The Rift

How it works

1. THE CLIMB (by your game stage). 30+: Ashwing Gargoyles perch on high ledges and rooftops. 50+: lone Rift Hunters. 70+: Husk packs and Riftwings. 90+: Bile Gluttons and Rot Bloaters. 100+: elites (Gorebull, Cairn Brute, the six fiends). 130+: casters (Acolyte, Hexbinder, Soul Leech, Warlock), 150+ the Grave Caller. 200+ or day 50: the Ashen Sovereign can be called.
2. Demons come out at night, mostly in the burnt forest and the wasteland, twice as many on dread nights. From game stage 80 they also join blood moon and wandering hordes. The Hollow Relay announces each new stage of the Rift.
3. RIFT HUSK: fast bone-runners in packs that lunge at you. They get back up once after dying. Counter: fire or explosives keep them down.
4. RIFT HUNTER: hunts by sound, leaps between cover to flank you, then pounces. Hurt it badly and it vanishes, heals, and comes back. Counter: stay quiet (crouch, watch the noise meter), keep your back to a wall.
5. ASHWING GARGOYLE: a statue on a high ledge (stone skin: shooting it barely chips it). Come close and it wakes, climbs and dives: if it grabs you it carries you up and drops you. Counter: crouch past at a distance, or hurt it while it holds you and it lets go, stunned.
6. RIFTWING: a fast flier that spits burning globs. The glob lands where you stood when it spat. Counter: keep moving.
7. GOREBULL: paws the ground and snorts (the tell), then charges in a straight line, smashing weak blocks. A hit throws you and staggers you. Counter: sidestep, or let it hit a wall: it is stunned and takes extra damage.
8. CAIRN BRUTE: rock armor that cracks off in three stages; each break staggers it and lets more damage through. Fists over its head = ground slam: everyone close staggers. Counter: back off from the slam, then punish the opening.
9. BILE GLUTTON: gurgles, then sprays a cone of bile that eats your armor and leaves a burning puddle. ROT BLOATER: belly-slams up close, and when it dies it bursts into a green pool that rots you and heals demons. Counter: kill both from range, step out of the cone, stay out of the pools.
10. CASTERS: a glowing circle under its feet is the tell. The ACOLYTE raises 2-3 dead, the GRAVE CALLER raises four and is warded while they stand near it, the HEXBINDER curses you (weaker hits, slower healing), the SOUL LEECH drains you with a green stream, the WARLOCK blinks around you and drops shadow bursts that blind. All of them blink away when you close in. Counter: kill casters first, break line of sight, move off the ring.
11. FIENDS (elite brutes). PYRE: burning aura, swells red before a fire nova, throws fire. RIME: frost aura slows, the frost nova freezes you nearly solid. STORM: a humming ring under your boots, then lightning (three in a row when it is hurt). BLOOD: every hit bleeds, frenzies below half health, its blood burst heals it. SHADE: steps out of the dark behind you, blinds everyone near. ABYSS: a violet circle, then it drags you in and the well bursts.
12. EXPOSED: after its big attacks a demon is exposed for a moment (slowed, takes +50% damage). Most specials end in a window like that: it is when you hit back.

Tips

• Demon afflictions are named: Rift Fire, Rift Frost, Frozen Solid, Rift Shock, Rift Wound, Hexed, Bile Burn, Rift Rot, Shadowblind, Drained, Staggered and Rift Dread. The Rift Ward pill and Rift-Hide armor resist all of them.
• Drops: Rift Ash, Demon Hide, Demon Horns, Rift Shards (casters), Gargoyle Stone Hearts, Cairn Plates, Bile Glands, and a trophy per demon kind that tells its story (traders pay well).
• Six Rift pages turn up in demon remains (and now and then in bookcases, desks and file cabinets). Bind them into the Rift Codex: it teaches the Rift Altar, the Rift Blade (+50% damage against demons) and the Rift Ward. They count for Hollow Marks, Lore Keeper and the Ouija Lens like the other lost pages.
• Every demon kill pays a Hollow Mark (the Sovereign pays five, plus 25 more to everyone who fought it).
• Hunter's Contracts: Stone Watcher, Rift Fiend, The Robed Ones and the standing bounty on the Ashen Sovereign. The Hunter's Journal has a Rift page.
• With nobody close by, demons go for your generators, batteries, solar banks, turrets and blade traps (see Base Raids & Sieges).
• Turn demons off in Hollow Settings (Rift demons). The ritual still works.