Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Wildstar Settlers

The hype machine for Wildstar has been gearing up.  From Reddit, here's some info about the Settler path which looks rather interesting.  I'm especially interested by the idea that almost everything a Settler builds is unphased. Will that result in a landscape overrun with buildings?


Settler Path

  • Meant for socializers and also "builders"
  • Tasks include mending broken or degraded equipment such as a farmer's fence which, due to the breakage, is letting all his cows escape. Such tasks are separate from questing. This is internally called "minfrastructure"
  • True infrastructure tasks include building a new shop, new vendor or a bus station.
  • Smaller "projects" helps gather resources for bigger "projects"
  • Can unlock Settler powers that allow you to "free-farm anywhere"
  • There are goals when building -- raise a town's value or utilize your abilities
  • Increasing value to a certain extent allows special things to happen like bigger rewards
  • Bigger, more meaningful projects will take multiple settlers to complete while smaller projects can be done solo
  • If structures aren't maintained, they will decay
  • You can get a lot of path XP by running around and building everything by yourself but less from social tools like campfires
  • almost everything Settlers do is unphased
  • Settlers have utility in dungeons such as being able to make a resurrection station next to a boss -- can use resources that can be found in the dungeon. Random chance whether many of these resources will appear
  • Settlers will be useful when placing structures next to harder areas in the world
  • While there are static locations that can be built on, there are also free form structures you can freely place
  • Settlers will get more housing equipment(FABKits) than other paths
  • Housing dungeons mentioned explicitly after being asked the question "What sort of perks will Settlers bring to player housing?" I would not bet on housing dungeons being exclusive to Settlers, however.
  • Settlers get increased XP the more their structures are built (campfire, for example)
  • Speculation: in a video segment about settlers, a player is seen swinging a sword to cut down trees
  • Can build quest givers with really good loot
  • Video demonstrated the building of a jail which opened up quests for the area and had a warden that could give players a buff
  • Can build taxi vendors to allow rapid travel through area
  • Can make outposts with guards in an area to help you fight mobs (not just in towns)
  • There is somewhat of a meta where you have to decide where to place structures to get optimal use. For example build an outpost in the wilderness and choose to put your campfire there. You can put structures like a campfire in major areas, but then you are competing with everyone else doing that. We can expect that if there are two fires placed immediately on/next to each other, only one settler is going to get credit for a player standing within reach of both fires.
  • Mission types: Expansion(improving towns), Supply cache, Public ServiceTasks for the greater good), Civil Defense(combat, I think), Infrastructure (builds hospitals, taverns, spaceports, etc)
  • Can make puzzles appear

2 comments:

  1. Didn't people in UO grief folks by spamming buildings? Amusing era of history I'm not sure anyone expected to return...

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  2. I've had my eye on the Settler path ever since the Path concept was first announced. It is the one I was most hopeful would suit my style of play, and I have to say that so far I am very impressed. I am really trying to "temper" my enthusiasm because I don't want to get swept away by the hype... but everything I hear about WildStar just makes me look forward to it even more.

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