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GUARDIANS OF THE RIFT GUIDE
I've really been enjoying the new Guardians of the Rift minigame, and I've had a lot of people ask me how the minigame works, optimal strategies, etc so I figured I would make a guide to try and help everyone out!
I apologize for some of the formatting, I don't know how some of it came out double spaced.
WHY SHOULD YOU DO THIS MINIGAME?
Introduced alongside this minigame are extremely powerful rewards that enhance your Runecraft abilities, including the Colossal Pouch and the Raiment of the Eye set, which increases the amount of runes crafted per essence. Also included is the addition of the "True Blood Altar", which provides a way to Runecraft Blood Runes similar to most other runes.
REQUIREMENTS
While there are technically no requirements, I would strongly recommend 56+ Agility to access Large Guardian Remains and 14+ Runecraft to craft Air-Fire Runes.
GEAR/INVENTORY
BEGINNER SETUP:
Crystal Pickaxe>Dragon Pickaxe>Rune Pickaxe
Monkey>Max Cape>RC Cape
Varrock Armour 4=Varrock Armour 3/2/1 (AFAIK, I could be wrong on this)
Celestial Ring (Charged)>Celestial Ring (Uncharged)
ADVANCED SETUP:
HOW TO GET THERE
Teleport Wizard->Minigames->Guardians of the Rift
OVERVIEW/OBJECTIVE
Guardians of the Rift is a non-combat Runecraft-based minigame that takes place within the Temple of the Eye. The main goal of the game is to assist The Great Guardian in closing an abyssal rift to The Scar, the most dangerous part of Abyssal Space, by supplying it with guardian stones while protecting it from the abyssal creatures that come through the rift.
Upon entering the minigame, players will have 2 minutes to prepare before Abyssal creatures start swarming through the Rift. In order to defend against the creatures, players can either build Guardians at the Essence Pile using cells, or create/upgrade/repair barriers by placing cells at certain Cell Tiles near the runic portals. The objective of the minigame is to power up the Great Guardian to 100% so that he can close the portal where abyssal creatures are spawning. In order to do this you need to:
1. Gather guardian essence via either mining huge guardian remains or refining guardian fragments obtained via mining at the workshop using a chisel.
2. Imbue guardian essence you gather during the minigame at runic altars to obtain elemental and catalytic stones which you will use to powerup the Great Guardian.
3. Create/maintain Guardians and barriers in order to protect the Great Guardian while he is powering up.
Below is a diagram with terms and locations mentioned earlier in the guide and will continue to mention. Feel free to use this as a reference if you are confused on some of the terms I bring up.
THE UI
1: Highlights the Great Guardian's current power
2/3: Shows the current runic altars currently open
4: Time until the 2 active portals switch. The 2 runes switch every 20 seconds.
5/6: Current Elemental/Catalytic Energy; these are the numbers used for scoring
7: Shows how many guardians are currently summoned, in this case 7 out of 10 possible guardians are summoned
8: Every few minutes, a portal opens up that teleports you directly to Huge Guardian Remains, denoted by a cardinal direction where you can mine guardian essence directly. These portals last ~20 seconds.
How to Play
There are two alignments of runes that you'll craft within the minigame:
1. Elemental (Air, Water, Earth, Fire)
2. Catalytic (Mind, Body, Cosmic, Chaos, Astral, Law, Nature, Death, Blood)
In order to craft runes, you need guardian essence. You can obtain guardian essence by either mining huge guardian remains or refining guardian fragments obtained from mining guardian remains/parts or large guardian remains at the workshop using a chisel. Upon imbuing runes, you will receive 1 energy stone for each guardian essence imbued through one of the runic altars for that corresponding alignment (EG: If you Runecrafted 20 guardian essence into 200 air runes, you will receive 20 elemental energy stones). You can use these stones to power up the Great Guardian in the center of the arena. Each stone corresponds to 2 energy upon powering up the Great Guardian, which is the scoring system that we will get into later. You will also receive a powered cell depending on which altar you crafted runes at. There are 4 different tiers of cells:
1. Weak (Air, Mind, Body)
2. Medium (Water, Cosmic, Chaos)
3. Strong (Earth, Nature, Law)
4. Overcharged (Fire, Death, Blood)
You can use these cells in order to craft Guardians or create/upgrade/repair barriers, with the higher tier cells summoning stronger guardians or creating stronger barriers. Both creating guardians or creating/upgrading/repairing barriers will provide you with a set amount of BOTH elemental and catalytic energy. You can only have ONE of each tier of cell in your inventory at a time.
In order to summon Guardians, have a charged cell in your inventory and click on either Essence Pile near the workbench, and a Guardian will be summoned. WARNING: Your lowest tiered charged cell will be consumed first, so if you have both a weak cell and an overcharged cell in your inventory, a weak guardian will be summoned, so you might want to drop/destroy your weak cell so that you can summon stronger Guardians.
In order to create barriers, you will need a weak or higher-tiered cell in your inventory. Simply take your cell to an inactive cell tile, and place it there. In order to repair a barrier, place the same tier cell or below as the barrier you have to heal it a set amount. Higher tier cells restore more hp. In order to upgrade a barrier, place a cell at least one tier higher than the tier of the barrier currently up. (EG: If you have a medium tier barrier, you will need to place a strong or overcharged cell on that same tile to upgrade it to a strong barrier. You CANNOT skip upgrade tiers, you have to go weak->medium->strong->overcharged, you cannot go from weak->overcharged although you can use overcharged cells to upgrade a weak barrier to a medium barrier.) If a barrier gets destroyed, you need to use 10 guardian essence in your inventory to repair the tile, after which you will be able to place a weak or higher tiered tile on it to build a weak barrier.
Upon crafting runes at an altar, you have a small-medium chance of receiving a talisman for that specific rune. You can only receive air talismans from the air altar, mind talismans from the mind altar, etc. These talismans allow you to enter that altar even if the altar isn't active, at the cost of consuming your talisman. (EG: If the two active altars are Air and Chaos, and you really want to go back to the fire altar and have a Fire Talisman, you can enter the Fire portal at the cost of your talisman). You can stack multiple talismans of the same type if you please.
Below are charts that denote how much energy you get for performing certain actions and it may help you visualize some of what I have been saying. The energy values may not be exact, but it should give you a rough idea of what to expect.
Scoring System
Throughout the minigame, as you know, you will earn Elemental and Catalytic energy for completing various activities. Currently, the point system is a little different than OSRS. On Alora For every 100 elemental energy you receive during the game, you will receive 1 elemental energy attuned, and for every 1 catalytic energy gained during the game, you will receive 1 catalytic energy attuned, up to a maximum of ~1000 points for each alignment in each game and an overall point cap of ~1200. Any leftover points have a xx% chance of converting to an extra point. (EG: If you gained 857 elemental energy during the game, you will receive 8 elemental energy attuned with a 57% chance to receive 9 elemental energy attuned). For every 1 total elemental energy attuned and 1 total catalytic energy attuned, you will receive 1 point/roll that you can use to redeem rewards from the Rewards Guardian.
DISCLAIMER: If the scoring system is changed to match OSRS, you will want to try and balance elemental and catalytic energy for maximum points.
STRATEGY
As I mentioned before, because of how points currently work on Alora, if you are just aiming for the maximum amount of points, you will solely want to focus on attuning elemental runes (Air, Water, Earth, Fire). You want to stay away from Catalytic runes as they will provide no benefit whatsoever. You will receive enough catalytic energy from using cells so that you can solely focus on elemental runes.
Now to get into the strategy I recommend for the actual game. This strategy is recommend for smaller groups of 2-3 people or soloing. This strategy minimizes downtime and makes full use of most if not all of your fragments/essence. This strategy is also designed for those using Giant/Large/Medium/Small pouches, as once you gain access to the colossal pouch, you will have enough experience and know how to alter the strategy accordingly as key concepts/deposit timers remain. The main concepts of this strategy are to hold the stones for as long as possible. If running with people you know, this is so that you all can maximize how many points you each get during the game. Additionally, try to only summon Strong or Overcharged Guardians so that you won't really have to worry about your defenses dropping. Although this is subject to change if you are getting super unlucky with which altars are active, in which case you might need to summon Medium Guardians to hold off the Abyssal Creatures. Once you have reached the Guardian cap, use remaining cells to build up/repair barriers. Below are the strategies I find the most effective:
In solos, you want to deposit either when you run out of fragments or when you notice the Great Guardian's HP dipping too low for comfort.
In duos, either you or your partner want to deposit when you run out of fragments or when you hit 449 elemental stones, as any more than this (assuming the Great Guardian hasn't lost any HP) will end the game on the spot, not allowing your partner to deposit. After depositing, the other player can deposit their stones, ending the game.
In trios, either you or your partners want to deposit when you run out of fragments or when you hit 337 stones, as any more than this (assuming the Great Guardian hasn't lost any HP) will end the game on the spot, not allowing your partner(s) to deposit. After both players have deposited, the remaining player can deposit their stones, ending the game.
Below is a written guide:
1. Before game start, use the shortcut to reach the Large Guardian Fragments
2. Upon game start, mine Large Guardian Fragments until the first portal to Huge Guardian Fragments appears (with crystal/d-pick you should have somewhere between 200-250 fragments)
3. Enter the portal and fill your inventory/pouches with guardian essence
4. Enter the active elemental altar and craft all your runes.
5. If applicable, summon Guardians and create/repair barriers.
6. Go to workbench and chisel full inventory/pouches worth of essence.
7. Repeat Steps 4-5
8. Repeat Steps 6-7
9. At this point, you should have ~150 stones in your inventory.
10. Wait for next portal to Huge Guardian Remains to spawn
11. Repeat Steps 3-8
12. At this point you should have ~300 stones, wait for portal to Huge Guardian Remains to spawn
13. Repeat Steps 3-8 until you run out of fragments or hit the deposit #, whichever comes first.
14. Deposit your stones
15. Profit
Below is an example run on video(duo). I apologize for the subpar video quality, but you should be able to get the gist of what I'm doing:
REWARDS
Drop rates (not 100% accurate. We receive more pearls on Alora, approximately 3 pearls for every roll on average. Also some items you can't receive):
RUNE/XP RATES
I was earning ~70k base Runecraft xp/hr
The amount of runes you receive varies depending on how efficient you are, what runes you are crafting, and if you are keeping them all or not. If you are going for mainly points, as you will only be crafting elemental runes, the runes you receive are negligible as there is no real use for them.
MY LOOT SO FAR
For some reason, the tracker failed to record ~250 of my pulls. However, the only unique I received not pictured here is the pet. (pictured below)
MISC. TIPS/INFO
1. Every person in the game raises # of stones required to power up the Great Guardian by 250 (duo requires 500 total stones, trio requires 750 total stones, etc. Boss starts at 10% total power, so from 10% you only need 450 in a duo, 675 in a trio, etc.)
2. Every person in the game raises max # of Guardians by 2 (solo is 2, duo 4, trio 6, etc. up to a maximum of 10 Guardians)
3. If you click on a Huge Guardian Fragment portal before it disappears, you can still enter it as long as you clicked "enter" before it disappeared. (This does not work with active altars sadly)
4. It takes ~7-8 seconds to reach the furthest altars from the workbench, so leave enough time to run there if you are trying to enter a specific portal.
5. For optimal pts/hr I recommend running duos, as you will get no less than 8 points if you and your partner know what you are doing, oftentimes you are getting 10 or 11 points.
6. Yew logs are the best log to light your Abyssal Lantern with if only going for points, or redwood for a combination of points/runes.
7. If there is downtime while waiting for portals, you can mine guardian fragment parts located on the edges of the arena.
8. You can fill your pouches with essence while mining or crafting, and it will not stop the mining/crafting action.
9. Set your pouches to 1 click Fill via Runelite plugin Menu Entry Swapper.
10. You can deposit runes at the blue pool next to the workbench to free up some inventory spaces mid game.
11. Catalytic Talisman that you get from Rewards Guardian functions as a Blood Talisman.
12. You can exchange Abyssal Lanterns for 100 Abyssal Pearls.
13. You can exchange any dye you receive for any other dye color (it will also fill collection log slots).
CONCLUSION
That just about wraps it up! Thank you for reading my guide, I hope you were able to find some use of it. If you are confused about anything, feel free to shoot me a message on the forums or in game!
Special thanks to MrFiveSeven for doing a run with me so I could get some footage.
Hope to see you all on the rift. Cheers!
