When last we met our brave Mordesh medic hero was about halfway through Wilderrun and very close to level 40. I was having so much fun I decided to pick her back up right away and stick around in the zone even though Malgrave opens up at 40. She’s now 42 and there’s just a few of the Torine quests left. Wilderrun is still not my favorite zone, but I’m glad I went through and gave it another look after more than a year away.
IntPiPoMo 12. Osun
The lopps where I left off last time sent me off to deal with the Osun, who were apparently bad noisy neighbors. I love this quest chain because you keep running into the lopps along the way. They are trying so hard to be brave adventurers like Marshal Yatish!
IntPiPoMo 13. Introducing the Strain.
Next stop was Lazarin’s base camp. In the questing with the Torine, you get to see one tiny glimpse of the Strain. Here is where you get to see what happens when it starts taking over the world. The effect is a bit different now that you will know quite a bit more about the strain by this point if you have been doing the Drusera quests. I think it still works though, since that all takes place in sealed labs while this is your first chance to see it out in the open.
InPiPoMo 14. Warbots and Freebots.
After clearing that area, and knowing that more strain troubles awaited me, I took a detour. This little optional quest hub unlocks the Crimelords of Whitevale adventure, and has a few tasks to help out some freebots and ekose. I love freebots, and their infectious joy at being sentient and independent. I also remembered the first time I climbed to the top of this structure as an explorer, and realized it was a giant fallen megadroid.
IntPiPoMo 15. Lore for the score.
There was one more detour before helping the Torine. There’s a lore object waaaaay up at the top of a tree in the middle of the jungle. I love that it isn’t just randomly there for no reason. The designers went through the extra care of having the remnants of an observation camp up there. Little touches like this make me love this game so much!
IntPiPoMo 16. Strain-corrupted Torine territory.
Finally I pushed on to the last area. It doesn’t look so bad from this shot, but the corruption gets worse the deeper you go. This zone is more enjoyable than I remembered from the first time around. I think it seriously suffers from two big issues for me. One is that jungle zones are not usually my thing. I do like that, as with many of the large zones in WildStar, Wilderrun is broken up into a lot of distinct subzones that have different moods. I particularly enjoyed the freebot versus elementals/megadroid area.
IntPiPoMo 17. This is why Wilderrun will always feel like a letdown.
The other issue this zone has is that it follows on the tail of Farside. Coming down from low-g hoverboarding in a classic science fiction setting would make anything that followed look pretty crappy in comparison in my book. Giving Wilderrun a little extra time helped distance it from Farside and let me enjoy it on its own terms.
