Today Carbine patched in The Mystery of Genesis Prime, or UltraDrop 3, to the WildStar Megaservers. You might have heard a thing or two about this upcoming drop, since we've covered it quite extensively already. Even before it was live, there were plenty of noteworthy areas to cover, and now that it is live, Carbine is calling this their largest drop to date. The full patch notes comes with over 100 pages of the nitty gritty details. For those who do not need such a deep dive into each line item, Carbine have also blessed us with a TL;DR version.

One area that has always been pretty contentious has been the high cost of everything in the game. It's often joked that you have to pick and choose what you want to do, especially while leveling. Do you spend your earnings on new abilities? Do you level your crafting professions? Can you afford that housing upgrade? With Genesis Prime, players will now earn 140% higher rewards from quests and be able to sell their junk to vendors for 40% more. This should absolutely alleviate a lot of the cost issues. Another nice thing about raising these caps is that the supply of in-game currencies go down, the demand decreases, and a system that dampers gold selling is placed. Botting and gold selling is always an issue in just about any game, and one that development teams constantly fight against. One major way to deal with the issue is to not make players feel any need to go down these nefarious routes in the first place.

There's so many cute and cuddly new creatures waiting to bear hug you with Genesis Prime

Big runecrafting changes are a major component for this drop, which benefits both PvE and PvP players. The main reason behind all of runecrafting's changes stem from Carbine wanting people to actually use runecrafting, especially when leveling. I never bothered with runecrafting when I was playing WildStar, beyond the quest that introduces the skill to you. While there are several reasons behind that (most of which Carbine is hoping to address with this drop), the main reason for me to ignore runecrafting while leveling is because you swap out gear so often when you're leveling. Enchantments, augmentations, runecrafting, or whatever a game wants to call equipment modifications, just seems so pointless while leveling. When you're at max level and you want to get every possible advantage you can by squeezing in an extra stat here and there wherever you can possibly fit one, that's when these modifications are important. Getting an extra +1 Awesomeness on a piece of gear that I'll replace tomorrow just doesn't sense to me. However, I guess if you're leveling slower than I do, it might be worthwhile.

Carbine has added in Weakened Runes to WildStar, which is supposed to be a cheaper rune just for the leveling experience. There's also Eldan Runic Flux available, which will open up even more rune slots for you. I imagine this is definitely for the level cap folks and not those of us either enjoying the lower levels or (in my case) bumbling around. Now that there's more money coming into the economy from quest rewards and vendoring items, people can actually afford (in theory, at least, in my mind) to throw some gold towards squeezing extra stats onto their gear. One criticism I saw while reading community reactions, though, was one I had not thought of. Currently, there is no differentiation between what you're wearing and what's in your bags, which makes remembering what gear to rune a giant pain in the ass.

Enough on runecrafting. I could go on about that forever, and Carbine even has an enormous thread that focuses solely on these changes, so let's get back to the rest of what's in this drop. Now seems like a good time to bring up The Defile, which is the large “physical” component of this drop. By physical, I mean, the land area you'll be running around in, if you're not all bumbly like me and are level 50. I'm sure Lewis will be out there, because he's totally pro at this stuff.

More cute and cuddly bear hugs await you!

The Defile comes with a load of content for quite a bit of different playstyles. Everyone but PvP players are covered here, but we knew that was coming (although ratings did get reset today). Last drop was the first PvP update and we knew this one would be a PvE one. The Defile has new achievements, story missions, path missions, and more. Solo players can enjoy new lore and missions, small groups can see what the fuss is in The Black Focus – an outdoor area with treasure to find, puzzles to beat, overlapping dailies, full groups can take on Koral the Defiler, and 20-man raid size groups can take on the Siege of the Lightspire, which is a five-part public event that requires both Exile and Dominion working together to overcome the event.

 

Additionally, this update is fully packed with new lore content that advances the story of Nexus even further. Continue the Nexus saga and explore OMNICore-1, our all new, fully-voiced, story instance for solo players. And, if you just can’t get enough, repeat it to experience every choice and earn more rewards.

Another big change that comes with drop three is the dungeon gating system. Now, you just need Bronze medals from Veteran dungeons and Adventures to be able to do the attunement for raids. Carbine wants to lower the requirement for raiding, and to do this, they've also retroactively let world bosses count towards the attunement quest. Tracking progress in dungeons is also easier now. A new dungeon medals info screen has been added in, and any dungeons that aren't completed will show objectives you have finished, as well as the ones you need to finish.

Other noteworthy mentions for this patch include capital city transmat spells are now just 30 minutes instead of 24 hours – rejoice and get to where you need to be without artificial gating! Assault and Support Power have both been changed to create a normalization across tank and DPS archetypes. New colorblind settings, new training dummies, the ability to skip the beginning tutorial Arkships, and better rewards for Veteran dungeons. Also, new hats! We showed those off briefly (well, okay, just the Chua because I have a small, fluffy spot in my heart), but those sweet new desert head shields come with this patch, too.

Playing WildStar? Let us know how it's going in the comments section below! However, if you have a bug or feedback for the development team, I suggest letting Carbine know over at this thread.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our WildStar Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Vendolyn's been playing MMOs since 1999, although Vendolyn in-game often becomes a long-term shelved alt. When she's not gaming, she's likely marathoning some questionable TV show or babbling about music to no end. She really likes goats.

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