There seems to be some interest in playing WildStar together, so I thought it might be nice to put a small guide here about some things to know about.
A few topics are still missing, most importantly, runes, but those only become really important at max level.
Server, faction, races
WildStar has one server per region: there is one North American server, and one European server, so when you want to play together with friends, you'll want to be on the same regional server. The GSCH guild is on the NA server.
If you had characters already before all servers were merged, they should still be there, except if they were still on the ship with the tutorial and intro quests. Those low level characters were deleted when they completely redid the tutorial portion.
While leveling, or more specifically, questing, your faction is important too. NPCs that happily give a quest to Exile characters will cheerfully slaughter Dominion characters and vice versa; there are also neutral NPCs but especially the lower level zones are very much separated by faction. Parties/groups can be cross-faction though, even at low levels, but it's mainly because almost all endgame content can be done with cross-faction parties and groups too. Most GSCH people seem to be playing Exile characters (because Exiles are cool, Dominion is evil! I may be biased though.)
Unlike some other MMOs, not every race can be every class/profession. Humans (of either faction) can be any class, but for the other races not all classes will be available. (This might change in the future.)
Exile races are: Human, Granok (rock people), Aurin (tree-hugging people with tails and cat/rabbit/other ears), Mordesh (space 'zombies')
Dominion races are: Cassian (Human), Draken (tribal lizard people), Mechari (robot people), Chua (hamsters with an obsession for explosives)
Classes
Every class in WildStar has two roles. Assault, aka doing damage (dps), and Support, which is either Tank or Healing depending on class.
- Warrior - Melee. Wears Heavy armor. Hits things with a greatsword. Can be Tank.
- Engineer - Medium ranged. Wears Heavy armor. Shoots things and has bots to hurt things. Can be Tank.
- Stalker - Melee. Wears Medium armor. Stabs things with claws. Can stealth. Can be Tank.
- Spellslinger - Long ranged. Wears Light armor. Shoots things with dual pistols. Can be Healer.
- Esper - Long ranged. Wears Light armor. Uses a psy-blade to channel mind powers. Can he Healer.
- Medic - Medium ranged. Wears Medium armor. Uses Resonators to deal pain or heal. Can be Healer.
Leveling
WildStar is one of those MMOs where leveling is mainly to see the story in a variety of zones, with a lot of other content at max level (50).
When your main goal is to level up, it's best to only do the zone and world story quests (as the side tasks give much less experience, though often they are in the same areas, and can be completed simultaneously) that are your own level or up to 2 levels higher. You can always go back to a zone later to finish its story.
If you want to experience the whole story first, just be aware you will not level as fast, as the experience you gain from lower level quests will not be very much.
While you level up, you'll gradually unlock access to several types of instanced content:
- Expeditions are story based instances, 15 to 45 minutes, and generally with a 50s Sci-fi/horror theme. They can be done by 1 to 5 players.
- Adventures are content for 5-player groups, 20 to 60 minutes, with unique gameplay mechanics and objectives.
- Dungeons are also for 5-player groups, 20 to 45 minutes, with a more straight forward objective of killing bosses.
Gear
As you level up and do quests, you will generally get quest rewards that are upgrades (unless you are doing lower level quests). Gear in WildStar has 3 important things to keep in mind:
- Main stat (either Assault or Support)
- Rarity (inferior, average, good, excellent, superb, legendary, artifact)
- Item level
Any item of Inferior rarity (grey) is junk. It will sell to vendors automatically if that option is selected in the vendor screen.
At least for any item of Excellent (blue) rarity and above, the stats are the same if the item level is the same, so it is easily possible for a lower rarity item to have better stats, if it has a higher item level. Higher rarity levels do change how many rune slots an item can have (more about runes later).
[There should probably be a section here to explain the different item slots too, shields, gadgets, etc]
End-game
At level 50, a bunch of content opens up:
- A few level 50 zones with daily quests.
- One zone of note is Arcterra, which opens up at 48 already (the dynamic events in that zone reward very nice chunks of experience to get to 50)
- World bosses; every zone has one of these. They need at least 20 people to kill. They can drop nice loot, especially if you're a fresh level 50. You'll often see people in /nexus chat forming groups for these. Bosses respawn on their own (long timer), but can also be summoned once an hour with 'paps', a token item that drops from level 50 content occasionally.
- Veteran Expeditions (recommended item level: 55+), Adventures (60+), Dungeons (70+). Level 50 versions of the instances.
- Daily Contracts (3 tiers: Tier 1 is repeatable (changes each time), usually of the variety 'Kill 30 mobs of type X', three Tier 2 contracts (usually easily completed solo), and a Tier 3 contract that involves killing a world boss, or doing a veteran Dungeon or Adventure)
And of course, the true endgame (according to some players): housing, which unlocks already at level 15, but you'll want to be level 50 to get access to more items, more money to spend, etc.