With the Cataclysm event in full swing, the story on both sides is starting to turn. There’s not much in the way of rewards yet (but the epics are coming), except for the Feat of Strength Tripping The Rifts.
The rifts can be found throughout the game, including Northrend and Outland. Each zone is limited to a certain element type and the rifts take an hour to respawn. As the daily quest item only drops if the rift is level appropriate for your character, this makes getting the ones in Northrend a bit difficult. In fact, I flew around the entire continent, using one of the rift location guides Google provided me, and I never saw a single one.
The quest itself isn’t too important to me, so I headed to Outland. Within fifteen minutes I had closed an Air Rift in Terokkar Forest in the Cenarion Thicket, as well as a Water Rift in Shadowmoon Valley at Legion Hold. The sad thing is, there were two more Water rifts open in SMV. Nagrand and Blade’s Edge were void of any Earth ones at the time of searching, so I headed to Hellfire and sure enough right by the Dark Portal I got a Fire Rift closed and had three of the four done. After work last night, I logged in and headed to Nagrand where I got my last rift closed right in Telaar.
If the quest isn’t important, this is the route I suggest you take. A simple “who” search in a zone will tell you if it’s heavily populated. At one point, I saw Netherstorm had 7 80’s in it and I’m sure a couple were rift hunting, so I stayed away. If it’s relatively quiet, pull up a guide and start flying around. I suggest this over Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor only because of flight. It makes things much faster than taking flight paths or mount riding (unless you’ve gotten your 310% mount speed training). Happy Hunting!
