Rift Keystone Fragment
Rift Keystone Fragments, usually called "Rift Keys" or "Keystones" are a kind of material awarded for completing Bounties and opening Horadric Caches. Rift Keys are spent to open Nephalem Rifts, and have no other function of purpose in the game. These materials are found only in Reaper of Souls and in Adventure Mode.
Opening a Nephalem Rift requires 5 rift keys, and all players in a game can enter the same rift after one player opens it. Thus players often party up for Rifts and take turns opening them, so the Rift Key expenses are spread equally.
- Rift Keys are obtained 1 per bounty, and there are usually 2 keys in a Horadric Cache. Thus a player can earn up to 7 for clearing all 5 bounties in an act, plus the bounty bag.
Greater Rift Keys
A new kind of rift key was added in the Patch 2.1, tied to Greater Rifts. To open these higher levels of Rifts, players must farm Greater Rift Keys which are only dropped by Rift Guardians. Greater Rift Keys come in several quality levels, with higher level keys opening higher level Rifts.
Unlike normal Rift keys, a greater rift keys is required from each character in the game who wants to enter the Rift. Thus there is no free-loading or entering a Rift that someone else has opened, as Greater Rifts are serious business; timed dungeons with almost all of the rewards coming from the Rift Guardian, which players must rush to reach in time.
Rift it Forward
A popular player innovation to share the costs of Rift Keys and rewards of Nephalem Rifts is known as Rift it Forward. This is a sort of community-minded exploit where a player spends his rift keys to open a rift for a powerful character, in exchange for the reward from the Rift Guardian and rift completion.
The usual technique is for a powerful player to solo a Rift on a high difficulty level, then to use the public or clan chat to offer spots in his game to other players. A weaker character or characters join in, share the reward when the Rift Guardian is killed and the Rift is completed, and then open up a new Rift for the powerful player. The weaker characters leave the game then, so as to remove the multiplayer scaling up of monster hit points, and hope to join in again once the Rift is nearly cleared.
This system benefits the weaker characters by giving them free experience, gold, and items, and benefits the powerful character by enabling him to do Rifts without having to farm for or spend his own Rift Keys. Though the entire system is something of an exploit, Blizzard has commented approvingly[1] on it, and seems to have no desire to nerf or modify the shared rewards to make Rifting it Forward impossible.
Rift Keystone Fragments from Goodie Bags.
Tooltip notification of 5 Rift Keys.
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