Preparing for Wildstar Online

So you want to play Wildstar? Me too. Since I’ve gotten some beta time and some other steps out-of-the-way, I wanted to share a few steps in what any new Wildstar player should do. I’ll cover race, faction, class, addons, and servers. If you’re not fully prepared – read this post!

Step 1: Pre-order the game. If you’re going to get it anyway, you may as well buy it sooner to get some cool perks.

• Exclusive Rocket House
• Exclusive Housing Trophy
• Exclusive In-Game Title: “Chosen of the Progenitors”
• Access to Beta Weekends (there’s also some weekday betas going on that you can still partake in as of the time of this writing)
• 3 Day Head Start
• In-game Storage Bag

Step 2: Faction, race, class. Who do you want to be, what do you want to be, and how do you want to look while doing it?

1. Faction: Exiles – The rebels. The freedom fighters. The underdogs. The exiles wanted a place to live in peace and do their thing. Or you could choose the Dominion. As the name implies they want to dominate. And I don’t mean leather – they want nothing but total, uninterrupted control of the universe.
2. Race: At this point there are no racial bonuses so this is purely a cosmetic choice.
   Exile

   •  Human – Standard Human
   •  Granok – Big rock creatures
   •  Aurin – Cute bunny people
   •  Mordesh – Space zombies
   Dominion

   •  Cassian – The other humans
   •  Draken – Creepy monster things
   •  Mechari – Cool robot things
   •  Chua – Little people bunnies. Yes, there’s a difference.
3. Class:
   • Warrior – Melee dps/tank. Heavy armor, cleave damage, overall beastliness.
   • Spellslinger – Ranged DPS/healer. Light armor, high mobility, “space cowboy”.
   • Medic – Range DPS/healer. Medium armor and way more punch than you’d expect from a “medic”.
   • Stalker – Melee DPS/Tank. Medium armor, stealthy, sneaky, stabby… you know.
   • Esper – Ranged DPS/healer. Light Armor, low mobility but high damage. Lots of channeled casts that hurt a lot.
   • Engineer – Ranged DPS/Tank. That’s right’s right, a ranged tank. Heavy armor and pets. It’s a diverse class.

Step 3: Find your server. Here’s the official server list. The biggest choices here are PVE, PVP or RP. Though, if you have any latency concerns, looking up server locations may be another thing you’d want to do.

Step 4: Get some addons: These mods will help boost your game play experience, productivity and general awesomeness.

Amppurchased – Shows you, in the amp selection screen, where to get missing amps.

Auramastery – Cooldown display with audible and visual notifications.

Better Chat Log – Makes the chat a little more clear.

BetterWho – The /who command has a cleaner display.

BijiPlates – Customizable nameplate addon.

CheatSimon – While I actually enjoy these games, this shows the key sequence for the “Simon Says” memory puzzles.

CommodityStats – Like auctioneer from WoW. Helps track economy trends.

Iconloot – Has an on-screen display of more important looted items.

Junkit – Automatically sells junk and repairs.

MailHelper– Additional mailbox features including mass collection.

Potatoui – Incredibly customizable UI mod.

RestXPReminder – Adds a reminder when you log out to do it at your house.

Scrappy – Sortable scavenging menu.

TheZone – Important mod for world pvp – it shows who else, including enemies, is in the zone with you.

ThreatMeter – Important for dungeons/raids to ensure that you aren’t pulling threat off of your tank.

CurrencyCount – Shows all of your currencies, not just gold.

DetailedExperienceText – Xp per session, per hour, totals and more stats regarding .experience.

GalaxyMeter – It’s a DPS meter, pretty standard.

Hephaestus – Bulk crafting addon.