Hello my little pustules of gaming enthusiasm. How goes it? The Rift patch 1.7: Carnival of the Ascended is almost upon us, and I wanted to spend this week touching a little bit about what it will contain. Plus what some of you hoped it would contain.

First off we have:

The River of Souls Chronicle: Disguised as cultists of the Endless Court, you and an ally (or maybe just you) must sneak into the River of Souls to foil Alsbeth's schemes. Terrible foes and an old friend await in our latest Chronicle for one or two Ascended.

Well, readers of this column will be pretty well prepared for this one, as I covered River of Souls a couple of weeks back. So well done you for having such good taste. Hopefully it will give you an advantage against Alsbeth and her naughty minions.

Ascended Weddings: Players can now join together in blessed unions. Aw, isn't that sweet?

I love you pumpkin. I love you honey bunny.

Ascended Weddings: The Movie

EXT. HOUSE – DAY

A man and a woman embracing. They are both carrying packs, and have weapons strapped to their backs.

VOICEOVER GUY

It was a love that was never meant to be.

EXT. FIELD – DAY

A fierce battle is raging. Swords clashing, magic flying across the battlefield. Death rift creatures ripping fighters’ heads off. The sky is dark, lightning flickering. Our hero is fighting, but then is run through with a sword.

VOICEOVER GUY

War tore them apart.

EXT. FIELDS/MOUNTAINS

Montage of shots as the woman hikes to find her love.

VOICEOVER GUY

Love brought them back together. But at a later stage from when war tore them apart. Say, like three years or something.

EXT. CHURCH – DAY

The warriors are now---

Actually, enough of that. It’s getting silly.

So as you can see, Ascended and Defiant can now get married. Huzzah! I love weddings. All that free booze. All that gossiping about how terrible the bridesmaids look in their dresses that for some reason appear to resemble meringues. (What’s with that, anyway? Does the bride do it on purpose, so no one will be looking at the bridesmaids, except to laugh at them?) Anyway, time to save up your in-game money and buy an in-game engagement ring for your in-game girl or boyfriend. Sláinte.

There are a few other upgrades as well. PvP gets a boost. The number of ranks in the Prestige system is upped to 40. Caduceus Rise gets a Master Mode upgrade, with meaner bosses and fights, and “the richest rewards you can get without raiding”. And then a few weeks after the update we get the actual Carnival of the Ascended itself. Not quite sure what it is yet, but it’s to celebrate a year of RIFT, so I reckon it’s going to be a party of note. I wonder how many players are going to schedule their weddings for the anniversary? Should we put a small wager on the table? As my six year old daughter says, “Sportsman’s bet”. (Because she doesn’t like to hand over the cash when she loses bets. Which she does all the time, because I’m older and cleverer than her and know how to cheat.) Answers in the comments.

So that’s some of the things that 1.7 is going to bring to us. But while browsing the web I noticed that a few people were hoping that the update might give players the ability to take the war into the actual Planes beyond Telara. You know the ones the Blood Storm comes from? And to that I say, “Are you mental?”

Actually, I didn’t. What I did say was, “Hey, I was supposed to write up details of the different planes ages ago. I forgot all about that. I’ll do it now.” To which my son replied, “Daddy, I can’t swim yet. Don’t leave me in the water! Daddy!”

So to veer off track a bit, first off we have The Plane of Death. It’s a never-ending desert of grey dust and naked, bleached skeletons. It is a place of torture and pain, where they make you watch back to back episodes of Paris Hilton’s BFF and Keeping up with the Kardashians. Spikes of volcanic glass burst randomly from the ground. And if you happen to be standing above one as it does so… well, let’s just say you’re going to be a little tender in the nether regions for a while. Miles-wide pools of boiling oil and tar lay sneakily hidden beneath a covering of dust, where cockroaches the size of cars wait to pull you beneath the surface where they eat your face clean off! And some of you guys want to go there? Are you mental?

Yes. Yes I will eat your face. Clean off!

Or perhaps you would rather take the battle to the Plane of Life? Greenscale’s home? Where the scent of flowers can put you into a daze and you might end up wandering into the mouth of the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Where every direction you turn you are faced with vines and leaves, trees and roots. Where the sky is a distant memory and the ground writhes like snakes. How are you going to fight in an environment like that? And it’s filled with faeries. They hover around like mosquitos, except that instead of sucking your blood (well, they might do that), they will eat your face clean off!

Feed me Seymour!

Or what about the Plane of Air? Yeah, just read the name of this plane again. How are you going to fight here? It’s made up of nothing! The clue is in the name! Are you going to hop between the floating islands? You can try, but if you miss you’ll be sucked up into one of the many tornadoes that whirl across the cloudscapes, or struck by lightning from the hundreds of never-ending storms. Either that or you’ll be attacked by flying dragon beasts that will eat your face clean off!

Good luck fighting here…

What’s left? Ah yes, the Plane of Fire. Let’s have a look at that, shall we. The Plane of Fire is a broken and cracked expanse of razor sharp obsidian that will cut even the strongest boots to shreds. Thousand feet high volcanoes spew lava and smoke into the sky. The air is filled with black clouds, purple lightning arcing into the ground. The seas are vast expanses of bubbling lava. The slightest touch and you’ll combust. But the creatures that live there? They can walk on it just fine. And they’ll come straight for you, where they’ll eat your face clean off!

Do what to your face? Don't be disgusting! Why would you even say that?

Two more left. The Plane of Water. Yeah, you don’t want to go here. Just looking into the icy, primeval depths can turn a mortal instantly insane. A gibbering wreck of a person who thinks Wrestling is really real. This is the plane of nightmares, the bottomless depths of its endless sea filled with Cthulhu like monsters with hundreds of tentacles and fish-headed monsters who… you guessed it, will eat your face clean off! True story.

And finally there is the Plane of Earth. Do you like the beach? I mean, really like the beach? You like the sand? The sand that gets everywhere. The sand that is whirled up by the wind, grating against your skin, getting into your eyes. You like that? Then you’ll like the Plane of Earth. For a while, anyway. Apparently this Plane is a vast expanse of multicolored sand. As if it belongs in a My Little Pony cartoon.

That is, if this My Little Pony cartoon has ponies with razor sharp hoofs and corrosive acid dripping from their pointy teeth. Teeth that will, you guessed it, eat your face clean off!

The plane is pierced by spikes of crystal and stone. Rivers of molten metal flow through the rainbow deserts of death and sometimes solidify into weird islands of solid metal. Orelings tunnel underground, expanding the mines of troglodytes. Mountain Trolls who failed drama school do their best to imitate boulders, jumping out at anyone who dares walk past.

So yeah, all you people who wanted the ability to travel to the planes? Go see a shrink.

Oh. I can hear my son shouting from the pool. I suppose I should go get him out.