The Darkspur Cartel seeks out profit anywhere it can find it, and that includes benefiting from the conflict between the Dominion and the Exiles. While the Krogg claim to be a neutral party with no preference for either faction, they nonetheless seek to prolong the war for as long as they’re able to. By offering military goods—which are often stolen from Dominion logistics depots or Exile supply drops—at a steep discount, the Cartel continues to line its own pockets at the expense of others. The Dominion and Exiles are so blinded by their hatred for one another that they hardly notice as the predatory Krogg observe their battles from the shadows.


The Battle Chase runs from 10am PST January 6 until 10am PST January 16, and during that time the Krogg are rewarding anyone that steps foot into a Battleground. Go toe-to-toe with the enemy and (win or lose) you’ll earn Battle Bits—a tradable event currency. You’ll get more Battle Bits for a win, of course, and once you’ve saved up enough Battle Bits you’ll want to visit Arnie “The Exchanger” Vandragg in Conqueror’s Square in Illium, or Champion’s Corner in Thayd. Arnie will exchange your Battle Bits for Krogg Kash, which you can then use at the guy next to him—Sly “The Collector” Lundggor—to purchase Battle Chase rewards like housing décor.






In addition to completing Battlegrounds and collecting Battle Bits, there are also Battle Chase Crates, which is where all the best rewards come from. You can go straight to the In-Game Store and purchase Battle Chase Crates for Protobucks or OmniBits (a free in-game currency earned alongside XP), or you can even buy Krogg Kash directly for use at Sly’s store, but you can also earn Mini-Crates just by completing a Battleground. At the end of a match you’ll have a chance to earn a Mini-Crate, which has a subset of the larger purchasable crates, but still has a chance to drop the Exile- and Dominion-themed hoverboards.




There are two In-Game Store Battle Chase Crates to purchase directly, and they offer either Exile- or Dominion-themed items inside. They’ll be available for purchase during the following times:


January 6–9 & January 12–16


January 9–16


Good lucking chasing the battle, and don’t forget that you can now queue for multiple types of content at the same time. Have fun and see you on the battlefield!

The Entity is far from defeated, and the fate of Nexus teeters upon a razor’s edge. Growing ever weaker in her struggle against her eternal foe, Drusera has reached out to the heroes of Nexus, inviting them to expand their power and unlock the potential of their own Primal Matrix. In doing so, she strives to fortify the forces arrayed against the Entity and his minions before her own strength fades. Could this be the key to securing a lasting victory against the enemy? Drusera certainly seems to think so, but only time will tell...

Power of the Primal Matrix is a massive update coming to WildStar next month, and introduces engaging, high-end content, as well as a variety of incredible new systems focused at end-game players.


The Primal Matrix system unlocks the latent power in every hero on Nexus, allowing for additional character progression beyond level 50. Through Drusera you’ll be able to further increase your power by way of Primal Essence—an element that’s collected in and spent through the Primal Matrix interface—allowing you to customize and unlock your newfound potential, including new class abilities.



Primal Essence is collected by engaging in a wide variety of content, including instanced PvE, PvP, Daily Quests, Contracts, and throughout the world itself. A new reward system will provide Primal Essence collection bonuses on an ever-changing rotation of content, and a personal loot system will help reduce loot distribution woes for these highlight sought-after elements. There are four different types of Primal Essence you’ll collect, and as you progress through the Primal Matrix system, some amount of each Essence will be required to unlock each node. While only earned at level 50, Primal Essences are a region-wide material stored in the Primal Matrix UI, which allows you to play all of your characters however you want, and continue to make progress through the Primal Matrix for each and every one of your 50s. And our Signature members, along with all of their other great benefits, will receive a significant bonus when collecting Essences.

As you collect Primal Essence and progress through the Primal Matrix, you’ll gain additional power in the form of ability points, new abilities, and stat increases, some of which will provide bonuses for the three new character stats also being added to WildStar: Toughness, Tenacity, and Hope. And as your Primal Matrix nodes are unlocked, you’ll increase your Heroism rating—a trackable number that allows you to easily gauge your relative power increases post-level 50.

Obviously, this is a massive new system and we’re just scratching the surface here. But don’t worry! We’ll have a more in-depth overview in the coming weeks.


You’ve collected Primal Essence, you’ve unlocked new-found power through the Primal Matrix system, and now it’s time to put it to the test. Along with two new pieces of instanced content (detailed below) also arriving with Power of the Primal Matrix, we’re introducing a new difficulty scaling feature for an initial selection of our classic PvE content (with more coming in the future).

When queueing for a supported Expedition or dungeon at level 50 you’ll have the option to set a Prime difficulty level for the instance. Prime levels will offer greater challenges from enemies, and increased rewards with item drops that scale relative to the difficulty of the instance. Prime 0 replaces the Veteran dungeon setting, and the difficulty levels scale up from there.
Prime difficulty scaling will initially be featured in two classic dungeons (Ruins of Kel Voreth and Stormtalon’s Lair), two classic Expeditions (They Came from Fragment Zero and The Gauntlet), and in two new pieces of content arriving with Power of the Primal Matrix: Coldblood Citadel and Evil from the Ether.

Content scaling goes the other way too. All normal pre-50 instances will scale enemy levels to the group’s lowest character’s level, and then reduce everyone in the group to that level as well. This allows high level characters to help out new low-level WildStar friends and guildmates—and these instances also feature scaling items that will make it worth their while.


Harizog Coldblood, warlord and the leader of the Osun in the north, has been killed while defending the Vault of the Archon. Though many other Osun met a similar fate alongside their master, many more survived and were left within the confines of the Fortress of Kel Havik to brood and plan their revenge against the offworlders. They have left the Hall of the Hundred behind, moving instead to their warlord’s ancient holdfast—Coldblood Citadel.




In this new scalable 5-player Prime dungeon, you’ll be called upon to strike at the very heart of the Osun plot.


The Mordesh lost contact with the transport ship Zarkhov's Shade not long after it left Grismara. Now, its derelict husk has drifted close enough to Nexus for an enterprising business-Ekose, like Captain Weir, to dock with it and see what remains that might be worth taking… though it might be more than he bargained for.




Set off on this new 1–5 player scalable Prime Expedition, and discover what dark secrets this derelict ship holds.


This is just an overview of the larger systems and content coming with the next update, and we’ll have a few in-depth previews to go into them even more. The Power of the Primal Matrix update will also be available for testing on the PTR next week, so jump in, help us test, and get an early look at the changes.

For a limited-time Protostar will match your experience point for point, which means you earn twice the XP every time you earn XP during this special event. The XP X-Plosion runs from December 23 at 2am PST until 11:59pm PST on December 26.

Keep in mind that the double XP from this Double XP X-Plosion! event stacks with the bonuses from Signature, and Signature offers a ton of other great benefits too—including new monthly login rewards!

We recommend maximizing Protostar’s very generous Double XP X-Plosion! by tackling adventures, expeditions, and dungeons, which you can queue for by using the Content Finder (N). Already level 50? During the event you can earn Elder Gems twice as fast to purchase items like Ability or AMP points. When you hit the weekly cap of 350 Elder Gems, your XP is converted to gold. It’s a good time to make good use of your time!


Don’t have any WildStar characters yet? The Double XP X-Plosion! event is the perfect time to start, and it’s completely free!

Just in time for the holiday season, you can bring a variety of interesting shades to your home away from home! The recent release of the 1.6.4 game update brought with it the ability to color shift all sorts of housing décor, giving you an array of new customization options.



If you haven’t checked it out yet, we’ve captured some festive images to demonstrate just a few ways this feature can be harnessed. Whether you’re looking to enhance the holiday decorations around your cozy hearth indoors, or add a bit more depth to your winter wonderland outside, the color-shift options are easy to use and positively fun for the whole family!





It’s worth noting that we’re currently tracking a bug with color shifting in which some NPC décor isn’t displaying color shift consistently, whether the selected colors aren’t showing up or are only being applied to a portion of the NPC. We’ll be applying a fix for this in a future game update.


Also available as of 1.6.4 is the oft-requested account-wide dyes feature. Any dye that any characters on your account have already unlocked has been retroactively unlocked for all your characters on your account. Of course this means any new dyes acquired and learned going forward will now unlock for the entire account as well.

With both of these features the power of color is in your hands!

“Papa” Phineas T. Rotostar welcomes you to the most magical time of the year! A time when we huddle together in front of the hyperfurnace with the ones we love, and then valuate that love by estimating the costs of the gifts we’ve purchased for each other. It’s consumerism at its best, and it’s also when the incredible, jaw-dropping, amazing deals begin to appear from the Protostar Corporation.

That’s right. It’s Protostar’s Gala Winterfest Extravaganza!

From 10am December 18 to 10am January 1 you’re invited to the corporate-sponsored, consumer-driven holiday that celebrates the most profitable of seasons. Protostar knows the value of a good marketing budget, and has gussied both capital cities up in full Winterfest trappings. These winter cash grabs wonderlands are centralized in the Parade Grounds in Illium and the Shindig Hollow in Thayd. But the centerpiece of the action is Protostar's SuperMall-in-the-Sky!






In the time-honored traditions of consumer acquisition and retention, the Protostar Corporation is looking to reward YOU with limited-time ColdCash for helping them out around the holidays. What can ColdCash get you? Amazing Winterfest stuff, that's what!





New for 2016!

In addition to all the great, just absolutely great, tremendous deals you’re going to get with your ColdCash, this year we also have a great selection of items now purchasable with your holiday currency!

• Proto-Present Turret
  
• Orbitron (Snow-Sphere)
  
• Sky Remodel: Brought to You By…

Reminder: You can earn extra ColdCash with Signature, and it stacks with the currency-boosting Flask of Festivity—available from the In-Game Store during holidays. You’ll want to squeeze every nog-flavored drop out of your Winterfest time if you want to snag this year’s new items.


The centerpiece of Winterfest is the majestic, duty-free, majestic, profit-oriented, majestic, and gravity-defying Protostar SuperMall-in-the-Sky. Take a leisurely ride up for a shopping spree you’ll not soon forget—and might not see again! Because all the fun and consumerism and fun might kill you, but also because gravity is a tricky mistress and who knows how long that thing can stay up there?




If Winterfest is about anything, it’s about the joy of handing over money for stuff you need (or at least want a whole lot): toys, mounts, housing décor, costumes, and more! While most items sold by Protostar either come directly from the festivities—or purchased with ColdCash you earn from those festivities—new and time-limited exclusives are also available from the In-Game Store for Protobucks or OmniBits (a free in-game currency earned alongside XP).

Peruse the greatest shopping catalogs ever created, let the spirit of the holiday take hold, and spend, spend, spend! For the full rundown on all that Winterfest has to offer, be sure to check out our website.

While Winterfest celebrates the purchasing-spirit of the season, you don’t have to spend a dime to experience it. Don’t get left out in the cold, start playing WildStar today for free!



Protostar Corporation Disclaimer

The Protostar Corporation is not legally responsible for injuries received in the SuperMall, holiday-induced splorg seizures, your imminent bankruptcy, the near-certainty of artificial snowflake ingestion, or any and all across-the-board real-time variations in market value for goods and services. Also, "Clone Flu" is not a thing so stop saying it is.

Madame Fay’s Winterfest Fortunes are here, and they’re packed with holiday-themed goodies! She’s managed to wrangle a number of holiday-themed items, and in her infinite wisdom has crammed them into tiny capsules. Each capsule you open contains a random chance at her latest offerings (including mounts, décor, currencies, and consumables), and as you open more you’ll fill up Madame Fay’s carrot meter. Once it’s full you’re guaranteed an item of purple quality of better in your next Fortune! It’s the only guarantee in the universe signified by a giant magic-filled carrot (as far as we’re aware).


The fabulous, amazing, incredibly wonderful Ho Ho Ho Mobile mounts are the talk of Nexus. Gawk at its delicate gold plating. Be puzzled by the mounted animal head, and if it’s still alive, does it ever wonder what the heck nog is (?). Admire the jolly yet menacing carvings of skull-faced revelers that add a touch of the sinister to the celebratory. And, last but not least, imagine yourself sitting atop its glistening seat, riding it across Nexus to eternal glory.



*The Ho Ho Ho Mobile mount variations in the Madame Fay Fortunes will be rotating approximately every few weeks; beginning with the green and gold versions, followed by blue and gold, and then all color variants will be available until the next Fortune inventory refresh. We’ll be providing updates on our @WildStar Twitter for when these rotations occur.

After collecting both non-gold variants, you can purchase a Ho Ho Ho Mobile Gilding Catalyst for 1 gold from the Madame Fay Far-Traders (found in Illium and Thayd) to consume the mounts and spit out the gold version. It’s important to note that when turning in the color variants for the gold version, the unclaimed mount items must be in your inventory. If the mounts are claimed by a character to be used, they cannot then also be used to create the gold version. Of course keep in mind there is a rare chance to win the gold version directly from a Fortune, and it isn’t on a rotating schedule like the other variants.


Ok, sure, there’s other stuff besides the Ho Ho Ho Mobile too, of course. Let’s see some of ‘em!




Fortune Coins are purchased directly from the In-Game Store, and can be redeemed for Madame Fay’s Fortunes (accessed through the golden carrot icon), which can include a wide variety of items, décor, mounts, currencies, and consumables. Hit your ‘N’ key inside WildStar to bring up the In-Game Store.

Hey everyone, Pappy here!

It’s been a little while since my last update, so I figured it was about to time to reach out again, take a look back at 2016, and provide some teasers for what’s coming up next for WildStar.

First and foremost, let’s talk about Redmoon Mutiny—the second phase of WildStar’s latest raid, Redmoon Terror. It was released November 16, and I’ve had a great time watching our raiders jump in and go toe-to-toe with some of our most memorable and challenging bosses to-date. I’d like to give a big shout-out to Raid Designer Tyler Fuchs (CRB_Tyrius) and the rest of the WildStar team for delivering such a great experience, and another big shout to Codex for their world-first kill on Laveka the Dark-Hearted. Since then, we’ve had a number of guilds clear the raid, with many more in-progress. I also think that it’s important to note that we just recently dropped the faction barrier when creating groups for instanced content (including raids), as well as for social systems like circles and housing—allowing all of you to play together regardless of whether you’re an Exile fighting for your new home, or defending your galactic legacy as a proud Dominion citizen. Along with these tasty morsels, we’ve also enjoyed the spooky celebrations of this year’s Shade’s Eve, the dangerous delights of another Dungeon Chase, and the exciting exploits of this past weekend’s Double XP X-Plosion—and in just a few weeks we’ll all be enjoying the capitalist kookiness of Protostar’s Gala Winterfest Extravaganza once again!

Looking back, it’s been a pretty big year for WildStar. Since January, we’ve released Destination Arcterra, continued our World Story in Vault of the Archon, streamlined our tutorial experience, successfully launched WildStar on Steam, given our players new and exciting character features with Heroes Evolved, released a brand new raid with Redmoon Terror, and then finished it with the recent release of Redmoon Mutiny. We also started our DevConnect series back in March, which has resulted in some great discussions among our passionate community members, and brought a number of big improvements to the game—including the faction barrier changes, additional race/class combinations, and enhancements to make WildStar more alt-friendly. All of these changes and additions have been focused on two things: continuing to provide our players with new and exciting adventures on Nexus, and making WildStar more fun, friendly, and accessible to everyone. We’ve made some great strides this year on both fronts, but we have a lot more in store for the future.

Over the last year, the WildStar team has been asking some important questions about our game and the direction that we want to take it. What is the best way to provide our players with compelling and meaningful character progression? Do our players feel adequately (and appropriately) rewarded for the time they spend in our game? What new experiences should we create, and how can we give continued relevance to all of our existing content? With these questions in mind, the team has been working on a number of exciting features for WildStar, along with some brand new content that will take players to exciting (and dangerous) places, both on and off planet Nexus. We’re looking forward to sharing more with you in the next few weeks—so stay tuned!

As always, I want to give a huge thank you to the WildStar community! As I said before, we’ve had a big year, and it’s because of you that WildStar only continues to get better and better.

See you all on Nexus!

Pappy

An unnaturally-vibrant array of Gummilynx mounts are now available on the In-Game Store! These floating, gelatinous creatures would be right at home in a gingerbread house, or maybe a housing plot movie theater. The Rapple color is unique to our Signature members as a special limited time preview, but the other Bingberry, Concord, and Loppfruit variations are available for everyone—and (while we don’t condone taking bites of your Gummilynx) will inevitably get caught in your teeth.




You’ve come to know and love the seasonal topiary décor bundles, but everyone knows the winter version is the only one that matters. You’ve painstakingly turned your housing plot into a snow-covered hotel, gone to great lengths to model its elevator full of blood, and taken a shine to its important ballroom bar and food storage lockers, but now—today—you can finally recreate those final terrifying scenes in a frigid topiary maze. You’re welcome, universe.

• Launch the game
  
• Click on the Phineas icon on the bottom left, or press the letter “U” on your keyboard

Most everything on the store can be purchased using either OmniBits (a free currency earned in-game alongside XP) or Protobucks, so get your Protostar-approved items today!


All this icing looking pretty sweet? Then dive in today and get yourself a galaxy-sized slice of WildStar cake—no subscription required.

Put on your game faces people. It's time to be a player versus other players! “Power, Prestige, and PvP!” is a limited-time bonus event that doubles the rate you earn Prestige. Which isn’t, like it may sound, indicative of your recognition among the local monocle-laden nobility—no, in WildStar Prestige is PvP currency.

From December 9 at 2am PST until 11:59pm PST on December 12, you’ll earn Prestige twice as fast.

You can queue for Battlegrounds starting at level 6 through the Content Finder (press the N key), or you can start an Arena team for practice or ranked matches, which begin at level 30 and 50 respectively. You can even take party in the most dangerous game of all: world PvP. Keep in mind that full social leadership options (such as the ability to invite others to social groups, like Guilds or Arena teams) require Signature status, or reaching the 1,600 Cosmic Point reward.

Be sure to keep an eye on your Prestige—it caps at 12,000 points until you spend some. Visit the vendor regularly in Thayd (for Exiles) or Illium (if you're with the Dominion) to spend your Prestige regularly and wisely, and you can keep dominating the unlucky chuckleheads that made the mistake of going toe-to-toe with you.

See you on the Nexus battlefield!

In this latest edition of the series we’re shining a spotlight on Australian guild The Timeless. Whenever they’re not engaging IRL “drop bears” in hand-to-hand combat, these lovable lads and lasses can be found blasting their way through Redmoon Terror at times nearly 20 hours ahead of us Carbine folks on the U.S. west coast. For this reason we consider The Timeless to literally be a guild of the future, and therefore popped down under for a chat with their guild leader, Drenaka.


Tell us a little bit about the formation and foundation of The Timeless.

The Timeless is an Australian/Oceanic time zone guild on Exile Entity (U.S.) currently focused on progression raiding in Redmoon Terror. We started out when the game launched as a group of friends mostly on the east coast of Australia—and some late-night Americans coming from other games looking to try WildStar—and quickly grew with players doing housing, dungeons, and eventually raids. During this time we gained more players from Australia and New Zealand, and so started considering ourselves an Australian/Oceanic guild and suited our activities around the GMT+10 time zone.

When did you first start actively raiding in WildStar and what drew you into the game’s raid scene?

The Timeless started forming our raid team around September 2014. Initially our team was small and changed frequently, until we found a good mix of classes. The primary drive for the group of current players is the engaging and challenging content that WildStar provides, and the unparalleled combat system.

Another drive for us is we like proving people wrong that tell us "You can't do that." :) When we started there was an idea in the community that if you weren't in America, you wouldn't be able to do the endgame content because of latency, and we wanted to show that this game could be fully enjoyed no matter where in the world you resided!

As guild leader, how do you go about keeping members happy, choosing officers, maintaining a raid schedule/roster, making steady progress on boss encounters, and everything else that comes with the title?

Our guild has a wide variety of play styles and balancing those does sometimes cause disagreements; but thankfully our members understand that we are a small community and need to work together so we don't have too many disputes. In officers, we look for people who are interested in helping out, but it's more of a formality as most of our discussions are held in the open with contributions from all. Our raid schedule has been fairly fixed over our history, and our roster has been primarily made up of a strong core with several helpers that we call on when needed. Amongst our core, some of our members participate in other raids and bring that experience to us to work into our strategies, which usually have to be adjusted from the “meta” to factor in our higher latency. Previously we have used spreadsheets to manage fights and rosters, but have recently been moving away from them as we found them to be excessive to maintain for our style. :)

What is your most memorable boss kill and why?

Our most memorable boss kill would almost certainly be Avatus. It was a long road with many challenges and struggles along the way, and so when it finally died the joy in voice channels was immense—that a pink dropped on our first kill was the super fancy icing on the already-amazing cake!

What do you think of Redmoon Terror so far and what boss are you currently working on?

We’re currently working on Engineers and have been very close to downing them in our last few attempts, and should be getting that kill very soon. In general, Redmoon Terror has been fun for us. As the content is quite fresh with new mechanics that have not been seen before, it's been highly engaging for a lot of our older members, especially with the focus on more individual responsibility.

Editor’s Note: Following this interview, The Timeless took down Engineers on Monday, November 28. Congrats!

Do you consider your guild to be tight-knit friends and family, or did you all largely meet in the game?

Most of us met each other for the first time in-game. Some members have been friends from other games or joined together as real-life friends (or family in some cases!). Over time we’ve grown close and even play other games together during downtimes or off-raid nights. Recently we used PAX Australia as a reason to hold a guild meetup for past and present guild members, which resulted in people flying in from all over the country to attend!

Do you accept new members often (including casual players and non-raiders)? If so, what do you look for in candidates and how can one apply to become a member?

We are always accepting of new people who are friendly and keen to become part of the community. While our focus is on raiding, we do have several people who do housing and other non-raid PvE and some PvP content, so are very open in who we accept.

For raiders, we look for people who are willing to learn and can make our times, which are based around the GMT+10 time zone. We prefer people who choose classes they are comfortable with, while also filling any gaps we see occurring in encounters. If you wish to join us you can contact any of our members, or use our google form linked on the official WildStar website.

Finally, for the sake of being thorough, do you accept members from locales outside Oceania?

While a large amount of our guild is Australian, we accept members from around the globe, and have people from Southeast Asia, America, and Europe raiding regularly with us. We like to keep our Mates Per Second high, and will suitably warn you of the dangers of drop bears and other important Australian facts. ;)

Thank you for your time and good luck on Engineers, Mordechai, and the challenges that await The Timeless in Redmoon Mutiny. Cheerio, mates!


If you’re a guild leader interested in having the spotlight shone on your guild next, visit our official forums for more info on how to apply.