WildStar: What To Do After Endgame

WildStar launched on June 3 and so far seems to be getting great reviews from the press and players alike. In addition to the fun space setting and the sometimes over the top attitude of the game’s NPCs, one reason many MMO veterans seem to be enjoying WildStar so much is that the game, to be blunt, isn’t afraid to kick your ass.

Wildstar in some ways represents a return to a time when MMOs could be brutally difficult. Long time online gaming fans will remember that even World of Warcraft, the MMO by which all others are still measured, once designed its endgame content specifically for the most skilled or elite players. Those who played in that game’s Burning Crusade expansion may remember wiping repeatedly the first time they set foot in heroic dungeons, or taking weeks if not months to finish the game’s attunement quest for Karazhan, WoW‘s first 10-player raid.

But as WoW began catering to its ever increasing casual player base, we began to see things like the removal of such attunement quests and multiple raid difficulty levels for players of all skill levels. There’s still a level of raiding in WoW for the truly hardcore players, but there are many in the MMO community who never really got over some of Blizzard’s decisions, like letting everyone steamroll through content via the game’s notorious Raid Finder.

WildStar has made it very clear that its end game is tuned specifically for “hardcore” players only, and it makes no apologies for it. If you’re coming to the game with no previous experience with this level of content, the experience once you hit level 50 can be a bit jarring.

For example, WildStar‘s first 20 player raid, the Genetic Archives, features a long attunement process that might remind WoW veterans of that Karazhan attunement mentioned earlier.

As many players are just now hitting the level cap, we here at Den of Geek thought it might be a good idea to put a quick primer together to help everyone get into the raiding scene. If you want to play The Strain, WildStar‘s newest update — featuring a new public event, quests, storyline, and raids, you’ll want to get to it as fast as possible. Here’s your guide to getting epic loot on Nexus.

The Veteran Tier

Ding! Level 50! Congratulations dude! (or dude-ette!) You’ve completed the leveling process and now the real game begins.

The first order of business is to jump right back into a harder version of some past dungeons and adventures you might have visited while leveling up.

WildStar‘s endgame features “veteran” dungeons and adventures that are scaled-up to level 50, and feature additional mechanics and challenges. Both Veteran Adventures and Veteran Dungeons offer blue-quality Veteran Tier gear. You’ll want a full set before you even think about setting foot inside a raid, so better start grinding.

If you need a break from dungeon running, WildStar‘s endgame also features a number of daily quests and other things to do in high-level zones, as well as a robust crafting system which can also produce some decent gear.

But the quickest way to get raid ready is to simply queue up for your favorite Adventure or Dungeon, kill some bad guys, and repeat.

Get Those Gems

WildStar‘s endgame features a currency called Elder Gems, which are designed to allow players to purchase gear to help mitigate bad luck with the RNG gods. Gems can also be used to purchase permanent upgrades to character abilities and skills. Elder Gems are purchased using Elder Points. Elder Points are in turn obtained by anything that grants you XP at max level. Each time your Elder Point bar fills up all the way, you get one gem and the bar resets to zero.

A couple of tips here: you don’t have to really do anything extra to get Elder Points/Gems besides run content in the Veteran Tier or whatever else you want to do at max level. But if you want to get raid ready as fast as possible, you should try to hit the current Elder Gem cap of 140 per week.

The second tip is that while upgrading your character’s abilities might seem like the best place to start spending your gems, you’re actually going to want to hold off on that for now, because you need those gems to get attuned for the first raid. The WildStar team has said that it will introduce other methods of upgrading your character’s abilities and skills in an upcoming patch and that the Elder Gem vendor is just supposed to be a “fallback” method, just like with obtaining Veteran gear.

Your first order of business whether you are Dominion or Exile is to save up 150 Elder Gems. This will let you purchase the key needed to start the attunement for Genetic Archives.

Your Long Trial Begins

Attunement for raiding in WildStar is done by creating the “Genesis Key.” A fully completed key will let you access the 40 man raid, The Datascape. But we’re a long way from there, cupcake. Your first objective will be unlocking the 20 man raid, Genetic Archives, and that’s going to be easier said than done.

After obtaining your 150 Elder Gems to buy the attunement key, you’ll have to complete a number of additional objectives including solo quests and dungeons runs. You can’t skip ahead in the quests for the most part, so you’ll want to follow along with what the game tells you to do.

In addition to a number of solo quests, like killing a mini boss or retrieving a particular item, the most time consuming part of the attunement will be four of the 12 total steps.

You’ll want to:

Become Beloved with either the Dominion or Exiles. You can get reputation for this by simply doing a lot of Dominion or Exile quests while leveling or running dungeons.

Obtain a Silver Medal in Veteran Tier Adventures. Each adventure will have its own requirement for the silver medal ranging from completing a specific objective to not having anyone die during the run.

Obtain a Silver Medal in Veteran Tier Dungeons. You’ll be required to complete each dungeon by a specific time limit.

Kill 10 World Bosses. WildStar‘s world has quite a few giant behemoths roaming about in the different zones. It’s important to note that your 10 kills do not have to be 10 different bosses. You can kill the same one over and over again if needed.

We should note here that killing the world bosses is the only part of this attunement line that does not have to be done at the time the player is on that specific step. In other words, you’ll get credit retroactively for any world bosses you’ve killed prior to obtaining this step. That said, silver medals for Veteran Tier Adventures and Dungeons do have to be completed at the time you have the quest.

After finishing all 12 steps, the last of which will be killing an extra boss in Veteran Kel Voreth that was created just for the attunement quest, you’ll be given access to the Genetic Archives.

The attunement key quest line actually continues on from here in order to allow you to open the 40 man raid The Datascape. But doing so requires a Genetic Archives clear, so it’s probably best to focus on just getting through your first raid for now.

You can also participate in our newly formed 1v1 duel league, WildStar Fighting Championship.

If you have any additional advice for this process, be sure to let us know in the comments!

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