Carbine have just released a new deep dive on their latest raid: Core Y-83. Without a doubt Raids and Dungeons in WildStar are some of the best I've ever played in the genre. They're challenging, fun and engaging. Best of all, they're bloody difficult and require a ton of teamwork to progress through. Although I never played Datascape, I did clear Genetic Archives. As the latest 20 player raid, Core Y-83 does things a little differently. Firstly, Core Y-83 doesn't require players to become attuned. You and twenty others can jump straight in, without completing the prologue quest. Even if you do wish to complete the prologue, you can solo it.

The prologue is an optional quest line in the Defile that takes players through the story leading up to the dilemma that occurs inside the raid. This quest line can be completed solo (but feel free to grab some friends!) and is in no way required to participate in the raid. Completing the quest line will give you a handy reward.

As for what else Core Y-83 brings, there's a few things. The raid is considered a boss-in-a-box, which basically means that it's of a raid difficulty but unlike Genetic Archives, there's only one boss at the end instead of multiple. I suspect the idea behind this is to provide a sense of progression and to prepare people for a taste of real raiding. As well as that, there's also the ability to choose which difficulty you want. 

The boss encounter in Initialization Core Y-83 therefore offers two levels of difficulty, both of which are available in the same instance. The base level is about as tough as the Dreadphage Ohmna encounter at end of the Genetic Archives raid. For those of you craving an even greater challenge, a higher (optional) level of difficulty is available to put your skills to the test. This will crank up the challenge level to roughly match the Elemental pairs near the end of Datascape.

Finally, there's new loot that is based on whichever difficulty you pick. If you happen to choose the hardest, your loot will be based on the higher tier as well as the lower tier difficulty.

When completing the encounter on the base difficulty you can expect to see some new décor items, gear and rune sets. Like the difficulty, the new gear is meant to help close the gap between Genetic Archives and Datascape. (The rune sets are a bit special compared to our existing ones, so we will leave exactly what they do as a surprise.) Completing the optional higher difficulty grants players everything from the base difficulty version as well as even more décor items (only available at the optional difficulty), better versions of runes, and the best part - which you'll have to discover for yourself.

Overall Core Y-83 is sounding pretty positive and like most players who once played WildStar, I'd love to give it a go. I am however a bit reluctant to hand over $15 just to try it. Saying that, there is a 10 day free trial at the moment so I might have to dive back in just to see how things are.