Just picked up my first couple of BTCD's. Would like to start a local wallet and open it up for staking. Noob question here, once I've followed the instructions to start staking do I need to leave the wallet online for it to occur or can it be taken completely offline?
You don't have to have the wallet open in order to stake as your coins accrue "coin age" regardless of whether it is open or not, as long as you do not send or receive any other BTCD to your address. When you do next open your wallet (and unlock it for staking) your next stake amount will include everything for your coin age. In other words, you could just open it once a week for a few hours (or until you receive a mined block) and you would receive the same stake amount as you would have done if the wallet was open the entire time. All up you get around 5% pa from staking, and of course there is the as-yet-unknown income that BTCD holders will get from teleport, anon credit card, SuperNET, etc etc.