As far as in-game events go, Shade’s Eve is the real deal. For folks who expect some decorations and a couple quests out of their holidays, well, you’re kinda right…
Thayd is decked out for the holiday.
But you’re also going to be a bit under-prepared for what WildStar is throwing at you with this holiday. The capital cities are decorated. And I don’t mean just a couple pumpkins sprinkled around. The entire city is completely decked out in seasonal decor, and even the lighting and music have been changed to suit the mood. I actually got lost in Thayd, a city I’ve been running around in for over a year, because the atmosphere is so very different and the whole place felt new.
There are also daily quests. They are relatively standard fare, but with that extra WildStar flavor. My favorite one has you go trick-or-treating at other people’s houses. For 50 silver you can put out some candy of your own. There’s a bit of a trick to this quest. There are several different types of candy, and you need to collect one of each. That means people are constantly calling out in housing zone chat asking for and offering different kinds of candy. In some games I could see this being awful really fast, but WildStar’s housing chat is notoriously helpful and fun, and so far everyone’s been working together to make this quest a breeze.
I love that you can run around in a spooky corn field.
The other truly amazing piece is the quest that sends you into the holiday expedition (mini-dungeon). Most other holiday events I’ve experienced in games tend to send you to either a one-and-done boss in a box, or have some re-skinned portion of an existing dungeon set up to match the theme. WildStar instead has gone all-in and made a complete experience jam packed with atmosphere and lore. I’m hoping to put a guide together soon so I don’t want to get into too many details here, but I absolutely loved the expedition. I also think the devs made the right call by adding level scaling. It allows characters of almost any level (above 10 I believe) to group up and run it together. I soloed it on both my main and my fresh 50 engineer without too much trouble, and also ran with groups of 3-4 guildies of varying levels and it was still engaging, fun, and about the right amount of challenge.
Pray the Angel finds you there. Or not. She’s kinda creepy too.
There’s a final note I want to make about this event as it relates to WildStar’s F2P model. I think they did it right. There are only a handful of items that are store exclusive for the holiday: the skeletal warpig mount, the haunted house fabkit, and the shade’s eve dye pack. The mount seems to be standard MMO cash shop mount fare. It is not for me but the value for the price seems fair. The dyes were a must-have, but were cheap enough to pay for with omnibits and can be applied to every character on my account so I’m happy. The fabkit is pretty sweet, it allows you to basically have a second house (a haunted house!) on your plot, and you can even fully furnish it as you choose. However, it suffers from the standard issue all fabkits have, which is that if you decide you don’t like the location or want to swap it out for something new it is gone forever. Since it is a one-use, one-character purchase (and fairly expensive too), I don’t think it is worth the cost. If they ever change those kits from single-use to something you learn and can re-use I would probably buy one myself.
All of the rest of the shade’s eve goodies can be purchased with Shade’s Silver. You earn this from dailies and from running the expedition. I ran quite a few times last night and if there is a daily cap on that currency I didn’t find it, and I earned enough to purchase the hoverboard already! Even better, it looks like most of the items can drop from the instance goodie bag. I would recommend holding off on any big purchases until later in the event, since you might get lucky and get one for free! I managed to snag the pet last night and since that was one of my must-haves I was super stoked.
I hope you all have a fantastic time with Shade’s Eve! And if you are still waffling about whether or not to try WildStar? There’s absolutely no better time!
