New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

I asked on Twitter the other day if people had any questions or specific things they would like to see in a guide, and Walks came at me with the really tough questions:

 

I certainly don’t want to disappoint my loyal readers, and it turns out there’s a lot to learn from these questions!

Costume Basics

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your fabulous costume from this menu.

Why wander around Nexus looking like you just picked up whatever you could find off of random monsters you killed? Costume items can be purchased for renown, prestige, or NCoin, or you can mix and match the appearance of any gear you find while playing the game normally!

Open your character sheet (default “P”) and select “Costumes” from the menu on the upper right. This basic menu lets you preview costumes you’ve already made and select which one you want to wear. Free-to-play characters can have 4 costumes, while folks who purchased the box get 6. You can purchase more from the cash shop, up to a total of 12. Changing between costumes can be done at any time and has no cost. But before you select a costume you have to put together a great look for yourself! That brings us to the next step.

The Holo-wardrobe

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

An empty costume, just waiting for inspiration!

This is where the magic happens, fellow citizens of Nexus. The Holo-wardrobe can be accessed directly from the menu at the bottom left of your screen, or from the costumes tab of your character sheet. The left column is where you will choose and create your costume. The right side shows a preview of your outfit while you’re working. In the center, dye and costume options will be presented based on what you have selected on the left.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your weapon.

When you start, everything on the left will be grayed out or empty, and the preview on the right should show whatever gear you have equipped.  To use the “skin” or appearance of an item for your costumes, you must first unlock it. Clicking the “Unlock Items” button in the top center of the holo-wardrobe will bring up a list of all the items available for you to learn the appearance of. You can go through this list, see a preview of each item, and decide if you want to unlock its appearance for your costumes. Note that unlocking an item’s appearance will cause it to become soulbound to you and unable to be traded. As you find new items, you can also shift+right click on them to unlock their appearance. You start with 300 individual item appearance slots available, and more can be purchased in the in-game store up to a total of 850. Items you learn are available across your entire account, for both Exile and Dominion characters.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Oh no, two different duplicate items! Right click and forget the extras to free up space!

Now that you’ve unlocked some fancy items, let’s put them to work. You can change the appearance of any visible gear slot. That means weapon, head, shoulders, chest, hands, legs, and feet. Click on one in the leftmost column of the wardrobe and it will show all the appearances you’ve unlocked for that slot in the middle column. Items are arranged alphabetically, and you can move between pages using the small arrows at the bottom right of this section. Items with an exclamation point symbol are no longer available in the game (but you can still keep using their appearance!). Items with a red “no” symbol can’t be used by your current character. This mostly happens with weapons, since you can’t change your weapon appearance to that of a different class. Alternately, you can click the eye icon next to an appearance slot to hide the display of that item. That option is particularly useful for hiding your helm if you want to show off your cute haircut.

Dyes

I wrote a whole guide to using Dyes and finding new ones! You can find it at Wildstar Core!

Just answer Walks’ questions already

Oh right I was supposed to talk about my favorite color and class for overall looks. My favorite dye color is Northern Lights, which is one of the new ones from Cosmic Rewards. It is such a pretty, multi-hued color, with metallic blues and purples. As for which class gets the best gear, that mostly only matters for your weapons (I love Spellslingers’ pistols and Medics’ resonators so much). Otherwise, just go to the auction house or find a friendly crafter and get whatever you like. You can learn the appearance of items from any class! I like a lot of the medium and light armor, although some of the late-game heavy armor has a great tanky feel to it if you are into that. As much as I like my spellslinger, some of the medic class sets are pretty amazing. Also, don’t forget to think about PvP. Not only are the level 50 PvP sets very snazzy looking, there are also a few nice costume sets available for the PvP currency, prestige. Remember that your holo-wardrobe is shared across your whole account, so you can mix and match as much as you want!

That’s it for today! If you still have questions check out Kelzam’s guide from when the holo-wardrobe system launched, or ask away in the comments!


New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

I asked on Twitter the other day if people had any questions or specific things they would like to see in a guide, and Walks came at me with the really tough questions:

 

I certainly don’t want to disappoint my loyal readers, and it turns out there’s a lot to learn from these questions!

Costume Basics

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your fabulous costume from this menu.

Why wander around Nexus looking like you just picked up whatever you could find off of random monsters you killed? Costume items can be purchased for renown, prestige, or NCoin, or you can mix and match the appearance of any gear you find while playing the game normally!

Open your character sheet (default “P”) and select “Costumes” from the menu on the upper right. This basic menu lets you preview costumes you’ve already made and select which one you want to wear. Free-to-play characters can have 4 costumes, while folks who purchased the box get 6. You can purchase more from the cash shop, up to a total of 12. Changing between costumes can be done at any time and has no cost. But before you select a costume you have to put together a great look for yourself! That brings us to the next step.

The Holo-wardrobe

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

An empty costume, just waiting for inspiration!

This is where the magic happens, fellow citizens of Nexus. The Holo-wardrobe can be accessed directly from the menu at the bottom left of your screen, or from the costumes tab of your character sheet. The left column is where you will choose and create your costume. The right side shows a preview of your outfit while you’re working. In the center, dye and costume options will be presented based on what you have selected on the left.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your weapon.

When you start, everything on the left will be grayed out or empty, and the preview on the right should show whatever gear you have equipped.  To use the “skin” or appearance of an item for your costumes, you must first unlock it. Clicking the “Unlock Items” button in the top center of the holo-wardrobe will bring up a list of all the items available for you to learn the appearance of. You can go through this list, see a preview of each item, and decide if you want to unlock its appearance for your costumes. Note that unlocking an item’s appearance will cause it to become soulbound to you and unable to be traded. As you find new items, you can also shift+right click on them to unlock their appearance. You start with 300 individual item appearance slots available, and more can be purchased in the in-game store up to a total of 850. Items you learn are available across your entire account, for both Exile and Dominion characters.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Oh no, two different duplicate items! Right click and forget the extras to free up space!

Now that you’ve unlocked some fancy items, let’s put them to work. You can change the appearance of any visible gear slot. That means weapon, head, shoulders, chest, hands, legs, and feet. Click on one in the leftmost column of the wardrobe and it will show all the appearances you’ve unlocked for that slot in the middle column. Items are arranged alphabetically, and you can move between pages using the small arrows at the bottom right of this section. Items with an exclamation point symbol are no longer available in the game (but you can still keep using their appearance!). Items with a red “no” symbol can’t be used by your current character. This mostly happens with weapons, since you can’t change your weapon appearance to that of a different class. Alternately, you can click the eye icon next to an appearance slot to hide the display of that item. That option is particularly useful for hiding your helm if you want to show off your cute haircut.

Dyes

I wrote a whole guide to using Dyes and finding new ones! You can find it at Wildstar Core!

Just answer Walks’ questions already

Oh right I was supposed to talk about my favorite color and class for overall looks. My favorite dye color is Northern Lights, which is one of the new ones from Cosmic Rewards. It is such a pretty, multi-hued color, with metallic blues and purples. As for which class gets the best gear, that mostly only matters for your weapons (I love Spellslingers’ pistols and Medics’ resonators so much). Otherwise, just go to the auction house or find a friendly crafter and get whatever you like. You can learn the appearance of items from any class! I like a lot of the medium and light armor, although some of the late-game heavy armor has a great tanky feel to it if you are into that. As much as I like my spellslinger, some of the medic class sets are pretty amazing. Also, don’t forget to think about PvP. Not only are the level 50 PvP sets very snazzy looking, there are also a few nice costume sets available for the PvP currency, prestige. Remember that your holo-wardrobe is shared across your whole account, so you can mix and match as much as you want!

That’s it for today! If you still have questions check out Kelzam’s guide from when the holo-wardrobe system launched, or ask away in the comments!


New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

I asked on Twitter the other day if people had any questions or specific things they would like to see in a guide, and Walks came at me with the really tough questions:

 

I certainly don’t want to disappoint my loyal readers, and it turns out there’s a lot to learn from these questions!

Costume Basics

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your fabulous costume from this menu.

Why wander around Nexus looking like you just picked up whatever you could find off of random monsters you killed? Costume items can be purchased for renown, prestige, or NCoin, or you can mix and match the appearance of any gear you find while playing the game normally!

Open your character sheet (default “P”) and select “Costumes” from the menu on the upper right. This basic menu lets you preview costumes you’ve already made and select which one you want to wear. Free-to-play characters can have 4 costumes, while folks who purchased the box get 6. You can purchase more from the cash shop, up to a total of 12. Changing between costumes can be done at any time and has no cost. But before you select a costume you have to put together a great look for yourself! That brings us to the next step.

The Holo-wardrobe

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

An empty costume, just waiting for inspiration!

This is where the magic happens, fellow citizens of Nexus. The Holo-wardrobe can be accessed directly from the menu at the bottom left of your screen, or from the costumes tab of your character sheet. The left column is where you will choose and create your costume. The right side shows a preview of your outfit while you’re working. In the center, dye and costume options will be presented based on what you have selected on the left.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Choose your weapon.

When you start, everything on the left will be grayed out or empty, and the preview on the right should show whatever gear you have equipped.  To use the “skin” or appearance of an item for your costumes, you must first unlock it. Clicking the “Unlock Items” button in the top center of the holo-wardrobe will bring up a list of all the items available for you to learn the appearance of. You can go through this list, see a preview of each item, and decide if you want to unlock its appearance for your costumes. Note that unlocking an item’s appearance will cause it to become soulbound to you and unable to be traded. As you find new items, you can also shift+right click on them to unlock their appearance. You start with 300 individual item appearance slots available, and more can be purchased in the in-game store up to a total of 850. Items you learn are available across your entire account, for both Exile and Dominion characters.

New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

Oh no, two different duplicate items! Right click and forget the extras to free up space!

Now that you’ve unlocked some fancy items, let’s put them to work. You can change the appearance of any visible gear slot. That means weapon, head, shoulders, chest, hands, legs, and feet. Click on one in the leftmost column of the wardrobe and it will show all the appearances you’ve unlocked for that slot in the middle column. Items are arranged alphabetically, and you can move between pages using the small arrows at the bottom right of this section. Items with an exclamation point symbol are no longer available in the game (but you can still keep using their appearance!). Items with a red “no” symbol can’t be used by your current character. This mostly happens with weapons, since you can’t change your weapon appearance to that of a different class. Alternately, you can click the eye icon next to an appearance slot to hide the display of that item. That option is particularly useful for hiding your helm if you want to show off your cute haircut.

Dyes

I wrote a whole guide to using Dyes and finding new ones! You can find it at Wildstar Core!

Just answer Walks’ questions already

Oh right I was supposed to talk about my favorite color and class for overall looks. My favorite dye color is Northern Lights, which is one of the new ones from Cosmic Rewards. It is such a pretty, multi-hued color, with metallic blues and purples. As for which class gets the best gear, that mostly only matters for your weapons (I love Spellslingers’ pistols and Medics’ resonators so much). Otherwise, just go to the auction house or find a friendly crafter and get whatever you like. You can learn the appearance of items from any class! I like a lot of the medium and light armor, although some of the late-game heavy armor has a great tanky feel to it if you are into that. As much as I like my spellslinger, some of the medic class sets are pretty amazing. Also, don’t forget to think about PvP. Not only are the level 50 PvP sets very snazzy looking, there are also a few nice costume sets available for the PvP currency, prestige. Remember that your holo-wardrobe is shared across your whole account, so you can mix and match as much as you want!

That’s it for today! If you still have questions check out Kelzam’s guide from when the holo-wardrobe system launched, or ask away in the comments!


New to Nexus: Fashion Guide

PvP on My Mind

In my so-called hardcore WoW raiding days I stayed as far away as possible from PvP. Sure, I saw the potential benefits, like building better situational awareness and reaction times, but I couldn’t stand the culture. It didn’t help that at the time the folks in my guild who did a lot of PvP were some of the most obnoxious members of the raid team. The few times I tried it back then I got berated by my own team and murdered by the opposition and never felt like I had the chance to actually learn what I was supposed to do.

I never did end up PvPing much in that game, with too many entrenched “experts” and understood “best practices” to bar my entry. As I’ve picked up new MMOs over the years I have given PvP more of a try, and found that it can actually be enjoyable. The best scenario for me was always games with a healthy leveling bracket. This gave me some time to learn the battlegrounds and get acquainted with strategy and abilities without the hard wall that comes at the level cap. The wall of opponents with maxed out PvP gear can make learning so miserable that you give up without even giving it a fair try. Leveling brackets tend to normalize gear and are often more about skill and maybe which abilities you’ve learned at  your level. It makes the playing field much more even and let me tell you, losing a close match is way more fun than getting completely wrecked.

PvP on My Mind

Walatiki Temple in a rare moment of calm.

Anyway all of this is just setup for the fact that I actually find myself enjoying PvP in WildStar. I tried some while leveling and managed to learn the battlegrounds and some vague sense of strategy. I even wrote a “guide” that is just vague enough to still be relevant today! Then with the advent of the contracts system I gave it a shot on my level 50 character too. I was happy to see that a few days of being insta-killed was enough to buy myself a minimum amount of gear and then suddenly I could actually even be useful!

Fast-forward to the present, when I found out that there’s a new PvP season and all my hard work from before can now be upgraded by spending a few gold at the season 2 vendor. Sigh. At least the sweet armor has been unlocked for my holo-wardrobe.

PvP gear this season in WildStar has an interesting twist. The basic gear can be purchased for gold, which is awesome. This allows new folks and people playing catch-up to get a complete set very quickly. The next stage of gear can be purchased for a modest amount of prestige. I’m currently filling out my set, and it feels like something that can be reasonably done in a few nights of play if you are mostly focusing your time on PvP. Again this seems totally reasonable. A week of dedicated PvP should get you relatively caught up, but still not on par with the hardcore PvPers. That last step requires imbuement items and an awful lot of prestige. Each slot of gear (excluding gadget, weapon attachment, implant, etc.) can be upgraded by using a couple imbuement items, each of which costs more than (sometime double) the original item cost in prestige. Upgrading improves the quality of the gear and adds a rune slot, but doesn’t change the item level. This is the step that separates the real cupcakes from the mini-muffins or whatever. I guess I’m as bad at baked-goods analogies as I am at PvP.

PvP on My Mind

The real reason I want to pvp

This long slow grind seems potentially soul crushing for someone who is not super great at PvP. Part of me wants to just throw my excess prestige at pets and costumes and then run back to questing and expeditions. However, I find I’m often really enjoying PvP in spite of myself, and each new piece of gear (and the survivability that comes with it) keeps adding to that enjoyment.The slow and steady rate of progression is a nice counterpoint to the randomness of chasing gear from raiding. It also really helps that there is a chance to win the imbuement items from both the winner and loser goodie bags from doing battlegrounds. In fact I won two of them in a row by some miracle last night.

WildStar’s first in-game event since Free-2-Play launched begins tomorrow, and just happens to be a bonus prestige event. I’m suddenly finding myself really looking forward to it. This upcoming event not only gives me a bit of a speed pass to PvP rewards, but it will also hopefully bring in even more people to the battlegrounds. The very best part is that this type of event can attract people with some interest, but doesn’t “force” non-PvP-minded folk to queue for any reason. With a little luck, that will lead to an influx of people who actually want to be there, and maybe even enough new folks to actually make me look good for a change.

Are you interested in learning to PvP in WildStar? Are you planning to participate in the upcoming prestige bonus event? If you want a buddy to hang out with and maybe laugh at, leave me a note here or on Twitter and we can fight the Dommies together! Or at least check out this helpful guide over at WildStar-Core to get yourself started!


PvP on My Mind