Choose My Adventure: Crafting in WildStar

This week's Choose My Adventure is all about crafting in WildStar as I'll give my impressions on the creative system that seems to be pleasing finicky MMO fans already. You voted last week for me to focus on Relic Hunting and Technologist as my tradeskills, and I've been having a blast. Get it, blast? Because that's how you collect... the... ahem. Anyway!

First of all, I want to thank you for voting on two compatible tradeskills. That makes things much easier. Both Relic Hunting and the Farming hobby contribute the proper materials for the Technologist trade. Since the additional hobbies are free and don't count toward the two-trade-at-a-time limit, I also played around with the Cooking hobby a bit, too.

Crafting is interesting in this game. You can learn two tradeskills at a time but can switch out at any time without any progression loss. The first time you do this is free, but it costs you money and a cooldown period each time after that.

There are two different types of crafting in the UI: Circuit Board Crafting and Coordinate Crafting. With the Circuit Board, you're placing microchips and powercores into sockets, increasing or decreasing stat points, and adjusting the power bar. All of this combines to create the item you're looking to make, and sometimes random things happen during the process to create more unique items.

With Coordinate Crafting, you use a grid to uncover hidden variants locked in the grid. You can place additives to help locate those hidden variants with clues given along the way. Uncovering these variants adds to the item's rarity and effectiveness.

The Technologist uses the Coordinate Crafting method to unlock certain parts of the tech tree with medical supplies, stat-boosting elixirs, and field tech. You can make specific concoctions if you're aiming for a goal formula, which is especially useful for crafting quests and workorders that call for specific items further down your tech line. The trade uses herbs found in the wild or grown as a Farmer and Eldan relics gathered with the Relic Hunter trade. I've found that the Relic Hunter not only is a good match for the Technologist but can also use Eldan relics to supplement many other professions.

Right now I'm still early in the trade, but I've been creating elixirs for NPCs and filling workorders. The game guides you through crafting quite well in the beginning, so even though it may seem confusing at first, you'll be having fun with it soon.

As for the hobbies, right now we have Cooking and Farming with Fishing rumored to be added later. I haven't opened up Farming yet (I will once I get a house and garden), but Cooking is pretty straightforward using the Coordinate Crafting method. You add ingredients to the grid to create consumable buffs at a crafting table. Easy as that!

As for my other progression this last week, I gained only three levels (to level 14) because I spent a lot of time learning crafting, but I really had a lot of fun with my exploration of the rest of the Celestion map. I encountered more small humanoid bunnies with an off-the-charts cute factor, a shady band of black-cloaked Night Elv... er, Mordesh, and some of the coolest robots and mechs I've seen in a long time.

I also did my first raid against Grendelus the Guardian, and that was fun. It took about 15 people and five minutes or so to bring him down, but it got me a shiny new title: The Giant Slayer! I've found that many of these world tasks really get people together in an old-school way, and I think I missed that. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy the new popular public quest system that allows you to jump in and jump out of group content with no barriers, but there's just something nostalgic (and more personal) about asking to join a group and completing a task with other players whose names you might look at or even remember. That's how we made MMO friends with random people in the old days, kids.

Next week is my final week with WildStar, and my goal is to hit around level 16 or so. Once I'm at 15, I'll be able to play around with mounts, so I can report back on that as well as my general impressions of the game at that point. "But Shawn, the game doesn't even really get good until (insert high number here)!" Yes, I know how that goes, but I may revisit this character for a later Choose My Adventure and you can see how he's progressing at higher levels.

Also, I'd really like to jump on and play my alts a bit this week as well. Although I'm steadily leveling my Medic (whom I love) in addition to this CMA character, I'd like to get a few levels into the other classes and report back on very early impressions of each -- especially as they might compare to the Spellslinger.

So let me know in the comments what else you'd like to see me try for this week and I'll do my best to accommodate.

Shawn Schuster is now permanently at the helm of Massively's Choose My Adventure with you as the co-captain. It's going to be a rough ride, so put on your seat belt! Join him every Wednesday for a reader-guided deep-dive into a new MMO every month. Farcical puns about cars and farming sold separately.