is based on.

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