The link to this guide was posted by Gyoin in forum chat for us soon-to-be-50s. I'm reposting here for convenience.
http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/b...-the-ultimate-guide-to-wildstars-endgame-pve/
-------------------------------------------------
I just dinged 50?!? Now what?!?!
1.1 - Elder Gems
When you reach level 50 you’ll notice that you still have an experience bar. Every time you gain 75,000 experience you are rewarded with 1 Elder Gem. You can gain a maximum of 140 Elder Gems a week. It’s fairly easy to hit the cap on a weekly basis. There is a vendor for Elder Gems in each Capital City, you can get directions to this vendor by speaking to any guard. Once you reach the Elder Gem cap for that week any additional experience gained will be converted into gold!
You can use Elder Gems to buy AMP points, Ability Tier Points, Gear, Housing Items, Mounts, Bags, Additional Action Sets and the Genesis Key (Item required to unlock the attunement quest for raids).
If you want to be the very best like no one ever was, it is suggested that you prioritize spending your elder gems on the following:
Important side-note: AMP and Ability Tier Point unlocks have been known to drop from PVP Satchels from winning a battleground. The drop rate on both seems extremely low (0.1%-1%). Unlike the ones sold from the vendor, these are not bound, meaning that they can be sold or traded! It’s also likely there will be an alternate way to unlock Ability Tier and AMP points via endgame PVE, although no methods have yet been confirmed.
The recent patch has also stated that AMP and Ability Tier Point unlocks have now been made available via World Drops. Waiting to gather more information on drop rates before updating Elder Gem spending advice. Advice for the moment: HOARD YOUR ELDER GEMS.
1.2 - Renown
Renown is not an exclusive endgame currency but can play a part in slightly increasing your rate of endgame progression. Renown is earned via doing activites while grouped up with other players. Literally if you do anything while in a group such as questing, dungeons, adventures, raids, PVP etc you will be rewarded with Renown; via farming dungeons and adventures you are going to find yourself with an absolute TON of it.
At the Renown vendor in your capital city (Located near the Guild Master) you can buy an assortment of cosmetic and vanity items and vials that increase your rate of gain for various things such as currency, experience and rep by 8% for two hours. The things that we’d suggest are worthwhile to advance your endgame progression are:
It’s arguable that for the more hardcore players looking to delve into endgame as fast as possible so that they can adds tags such as 14/14 SoO2k14legitswagnuggets onto their forum signature that gearing up for Veterans is not necessary, as Veteran Adventures are fairly straightforward and require nothing but questing gear to be successful in, which is in fact true providing you’ve had a good read over your class forum.
However for the more casual and relaxed player who may be hesitant to join Veteran Adventures fearing they may be a burden to the group, we’ve compiled a list of all the ways you go about getting quickly pimped out before stepping into the world of Veteran Adventures.
2.1 - Grimvault Crusade Gear
If you haven’t already, you want to ensure that you’ve completed the majority of the quests in Western Grimvault; not only do these quests provide you with a nice chunk of level 45-50 gear, but they also should take you to maxed out or Beloved reputation with The Grimvault Crusade.
Located at Legion’s Landing in Western Grimvault there is a vendor known as Reputation Dispensary A.R.S. This vendor sells level 50 feet, implant, weapon attachment, legs and chest for most classes, so having maxed out rep with the Grimvault Crusade can essentially instantly give you half a level 50 blue set of gear as soon as you have dinged!
2.2 - Blighthaven Story and Daily Quests
Completing the story quests in Blighthaven can provide with a nice stack of level 48-50 gear. Throughout Blighthaven there are also 3 different daily quests. Scorchwing, Elonya the Mad and Drusera’s Tree. These reward a bag that has a pretty significant chance to drop a blue or even epic item.
These 3 quests will raise your reputation with The Guardians of the Grove – A blightaven faction. Some of the rewards are actually pretty nice and can arguably be better than some veteran drops. It’s suggested checking out the rewards from the Guardians of the Grove faction here to see if it will be worthwhile farming the rep: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/01/wildstar-blighthaven-reputation-vendor-items/
Here’s some information on the group quests in Blighthaven:
Guardians of the Grove [GROUP 20+] : Fruit Basket which awards a Green, Blue or Epic Quality Support System or Shield.
To complete this quest, you must complete the Drusera’s Tree event. This event seems a bit overtuned currently, I have never completed it by defeating the waves of strain. Instead I wait near the tree, outside of aggro range and wait for the strain to win, then kill the corrupted Primal Life. Make sure you have a movement ability in your LAS, or stand next to one of the crystals when the tree is about to explode. Do this for 3 waves and you’ll complete the quest, but only recieve Bronze rewards.
Scorched Wings [GROUP 20+] : Phoenix Downfall which awards a Green, Blue or Purple Quality Boots, Gloves, or Helmet.
To complete this quest you must defeat the outdoor world boss Scorchwing. Scorchwing has an unconfirmed respawn timer of about 1-2 hours.The fight is fairly straightforward, and one does not have to be in the same group to get credit for the kill. PVE servers do NOT even have to be on the same faction to get credit, I am unsure of how PVP servers work.
Mad Heart [GROUP 5+] : Elonya’s Vessel which currently only is confirmed to drop a Green or Blue quality Implant. This may be a bug or simply not enough data collected on this loot bag.
This quest isn’t picked up at a quest giver but instead is from an item dropped by Elonya the Mad when you kill for the first time that day. I am unsure of whether or not you need to complete the prequests (From Genesis to Revelations [GROUP 5+] and Braving the Elements [GROUP 5+]) but it definitely is a possibility, those quests should be done regardless, as they both award a blue for every single possible class and spec.
2.3 - Random World/ PVP Satchel Drops
A lot of random gear drops in Wildstar in both the open world and via the PVP Satchels you are rewarded for participating in a Battleground. Luckily a lot of this gear is Bind and Equip and the blues are regularly thrown on the Auction House for a fairly cheap and affordable price.
The biggest upgrade by far to any character is the weapon. A lot of PVE weapons drop from the PVP Satchels from completing random battlegrounds, it is likely that your Auction House will be very stocked with cheap level 50 blue weapons; if you have a quick scavenge you should be able to pick up a sizeable weapon upgrade for 10-50g; this combined with the aforementioned blue gear from the Grimvault Crusaders rep will allow you to easily transition into Veteran Adventures.
2.4 - OP PVP Gadget
This is a personal suggestion, for 750 prestige (PVP currency) you can buy a gadget known as Protection. This Gadget gives you an off GCD 5.3k heal which heals you and up to 5 nearby party members with a 1 minute cooldown. It’s pretty OP for group survivability if every member of your party has it, and the DPS from Gadgets really isn’t needed in most of the starter veterans, as most of the fights are mainly about staying alive! 750 prestige is very easy to get, it just means you have to quickly run 1-2 battlegrounds.
2.5 - Crafted Gear
Crafted gear can be a HUGE boost to your characters performance. Certain pieces of crafted gear can be arguably better than anything you will find in Veteran Dungeons or Adventures, due to the procs and bonuses they provide. It’s hard to say exactly what items of crafted gear are the best for each class. The majority of the high tier crafted gear is known as ‘Adventus’ or ‘Epochos’ gear. This tier of crafting gear can be quite expensive to craft, this is because when you are crafting gear you are essentially looking for 3-4 rune slots which are good for your class. Rune slots are completley random so you will likely have to craft the same piece of gear multiple times to get desirable rune slots. A lot of people recommend crafting level 49 gear as it is only slightly worse stat wise than sets such as Adventus and Epochos. The name of level 49 gear varies quite a bit, so scan your local auction house’s level 48-50 gear section to find the names of odd pieces of crafting gear. You’ll usually be able to tell what gear is crafted gear by seeing an extradionary amount of a certain stat on it e.g +125 finesse.
The following crafting professions make the follow items:
For guilds or groups of players it is a good idea to communicate via guild forums and chat to see and keep track of who has what professions, as crafting gear can be super valuable and generally speaking you are much better off getting items personally made instead of buying them off the Auction House, this way you can ensure the items your crafting have the stats that you want on them.
2.6 - Crafting Gear at Endgame
Crafters do crafting dailies that are found in Illium/Thayd (Main cities), Deradune, Ellevar, Whitevale, Wilderrun, Malgrave and Grimvault (There might be others that I have yet to find) to gain crafting vouchers that can be spent to purchase crafting materials and more importantly schematics for expert research.
Expert research schematics are unlocked tierly up to tier 4. You need to craft tier 1 resonators to create tier 2 resonators and so on so forth. Some schematics also have dependency in the other ones, this is seen in the tech tree. For example in order to create tier 3 pistols you would have also needed to create tier 1 and 2 greatsword & tier 1, 2 and 3 resonators.
Cost of the schematics vary between 8000 and 32125 vouchers. However this is not that much of an limiting factor because you can get over 20000 vouchers PER day (also the schematics are only needed once, after used you permanently learn the craft). Bigger limiter are eldan data fragments (soulbound, and only 1 per day can be acquired and you can need up to 21) and accelerons that are end game weaponsmithing material.
There are 4 kinds of these accelerons, all of them requiring the following:
Another major thing are hybrid powercores. In order to gain maximum power gain from your crafts, you want to use as good powercores as possible, this means that you will need to get a quality one from somewhere. Let it be either salvaging (possibly epic) gear or having a technologist make them for you.
Then there is the risk balancing of do you want to try pump out extra stats while crafting with the risk of destroying the craft.
If you want to find out more about crafting Wildstar Fans ‘Chief Sarcan’ wrote a wonderful guide a few months back that can be found here: http://www.wildstarfans.net/2014/01/chief-sarcans-basic-guide-to-crafting.html
2.7 - Crimson Badlands Daily Quests
Another way to get gear before venturing into the world of Veterans is to do quests located in Crimson Badlands. Crimson Badlands actually becomes accessible at level 49, so if you’re preemptively reading ahead be sure to head there at level 49. The first time you do these quests you’ll be rewarded with a small variety of blue level 50 gear. From then on you can continue to do these dailies each day to raise your reputation with OPERATION: Crimson Badlands. Once you’ve raised your reputation to various levels you can buy a variety of level 50 blue gear.
In all honesty getting the gear via reputation is probably pointless and a bit too slow for players looking to jump into veteran level endgame as soon as possible as it will take several days/weeks to reach certain reputation marks and arguably the additional gear is really not needed in order to jump into Veteran Adventures.
2.8 - Northern Wastes Daily Quests
Similar to Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes is an elder game zone that provides an additional path to get gear before delving into Veterans. The first time you do these quests you’ll be rewarded with a kick-ass gadget that if you’re lucky can arguably be BIS due to the raw stats + rune sockets on it, however the stats on the gadget are totally random, so you could get an awesome gadget or a not-so awesome one. You’ll also be rewarded with a support system at the end of the short quest chain that serves as a nice piece of level 50 starter gear.
From then on you can continue to do these dailies each day to raise your reputation with OPERATION: Northern Wastes. Once you’ve raised your reputation to various levels you can buy a variety of level 50 blue gear and once you’ve maxed out your reputation you can buy some pre-veteran level 50 epic gear. You can find a wonderful list of the reputation items available by clicking this wonderful link: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/01/wildstar-northern-wastes-reputation-items/
In all honesty getting the gear via reputation is probably pointless and a bit too slow for players looking to jump into veteran level endgame as soon as possible as it will take several days/weeks to reach certain reputation marks and arguably the additional pre-veteran level gear is really not needed in order to jump into Veteran Adventures.
2.9 - Malgrave, Grimvault, Blighthaven, Crimson Badlands and Northern Wastes Challenges
If you press L you can open up the quest log and go to challenges; this will allow you to overview and track all the challenges available in Malgrave, Grimvault and Crimson Isles; the majority of challenges have a 30 minute cooldown, meaning that you can complete the challenge and get loot for it once every 30 minutes! While challenges don’t offer the best loot by a landslide, they do offer something I found myself greatly in need of. Bigger bags. A few of the Grimvault, Malgrave and Blighthaven challenges give you a chance at winning a 15-16 slot bags along with a variety of random level 48-50 blues/greens, housing items and other cosmetic stuff.
Here is a list of challenges that offer a 15/16 slot bags as a reward:
Blighthaven – 16 slot bags:
Don’t drink the Juice
Up in the Air
Both of the Blighthaven challenges drop the same unique 16 slot bag so you’ll only be able to getone from them!
Grimvault – 16 slot bag:
Whats in the box
The Vultch (Not a challenge but a rare mob that can be found at 1522, -474 in Southern Grimvault. Drops a 16 slot unique bag called Carrion Luggage)
Grimvault - 15 slot bags:
Popping pustules
Get off my ship
Grimvault Reaper
Malgrave – 15 slot bag:
Who yo gunna call
2.10 - Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden (Normal)
Estimated time to complete: 1 hour- 1 hour 30 minutes
This is the only ‘non-veteran’ dungeon tuned for level 50 players; it has a grand total of 5 bosses alongside 7 mini-bosses and serves as a great way to initially get gear to progress onto the Veteran adventures and dungeons. It is arguable for those looking for speedy progression that Sanctum of the Sword Maiden normal is a waste of time and that Veteran Adventures are much easier and more rewarding; however, for those playing the game for more of an enjoyment aspect it serves as an incredibly fun and challenging dungeon to run and the knowledge of the boss abilities and mechanics on normal will prove useful when you venture in this dungeon on Veteran mode.
3.1 - Runes
Runes are permanent enchants that you can add to various gear slots. You’ll notice that pretty much every piece of endgame gear in Wildstar has gear slots such as ‘Water Slot’, ‘Fire Slot’, ‘Logic Slot’, etc.
Unlike other games, everyone has the ability to craft all runes; there is a runecrafting station located in each capital city where all runes can be forged. Rune crafting materials drop from pretty much anything and everything you defeat in Wildstar; you can also gain runecrafting materials from breaking down unwanted gear. From leveling you should have a moderate selection of runes in your bags that may prove useful.
There are several types of rarity levels and sets of runes; the green runes are fairly cheap and are suggested to slap on most Veteran and Dungeon gear as the blue and epic runes are very expensive.
In terms of stats provided by the runes there is NO difference between uncommon (green), rare (blue) and epic (purple) runes. The only difference is that the blue and epic sets provide set bonuses. So when you’ve got X amount of that rune set socketed in your gear you’ll obtain some sort of bonus. These bonuses in most cases are actually fairly weak. The bonuses include stuff like increased physical damage, increased magical damage, special damage procs, increased focus recovery, increased focus cap and a variety of other wonderful and weird bonuses.
So to summarize the only reason you’d opt for a rare or epic quality rune over an uncommon one is in order to try and achieve a set bonus.
These rarer runes are arguably the biggest money sink at endgame and should be saved to Raid gear or you will drain your pockets dry on gear that will be replaced within a couple of weeks.
My favorite American (Fevir!) did a convenient guide on Runecrafting in Wildstar. It’s definitely worth checking out if you want to find out more info:
3.2 - Boosts
Boost are similar to vials or flasks in other MMORPG’s; they increase your stats by X amount for a short period of time and are made by the crafting profession Technologist.
While they only last a relatively short 15 minutes in Wildstar, they are fairly cheap and inexpensive to make.
If you’re reading this, Carbine, myself and pretty much all of the player base would greatly appreciate longer lasting boost that cost more materials. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse to refresh it every 15 minutes! You can only have one boost active at a time:
3.3 - Special Meals
Special meals can be made by the cooking profession that everybody automagically has! There are an absolute ton of odd bonuses when it comes to endgame meals and consumables. For those looking for a quick and easy stat increase to help with dungeon and raid progression you can most likely obtain any one of the following at your local auction house:
3.4 - Field Tech
Also crafted by the Technologist profession, ‘Field Tech’ is a short term consumable that can be used on more difficult fights where that little bit of additional damage or mitigation could be needed. Field Tech is pretty damn cheap to craft so check the Auction House or contact your nearest Technologist, some of the Field Tech we suggest is:
3.5 - Addons
We’ve compiled a list of useful and suggested Wildstar addons that we believe are not only really awesome awesome and helpful to have for venturing into Elder Game but will also improve your quality of life playing Wildstar by a truckload. If you want to download any of the following addons all you need to do is simply click on the name of the addon to be re-directed to Curse where you can download them all for free!
Auramastery – Aura Mastery is a Buff / Debuff / Cooldown / Resource / Health & General Proc tracker useful for tracking those important abilities!
Bijiplates - BijiPlates is a nameplate replacement add-on that shows separated health and shield bars instead of the default in-line style.
Buff Master – Buff Master is an alternative Buff / Debuff / Cooldown / Resource & General Proc tracker useful for tracking those important abilities and cooldowns. Unlike Aura Mastery, Buff Master displays bars instead of boxes for tracking purposes.
Interruptor - Interruptor shows everything related to interrupting in an intuitive and uncomplicated way.
ThreatMeter – ThreatMeter is considered an essential for tanks and strong DPS. It allows you to keep track of threat throughout your party and raid.
Trackmaster - Track Master is a simple addon which will draw a line to a specific unit / position. It currently supports the following trackers: current target, current quest, nearest mailbox, waypoint and focus target.
Galaxymeter – Galaxymeter is a standard damage meter. It allows you to monitor DPS, damage done, healing done, healing received & pretty much everything and anything relating to numbers in combat. As a side-note Galaxymeter has a few kinks at the moment which mean that it is not always 100% accurate.
Content tuned for level 50 characters is commonly referred to in Wildstar as Veteran content. Unlike other MMORPGs, Wildstar’s endgame 5 man content is divided into two types of instance; Veteran Adventures and Veteran Dungeons.
To unlock and be able to queue for Veteran Dungeon or Adventure via the LFG tool, you’ll first need to find the entrance to that dungeon or adventure.
Veterans have an inbuilt medal based reward system that is centered around group performance. This consists of four different levels:
The reward structure for medals is as follows:
4.1 - General Medal Requirements for Adventures:
Bronze: Complete the adventure
Silver: Complete the adventure while completing an additional objective
Gold: Complete the adventure while completing an additional objectives with at most 1-2 deaths
4.2 - General Medal Requirements for Dungeons:
No medal: Complete the dungeon
Bronze: Complete the dungeon and the optional quest
Silver: Complete the dungeon and it’s optional quest within a time limit
Gold: Complete the dungeon, all it’s challenges and optional quests within a time limit with no deaths.
Adventures are a LOT easier than dungeons. As a general guideline once you can comfortably get silver or gold on every adventure it’s time to move onto Veteran Dungeons.
Estimated time to complete a ‘Veteran Adventure’: 30 minutes- 1 hour
Adventures are less boss orientated and more story focused instances. Unlike your standard MMORPG dungeon, adventures have multiple points where the players can make decisions on what to do and where to go, the players decisions means that the adventure can move forward in a multitude of different ways. There are a total of 4 different adventures at Endgame and I’ve listed them in a suggested path of progression:
5.1 - War of the Wilds
This is arguably one of the quickest and easiest Veteran Adventures. To unlock this Adventure you need to complete the attunement quest located in the Northern parts of Whitevale. (INSERT CO-ORDS)
The general aim of the game in War of the Wilds is to capture control points to allow your Moody (Exile) or Skeech (Dominion) forces to progress to the opposing team’s base and destroy their idol. While doing this you will have to deal with an opposing team of NPC exiles or dominion that are programmed with the sole purpose of focusing you, making them a real pain in the arse. There are 3 different lanes in this adventure that your Skeech or Moody forces will try to progress down – Top, Middle and Bottom. In order for your forces to reach the opposing base you will need to ensure that you capture all control points in that lane.
During this adventure your commander will shoutout a various tasks such as kill X boss or Y dominion mob. These tasks are tighly timed, so if you want to complete them to aim for silver or gold you will need to ensure you are on your toes and looking out for them.
There are also three bosses located across the map. These bosses don’t drop additional loot and only should be killed if you’re instructed by your commander while you’re aiming for either a silver or gold run. As a bit of a fun fact, once the boss dies you gain access to a totem which grants some of your Skeech or Moody forces special powers, such as the ability to hurl large chunks of ice or summon wolves. All in all for a general bronze/speed clear run for blue drops, these bosses are not worth killing.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
5.2 - Crimelords of Whitevale
Much like War of the Wilds, this is also a very easy and straightforward adventure. It essentially just involves a lot of running back and forth between various scenes of crime.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
Gold in this adventure is rewarded for:
5.3 - Siege of Tempest Refuge
In terms of difficulty, this is a slight step up from the two previous veteran adventures due to the high DPS requirement needed to defeat the ‘Bunker Busters’.
Siege of Tempest Refuge is a defensive adventure where you simply have to defend a capacitor in Tempest Refuge from 25 waves of attacking ememies (5 boss waves, 20 trash waves). The waves follow the pattern of 4x trash -> boss -> 4x trash -> boss etc.
The bosses themselves are completely randomized, however all of them are fairly straightforward and allow a lot of mistakes to be made, thus the majority can be one shot with limited knowledge of tactics. A general rule of thumb to ensure victory is that AOE is bad and you should move out of it.
Some of the trash waves can be a bit problematic. Three of the most lethal include The Bunker Buster, The Tank and Saboteurs. The Bunker Buster is a giant wagon with just under 900k health that needs to be nuked down before it reaches your capacitor. If it is allowed to reach your capacitor it will explode and one shot it, thus failing the adventure. The Tank is a siege tank with just under 300k health that quickly moves towards the middle of your base and, if left alive too long, will start to burn down your capacitor. Finally, the Saboteurs are trash mobs that will run around your base like crazy in stealth and plant a load of bombs everywhere. These can one shot both turrets and the capacitor. Luckily you can disarm them before they deal any damage. When saboteurs are about, be sure to focus them down and disarm all their bombs.
As a final note, you’ll also notice in this adventure you have something called Morale; the lower this gets the lower your damage will get. It’s unavoidable that this will eventually reach 0, as for each trash wave that spawns it will be reduced by 4. Also everytime someone dies it will be reduced by 4. Don’t die.
Loot is rewarded for:
5.4 - The Malgrave Trail
This is by far the longest, most challenging and arguably least rewarding of all the adventures. It involves protecting and escorting a slow moving caravan of low health NPC’s as they journeys along the Malgrave Trail. There are periods of intense no stop scorching action and there are periods of waiting around, oh so much waiting.
But what’s that? Escorting a slow moving Caravan isn’t fun enough for you? Well fear not because while doing this you’ll also have a side objective to keep your Caravan stocked on Water, Food and Feed. This means that 3-4 have to focus on protecting the Caravan while 1-2 people will run around the nearby desert frantically scavenging for supplies. If you allow your supplies to reach 0, the red bar of fatigue will fill up and your Caravan members will quickly start to die of dysentery!
Adding to the excitement that is running around searching for crates you will also be faced with dynamic tasks such as curing sick members of your Caravan by pressing T to throw vials on them before they die, picking up supplies that your Caravan drops every few minutes and finding lost members of your Caravan that randomly wonder off into the desert all while being occasionally ganked and one shot by insta-spawning NPC’s!
Malgrave Trail gold runs reduce grown men to tear of pure frustration.
If you’re planning on going for silver or gold, the easiest path for this adventure is Thirsty Creak -> Greenleaf Ridge -> Windged Fury -> Sandyhive -> Uboshwa -> Fort Westwatch.
Also if you’re planning on attempting gold, you may also want to book several therapy/counseling sessions as by the time the RNG gods of shined on you and granted you passage to achieve gold you will be having intense nightmares and hallucinations of members of your caravan randomly wandering off into the desert just to get slaughtered by a variety of horrific creatures.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
Estimated time to complete a Veteran Dungeon (First run): 1-4+ hours
6.1 - How can I tell if I’m ready for Veteran Dungeons?
One thing that people continually ask is how can I tell if I’m ready to tackle Veteran Dungeons? Unlike other games the answer is not simple. There are no clear cut caps you need to reach in order to enter Veteran Dungeons. Stats such as strikethrough are not as important in Wildstar as in other games and in almost every case for DPS classes stacking as much assault power and your main stat that grants assault power as you can will net a much larger DPS gain than capping strikethrough.
Also something important to note is that interrupts cannot be deflected. This not only further devalues strikethrough but this also means that anyone that uses the excuse “My interrupt got deflected” is completley full of shit.
Some general goals to aim for before you enter Veteran Dungeons:
DPS
There are 4 different Veteran Dungeons at Wildstar Endgame:
As I mentioned before each boss has at least one challenge! Oooooo, exciting stuff right? These challenges vary from boss to boss. Each boss challenges which you can find more information about on your quest log when you’re near the boss.
Challenges involve stuff like causing X mechanic to hit Y mob, avoiding AOE, avoiding Tornadoes and tons of additional fun stuff that actually is quite the challenge.
Completing challenges rewards an additional drop from the challenge loot pool in that dungeon. This means that completing challenges rewards you with an additional piece of blue or epic gear.
Since dungeons in Wildstar don’t have a daily lockout you can actually farm the first boss challenge in each dungeon are for challenge loot from that dungeon. Bosses you can farm for challenge loot are Bladewind the Invoker, Grond the Corpsemaker, Stew-Shaman Tugga and Deadringer Shalloas. Further information on challenges can be found below.
6.2 - Stormtalon’s Lair
In our experience this is by far the easiest Veteran dungeon as a whole, still tho, keep in mind this is WILDSTAR, so keep in mind it’s still bloody challenging. The first two bosses should be able to be taken down in 1-10 pulls by most groups, but the real challenge from this dungeon comes from Stormtalon who will probably take a few hours progression on to land your first kill.
Silver requirements
6.3 - Kel Voreth
Link to the official Veteran Kel Voreth Guide: http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/blog/wildstar-veteran-kel-voreth-guide/
Kel Voreth is the second dungeon suggested on the list of progression. The first and last boss and last bosses are fairly easy and straightforward and should only take 1-10 attempts to get a kill, however the real challenge of this dungeon comes from the second boss. The second boss has some very harsh DPS, avoidance and healing checks that a lot of groups progressing through veterans will struggle to pull off. Once you master the second boss however, getting a silver run for the attunement is pretty damn easy.
Silver requirements
6.4 - Skullcano
The official Veteran Skullcano guide can be found here: http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/blog/skullcano-veteran-guide/
Skullcano is the third dungeon suggested on the list of progression. The first boss is a complete pushover, the second boss presents a mild challenge and the final boss is a real test on your groups ability to dodge multiple lazer beams, avoid lava pools, press the spacebar and also turn away from the center of the room to avoid getting blinded. Skullcano is one of my favourite dungeons by far, bar the masses of trash surrounding the second two bosses the design is absolutely incredible, you’ll find yourself navigating through tiki villages and assault courses of lava waves, beams, spouts and jets to reach the top of the ‘skullcano’.
Requirements for Silver
6.5 - Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden
This is the final dungeon on the suggest path of progression. The speed clear time for this is 75 minutes. 75 minutes. That’s almost 4 episodes of Arrested Development. Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden is an absolute mammoth of a dungeon on Veteran and will put your group to the test.
Requirements for Silver
Before moving onto talking about 20 man and 40 man raiding, let’s take a moment to talk about Raid Attunement. Before you can access Genetic Archives (20 man) or Datascape (40 man) EVERYONE in your group needs to have completed the appropriate attunement quests. Which are initially started if your capital city, this attunement quest line is as follows:
8.1 - Genetic Archives (20 Man)
Genetic Archives is the easier of the two endgame raids, it holds host to a total of 6 bosses and 9 mini-bosses. Bosses drop 3 pieces of epic loot and are often much harder whereas mini-bosses drop 1 piece of epic loot and are much easier. Genetic Archive is split into two floors, the second floor is not accessible until both bosses on the first floor have been defeated.
I’ve listed the bosses and mini-bosses below in a suggested progression order. At the moment only various kill videos are available as a resource for tactics. We are currently working on written raid guides that will be released in the coming weeks!
First Floor
Mini-bosses [Available Immediately]
Bosses [Available immediately]
Mini-boss [Available once both bosses are dead]
Second Floor [Available once the Fetid Miscreation has been defeated]
Mini-bosses
Bosses [Once defeated, each Phagetech Guardian opens a hallway to one of these]
Boss [To access this next boss both previous bosses must be defeated]
Mini-bosses [unlocked once the Phageborn convergence has been defeated]
Final boss [Unlocked once all of the Malfunctioning minibosses have been defeated]
8.2 - Datascape (40 Man)
INFO COMING SOON-ISH (check link at top for updates)
Special thanks to all our guest contributors and fact correctors that have helped contribute and clean up this guide:
Zulunko
Repsoll
Mekabar
Kambhela
Spike3607
Deggor
Tehscat
11/07/2014:
http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/b...-the-ultimate-guide-to-wildstars-endgame-pve/
-------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
- ENDGAME CURRENCY
- Elder Gems
- Renown
- GEARING UP FOR VETERANS
- Grimvault Crusade Gear
- Blighthaven Story and Daily Quests
- Random World/PVP Satchel Drops
- Guardians of the Grove
- Scorched Wings
- Mad Heart
- OP PVP Gadget
- Crafted Gear
- Crafting Gear at Endgame
- Crimson Badlands Daily Quests
- Northern Wastes Daily Quests
- Malgrave, Grimvault, Blighthaven, Crimson Badlands and Northern Wastes Challenges
- 16 slow bags
- Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden (Normal)
- HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY CHARACTER'S PERFORMANCE EVEN MORE?
- Runes
- Boosts
- Special Meals
- Field Tech
- Addons
- VETERAN CONTENT (5 MAN)
- General Medal Requirements for Adventures
- General Medal Requirements for Dungeons
- VETERAN ADVENTURES
- War of the Wilds
- Crimelords of Whitevale
- Siege of Tempest Refuge
- The Malgrave Trail
- VETERAN DUNGEONS
- How can I tell if I'm ready for Veteran Dungeons?Stormtalon's Lair
- DPS
- Tanks
- Healers
- Stormtalon's Lair
- Kel Voreth
- Skullcano
- Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden
- How can I tell if I'm ready for Veteran Dungeons?Stormtalon's Lair
- RAID ATTUNEMENT
- RAIDING (20 MAN)
- Genetic Archives (20 Man)
- Datascape (40 Man)
- Changelog
INTRO
Howdy Cupcake and welcome to The One Level 50 Guide for Wildstar, this is a massive guide that aims to cover all the activities and fun stuff you can do at endgame in a fair bit of detail, give you advice on what to do, talk about various progression paths and drop a variety of pro hints and tips along the way.I just dinged 50?!? Now what?!?!
1 - Endgame Currency
1.1 - Elder Gems
When you reach level 50 you’ll notice that you still have an experience bar. Every time you gain 75,000 experience you are rewarded with 1 Elder Gem. You can gain a maximum of 140 Elder Gems a week. It’s fairly easy to hit the cap on a weekly basis. There is a vendor for Elder Gems in each Capital City, you can get directions to this vendor by speaking to any guard. Once you reach the Elder Gem cap for that week any additional experience gained will be converted into gold!
You can use Elder Gems to buy AMP points, Ability Tier Points, Gear, Housing Items, Mounts, Bags, Additional Action Sets and the Genesis Key (Item required to unlock the attunement quest for raids).
If you want to be the very best like no one ever was, it is suggested that you prioritize spending your elder gems on the following:
- Genesis Key – This is pretty damn important for any aspiring raiders, you NEED this key in order to progress on the attunement quest for raiding; without it, you’ll never be able to get into raids! (150 Elder Gems)
- Ability Tier Point Unlock x 7 (2,800 Elder Gems)
- AMP Power Upgrade x 10 (3,200 Elder Gems)
- Gear – The Elder Gem Vendor sells an assortment of boss drops from both dungeons and raids. However, to purchase gear from the Elder Gem vendor you must first have killed the boss that drops the piece of loot you’re trying to purchase. In theory this helps to somewhat eliminate the element of RNG on boss drops; in practice however more streetwise players will be to damn busy spending their first 6,150 Elder Gems (44 weeks providing you hit cap every week) on more permanent character upgrades such as the Ability and AMP points.
- Whatever you damn well want; you’ve probably been playing about 3 years now!
Important side-note: AMP and Ability Tier Point unlocks have been known to drop from PVP Satchels from winning a battleground. The drop rate on both seems extremely low (0.1%-1%). Unlike the ones sold from the vendor, these are not bound, meaning that they can be sold or traded! It’s also likely there will be an alternate way to unlock Ability Tier and AMP points via endgame PVE, although no methods have yet been confirmed.
The recent patch has also stated that AMP and Ability Tier Point unlocks have now been made available via World Drops. Waiting to gather more information on drop rates before updating Elder Gem spending advice. Advice for the moment: HOARD YOUR ELDER GEMS.
1.2 - Renown
Renown is not an exclusive endgame currency but can play a part in slightly increasing your rate of endgame progression. Renown is earned via doing activites while grouped up with other players. Literally if you do anything while in a group such as questing, dungeons, adventures, raids, PVP etc you will be rewarded with Renown; via farming dungeons and adventures you are going to find yourself with an absolute TON of it.
At the Renown vendor in your capital city (Located near the Guild Master) you can buy an assortment of cosmetic and vanity items and vials that increase your rate of gain for various things such as currency, experience and rep by 8% for two hours. The things that we’d suggest are worthwhile to advance your endgame progression are:
- Reputation Vial – 8% increase to reputation gained – last 4 hours – 2,500 renown – this can help you to speed up capping various endgame reputation such as Exile/Dominion, Grimvault Crusade and Crimson Isle.
- Experience Vial – 8% increase to experience gained – last 4 hours – 2,500 renown – this vial can help to speed up your elder gem gain. While this will be fairly useless for more hardcore players who hit this cap within 1-2 days, it can be useful to more casual/ time-limited players who may find themselves struggling to hit the 140 Elder Gem cap each week. Above the exp cap this vial will increase coin gain. It’s difficult to say if this is better vs Flask of Greed.
- Flask of Speed - 8% increase to movement speed - last 4 hours – 2,500 renown - this vial increases the speed at which your character moves at. Since movement is so vital in Wildstar, it will help to provide you with a slight competitive advantage. Also if you enjoy slacking it means that you can stand in the average telegraph for approximately 0.18348 more seconds!
- Flask of Greed – 8% increase on coin drops gained – last 4 hours – 2,500 renown – once you’ve got adventures and dungeons on farm, this flask can help to provide you with a bit of extra gold on the side for completing them. While initially progressing through adventures and dungeons this flask won’t be too useful as you probably won’t be clearing the content fast enough to get a reasonable benefit from this flask.
2 - Gearing up for Veterans
It’s arguable that for the more hardcore players looking to delve into endgame as fast as possible so that they can adds tags such as 14/14 SoO2k14legitswagnuggets onto their forum signature that gearing up for Veterans is not necessary, as Veteran Adventures are fairly straightforward and require nothing but questing gear to be successful in, which is in fact true providing you’ve had a good read over your class forum.
However for the more casual and relaxed player who may be hesitant to join Veteran Adventures fearing they may be a burden to the group, we’ve compiled a list of all the ways you go about getting quickly pimped out before stepping into the world of Veteran Adventures.
2.1 - Grimvault Crusade Gear
If you haven’t already, you want to ensure that you’ve completed the majority of the quests in Western Grimvault; not only do these quests provide you with a nice chunk of level 45-50 gear, but they also should take you to maxed out or Beloved reputation with The Grimvault Crusade.
Located at Legion’s Landing in Western Grimvault there is a vendor known as Reputation Dispensary A.R.S. This vendor sells level 50 feet, implant, weapon attachment, legs and chest for most classes, so having maxed out rep with the Grimvault Crusade can essentially instantly give you half a level 50 blue set of gear as soon as you have dinged!
2.2 - Blighthaven Story and Daily Quests
Completing the story quests in Blighthaven can provide with a nice stack of level 48-50 gear. Throughout Blighthaven there are also 3 different daily quests. Scorchwing, Elonya the Mad and Drusera’s Tree. These reward a bag that has a pretty significant chance to drop a blue or even epic item.
These 3 quests will raise your reputation with The Guardians of the Grove – A blightaven faction. Some of the rewards are actually pretty nice and can arguably be better than some veteran drops. It’s suggested checking out the rewards from the Guardians of the Grove faction here to see if it will be worthwhile farming the rep: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/01/wildstar-blighthaven-reputation-vendor-items/
Here’s some information on the group quests in Blighthaven:
Guardians of the Grove [GROUP 20+] : Fruit Basket which awards a Green, Blue or Epic Quality Support System or Shield.
To complete this quest, you must complete the Drusera’s Tree event. This event seems a bit overtuned currently, I have never completed it by defeating the waves of strain. Instead I wait near the tree, outside of aggro range and wait for the strain to win, then kill the corrupted Primal Life. Make sure you have a movement ability in your LAS, or stand next to one of the crystals when the tree is about to explode. Do this for 3 waves and you’ll complete the quest, but only recieve Bronze rewards.
Scorched Wings [GROUP 20+] : Phoenix Downfall which awards a Green, Blue or Purple Quality Boots, Gloves, or Helmet.
To complete this quest you must defeat the outdoor world boss Scorchwing. Scorchwing has an unconfirmed respawn timer of about 1-2 hours.The fight is fairly straightforward, and one does not have to be in the same group to get credit for the kill. PVE servers do NOT even have to be on the same faction to get credit, I am unsure of how PVP servers work.
Mad Heart [GROUP 5+] : Elonya’s Vessel which currently only is confirmed to drop a Green or Blue quality Implant. This may be a bug or simply not enough data collected on this loot bag.
This quest isn’t picked up at a quest giver but instead is from an item dropped by Elonya the Mad when you kill for the first time that day. I am unsure of whether or not you need to complete the prequests (From Genesis to Revelations [GROUP 5+] and Braving the Elements [GROUP 5+]) but it definitely is a possibility, those quests should be done regardless, as they both award a blue for every single possible class and spec.
2.3 - Random World/ PVP Satchel Drops
A lot of random gear drops in Wildstar in both the open world and via the PVP Satchels you are rewarded for participating in a Battleground. Luckily a lot of this gear is Bind and Equip and the blues are regularly thrown on the Auction House for a fairly cheap and affordable price.
The biggest upgrade by far to any character is the weapon. A lot of PVE weapons drop from the PVP Satchels from completing random battlegrounds, it is likely that your Auction House will be very stocked with cheap level 50 blue weapons; if you have a quick scavenge you should be able to pick up a sizeable weapon upgrade for 10-50g; this combined with the aforementioned blue gear from the Grimvault Crusaders rep will allow you to easily transition into Veteran Adventures.
2.4 - OP PVP Gadget
This is a personal suggestion, for 750 prestige (PVP currency) you can buy a gadget known as Protection. This Gadget gives you an off GCD 5.3k heal which heals you and up to 5 nearby party members with a 1 minute cooldown. It’s pretty OP for group survivability if every member of your party has it, and the DPS from Gadgets really isn’t needed in most of the starter veterans, as most of the fights are mainly about staying alive! 750 prestige is very easy to get, it just means you have to quickly run 1-2 battlegrounds.
2.5 - Crafted Gear
Crafted gear can be a HUGE boost to your characters performance. Certain pieces of crafted gear can be arguably better than anything you will find in Veteran Dungeons or Adventures, due to the procs and bonuses they provide. It’s hard to say exactly what items of crafted gear are the best for each class. The majority of the high tier crafted gear is known as ‘Adventus’ or ‘Epochos’ gear. This tier of crafting gear can be quite expensive to craft, this is because when you are crafting gear you are essentially looking for 3-4 rune slots which are good for your class. Rune slots are completley random so you will likely have to craft the same piece of gear multiple times to get desirable rune slots. A lot of people recommend crafting level 49 gear as it is only slightly worse stat wise than sets such as Adventus and Epochos. The name of level 49 gear varies quite a bit, so scan your local auction house’s level 48-50 gear section to find the names of odd pieces of crafting gear. You’ll usually be able to tell what gear is crafted gear by seeing an extradionary amount of a certain stat on it e.g +125 finesse.
The following crafting professions make the follow items:
- Tailor – Light Armor (Pairs well with Survivalist)
- Outfitter – Medium Armor and Support Systems (Pairs well with Survivalist)
- Armorer – Heavy Armor and Energy Shields (Pairs well with Mining)
- Weaponsmith – Weapons and Weapon Attachments (Pairs well with Mining)
For guilds or groups of players it is a good idea to communicate via guild forums and chat to see and keep track of who has what professions, as crafting gear can be super valuable and generally speaking you are much better off getting items personally made instead of buying them off the Auction House, this way you can ensure the items your crafting have the stats that you want on them.
2.6 - Crafting Gear at Endgame
Crafters do crafting dailies that are found in Illium/Thayd (Main cities), Deradune, Ellevar, Whitevale, Wilderrun, Malgrave and Grimvault (There might be others that I have yet to find) to gain crafting vouchers that can be spent to purchase crafting materials and more importantly schematics for expert research.
Expert research schematics are unlocked tierly up to tier 4. You need to craft tier 1 resonators to create tier 2 resonators and so on so forth. Some schematics also have dependency in the other ones, this is seen in the tech tree. For example in order to create tier 3 pistols you would have also needed to create tier 1 and 2 greatsword & tier 1, 2 and 3 resonators.
Cost of the schematics vary between 8000 and 32125 vouchers. However this is not that much of an limiting factor because you can get over 20000 vouchers PER day (also the schematics are only needed once, after used you permanently learn the craft). Bigger limiter are eldan data fragments (soulbound, and only 1 per day can be acquired and you can need up to 21) and accelerons that are end game weaponsmithing material.
There are 4 kinds of these accelerons, all of them requiring the following:
- 5x Sign of Earth/Air/Fire/Water – Eldan (Depending are you making Corium/Cyclonite/Emberine/Marinax respectively)
- 4x Galactium Chunk
- 2x Sign of Fusion – Eldan
- 1x Eldan Acceleron
Another major thing are hybrid powercores. In order to gain maximum power gain from your crafts, you want to use as good powercores as possible, this means that you will need to get a quality one from somewhere. Let it be either salvaging (possibly epic) gear or having a technologist make them for you.
Then there is the risk balancing of do you want to try pump out extra stats while crafting with the risk of destroying the craft.
If you want to find out more about crafting Wildstar Fans ‘Chief Sarcan’ wrote a wonderful guide a few months back that can be found here: http://www.wildstarfans.net/2014/01/chief-sarcans-basic-guide-to-crafting.html
2.7 - Crimson Badlands Daily Quests
Another way to get gear before venturing into the world of Veterans is to do quests located in Crimson Badlands. Crimson Badlands actually becomes accessible at level 49, so if you’re preemptively reading ahead be sure to head there at level 49. The first time you do these quests you’ll be rewarded with a small variety of blue level 50 gear. From then on you can continue to do these dailies each day to raise your reputation with OPERATION: Crimson Badlands. Once you’ve raised your reputation to various levels you can buy a variety of level 50 blue gear.
In all honesty getting the gear via reputation is probably pointless and a bit too slow for players looking to jump into veteran level endgame as soon as possible as it will take several days/weeks to reach certain reputation marks and arguably the additional gear is really not needed in order to jump into Veteran Adventures.
2.8 - Northern Wastes Daily Quests
Similar to Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes is an elder game zone that provides an additional path to get gear before delving into Veterans. The first time you do these quests you’ll be rewarded with a kick-ass gadget that if you’re lucky can arguably be BIS due to the raw stats + rune sockets on it, however the stats on the gadget are totally random, so you could get an awesome gadget or a not-so awesome one. You’ll also be rewarded with a support system at the end of the short quest chain that serves as a nice piece of level 50 starter gear.
In all honesty getting the gear via reputation is probably pointless and a bit too slow for players looking to jump into veteran level endgame as soon as possible as it will take several days/weeks to reach certain reputation marks and arguably the additional pre-veteran level gear is really not needed in order to jump into Veteran Adventures.
2.9 - Malgrave, Grimvault, Blighthaven, Crimson Badlands and Northern Wastes Challenges
If you press L you can open up the quest log and go to challenges; this will allow you to overview and track all the challenges available in Malgrave, Grimvault and Crimson Isles; the majority of challenges have a 30 minute cooldown, meaning that you can complete the challenge and get loot for it once every 30 minutes! While challenges don’t offer the best loot by a landslide, they do offer something I found myself greatly in need of. Bigger bags. A few of the Grimvault, Malgrave and Blighthaven challenges give you a chance at winning a 15-16 slot bags along with a variety of random level 48-50 blues/greens, housing items and other cosmetic stuff.
Here is a list of challenges that offer a 15/16 slot bags as a reward:
Blighthaven – 16 slot bags:
Don’t drink the Juice
Up in the Air
Both of the Blighthaven challenges drop the same unique 16 slot bag so you’ll only be able to getone from them!
Grimvault – 16 slot bag:
Whats in the box
The Vultch (Not a challenge but a rare mob that can be found at 1522, -474 in Southern Grimvault. Drops a 16 slot unique bag called Carrion Luggage)
Grimvault - 15 slot bags:
Popping pustules
Get off my ship
Grimvault Reaper
Malgrave – 15 slot bag:
Who yo gunna call
2.10 - Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden (Normal)
Estimated time to complete: 1 hour- 1 hour 30 minutes
This is the only ‘non-veteran’ dungeon tuned for level 50 players; it has a grand total of 5 bosses alongside 7 mini-bosses and serves as a great way to initially get gear to progress onto the Veteran adventures and dungeons. It is arguable for those looking for speedy progression that Sanctum of the Sword Maiden normal is a waste of time and that Veteran Adventures are much easier and more rewarding; however, for those playing the game for more of an enjoyment aspect it serves as an incredibly fun and challenging dungeon to run and the knowledge of the boss abilities and mechanics on normal will prove useful when you venture in this dungeon on Veteran mode.
3 - How can I improve my character’s performance even more?
3.1 - Runes
Runes are permanent enchants that you can add to various gear slots. You’ll notice that pretty much every piece of endgame gear in Wildstar has gear slots such as ‘Water Slot’, ‘Fire Slot’, ‘Logic Slot’, etc.
Unlike other games, everyone has the ability to craft all runes; there is a runecrafting station located in each capital city where all runes can be forged. Rune crafting materials drop from pretty much anything and everything you defeat in Wildstar; you can also gain runecrafting materials from breaking down unwanted gear. From leveling you should have a moderate selection of runes in your bags that may prove useful.
There are several types of rarity levels and sets of runes; the green runes are fairly cheap and are suggested to slap on most Veteran and Dungeon gear as the blue and epic runes are very expensive.
In terms of stats provided by the runes there is NO difference between uncommon (green), rare (blue) and epic (purple) runes. The only difference is that the blue and epic sets provide set bonuses. So when you’ve got X amount of that rune set socketed in your gear you’ll obtain some sort of bonus. These bonuses in most cases are actually fairly weak. The bonuses include stuff like increased physical damage, increased magical damage, special damage procs, increased focus recovery, increased focus cap and a variety of other wonderful and weird bonuses.
So to summarize the only reason you’d opt for a rare or epic quality rune over an uncommon one is in order to try and achieve a set bonus.
These rarer runes are arguably the biggest money sink at endgame and should be saved to Raid gear or you will drain your pockets dry on gear that will be replaced within a couple of weeks.
My favorite American (Fevir!) did a convenient guide on Runecrafting in Wildstar. It’s definitely worth checking out if you want to find out more info:
3.2 - Boosts
Boost are similar to vials or flasks in other MMORPG’s; they increase your stats by X amount for a short period of time and are made by the crafting profession Technologist.
While they only last a relatively short 15 minutes in Wildstar, they are fairly cheap and inexpensive to make.
If you’re reading this, Carbine, myself and pretty much all of the player base would greatly appreciate longer lasting boost that cost more materials. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse to refresh it every 15 minutes! You can only have one boost active at a time:
- Expert Moxie Boost – Increases Moxie by 61 for 15 minutes
- Expert Tech Boost – Increase Tech by 61 for 15 minutes
- Expert Grit Boost – Increases Grit by 61 for 15 minutes
- Expert Brutality Boost – Increases Brutality by 61 for 15 minutes
- Expert Finesse Boost – Increases Finesse by 61 for 15 minutes
- Expert Insight Boost – Increases Insight by 61 for 15 minutes
3.3 - Special Meals
Special meals can be made by the cooking profession that everybody automagically has! There are an absolute ton of odd bonuses when it comes to endgame meals and consumables. For those looking for a quick and easy stat increase to help with dungeon and raid progression you can most likely obtain any one of the following at your local auction house:
- Vindicators Risotto – Increases Finesse by 67 for 30 minutes
- Brightland’s Stew – Increases Brutality by 67 for 30 minutes
- Exile Empanadas – Increases Moxie by 67 for 30 minutes
- Dominion Dessert – Increases Insight by 67 for 30 minutes
- Enhanced Spider Stir-Fry – Increases Tech by 67 for 30 minutes
- Behemoth Steak – Increases Grit by 67 for 30 minutes
3.4 - Field Tech
Also crafted by the Technologist profession, ‘Field Tech’ is a short term consumable that can be used on more difficult fights where that little bit of additional damage or mitigation could be needed. Field Tech is pretty damn cheap to craft so check the Auction House or contact your nearest Technologist, some of the Field Tech we suggest is:
- Elemental Life Drain – For the next 3 minutes landing a hit grants a 25% chance to steal 433 health.
- Temporal Shimmy Tonic – Increases Critcal Hit Rating by 85 for 3 minutes
- Shield Attunement Nanite Cocktail – Increases Max Shield by 1546 for 3 minutes
3.5 - Addons
We’ve compiled a list of useful and suggested Wildstar addons that we believe are not only really awesome awesome and helpful to have for venturing into Elder Game but will also improve your quality of life playing Wildstar by a truckload. If you want to download any of the following addons all you need to do is simply click on the name of the addon to be re-directed to Curse where you can download them all for free!
Auramastery – Aura Mastery is a Buff / Debuff / Cooldown / Resource / Health & General Proc tracker useful for tracking those important abilities!
Bijiplates - BijiPlates is a nameplate replacement add-on that shows separated health and shield bars instead of the default in-line style.
Buff Master – Buff Master is an alternative Buff / Debuff / Cooldown / Resource & General Proc tracker useful for tracking those important abilities and cooldowns. Unlike Aura Mastery, Buff Master displays bars instead of boxes for tracking purposes.
Interruptor - Interruptor shows everything related to interrupting in an intuitive and uncomplicated way.
ThreatMeter – ThreatMeter is considered an essential for tanks and strong DPS. It allows you to keep track of threat throughout your party and raid.
Trackmaster - Track Master is a simple addon which will draw a line to a specific unit / position. It currently supports the following trackers: current target, current quest, nearest mailbox, waypoint and focus target.
Galaxymeter – Galaxymeter is a standard damage meter. It allows you to monitor DPS, damage done, healing done, healing received & pretty much everything and anything relating to numbers in combat. As a side-note Galaxymeter has a few kinks at the moment which mean that it is not always 100% accurate.
4 - Veteran Content (5 man)
Content tuned for level 50 characters is commonly referred to in Wildstar as Veteran content. Unlike other MMORPGs, Wildstar’s endgame 5 man content is divided into two types of instance; Veteran Adventures and Veteran Dungeons.
To unlock and be able to queue for Veteran Dungeon or Adventure via the LFG tool, you’ll first need to find the entrance to that dungeon or adventure.
Veterans have an inbuilt medal based reward system that is centered around group performance. This consists of four different levels:
- No medal
- Bronze medal
- Silver medal
- Gold medal
The reward structure for medals is as follows:
- No Medal: 1 roll on the final boss table and 100% money reward
- Bronze Medal: 1 roll on the final boss table, 1 roll on an instance-wide loot table and 150% money reward
- Silver Medal: 1 roll on the final boss table, 2 rolls on an instance-wide loot table and 200% money reward
- Gold Medal: 1 roll on the final boss table, 3 rolls on an instance-wide loot table and 250% money reward
4.1 - General Medal Requirements for Adventures:
Bronze: Complete the adventure
Silver: Complete the adventure while completing an additional objective
Gold: Complete the adventure while completing an additional objectives with at most 1-2 deaths
4.2 - General Medal Requirements for Dungeons:
No medal: Complete the dungeon
Bronze: Complete the dungeon and the optional quest
Silver: Complete the dungeon and it’s optional quest within a time limit
Gold: Complete the dungeon, all it’s challenges and optional quests within a time limit with no deaths.
Adventures are a LOT easier than dungeons. As a general guideline once you can comfortably get silver or gold on every adventure it’s time to move onto Veteran Dungeons.
IF YOU ARE JOINING VETERAN DUNGEONS OR ADVENTURES VIA THE LFG TOOL WITH THE AIM OF GETTING A SILVER OR GOLD MEDAL YOU WILL HAVE A BAD TIME.
IF YOU WANT SILVER OR GOLD MEDALS JOIN A GUILD YOU MUPPET.
Here’s a handy link! – http://www.wildstarforums.com/forums/wildstar-community/guild-recruitment
5 - Veteran Adventures
Estimated time to complete a ‘Veteran Adventure’: 30 minutes- 1 hour
Adventures are less boss orientated and more story focused instances. Unlike your standard MMORPG dungeon, adventures have multiple points where the players can make decisions on what to do and where to go, the players decisions means that the adventure can move forward in a multitude of different ways. There are a total of 4 different adventures at Endgame and I’ve listed them in a suggested path of progression:
- War of the Wilds
- The Siege of Tempest Refuge
- Crimelords of Whitevale
- The Malgrave Trail
5.1 - War of the Wilds
This is arguably one of the quickest and easiest Veteran Adventures. To unlock this Adventure you need to complete the attunement quest located in the Northern parts of Whitevale. (INSERT CO-ORDS)
The general aim of the game in War of the Wilds is to capture control points to allow your Moody (Exile) or Skeech (Dominion) forces to progress to the opposing team’s base and destroy their idol. While doing this you will have to deal with an opposing team of NPC exiles or dominion that are programmed with the sole purpose of focusing you, making them a real pain in the arse. There are 3 different lanes in this adventure that your Skeech or Moody forces will try to progress down – Top, Middle and Bottom. In order for your forces to reach the opposing base you will need to ensure that you capture all control points in that lane.
During this adventure your commander will shoutout a various tasks such as kill X boss or Y dominion mob. These tasks are tighly timed, so if you want to complete them to aim for silver or gold you will need to ensure you are on your toes and looking out for them.
There are also three bosses located across the map. These bosses don’t drop additional loot and only should be killed if you’re instructed by your commander while you’re aiming for either a silver or gold run. As a bit of a fun fact, once the boss dies you gain access to a totem which grants some of your Skeech or Moody forces special powers, such as the ability to hurl large chunks of ice or summon wolves. All in all for a general bronze/speed clear run for blue drops, these bosses are not worth killing.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
- Capturing 3 control points
- Capturing 7 control points
- Capturing 11 control points
- Defeating the opposing teams idol (Finishing the adventure)
- Complete the adventure
- Defeat at least 8 member of the opposing faction
- Complete at least one of your commanders tasks
- Complete the adventure
- All players must be level 1 or above for Gold. You can see your personal level in the instance panel above quests. You gain exp for this level by killing members of the opposite faction. If you die you will loose exp and have to kill more of them in order to get gold.
- Complete both of your commanders tasks
5.2 - Crimelords of Whitevale
Much like War of the Wilds, this is also a very easy and straightforward adventure. It essentially just involves a lot of running back and forth between various scenes of crime.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
- Completing the first arch
- Completing the second arch
- Completing the third arch
- Defeating the final boss
Gold in this adventure is rewarded for:
- Complete the Adventure
- You are required to have maximum notoriety. Every time you complete tasks in this adventure you gain notoriety. Every time you die you lose notoriety. (This can be seen by default in the top right hand corner of your screen)
5.3 - Siege of Tempest Refuge
In terms of difficulty, this is a slight step up from the two previous veteran adventures due to the high DPS requirement needed to defeat the ‘Bunker Busters’.
Siege of Tempest Refuge is a defensive adventure where you simply have to defend a capacitor in Tempest Refuge from 25 waves of attacking ememies (5 boss waves, 20 trash waves). The waves follow the pattern of 4x trash -> boss -> 4x trash -> boss etc.
The bosses themselves are completely randomized, however all of them are fairly straightforward and allow a lot of mistakes to be made, thus the majority can be one shot with limited knowledge of tactics. A general rule of thumb to ensure victory is that AOE is bad and you should move out of it.
Some of the trash waves can be a bit problematic. Three of the most lethal include The Bunker Buster, The Tank and Saboteurs. The Bunker Buster is a giant wagon with just under 900k health that needs to be nuked down before it reaches your capacitor. If it is allowed to reach your capacitor it will explode and one shot it, thus failing the adventure. The Tank is a siege tank with just under 300k health that quickly moves towards the middle of your base and, if left alive too long, will start to burn down your capacitor. Finally, the Saboteurs are trash mobs that will run around your base like crazy in stealth and plant a load of bombs everywhere. These can one shot both turrets and the capacitor. Luckily you can disarm them before they deal any damage. When saboteurs are about, be sure to focus them down and disarm all their bombs.
As a final note, you’ll also notice in this adventure you have something called Morale; the lower this gets the lower your damage will get. It’s unavoidable that this will eventually reach 0, as for each trash wave that spawns it will be reduced by 4. Also everytime someone dies it will be reduced by 4. Don’t die.
Loot is rewarded for:
- Defeating the first boss
- Defeating the second boss
- Defeating the third boss
- Defeating the fourth boss
- Completing the adventure
- Completing the adventure with the capacitor above 95% health.
5.4 - The Malgrave Trail
This is by far the longest, most challenging and arguably least rewarding of all the adventures. It involves protecting and escorting a slow moving caravan of low health NPC’s as they journeys along the Malgrave Trail. There are periods of intense no stop scorching action and there are periods of waiting around, oh so much waiting.
But what’s that? Escorting a slow moving Caravan isn’t fun enough for you? Well fear not because while doing this you’ll also have a side objective to keep your Caravan stocked on Water, Food and Feed. This means that 3-4 have to focus on protecting the Caravan while 1-2 people will run around the nearby desert frantically scavenging for supplies. If you allow your supplies to reach 0, the red bar of fatigue will fill up and your Caravan members will quickly start to die of dysentery!
Adding to the excitement that is running around searching for crates you will also be faced with dynamic tasks such as curing sick members of your Caravan by pressing T to throw vials on them before they die, picking up supplies that your Caravan drops every few minutes and finding lost members of your Caravan that randomly wonder off into the desert all while being occasionally ganked and one shot by insta-spawning NPC’s!
Malgrave Trail gold runs reduce grown men to tear of pure frustration.
If you’re planning on going for silver or gold, the easiest path for this adventure is Thirsty Creak -> Greenleaf Ridge -> Windged Fury -> Sandyhive -> Uboshwa -> Fort Westwatch.
Also if you’re planning on attempting gold, you may also want to book several therapy/counseling sessions as by the time the RNG gods of shined on you and granted you passage to achieve gold you will be having intense nightmares and hallucinations of members of your caravan randomly wandering off into the desert just to get slaughtered by a variety of horrific creatures.
Loot in this adventure is rewarded for:
- Completing the task at your first stop
- Completing the task at your second stop
- Completing the task at your third stop
- Completing the task at your fourth stop
- Completing the task at your fifth stop
- Completing the Adventure
- Complete the adventure
- Ensure that at least 20 of your caravan members survive
- Complete the adventure
- Ensure that all 30 of your caravan members survive
6 - Veteran Dungeons
PEPPER YOUR ANGUS. Because Veteran Dungeons are hard. Hard like rocks. Big rocks.
Estimated time to complete a Veteran Dungeon (First run): 1-4+ hours
6.1 - How can I tell if I’m ready for Veteran Dungeons?
One thing that people continually ask is how can I tell if I’m ready to tackle Veteran Dungeons? Unlike other games the answer is not simple. There are no clear cut caps you need to reach in order to enter Veteran Dungeons. Stats such as strikethrough are not as important in Wildstar as in other games and in almost every case for DPS classes stacking as much assault power and your main stat that grants assault power as you can will net a much larger DPS gain than capping strikethrough.
Also something important to note is that interrupts cannot be deflected. This not only further devalues strikethrough but this also means that anyone that uses the excuse “My interrupt got deflected” is completley full of shit.
Some general goals to aim for before you enter Veteran Dungeons:
DPS
- You’re able to pull AT LEAST 3k-3.5k on a single target practice dummy over a 3 minute parse.
- You understand how interrupting and moments of opportunity work.
- You’re rolling with at least 2-3 interrupts.
- You can avoid hostile telegraphs (Red is bad yo.)
- You’re comfortable with performing your DPS rotation while constantly moving.
- You don’t have double tap to dash activated and instead have it bound to a different key.
- It’s hard to give an exact statistical figure for tanks. Try and get as much crafted gear and gear from Veteran Adventures as you can.
- Generally you want to aim for at least 30,000 health.
- You want to be confident you have the ability to hold agro against strong DPS.
- Interrupts. You want to roll with as many as you can manage. The more successful interrupts you can pull off, the less damage you’ll take.
- Just because your the tank doesnt’ mean you can stand in hostile telegraphs. Your general job as a tank is to hold agro and avoid as much damage as you can.
- Kiting mobs, learn how to do it. As a fresh tank there will be certain hard hitting trash packs where if you constantly stand in melee you’re going to take damage that even the best geared healers may struggle to heal through. If you’re dropping low have a tactical plan involving movement abilities, dash rolls and sprinting to kite mobs and avoid all damage while the healer tops you up.
- You don’t have double tap to dash activated and instead have it bound to a different key.
- You want to be confident you can heal your entire group up through heavy and sometimes unpredictable damage.
- You need to be aware of what all your abilities do when tiered up (This is because you will need to regularly change your Limited Action Set to counter the damage of the fight or scenario your group is facing. E.G Some encounters require very little AOE healing and lots of tank healing whereas others may have a heavy AOE healing requirement with little tank healing).
- You need to have good management of your focus.
- A good healer will also be rolling with 1-3 interrupts.
- A good way to get confidence for healing veteran dungeons is to heal 1x healer and 4x DPS speed runs for veteran adventures.
- You need to be aware that if someone dies, it is not always your fault. There are a lot of ways both the DPS and Tank can really fuck up in veterans.
- You don’t have double tap to dash activated and instead have it bound to a different key.
There are 4 different Veteran Dungeons at Wildstar Endgame:
- Storm Talon’s Lair
- Ruins of Kel Vorath
- Skullcano
- Sanctum of the Sword Maiden
As I mentioned before each boss has at least one challenge! Oooooo, exciting stuff right? These challenges vary from boss to boss. Each boss challenges which you can find more information about on your quest log when you’re near the boss.
Challenges involve stuff like causing X mechanic to hit Y mob, avoiding AOE, avoiding Tornadoes and tons of additional fun stuff that actually is quite the challenge.
Completing challenges rewards an additional drop from the challenge loot pool in that dungeon. This means that completing challenges rewards you with an additional piece of blue or epic gear.
Since dungeons in Wildstar don’t have a daily lockout you can actually farm the first boss challenge in each dungeon are for challenge loot from that dungeon. Bosses you can farm for challenge loot are Bladewind the Invoker, Grond the Corpsemaker, Stew-Shaman Tugga and Deadringer Shalloas. Further information on challenges can be found below.
6.2 - Stormtalon’s Lair
In our experience this is by far the easiest Veteran dungeon as a whole, still tho, keep in mind this is WILDSTAR, so keep in mind it’s still bloody challenging. The first two bosses should be able to be taken down in 1-10 pulls by most groups, but the real challenge from this dungeon comes from Stormtalon who will probably take a few hours progression on to land your first kill.
Silver requirements
- Complete the dungeon within 30 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete the dungeon within 30 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete all challenges
- No player deaths
- Bladewind the Invoker – Defeat Blade-Wind the Invoker after causing every one of his Lightning Strikes in phase 2 to strike a Thundercall Channeler
- Aetheros I - Allow no member of your group of party to get hit by a tornado
- Aethros II - Defeat Aethros without letting any Gusts of Aethros survive for more than 15 seconds
- Stormtalon – Successfully avoid all lightning strikes – Sidenote: This one is a tad RNG at the moment as it is possible he can stun you while casting lightning strikes.
6.3 - Kel Voreth
Link to the official Veteran Kel Voreth Guide: http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/blog/wildstar-veteran-kel-voreth-guide/
Kel Voreth is the second dungeon suggested on the list of progression. The first and last boss and last bosses are fairly easy and straightforward and should only take 1-10 attempts to get a kill, however the real challenge of this dungeon comes from the second boss. The second boss has some very harsh DPS, avoidance and healing checks that a lot of groups progressing through veterans will struggle to pull off. Once you master the second boss however, getting a silver run for the attunement is pretty damn easy.
Silver requirements
- Complete the dungeon within 40 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete the dungeon within 40 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete all challenges
- No player deaths
- Grond The Corpsemaker – Defeat Grond the Corpsemaker without anyone in your party being caught in a bone trap
- Slavemaster Drokk - Defeat Slavemaster Drokk without anyone being hit by Homing Barrage
- Forgemaster Trogun - Defeat Forgemaster Trogun without having him gain any stacks of Essence of Primal Fire
6.4 - Skullcano
The official Veteran Skullcano guide can be found here: http://www.manoflegends.com/admin/blog/skullcano-veteran-guide/
Skullcano is the third dungeon suggested on the list of progression. The first boss is a complete pushover, the second boss presents a mild challenge and the final boss is a real test on your groups ability to dodge multiple lazer beams, avoid lava pools, press the spacebar and also turn away from the center of the room to avoid getting blinded. Skullcano is one of my favourite dungeons by far, bar the masses of trash surrounding the second two bosses the design is absolutely incredible, you’ll find yourself navigating through tiki villages and assault courses of lava waves, beams, spouts and jets to reach the top of the ‘skullcano’.
Requirements for Silver
- Complete the dungeon within 45 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete the dungeon within 45 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete all challenges
- No player deaths
- Stew-Shaman Tugga - Defeat Stew-Shaman Tugga on Veteran difficulty without allowing him to eat any meat from his stew
- Thunderfoot - Defeat Thunderfoot without him destroying any mushrooms
- Bosun Octog – Defeat Bosun Octog when he has at least 10 stacks of Broken Armor
- Mordechai Redmoon - Defeat Mordechai Redmoon without anyone in your party being blinded while blinding Mordechai each time the terraformer overloads
6.5 - Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden
This is the final dungeon on the suggest path of progression. The speed clear time for this is 75 minutes. 75 minutes. That’s almost 4 episodes of Arrested Development. Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden is an absolute mammoth of a dungeon on Veteran and will put your group to the test.
Requirements for Silver
- Complete the dungeon within 75 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete the dungeon within 75 minutes
- Complete all optional quests
- Complete all challenges
- No player deaths
- Deadringer Shalloas – Defeat Deadringer Shallaos without your party gaining a total of 25 or more stacks of Resonance
- Rayna Darkspeaker – Defeat Rayna Darkspeaker without anyone in your party getting hit by any Molten Waves
- Ondu Lifeweaver - Defeat Ondu Lifeweaver without anyone in your party taking damage from the first pulse of Plague Splatter
- Moldwood Overlord Skash - Defeat Moldwood Overlord Skash without anyone in your party being hit by a Corruption Heartseeker
- Spiritmother Selene – Defeat Spiritmother Selene the Corrupted after interrupting or killing at least one Darkness Effigy during each “Lights Out!”
7 - Raid Attunement
Before moving onto talking about 20 man and 40 man raiding, let’s take a moment to talk about Raid Attunement. Before you can access Genetic Archives (20 man) or Datascape (40 man) EVERYONE in your group needs to have completed the appropriate attunement quests. Which are initially started if your capital city, this attunement quest line is as follows:
- Once you reach max level you will be contacted on your communicator and given an initial quest to seek out an NPC in your capital city
- Acquire 150 Elder Gems and use these to purchase the Genesis Key
- Kill elemental mini-boss in Wilderun (Can easily be solo’ed – Bring healing potions)
- Become Beloved with either the Exiles or Dominion (Depending on your faction) – 32k rep needed for Beloved. (Quickest way to cap this from experience is spamming Veteran War of the Wilds. You can also gain faction rep by going back and doing quests in your factions low level zones you didn’t initially pass through)
- Complete the ‘Arkship Heist’ quest in your capital city, this involves puzzles, stealth and some combat. (Can easily be solo’ed)
- Obtain a silver medal or higher in EVERY Veteran Adventure
- Complete the quest ‘Mech-assault’ in Farside (Can easily be solo’ed)
- Obtain a silver medal or higher in EVERY Veteran Dungeon
- Complete the quest ‘Slugging it out’
- Complete the quest ‘Flight of Fancy’
- Kill 12 of the 18 Worldbosses in Nexus (You CANNOT kill the same boss more the once)
- Complete the quest ‘Over the gorge’ which involves killing an additional boss in Veteran Kel Voreth
[Congratulations you are attuned for Genetic Archives] - Defeat the Dreadphage Ohmna (Last boss in Genetic Archives)
- Gather 300 Partial Primal Patterns from Dungeons, Adventures, and Genetic Archives
[Congratulations you are attuned for Datascape]
8 - Raiding (20 Man)
8.1 - Genetic Archives (20 Man)
Genetic Archives is the easier of the two endgame raids, it holds host to a total of 6 bosses and 9 mini-bosses. Bosses drop 3 pieces of epic loot and are often much harder whereas mini-bosses drop 1 piece of epic loot and are much easier. Genetic Archive is split into two floors, the second floor is not accessible until both bosses on the first floor have been defeated.
I’ve listed the bosses and mini-bosses below in a suggested progression order. At the moment only various kill videos are available as a resource for tactics. We are currently working on written raid guides that will be released in the coming weeks!
First Floor
Mini-bosses [Available Immediately]
- Genetic Monstrosity
- Hideously Malformed Mutant
- Gravitron Operator
Bosses [Available immediately]
- Experiment X-89
-
- Kuralak The Defiler
-
Mini-boss [Available once both bosses are dead]
- Fetid Miscreation
-
Second Floor [Available once the Fetid Miscreation has been defeated]
Mini-bosses
- Phagetech Guardian – (two of them)
-
Bosses [Once defeated, each Phagetech Guardian opens a hallway to one of these]
- Phagetech Prototypes
-
- Phage Maw
-
Boss [To access this next boss both previous bosses must be defeated]
- Phageborn Convergence
-
Mini-bosses [unlocked once the Phageborn convergence has been defeated]
- Malfunctioning Gear
-
- Malfunctioning Dynamo
-
- Malfunctioning Piston
- Malfunctioning Battery
-
Final boss [Unlocked once all of the Malfunctioning minibosses have been defeated]
- Dreadphage Ohmna
-
8.2 - Datascape (40 Man)
INFO COMING SOON-ISH (check link at top for updates)
Special thanks to all our guest contributors and fact correctors that have helped contribute and clean up this guide:
Zulunko
Repsoll
Mekabar
Kambhela
Spike3607
Deggor
Tehscat
9 - Changelog
11/07/2014:
- Added in sections regarding Addons, Northern Wastes, Crafting at Endgame and Crafted Gear.
- Rewrote a variety of sections to make them easier to read
- Added in YouTube links for the majority of bosses in Genetic Archives
- Corrected and expanded on the Raid Attunement section
- Added in Veteran Dungeon Challenge information
- Added a small tidbit about challenge farming
- Added information about our lord and savior Elemental Life Drain
- Links to Veteran Skullcano and Veteran Kel Voreth Guides
- Corrected a bit of misinformation around Malgrave Trail
- Added in link to Dulfys Northern Wastes Rep Equipment Guide
- Added in a section about Blighthaven daily quests (Thanks u/Spike3607 for the assistance!)
- Corrected Adventure medal requirements (Thanks u/Deggor)
- Corrected some really shitty spelling. Spell check is a miracle worker.
- Updated the Veteran Medal System section to reflect recent changes
- AMP and Ability point world drop rates have been increased. Still need more information on there drop rates to expand the Elder Gem spending advice section.
- Added in a section entitled ‘How do I know if I’m ready for veteran dungeons?’, it’s pretty damn awesome.
- Expanded on the endgame crafted gear section to detail the value of rune sockets and how crafting level 49 gear can save you some cashmoney.
