Well, here you are. You’ve blasted, shredded and zapped your way through the legendary planet of Nexus. You have some inkling of what the Eldan were and what happened to them. You’ve quested and dungeoneered. And now you’re finally Level 50. So… now what? Well, head back to your faction’s capital city, because there’s much to do and we have a lot to talk about. Ready to become a legendary bad ass? Let’s start from the bottom.

Guide Index

01. First Things First

02. Must-Have Addons

03. Available Gear for the Job

04. Level 50 Content Explained

05. The Many Currencies

06. Your Goals at Level 50

First Things First

There is a plethora of content and things to do at Level 50, but there are things you should prioritize, first. Below we go over a number of steps to take before diving into all the new content open to you, in order to get you started on the right foot.

A Call to Action: The Flood of Quests

One of the first things that happens as soon as you hit Level 50 in WildStar is a sudden wave of incoming calls. Because of this, it’s not a bad idea to abandon what existing quests you have that you don’t care about. You can always go back and pick up your pre-50 quests later on. A lot of end game content has been added over the last three years, and the majority of it was designed to give freshly Level 50 characters more options and faster ways to catch up to veteran players.

In other words, expect a lot of people calling you and asking you to go here or there. Some of these calls will be held at bay until you reach your faction’s capital. Go ahead and accept all of these, if you can. Don’t worry about going anywhere quite yet, though. There’s a piece of the end game you want to have unlocked before you dive into anything, and we’ll talk about that next.

Tap into The Primal Matrix

Added in a recent large update, The Primal Matrix is a post-level cap progression system for your characters. If you have another 50 character and have unlocked it before, you know what to do and can skip past most of this information. It’s worth noting that the resources you gather to use in The Primal Matrix – Essences – are account-wide, and so are most of the various Essence Bonuses you can get from running endgame content. However, using Essence on one character does not subtract from another character. If you have 10,000 Crimson Essence on your Stalker and use it, you’ll still have that 10,000 Essence to use on your Spellslinger, and so on.

If you haven’t unlocked The Primal Matrix before, find the ghostly apparition named Drusera in your faction’s capital, who will offer you a new quest.

For Exiles, look for Drusera in the Champion’s Corner on the north-central part of Thayd.

If you’re Dominion, head to Conqueror’s Square in south-central Illium

Once you accept the quest, you’ll need to open the system’s interface. Simply left click the first node to unlock the adjacent nodes and complete the quest. Each node you put a rank in will raise one or more of your character’s stats at the cost of Essence of the node’s color. You’ll gain more Essence to spend in The Primal Matrix by doing almost any endgame activity, which is why it’s important to unlock The Primal Matrix before anything else!

Each point you put into a node increases your Heroism by 25 points, which is a number that makes it easy to track your overall progress in the Matrix. Players look at this number when finding others for really difficult content, because it is a good indicator of your character’s power. You start out with several thousand Crimson Essence to start, and completing the quest will grant you 5,000 Violet Essence.

Note: You may need to add a shortcut to The Primal Matrix interface to your toolbar. Just click the most lower-left button on your interface to pull up the shortcut menu, which is listed alphabetically, then left-click the pin icon to pin it to your shortcut bar.

You now have access to gaining Essence doing much of the content presented in this guide, as well as Essence Bonuses available for doing specified content listed in the Essence Bonus tab of your Content Finder by pressing ‘N’. Each Essence Bonus is on a timer which refreshes with new bonuses when the countdown concludes, and the timer can last from every hour to a few days. For more info on tracking bonus essences, helpful Addons and making the most of your Essence, watch for the upcoming guide to The Primal Matrix!

Find A Proper Build

If you haven’t already found advice or some kind of guide to follow on what abilities to use and how to distribute your AMP Power and Ability Tier Points, now is the best time! While everyone wants to play in their own way, there is no doubt optimal and most effective ways of playing characters in any MMORPG. Much of WildStar’s content is out of date due to so much of the community containing itself to the in-game space. While it’s unfortunate that WildStar doesn’t have the fansite resources available to some other games, there are still resources available and knowing where to look is key.

One of the best places to ask is to simply ask in /n – or “Nexus chat” – in-game. There is usually a general consensus on what to aim for at any point in your character’s progression path.

Alternatively, you can check out the WildStar Subreddit or the WildStar Official Forums and look for information or post your own questions therein!

Beware talent calculators and a lot of out-of-date information you may find by searching on Google. Because of how much outdated information can pop up, it’s almost always advised to simply ask for advice about how to play your class than to trust information that may no longer be correct. Many new players and fresh Level 50 characters find themselves confused because of game changes that have happened since the time of the posting of information they find on Google or defunct fansites.

Weekly Bonus Board

At either Conqueror’s Square in Illium or Champion’s Corner in Thayd, you’ll find a noticeboard called the Weekly Bonus Board that offers several quests. You can pick up one of these quests to complete each week, which reward an important currency called Elder Gems that will be explained later in the guide. Much like unlocking The Primal Matrix, you want to pick this quest up before you venture out to participate in endgame content so that you can be working towards completing this quest along the way. There is also a quest here for Gladiator’s Marks that you can get by winning instanced PvP content and use towards Seasonal costume pieces.

Which Elder Gem Weekly quest should you pick up? If you’re planning to progress mainly through PvP, feel free to pick up the PvP Bonus quest. If you don’t have many friends to run endgame 5-man content with yet, the World Boss Bonus or Questing Bonus are the easiest to complete. World Boss groups are happening all the time to complete objectives or get Essence bonuses, making it easy to complete this by the end of the week. The Questing Bonus is easy to do, as well, if you enjoy doing Daily Quests which you can find in the various Level 50 zones mentioned later in this guide. If you do already have a group of friends that regularly run Expeditions or Dungeons, however, then the Group PvE bonus can be one of the fastest to fulfill!

Remember to check back weekly every Wendesday to pick up a new Weekly Bonus Board quest!

A Need For More (Bag) Space

Depending on how you chose to level your character, you may or may not be hurting for bag space. It’s important to get as much bag space as possible because there is a lot of quick and long content both that drop items of interest, whether it be new gear upgrades, decor, item imbuement items, crafting materials, consumables or other items of interest. Don’t fret – there are a lot of easily accessible bag options available! But first, find the nearest vendor, hit the “Sell Junk” button, then empty your bags as well as you can by vendoring, salvaging or putting items into your bank.

Tip: You can set vendors to automatically sell your junk by clicking the cog icon in the upper-right hand corner of the vendor window and checking that option. Type /reloadui to reload the UI and save your setting afterwards!

Now that you’ve made bag space, you can buy or earn the bags below:

Dungeon Bags – Some bind-on-equip bags drop in the Prime (Level 50) versions of Dungeons that are 16-slot bags each. These are unique which means you can only have one at a time between your character’s inventory and bank slots. Search the Auction House for Dragonscale Sack, Satchel of the Forgotten, Bag of Booty, Trade-Sister’s Satchel or The Cold Case. These can range from anywhere between 25 Gold to 1 Platinum, or may simply drop for you while doing Prime Dungeon content.

Vendor Bags – A few options are available from vendors. One option is the Freeze Pack, which is a non-unique 14-slot bag found on vendors in the Level 50 Zone of Arcterra. We’ll discuss how to get to that zone later in this guide, but keep it in mind! Another option are the unique bags from the Renown Vendor in your Capital. One is a 16-slot bag which costs 2,500 Renown, while the other is a 14-slot bag that costs 2,000 Renown. Renown is earned through being in a party group and doing various group content. You may already have earned enough to purchase these while leveling your character. We’ll discuss Renown and other game currencies later on in this guide.

Other Options – You can also check the Auction House for the 14-slot Mobile Folding Space bag. There are some other options in the game we will not discuss at this point in the guide, as they require a currency best spent on higher priority items.

Abbreviations, You Say?

As with many hobbies and gaming cultures, players over time develop their own language of abbreviations and shorthand codes to refer to things quickly in-game. The table below is a list of some of the more common abbreviations or nicknames you may see in chat in-game, and what they mean or refer to. You, of course, aren’t expected to memorize all of these and it certainly isn’t exhaustive, but hopefully it serves as a handy point of reference!

Must-Have Addons

If you haven’t installed or used any Addons yet, you’re really missing out! WildStar is a game that allows a wide range of useful user-created Addons to upgrade and modify your in-game experience. If you’ve run across any of the “Simon Says” puzzles or times where you had to tap your ‘F’ key at the right moment, you’ll be happy to know there’s an Addon that will do it for you. There’s a plethora of Addons ranging from improved party and raid frames, to interrupt tracking, Essence Bonus tracking, player unit frames, an advanced Player Housing editor UI, damage meters, telegraph color enhancers and many more. While the definition of “must-have” is up for debate, below are some Addons that are extremely useful to you that will only help you enjoy the endgame experience better!

If you need help with how to install Addons, read on below the following list. Remember, this list is not an exhaustive list of what everyone may consider a must-have Addon, but rather useful suggestions

Auto Loot

You’ll be killing enemies in rapid succession in your endgame endeavors, and with all those deaths comes a rain of loot. The default loot system in groups is Need Before Greed, meaning when anything that is Uncommon or better quality pops up, you’ll get a window to select Need or Greed. When in instanced content such as Dungeons and moving at a fast pace, these drops can add up rapidly leaving you many windows to click through. With Auto Loot enabled, you can type /autoloot config to pull up it’s UI and set it to automatically hit Greed on most loot types, and can even specify specific drops and actions for those drops. This is a big time saver and lets you concentrate on the rest of the screen, instead of clicking away drops.

Builder & Gear

You probably know by now that each class has an Assault and Support role. Builder and Gear, as you may have guessed, help you manage your LAS and gear sets. Builder lets you save your current Action Set’s ability and Ability Tier Point distribution, name it, then choose it from a pop up box. You can attach gear sets to each saved LAS that you make so that when you change to your Support LAS, it’ll equip all of your Support gear, and then vice versa with your Assault LAS that you’ve saved. You may wish to create ones just for a movement speed ability that you can change in a moment’s notice, or for a more powerful Interrupt Armor breaker. Gear lets you save not only your gear sets, but also assign costumes, mounts and titles to specific Gear sets, as well.

ChatLinks

This is a pretty self-explanatory Addon. This lets you click on links put into any chat window in the game and then copy it to your clipboard. Many people link each other to guides, LAS builds, spreadsheets and other information on a regular basis. This is a very useful Addon to have. And of course, always be careful with opening links sent by others you do not know!

Combat Meter

A staple of MMORPGs is the damage meter which tells people how well (or bad) they’re doing at their job. You can track healing, interrupts, damage done and many other types of output with this Addon. Just don’t be that guy that tries to report damage done to your party chat after every pack of enemies. Thanks in advance.

DiscoTelegraphs

While you can customize the color of telegraphs in WildStar’s Combat tab under Options, the game is vibrant and colorful and makes it so that one color of telegraph is rarely clearly visible in all environments. DiscoTelegraphs makes all the enemy telegraphs in the game flash in rotating colors, making them extremely noticeable against any background. This is valuable and saves you a lot of time tinkering with these options. Obviously if you’re epileptic this may come with some issues, so consider yourself forewarned!

Interruptor

A simple Addon, Interrupt gives you a bar with a few customization features that shows you your target’s remaining Interrupt Armor and if they’re currently in a MoO. Interrupting enemies is extremely important in WildStar, and especially in the endgame content.

ItemPreviewImproved

WildStar’s default item preview function is surprisingly limited. This addon lets you ctrl+right click items linked in chat that you can’t Equip to preview them. You can also preview items on the Auction House, including Player Housing Decor, Quest Rewards, Schematics and Tech Tree rewards from rafting, Challenge rewards and loot in the Greed Vs Need Roll Window. These are all places you normally cannot preview the item. You can also preview multiple items on a character with this Addon, whereas normally you would not be able to.

LUI Auras

As a newly Level 50 player, this Addon is rather complicated and is simply being listed here to keep in mind for later in your journey.

This is a robust addon that allows you to make visual markers that appear or disappear depending on your needs. It is highly customizable and can add sounds in addition to visual cues for events you set to happen when meeting a set of conditions. For example, a DPS Medic will want to track the buff from their Triage ability when using a specific build. They could have a graphic and accompanying timer appear on the screen that counts down until the buff is gone, and then have a sound played and the graphic disappear. Similarly, you could have a sound or graphic cue when an ability comes off of cooldown and is available again. It is quite a complicated Addon to master, but very useful and even has it’s own page complete with guides to help you along!

MischhEssenceTracker

This is one of the best and most important Addons you can install as of the recent Primal Matrix update. Installing this Addon puts a new Essence Bonus tracker in your Tracker where your Objectives, Quests and Path Missions are located. The Bonuses are counted down in real time and tell you which bonus you will get, then moves them to a completed bonus section in Red so you know you’ve already completed them. The default Essence Bonus tracking UI leaves a lot to be desired, and this is everything you will need to keep track of Essence Bonuses on your way across Nexus.

RaidCore

If you’re looking to get into raiding, this Addon will help you learn and understand the extensive mechanics of all the raid bosses in the game. RaidCore gives you customizable alerts and timers so that you know when that really bad thing is going to happen and you can act accordingly! There are other similar Addons suchs as Lui BossMods you can try to see what suits you best!

TapThat

Remember earlier when I mentioned there was an Addon to automatically complete these timed mini-games for you? This is that Addon, and believe it or not it is A-OK with the WildStar team. While some people may enjoy these mini-games, after some time they become a hindrance rather than fun for many players. Simply click on the object you need to interact with and stand there and you’ll complete the “Simon Says” and tapping games.

Note: This does not work on disoriented where you are confused and your directions are changed and must hold a certain button to become reoriented.

Vince Raid Frames

This is a lite Addon with a lot of capabilities that many players use to set roles and assignments in Raids and other group content. Even if you aren’t doing a Raid Zone, this can take up a lot less memory than the default UI raid frames when in large World Boss groups or doing any other content where you’re in a raid and using your raid frames.

Installing Addons

All of the above listed Addons are available on https://mods.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar but the easiest way to install Addons is through the Twitch Client (formerly the Curse Client).

You can download the Twitch Client at https://mods.curse.com/client then follow the setup procedures. Once installed, add WildStar as a game manually or by having it search for games on your PC. Once installed, you can select WildStar on the left side and then choose the “Get More Addons” tab to search for and install all of the Addons listed above. From them on, you can check the Twitch Client for available updates to those Addons and manage them from there.

If you’d rather install the Addons manually and you’re using Windows 10, simply download the Addon by searching on the first link mentioned above. Download the Addon and extract it on your Desktop. Then, open a File Explorer window and copy and paste “%APPDATA%\NCSOFT\WildStar\Addons\” into the address bar. Move the Addon’s folder from your desktop into the location in your File Explorer.

If you have the WildStar game client running when you install your Addons, simply typing /reloadui will cause your new Addons to load. If you’re not seeing your Addons, hit Escape for the Options Menu and choose the Addons Tab. In the upper-right hand corner, check the box that says “Allow all out-of-date Addons to Load”.

Available Gear For the Job

Chances are that your gear is an amalgamation of questing gear from all across Nexus and potentially a few pre-Level 50 Dungeon drops if you did some dungeon delving. You may even still have Level 10-20 gear! If you’ve played any type of RPG before you know that the worse your gear is, the worse time you’re going to have. With that in mind, we’re going to look at your options for immediate or near-future equipment as a fresh Level 50 and where you should be looking for upgrades.

Advanced Gear Vendor

Item Level: 68

Rune Slots: 2 (expandable for 44g+; not worth it)

Vendor Names: Supplier Horato (Dominion) or Dealer Abaro (Exiles)

Locations: Conqueror’s Square, Illium (Dominion) or Champion’s Corner, Thayd (Exiles)

Cost: Gold; Approximately 1.5p for an entire set of Assault or Support Gear

This gear will be the most easily and readily accessible as soon as you hit Level 50. It costs 13-19g per gear piece, and a full set of Assault or Support gear is available. While each piece of gear comes with two rune slots, it is not worth the 44g per piece of gear to expand and add an additional rune slot. You’ll be replacing this gear quickly, as it is only a starting point.

Glory Gear Vendor: Prime Dungeon Gear

Item Level: 78

Rune Slots: 2 (expandable for 44g+; not worth it)

Vendor Names: Supplier Exina (Dominion) or Supplier Krystof (Exiles)

Locations: Conqueror’s Square, Illium (Dominion) or Champion’s Corner, Thayd (Exiles)

Cost: Glory; Approximately 3,500 Glory for a collection of five Assault or Support pieces

The next step up from the Advanced Gear Vendor items is the Prime Dungeon Gear items from the Glory Vendor. The available items don’t offer a full upgrade from your set of Advanced Gear items – only Head, Chest, Feet, Weapon Attachment and Implant items are available from this vendor. While these are worthy upgrades, for other gear slots you will have to look elsewhere.

Soulfrost Vendor

Item Level: 85 (Can Imbue to 90)

Rune Slots: 3 (expandable to 4 slots for 44g+; not worth it)

Vendor Names: Importer Typeica (Dominion) or Distributor Kragaz (Exiles)

Locations: Ivory Hall, Shiverskull Tower, Arcterra (Dominion) or The Icebox, Shiverskull Tower, Arcterra (Exiles)

Cost: Soulfrost; Approximately 3,275 Soulfrost for an entire Assault or Support set of gear; Some gear can be upgraded with Frozen Essence for between 550-650 Soulfrost, each.

Arcterra is the most recent and epic Level 50 daily content zone added to the game. By doing the introduction quest chain, participating in any of the events and boss kills constantly refreshing on the map and doing daily quests, you can amass a decent amount of Soulfrost as part of the rewards for doing content here. Arcterra also has a unique point system that fills as you do activities throughout the zone. Upon filling the bar you can claim an Icebound Pouch, which can have decor items, pets, toys and some times gear pieces and more Soulfrost.

PvP Seasonal Gear Vendor

Item Level: 65

Rune Slots: 2+ (expandable for 44g+; not worth it)

Vendor Names: Quartermaster Livius (Dominion) or Quartermaster Eliska (Exiles)

Locations: Conqueror’s Square, Illium (Dominion) or Champion’s Corner, Thayd (Exiles)

Cost: Gold; Approximately 1.5p for an entire set of Assault or Support Gear

If you’re aiming to begin a PvP career at Level 50, buying a set of this basic PvP gear is a must! PvP gear in WildStar has specialized PvP Power and PvP Defense stats that help you survive better and much more effective! PvP item above a certain threshold are equalized when entering PvP instances, meaning that wearing gear found in PvE content, even at higher levels, still isn’t as effective in survivability or damage output as wearing even Item Level 65 PvP gear. Once you start doing PvP content, you can earn Prestige to buy the next tier of PvP gear from the vendor with that currency. Afterwards you can imbue each armor piece and your weapon up to two times using special Imbuement items found on the same vendor. PvP gear is a must if you intend to PvP! Help your teammates and yourself enjoy a better time by investing in PvP gear before entering PvP content!

But Wait There’s More!

This isn’t an exhaustive list of gear you can at Level 50, but items that are immediately or quick to pick up.

For a complete guide on gearing your character at Level 50 and the endgame gear progression as a whole, check out the WildStar: Gearing Up Guide coming out in the coming days!

What About Crafting?

Crafting gear can be well worth it if you have a friend that is a craftsman themselves and have a lot of Crafting Vouchers saved up. You can get Item Level 72 items crafted fairly cheap with an Imbuement quest that adds 6 item levels, bringing them up to Item Level 78. There are raid-quality gear patterns that are higher, but also at a very high cost due to the amount of Crafting Vouchers required for vendor-bought materials to craft each piece. Because of the cost involved, not much crafted gear is around to buy, anymore.

Crafting can be an excellent alternative to grinding out gear, if you know someone with ample supplies. Otherwise, it should be seen as a last resort when you’re having problems finding an upgrade for an item slot and just can’t seem to fill that item slot. Hopefully the WildStar team continues to update to the Crafting system over time so that it continues to improve!

Level 50 Content Explained

You’ve unlocked The Primal Matrix, have better bag space, your Weekly Bonus Quest and hopefully a decent set of starting Level 50 gear.

So… now what do you do?

Well, there’s a plethora of places to go and see, and many ways to play the endgame of WildStar. Below is a quick summary of what content is immediately available to you, what it involves and some of the rewards for doing it. Much of it is solo content, while some of it scales when you bring friends or even outright requires a small or large group to complete. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Daily Zones

Intro Quests: “Just the Beginnin”, “An Invitation to Arcterra”,

Other Intros: In-game Mail from different characters

Several of the calls you receive when hitting Level 50 are calls to Daily content zones, some of which continue the game’s world story. There are six daily zones in total: Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes, Blighthaven, The Defile, Star-Comm Basin and Arcterra. Each of these Zones have an outpost of your Faction with which to gain Reputation, and an introductory quest line that itself rewards a decent amount of reputation and a gear piece of some kind. Northern Wastes offers some of the better fresh Level 50 gadgets in the game.

Once you’ve completed all the Daily quests here, you can come back to do them again the next day. CB and NW, Blighthaven and The Defile do not have rotating quests, while SCB and Arcterra do, meaning that you may be doing different quests on different days. Blighthaven has a limited selection of quests but all give a large amount of reputation, while The Defile has a more sorted variety but several can only be complete in a Group Content area.

Blighthaven, The Defile, SCB and Arcterra all have Group Content daily quests and Events that require a raid to complete. Usually these are only done if the Essence Bonus is for that particular zone, or if a Tier 3 Contract points players to that zone’s Event for that day. For more information about Contracts, read on below.

What are the rewards for doing Daily Zone content? Reputation gain can be slow, so you may be ahead of the gear rewards by the time you make meaningful progress. However, for reaching the final rank of reputation in these zones – Beloved – you can purchase one-time use AMP Power Upgrades and Ability Tier Point Unlocks, pets, toys, costumes, decor and other items.

Contracts

Intro Quest: “Contractual Opportunities”

Tasks exclusive to Level 50 players, Contracts are another character gear progression system that can reward you in many ways. You can find your Contract Boards in Conqueror’s Square in Illium as Dominion, or Champion’s Corner in Thayd for Exiles. There are five Contracts available at a given time: One Tier 1 contract; Three Tier 2 Contracts; and one Tier 3 Contract which is always Group Content oriented. The Tier 2 and Tier 3 Contracts can only be completed once per day and give you Reward Points for completing them, as well as Promissory Notes, some Gold and a Contract Commission loot bag. Tier 1 contracts can be picked up repeatedly but offer limited Reward points.

Contract Commission lootbags contain Glory currency and Runecrafting Supplies. As you up your Reward Points, the bar on the right of the Contract Board UI will rise. There are five tiers of rewards, and each tier you hit offers you a Item Level 90 Assault or Support gear piece, or more Promissory Notes. These are a great way to gear up your character, and when you reach the final tier reward, you’ll receive 2.5p and can choose an Assault or Support Item Casque that includes a random Item Level 120 gear piece. If you choose the Contractually Obligated Settlement reward, you’ll receive various cosmetic items such as exclusive mounts, companion pets or sometimes Elder Gems.

This system is one of the fastest ways to get some decent gear in the game, as by completing all your daily contracts you can receive about one item per day. When you claim your top tier reward, the bar will empty and reset to zero, and the items available in the first four reward tiers will randomize and may offer items for slots you don’t have Item Level 90 gear for yet!

Tasks can include going out to Level 50 daily zones and killing monsters to loot specific items; finishing a Prime Expedition; earning 1,500 Renown; killing a World Boss on a certain continent; doing a Level 50 daily zone’s group Event; completing a Prime Adventure or Dungeon; and so on.

Additionally, there is also a separate PvP tab at the top for PvP contracts. There are only three available daily, and they offer rewards parallel to the PvE tab’s rewards: High level PvP gear, cash, and other items.

World Story

You may know about the World Story if you accepted Drusera’s call while hitting certain levels and took the portals she made to find out the truth about what is happening on Nexus. At Level 50 you really get into the meaty parts of the story, and there are even two solo instances that are like personal dungeons. OmniCore-1 is the first of these and is unlocked by completing the world story in The Defile. Completing it rewards potential gear upgrades and other items, while digging deep into some revelations about Nexus. The second of these is Vault of the Archon, which continues the story of OmniCore-1. Both of these can be repeated on a weekly basis to try earning better medals, and thus better rewards.

World Bosses

Almost every zone in WildStar hosts a Level 50 World Boss that has a chance of dropping Item Level 90+ gear, as well as Runecrafting Supplies, costume and Player Housing Decor pieces, and some of the Glory currency. There are daily Tier 3 Contracts that can pop up asking players to kill any one of these bosses on a particular continent. Sometimes these World Bosses spawn by themselves, but usually they require players to use a console near them to put in 75 Progenitor Access Particles to summon them. Once summoned, an hour timer starts until PAPs can be inserted into the console, again. These are also often the targets of large Essence Bonuses, sometimes giving a 10x multiplier, or Violet Essence, which is the rarest and most important Essence to get.

You can kill World Bosses as many times as you like, as long as you’re there before they’re dead. If you see a group forming, join that group and be patient or help them farm PAPs from Prime mobs so you’re there when it spawns. Many times raids of 100+ people descend upon these bosses, especially when the Essence Bonuses refresh and lists one of them as a new bonus. You can get PAPs from Contract reward bags, 5-Man Dungeons and Prime monsters found around the open world.

A Word on Prime Difficulty

This is a difficulty setting that was added in The Primal Matrix update to accompany the new Primal Matrix system. Over time, the WildStar team is rolling out Prime Difficulty for instanced PvE content. All instanced PvE content has a base difficulty of Prime 0 available, while some content has higher difficulties available. To unlock higher Prime difficulties, up to Prime 10, you must receive either a Silver or Gold medal in a particular instance to unlock further difficulty levels. Getting a Silver medal will unlock the next higher level of Prime, while Gold should unlock the next two levels of Prime difficulty.

Prime Difficulty simply increases the damage and health of enemies in this content, which is why they have suggested Heroism levels. You may remember when you unlocked The Primal Matrix that each time you put a point in a node, that you gain 25 Heroism. While very advanced equipment can sometimes make up the difference in Heroism you’re lacking when doing higher Prime difficulties, it only helps to a point.

Of course, higher difficulty means higher rewards. As a rule of thumb, for each Prime difficulty level above Prime 0, drops in the dungeon will gain a minimum of 5 Item Levels per Prime level increase. This is before any Eldan or Eldan Prime tags that add even further Item levels. In addition, the higher Prime Difficulty rewards more Essence. The highest Prime Difficulties are for the very experienced players, and there are even Leaderboards to show those players’ progression. More Prime Difficulty is being added every update, and soon even raids will receive Prime Difficulty levels.

Expeditions (Prime)

Scattered throughout all of the leveling zones are Ekose of various rank. You know, the tall gray cat-looking aliens standing by ships. They’ll send you off into space on some task. These used to be called Shiphand Missions, but were renamed Expeditions because the WildStar team wanted to do content not necessarily tied to being on a ship or in space.

At Level 50, you can do Prime difficulty Shiphands, starting at the base difficulty of Prime 0. You can do these by opening your Content Finder with the default shortcut ‘N’, and choosing the Expeditions tab. Select Prime, then choose which Expedition you would like to do. At Prime 0 difficulty, you can easily solo these instances, so you may want to check “Do Not Find Others” so you can get an instant queue pop and enter the instance. If you’re in a party with friends, you can still check this so as to not find others. Keep in mind: These scale with how many people are in them.

There are daily quests for these near the Contract Boards mentioned before in both faction’s capital cities, offering further cash for completing one. There is also three Essence Bonuses up at a time for Expeditions, which refresh every hour. They’re a great way to gain Essence if you don’t want to do big or serious group content! And they’re also very rewarding. If you complete all of the objectives in Expeditions located on your Objective Tracker, you can get a Gold medal and increased rewards.

Sometimes gear drops can have an added Eldan or Ancient Eldan tag, boosting their item level from 5 to 20 item levels above the normal drop for the Prime difficulty you’re completing them on. You also get a lot of dyes, Glory, gold and decor for completing Prime Expeditions in addition to any gear items rewarded for completing the instance. Prime Expeditions are truly one of the most rewarding instances to do in the game, and doing them on higher Prime Difficulty settings can reward very powerful gear items.

Dungeons (Prime)

In order to enter a Prime Dungeon through the Content Finder, you are required to be part of a full 5-player group. Prime Dungeons are considerably more difficult than Prime Expeditions, and progressing to unlock further difficulties is also considerably harder due to more strict group coordination and efforts being required. At Prime 0 difficulty, even up through Prime 2 or 3, most of the seven Dungeons are still easy to conquer thanks to mixing with experience or gear more powerful than the content difficulty.

Bonus Essences are available for up to three Dungeons at a time and last two hours before rotating. The seven current dungeons are Protogames Academy, Stormtalon’s Lair, Ruins of Kel Voreth, Skullcano Island, Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden, Ultimate Protogames and Coleblood Citadel. Two of these are not available in Normal Mode leveling up and are exclusively Level 50 Prime Dungeons.

Like Expeditions, Prime Dungeons have a medal system, though your medal is determined differently. The Prime Dungeon medal system is a point system, where you gain points for each pack of enemy or bosses you defeat, each objective you accomplish, and so forth. You lose points for each player death in Prime Dungeons, so repeated deaths can have a huge impact on your end score. Speed of completion of the dungeon also plays a major factor in your score.

With no deaths, you can easily achieve a Silver medal by simply blowing through the dungeon and skipping many of the base population packs (or “trash”) and objectives – that is, if you make good time. The better your medal, the better rewards are dropped at the end of the Prime Dungeon, but it is worth noting that for Essence Bonus, you simply need to complete the dungeon and no medal is required.

Raid Zones

Currently there are four raid zones in WildStar: Genetic Archives, Datascape, Initialization Core Y-83 (or “Augmentors”), and Redmoon Terror.

To enter the Genetic Archives and Datascape requires finishing attunement steps by imbuing a Genesis Key item. To start this chain find Drusera at the Enigma Chamber for the Dominion, or at Secret Ops for Exiles. All you have to do is talk to her to complete the “Key to Nexus” quest on her and you receive your Genesis Key. Make sure you Equip the key, as items can only be imbued while equipped. After that, simply follow the instructions on the tooltip.

The first step is getting a Bronze medal in Prime Stormtalon’s Lair, Ruins of Kel Voreth, Skullcano Island and Sanctuary of the Sword Maiden. Step 2 will guide you to The Caretaker at the Bio-Mech Facility in Western Grimvault (you can use Rapid Transit to get there). Step 3 for new players is significantly harder and requires you to defeat the last boss in the Genetic Archives raid – Dreadphage Ohmna – and then the final step is to talk to The Caretaker and enter The Datascape.

Initialization Core Y-83 and Redmoon Terror have introductory quests, but don’t have any require attunement steps to enter. If you were to consider raids in terms of tiers, GA would be Tier 1, while DS would be Tier 2, Y-83 would be Tier 1.5 and Redmoon Terror would be Tier 3. Currently as of this guide, progression guilds are still working through Datascape and Redmoon Terror, while Genetic Archives is “pugged” on a regular basis. Very few guilds raid Y-83 due to the base loot not being an upgrade over Datascape item drops, and the hard mode being insanely difficult and not considered worthwhile, either.

Raids in WildStar are the ultimate end game content and require a lot of skill, coordination and dedication to see through to the end. For many players, raiding is the endgame, and although WildStar has been live for three years now and Redmoon Terror was released in late 2016, most guilds and players still have not cleared or seen all of Datascape.

PvP

There’s not much to say about PvP in WildStar. I’ll be honest with you: Not many players PvP. There is a base of dedicated PvPers who are forever attempting to revive this part of the game, who meet varying degrees of success or failure. PvP in WildStar is actually really fun! Which makes the truth of things a real shame. The main detractor is that queue times to enter Battlegrounds are often very long due to a matchmaking system that needs updated and general lack of interest.

The game has and always will be largely PvE-centric, but that shouldn’t deter you from getting your feet wet in PvP. It can actually be quite lucrative as the rewards are a decent amount of cash and can include exclusive Player Housing Decor items. It is quite true that Arenas really are basically dead, but one should not give up hope on doing Battlegrounds. There are Essence Bonuses for Battlegrounds, as well, and even if you face a full coordinated premade group, losing fast means queuing back up and fast rewards and cash!

Warning: Don’t bring up PvP balance or issues in Nexus chat, unless you like working in salt mines.

Adventures (Prime)

Once a pillar of the gearing and raid attunement processes, Prime Adventures have sadly been left in the dust as the rest of the game has developed and progressed onward. Conceptually, Adventures are simulations created by The Caretaker to test the players in question. Before Prime Shiphands were added, Prime Adventures were the starting point for gearing up in preparation for raiding. They can be fun, as in most of them decisions are put up to a group vote that determines what happens next. Different paths and bosses – and thus different items and loot – were happened upon by voting differently at check points.

At one point, a Gold medal was required in each of the four game launch Adventures in order to imbue one step of the Genesis Key for attunement. Currently these are no longer ran, as there are no further Prime Difficulties or Essence Bonus related to them. Occasionally, the daily Tier 3 Contract calls for you to complete an Adventure, and most players simply choose to run the War of the Wilds Adventure since players out gear the content enough to just run to the end and complete the objective (it was formerly played like a MOBA game with micromanagement and advancing minions to kill the enemy’s core).

The Many Currencies

Throughout your adventures on Nexus, you’ve probably acquired at least a few different currencies. You may or may not have even noticed that every time you’ve done a group activity you’ve gained some Renown. If you’ve leveled up any Professions at all, you probably have some Crafting Vouchers. Have you been claiming your daily login reward? You probably have Service Tokens, OmniBits, Elder Gems and more. And there’s even more to come! If you’re unsure of what they’re all used for and how or where to acquire them, then look no further. It’s important to know what all of these currencies can do for you – and how you can obtain more – as they all play an important part in your everyday life at the endgame of WildStar!

Renown

One of the most common and earliest available in the game, Renown is a currency given to players in the multitudes as long as they’re doing group content. The more players that are in your group (up to a full group of five players), the more Renown you can earn. You’ll earn the most Renown by doing Expeditions and Dungeons, but can also earn Renown while grouped with friends and doing outdoor content such as daily quests.

You can spend this currency on: Consumables, Bags, Housing Decor & Fabkits, Companion Pets, Toys, Mounts & Customizations, Runecrafting Materials, as well as a one-time use AMP Power Upgrade or Ability Point Tier Unlock!

Elder Gems

Once you reach Level 50, rather than gaining XP, you gain Elder Points. By doing anything that would normally give your character XP, you get Elder Points that convert into Elder Gems at a static rate. You can gain a maximum of 315 Elder Gems per week, this way. There are few other ways to gain Elder Gems, such as the weekly quests mentioned above, as well as the occasional Daily Login Reward. Elder Gems can be an important part of unlocking your character’s true potential, as you can buy AMP Power Upgrades and Ability Point Tier Unlocks with them.

Another important item to consider saving up for is your 3rd and 4th Limited Action Set (“LAS”) Unlocks. As you’re probably aware, you have two Action Sets you can switch between. At Level 50, you may wish to have your 3rd and 4th sets unlocked, if you plan to play both a DPS and Support role. Perhaps you DPS and Heal in PvE content and are using both of your sets, but also want to DPS and Heal in PvP. You would certainly have different builds for both for PvP. There are other useful and cosmetic items, as well, however!

If all of this wasn’t enough to convince you that hitting your weekly Elder Gem cap weren’t important enough, then perhaps the knowledge that experience/rested experience earned after reaching your Elder Gem cap each week converts to cash! That’s right. When you’re capped on Elder Gems, gaining XP is instead converted into money, and depending on how active you are in WildStar, this can be especially lucrative!

You can spend this currency on: Housing Decor & Fabkits, Bags, Dyes, Costumes, Mounts, Runecrafting Materials, and AMP Power Upgrade or Ability Point Tier Unlocks (purchasable until max upgrades or unlocks).

Glory

Most of your Glory will be earned in instanced content such as Expeditions, Prime Dungeons and Raid Zones, with the occasional addition from Daily Login Rewards and World Boss kills. This currency is mostly used for buying pre-raid gear and eventually raid-quality gear upgrades. Other items are available for when you inveitably run out of things to spend your Glory on, such as Runecrafting Bags. You can also exchange 50 Glory for 1,500 Renown if you so desired.

You can spend this currency on: Gear Upgrades, Runecrafting Materials, Toys, Costumes, Companion Pets, Mounts and in exchange for Renown.

Prestige

The PvP currency in the game is Prestige, and while not many players PvP early in the game while leveling, it can be one of the earliest currencies you obtain when doing so. Prestige is spent to get PvP gear with special PvP Power and PvP Defense stats that only apply when in PvP combat. These are important to PvP and make your character more effective in it. You gain Prestige by participating in PvP, which is mostly in instanced Battlegrounds and Arenas.

Most players spend their Prestige on buying their Item Level 75 PvP Seasonal Gear sets, then upgrading those sets to their fullest capability with Imbuement Items. You can also purchase consumables made specifically for use in PvP, and other rewards exclusive to PvP vendors including an awesome faction-specific costume and a hoverboard that requires a certain PvP rating threshold to purchase in it’s entirety.

You can spend this currency on: PvP Gear, PvP Gear Upgrades, PvP Consumables, Housing Decor & Fabkits, Mounts, Costumes, Companion Pets, and Runecrafting Materials.

OmniBits

Back in October of 2016, WildStar went Free-to-Play and introduced an in-game store where players can spend real money for in-store currency called ProtoBucks to use in that store. However, almost every item in the store has secondary OmniBits price. It’s no secret that WildStar is one of the most generous F2P games out there, and they introduced OmniBits as a way to eventually earn (almost) anything on the store you desire just by playing the game. Much like Elder Gems, doing anything that would grant your character XP in the game – at level cap or before – has a chance of earning you OmniBits.

Players who are on free accounts have a maximum of 120 OmniBits per week and earn 1 OmniBit at a time, when they do. Signature Account players have a maximum of 360 OmniBits per week and earn 3 at a time when they do so. Worth noting is that OmniBits earned in other ways such as from Daily Login Rewards or from Madam Fay’s Fortunes don’t count against this limit and can be added beyond the weekly cap.

You can spend this currency on: Many things! Check out the in-game store! You probably remember it from the Smart Shopper quest early in your game experience.

Crafting Vouchers

These are almost entirely earned through doing Crafting Profession daily quests in a specific town per zone. If you’re unfamiliar with professions in the game or haven’t picked one up yet, all of the leveling zones have a town where you can typically find three quests asking you to craft certain items and turn them in as part of the quest. Depending on your profession skill level depends on the availability of these quests. Crafting Vouchers are exclusively used to buy crafting profession related materials and items used in crafting items, including the actual schematics, patterns, plans or recipes to learn how to make new things. Unlike other currencies, the usefulness of Crafting Vouchers is considerably limited.

Service Tokens

Among the most important currencies at Level 50 is Service Tokens. These are either purchased from the in-game store with real money (turned into Protobucks) or OmniBits, and occasionally rewarded through the Daily Login Reward. The amount you spend at a time varies greatly. If you have recently used your Rapid Transport, you can only use it again while it’s on it’s hour cooldown if you have between 2-9 Service Tokens available to pay to use Rapid Transport (determined by how far you’re attempting to transport from your current location).

Service Tokens are also used as an alternative currency to add dyes to decor items in Player Housing, adding dye to a costume, using the Character Chop Shop and most importantly, expanding a rune slot on your gear and getting a specific Rune slot type. Adding the right runes to your gear is an important part of your character’s power and expected of you by most other players. Rune slots come in several different types, each aligning to certain elements. The nature of Runes lends to players needing to often not have repeated types on a piece of gear.

To reroll a rune slot type costs a lot of money, and is random and do not guarantee you’ll get the right Rune slot type, leading to a huge expenditure on your part. With service tokens, you can pick a specific rune type and cut your costs way before you find yourself broke in-game.

Fortune Coins

One of the very few items on the in-game store that can’t be bought with OmniBits would be Fortune Coins. This special currency is used to play a sort of game of chance with Madam Fay. Each coin you spend will offer you three rewards. It can be crafting materials, exclusive Housing Decor & Fabkit items, costume pieces, and even really rare mounts or OmniBits. For each coin you spend, a progress bar fills until it reaches the top and guarantees that the next Fortune Coin you spend will result in at minimum an Epic quality item. The WildStar team rotates new items in and old items out about once every quarter of the year, with her collection typically being built around a particular theme. Some past themes have included the icey arctic, the Winterfest holiday, retro gaming, medieval, prehistoric and more.

Promissory Notes

Earned exclusively through completing Contracts, Promissory Notes have a limited use and are shared account-wide. Contracts are one of the many Level 50 activities you can do, which we had spoken about earlier in this guide. Regarding Promissory Notes: a vendor near your Contract Board provides daily deals that can offer rare items for anywhere from 25-100 Promissory Notes that includes things such as super rare dyes, mounts or Player Housing items. His only other offering is various Runecrafting Materials. The primary use of Promissory Notes, however, is actually in exchange for Reputation gain with different factions.

Most of the Level 50 zone factions have an NPC that allows you to trade in your Promissory Notes for reputation with their faction. This can be a great way to get AMP Power Upgrade and Ability Tier Point Unlocks for your alternate characters or even your main by making sure to complete your Contracts, the daily quests in a faction’s Level 50 zone and then complimenting your rep gain by turning in Promissory Notes.

Triploons

This is a currency added with the Redmoon Terror Raid Zone. You can only earn Triploons by defeating bosses and mini-bosses inside of the raid. These are used to purchase Item Level 130 gear, raid-quality runecrafting materials, exclusive Player Housing Decor, and items that can upgrade a raider’s Redmoon Terror class gear set item.

Your Goals At Level 50

Now that you’re ready to set out and do some endgame content, let’s talk about your goals. The name of the game is character progression, and in order to be your most successful in enjoying the endgame and having fun, there are priorities to consider. Whether you’re looking to casually play with friends, get into a raiding guild, PvP or just build cool stuff in Player Housing, aiming to accomplish these long term goals will only help you in the long run!

#1 Max Your AMP Power & Ability Tier Points

When you first hit Level 50, you’ll have access to 48 AMP Points and 41 Ability Tier Points, allowing you access to two Tier 8 Abilities and one Tier 4. The maximum you can get (not counting those earned in The Primal Matrix) is 57 AMP Points and 48 Ability Tier Points.

Getting access to a third Tier 8 Ability, or at least the Ability Points, is one of the most important things in the game. It can completely change the way you play your class, your capabilities and allows a flexibility you don’t want to miss in WildStar’s endgame. For some classes like the Esper, this allows you to make your Crush Tier 4, allowing it destroy two Interrupt Armor instead of one, but without hurting your damage too badly. In most cases, with more Ability Tier and AMP Power points you simply do what you do better with them all than without. Without your maxed Ability Tier and AMP Power points, you’re simply missing out on being as effective as you could be.

For more information, keep an eye out for another upcoming guide on hunting down those AMP Power Upgrade & Ability Tier Point Unlocks!

#2 Raid Attunement

Even if you mainly want to PvP, it is a good idea to go through raid attunement. The steps are laid out in the Level 50 Content Explained section, under Raid Zones. It is considerably easier than it was when WildStar first launched, reducing the attunement steps from around 13 down to 4. Getting a Bronze medal in Dungeons is extremely easy, and with how many overgeared characters and alts run through GA, you can quite possibly get a Dreadphage Ohmna kill under your belt within weeks of hitting Level 50.

Alternatively, you can typically find Pristine Genesis Keys for sale in Nexus chat if you ask, and the going price is 5p. That is fairly easy to save up. Because of the age of the Genetic Archives and Datascape raid zones, the in-game store even has one to purchase for 790 PB or 395 OB.

#3 Find a Guild or Community That Fits You

WildStar’s community is one of the best and helpful MMORPG communities out there. That’s not to say there aren’t a few exceptions that regularly troll Nexus chat, just as you’d expect on the internet. WildStar is at it’s best when you have friends to run the content with. Much of the endgame content requires coordination and know-how. Not many people queue solo for 5-man content. You’ll often find people recruiting for Guilds or Circles in Nexus chat, and many of those guilds are helpful to new and returning players, who want to help you enjoy the game the best that you can.

As in any MMORPG, there is an entire spectrum of player interest ranging from super casual, to semi-casual but progression-minded, to hardcore and so on. You’ll enjoy the game most if you have people around you can ask to join you on your adventure through the endgame, or who are open to asking others to join themselves.

Here are a few great resources for finding guilds and communities in WildStar, outside of Nexus chat advertisements:

Reddit Monthly Guild Recruitment Thread (Pinned at the Top)

The Official WildStar Forums’ Guild Recruitment Section

#4 Keep Your Gear Runed

When you hit Level 50, it can feel like you’re getting upgrades constantly. But one of the biggest parts of a character’s power comes from Runes, and they offer a noticeable difference. It’s something of an expectation for you to have your gear runed, because Runecrafting Materials come in ample supply. You can get them from completing Contracts, salvaging unwanted gear, for various currencies from vendors, from loot boxes earned by killing World Bosses and many more ways. The system can be daunting at first, but comes naturally when you know what to work with. You don’t want to put the most expensive, powerful runes in your gear you’re going to replace that week. Superb Runes are a nice middle ground in power and affordability due to them being plentiful from popular endgame content.

If you need help with how to Rune, check out our upcoming Runecrafting Guide when it releases!

#5 You Do You

There are many ways that players individually approach and enjoy the endgame and progress their character. Many people can only occasionally log in, which is why the option to progress through The Primal Matrix is such a great option. Contracts, daily quests and the occasional instanced content are all that some players can spare time for, but they still get rewarded for time spent enjoying the game. Some players solely PvP, while others strive for balance and dip their toes into all aspects of the game.

Some players only do Playing Housing, and some even raid just because they saw an awesome raid-exclusive piece of Housing Decor and want it for their plot. How you choose to play the game, in what amount and to what extent is entirely up to you. There is content for you, no matter what you do, but never feel forced into doing something. It’s true that the game is best when players can enjoy the game as a whole – PvE and PvP in all of their forms – and keep an open mind. However, if you don’t want to do one or the other, that’s entirely your choice and an option for you. Ultimately, whether through the numerous ways to earn gear or Essence for The Primal Matrix, you can advance in your own way.

And So Much More

Over the three years WildStar has been live, more and more new content has been added. There are many links in this guide to more full and detailed explanations for how many individual endgame systems work and how you’re rewarded for participating in them. There is never a lack of things to do! As we celebrate WildStar’s 3 Year Anniversary, we hope you find the information here useful and clarity in your journeys at Level 50 and beyond.

Check back for more guides, news and updates about everything WildStar here on QueueTimes as we celebrate the 3 Year Anniversary!