Destiny

[Basara]

Finished up last nights raid on my Titan. So much smoother with our usual team. Oryx dropped me a 302 class item which i'll use to infuse up my Warlocks 300 bond and a near perfect 306, full auto, scout rifle. My weapon of choice.

 

Took the under leveled Hunter through King's Fall for the first time and came out the other side 302 in a record 1hr 50. Firstly, no Ghost, fuck you Destiny! But it picked up after that. I got another rocket launcher at the same 306 roll from the Warpriest but the new one has tracking. He also dropped a exotic special that turned into a 310 4th Horseman, my second only to drop since i started playing this game. 306 boots from Golgoroth and 302 cloak from the Deathsingers. Oryx was feeling conflicted in his generosity and gave me 2 more auto rifles. Now, my original was only 300, my new ones are 307 and a perfect 310. Since i am more of a scout rifle guy i'll use the 310 to infuse that up to perfect light and keep the 307. I'm sure i'll find something to stick the 300 into.

 

It's getting much easier. Fewer wipes and the ones that do happen are to stupid mistakes. Golgoroth was originally out biggest problem, now he's one of the fastest fights. We almost had him in 3 orbs this time. Orb/gaze timing is nearly spot on, if we can get a couple more seconds we'll have him. I was getting 10 shots of Black Spindle off at around 129,000 damage each. Only wipes on the Deathsinger are if someone falls off a platform on relic duty, just more practice really. Oryx has so much going on its still somewhat of a challenge but we're generally getting him in 3 attempts. If it wasn't for all the jumping sections in between the encounters this would be faster than The Vault of Glass now.

 

All in all a solid raid. 

[Basara]

I'm a Hunter at heart. That was my first class, and the more I play Nightstalker the more I love it. Grenades are meh, but Keen Sight is amazeballs. Need the helm that gives you the ability to use that and Shadow Step.

Speaking of exotics, is it still possible to have Y1 stuff drop, or do I need to wait for Xur to sell a primary legacy to get a Universal Remote?

 

Year one exotics guns will drop from the Vault of Glass, Crota's End and the big chest in the Prison of Elders. I think the big chest is the only place to get year one armor from though.

[Basara]

triple post. my bad

[glfpunk]

It's kind of a pain doing the Touch of Malice quest line on alternate characters.  I can't remember which fragments I've gotten.  There are websites and apps that let you know what you've gotten and missed but it's grimoire based, so it's not any help when I've gotten them on my Titan already because the grimoire is unlocked.  So just started from square one the other day with a buddy and we went around and collected all the ones on patrol.  The big pain is the Court of Oryx T2 ones.  I ended up having to go swap to my Titan and buy stolen runes from Eris to swap over to the Hunter.  Then I had to write down the bosses that it spawned because you get fragments for specific combinations of T2 bosses.  They need to fix the damn Agonarch Rune.  Assholes messing it up for everyone.  I think I'm sitting at 37 fragments right now.  Have to go grab the 4 from the Regicide mission, 2 from the Shield Bros and Sunless Cell strikes, and 1 more T2 CoO fragment tonight.  I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get to 45 with the reset of the CoO T3 boss.  If they fixed the damn Agonarch Rune problem and opened that back up I could do it tonight since I have one that's fully charged. 

 

Snagged a 310 Hereafter from an engram the other day.  My Black Spindle is about to be 310, currently sitting at 307. 

[J.T.]

Sweet, sweet, Iron Banner.  Thank you for dropping the Zhalo Supercell for me.  It is a mighty fine bullet hose. 

 

I'm kinda bummed by Saladin's IB rewards.   The whole point of the Banner was to allow not so regular grinders to get their hands on near Raid quality items and 280 junk is not going to cut it.  You'd think that IB items would at least be 290. 

 

Sure, you can infuse the items to make them better, but why not make the stuff worth having from jump street so that you have more players competing in the event?

 

Got Hereafter, leveled it up, hated the recoil, shredded it, lamented on P&E not being a Y2 Exotic..  I will let someone else sell me on how useful the novelty blind debuff is but when I shoot something in the head with an exotic sniper rifle with that level of impact, if it is any critter short of an ultra it should fucking die.

 

Also bought the Y2 Don't Touch Me for my Gunslinger because I hate not having enough shots with CN to get any Way of the Gun medals.  Not sure how I survived in Y1 without these wonderful gauntlets.  The snap cloak in PvE is insane.

 

In honor of Arn Anderson I bought the neck slice emote with my Silver.  FINGER ON THROAT MEANS DEATH~!  METAPHOR~! 

 

Why Bungie decided that the custom emote should take the place of the most useful and utilitarian emote we have boggles my mind.

[Basara]

My Iron Banner pyramid scheme of bounties and marks has paid off. I cashed in this morning. For the first time ever I've ranked up all 3 characters. The Warlock to 5 and the Hunter and Titan to 4. No need to get them to 5 as i already picked up the pulse rifle on my Warlock. I played 64 games and went 37-27. I've also got a bunch of bounties left on all 3 characters for an instant boost next torny. Ignoring the 'drops will be the main supply gear' statement which turned out to be bullshit its been the easiest one yet thanks to having 9 different bounties and 3 weekly bounties. Its so much easier to rank up, especially on your alts. I ended up playing about 15 games total between my Hunter and Titan and some of those were unnecessary, i was just there because other people i play with were finishing some bounties. If you can hit a solid 3-4 games in a row with all 9 bounties in your inventory at the end of the week you can go from rank 1 to 4.5 straight away. If you do the weeklies as well you don't even need to play next time, hoarding them and handing those in on an alt once your main is leveled up will get them to rank 5 on the Monday.

 

The downside is I've now got to do the dailies every day for the next few days as i'm down to about 10 Legendary Marks after my Iron Banner and infusing spree. But it's all payed off, i can be over 300 on all three characters with weapons i actually want to use now, not just the ones with the highest light. I could do with some better armor in places, my Hunter is still using a random blue 294 helm since its the best I've found and a 310 exotic for arms since my best is 292 otherwise.

[RIPPA]

I hit Rank 5 early yesterday and just stopped playing IB

 

I am not going to get enough marks to buy anything else so I started focusing on other areas.

 

Now I need to win 2 more matches for my FWC quest line so I might go into IB to get the wins and see if I get lucky with a drop but. yeah...

 

Finally played the new version of Cerberus Vae. Wow is that totally different. I mean it's still a shitty strike but oh so fucking different.

[EVA]

Ignoring the 'drops will be the main supply gear' statement which turned out to be bullshit its been the easiest one yet thanks to having 9 different bounties and 3 weekly bounties. Its so much easier to rank up, especially on your alts. I ended up playing about 15 games total between my Hunter and Titan and some of those were unnecessary, i was just there because other people i play with were finishing some bounties. If you can hit a solid 3-4 games in a row with all 9 bounties in your inventory at the end of the week you can go from rank 1 to 4.5 straight away.

This is basically what I did with my Hunter yesterday. I had hoarded the daily bounties, and knocked all of them out in about an hour or so and hit 4 1/4. Crazy.

I actually didn't suck that bad, despite being underleveled, not having any good weapons on her, or running Nightstalker.

[Basara]

Looks like there's a patch coming later today to improve Nightfall drops. So if you plan on doing the Nightfalls i'd wait until its live. Its dropping at the usual 10am Bungie time.

 

Speaking of Nightfall, its the Dust Palace for the first time today, i hope all you Xbox players appreciate us beta testing it for a year to make it into the not as crap version you see today! Modifiers are Epic, Berserk, Small Arms, Grounded and Chaff. Not a bad set really. Small arms will help, its just a shame there are no longer primary burns to tear through those shields.

[J.T.]

Wasn't able to hit the IB because I was rolling with a friend of mine who was only 34.  We lost three hearbreakers in Control but still put up respectable numbers.  

 

My DTR Combat Rating for my new Hunter (dcons included) is now a somewhat respectable 89.34 but I need to get closer to or over 100.  My K/D is finally above 1.00 by a smidge.

 

Stillpiercer is that new hotness for me.  I am back to my old head-popping death from a distance ways in the Crucible thanks to this wonderful rifle..  Nearly zero recoil.

 

I will probably end up using the Hakke AOIF RUA-D sniper I ordered from Banshee to infuse Stillpiercer if the ATK for the RUA-D is better.  if not, Legendary Marks.  Banshee needs to have a Legendary Hakke shotgun available for order tomorrow.  I still need a good Legendary CQB special weapon.

 

Would also be nice if I could get a Legendary helmet to drop for my Gunslinger armor set-up.  I could also use a Legendary artifact for my Gunslinger and Nightstalker-to-be schema.

 

Paradox is the Daily today, so fire up those guides on how to get those exclusive Dead Ghosts.

 

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/160359808/0/0/1

[J.T.]

Looks like there's a patch coming later today to improve Nightfall drops. So if you plan on doing the Nightfalls i'd wait until its live. Its dropping at the usual 10am Bungie time.

 

Speaking of Nightfall, its the Dust Palace for the first time today, i hope all you Xbox players appreciate us beta testing it for a year to make it into the not as crap version you see today! Modifiers are Epic, Berserk, Small Arms, Grounded and Chaff. Not a bad set really. Small arms will help, its just a shame there are no longer primary burns to tear through those shields.

 

I saw something on DestinyTracker this morning mentioning something about avoiding the Nightfall until after the patch.

[Basara]

Yeah, Bungie posted something about it too. If you do it before the patch it will be gear from the old loot pool. No word whats actually in the new one though. Maybe we'll all get 14 strange coins instead of 12? To be fair, i haven't had that many crappy drops from the Nightfall. I haven't been doing them on all 3 characters every week like i used to because its not worth it really without the 500 rep and xp boost. But I've had a few exotics and a 300 hand cannon over the past few weks so it could be worse

[J.T.]

Speaking of Nightfall, its the Dust Palace for the first time today, i hope all you Xbox players appreciate us beta testing it for a year to make it into the not as crap version you see today! Modifiers are Epic, Berserk, Small Arms, Grounded and Chaff. Not a bad set really.

 

That is a daunting set for that strike.   The only thing going for you is Small Arms. 

 

I can deal with Chaff because I don't pay too much attention to my Radar in PvE because I hip fire a lot and look up from my hard sights every few seconds, but the area where you fight the Flayers has jack for cover and Grounded will make jumping to evade a near death sentence. 

 

You will have to do most of your fighting long distance the ledge near the Cortex and get rid of any adds that spawn there to flank you.

 

Not sure what Berserk does.   TBH, Angry / Berserk / Bloodthirsty skulls read nearly the same to me.

 

I am surprised that those bastards at Bungie didn't make Match Game one of the active skulls for this strike.  That would totally suck.

[Basara]

Berserk is non flinching enemies. Which will make those shield carrying sons of bitches a touch annoying. But like you say, all those modifiers aren't really noticeable in a Nightfall.I kind of just assume they are on because that's pretty much what a Nightfall is. Grounded is the only thing that might catch me out, because i forget it's on. It's nice having Small Arms back.

[J.T.]

Precisely.  I always expect enemies in Nightfalls not to flinch so it is no big deal.  Grounded gives me pause because I do a lot of jump avoids in close area PvE battles like the one with the Flayers and Cabal slug rifles are going to fucking sting.

 

Small Arms makes me smile now that I have the Zhalo Supercell, so I should make short work of the Flayer with the Arc shield. Probably should save him for last and deal with the other two from cover and extreme range.   The Smolder and my Stillpiercer are going to get a workout.

[glfpunk]

I had shitty luck with the nightfalls until last week.  I got a 310 Grav Forfeit for the Hunter and 16 strange coins on another.  I can't remember what my third reward was though.  Must not have been important. 

 

Went last night to finish up getting the calcified fragments that me and a buddy could get before reset.  Got the four from Regicide and then went to Court of Oryx where we proceeded to piss everyone off.  I was hoping that we'd get there and it just be the two of us to avoid this but there were a handful of people there.  So there's four fragments that you can get from T2 CoO and they're tied to being the summoner and getting specific boss combinations.  There was one that I needed and two that my buddy needed.  So if you popped off a T2 event and the boss combination wasn't the one you needed, you just suicide and then don't come back so the event would be abandoned and you wouldn't lose your stolen rune.  I got my correct combo on my first try and my buddy got one of his on his first try also but his last combo that he needed- I think it was Bracus Horusk, Menghoor, and Cra'adug- that shit took forever.  It just kept sending out different enemy combos than what he needed.  So he'd just jump off the edge and die and then respawn up at the top and let the timer run out to abandon the event and try again.  Finally got it though. It just sucks to constantly have to do that with other people there.  We did help them out too.  We must have done three or four T3's when we first got there with these other guys.  But then one random guy just hung around the whole time while we were searching for that T2 combo. 

 

So we're both sitting at 44 fragments and doing the T3 tonight will get us the 45th.  Did the mission where you have to kill the Centurion in the salt mine and will do the Undying Mind strike where you have to kill that special knight that spawns when you get the boss to half health.  After we get that last fragment we'll just need to do the Fears Embrace mission where you kill the wizard to get the Touch of Malice.  To be honest, I don't even know what gun I will infuse it into though.  I might just keep it so I don't have to swap the one I have. 

[RIPPA]

Got a 4th Horsemen out of my latest ToC drop. I doubt it will replace Invective for me but its a shotgun I can give to my Warlock.

 

Finished the FWC quest so I have the Exotic Titan Mark... which will probably always just sit there because I can't really see how I would choose the mark over any other exotic armor I have.

 

Of course - I got a legit Relentless (10 kills - not the bounty one that counts assists) in IB last night after I was already at Rank 5 and was just fucking around.

[J.T.]

I suffered through Undying Mind as a Weekly Heroic strike with my DARPA buddies and got the Mark of the Undying Mind.... which does my Hunter no good whatsoever. 

 

I shoulda kept it for the Titan I will eventually build to be an item mule,  but I need the Exotic Shards for future infusions and possible blueprint activation.

[Basara]

I did a spot of fragment hunting today too actually. I'm sitting on 40 at the moment. I 'don't think' i accidentally picked any up on other characters before i released what a nightmare it would be to figure out what i'm missing.

 

I'm currently missing one in Regocide, one in the Shield Brothers strike, the Agonarch Rune (is that still glitched?), Skyburners command and 2 tier 3 courts. Plus the 3 no ones found yet.

 

If the rune is still glitched that will be kind of annoying since i will have to wait 2 weeks for one of the tier 3 fragments i'm missing. Even more annoying, I've done all the tier 3 fights, they just weren't on my runes so i didn't get the fragment for them. I did get lucky with the tier 2s though. Without realizing there was a combination to the bosses for the fragments I've collected them all through dumb luck.

 

Edit: Make that 41, just knocked out this weeks tier 3 with a random that was sitting there waiting for a court.

[glfpunk]

Yeah Agonarch Rune is still turned off.  There was some exploit people were doing so Bungie turned it off until they figure out how to fix it.  Looks like you'll have to wait until next reset to get that T3 unless they turn the Rune event back on before then.  Shield Bro strike one is in the second room with enemies that has a bunch of Phalanx and random Cabal in it.  The fragment is under some debris and beams on the right side of the room. You kind of have to go along the right wall and go past it and look back toward the entrance to see it. 

[Basara]

I think i might be OK. I just loaded up Ghost Hunter and i'm still missing one in the Dreadnought. That, along with the Skyburners, Shield Brothers and Regicide should bring me up to 45. I'll be missing the Agonarch Rune, Baby Crota and the 3 that haven't been discovered yet.

[RIPPA]

Shield Bro strike one is in the second room with enemies that has a bunch of Phalanx and random Cabal in it.  The fragment is under some debris and beams on the right side of the room. You kind of have to go along the right wall and go past it and look back toward the entrance to see it. 

 

I still haven't found this one. Of course - I remembered the room and the general area but had blanked on specific location.

 

Of course I always feel bad if my teammates are waiting for me so I generally only search for like 5 seconds.

 

Oh and one time I was searching was that Special Shield Brothers one to try and get the Chaperone. That wasn't a smart time to do it

[EVA]

Fantastic article on Kotaku today about the development of Destiny's story

Lots of interesting details, both great and small. For instance, the "Prince Uldren" that was replaced by the Exo Stranger was actually a completely different character, they just repurposed the model for the Queen's brother.

[J.T.]

Interesting.  I always assumed from all of the comments from Deej and Cosmo in the discussion forums that the "Stranger" was still supposed to turn out to be Uldren only when you first meet him, he's out in the field doing his Master of Crows thing and gathering information about the Last City and you don't find out until later that he's actually the Queen's brother.

 

Funny how the left hand never talks to the right at Bungie.

 

Your first encounter with Uldren / The Stranger in the original story arc (as depicted in the dev stuff from E3) was supposed to be somewhat adversarial to say the least.

 

[J.T.]

Looks like the new patch unlocked a new quest called Not Forged In Light with Laskshmi-2 of the Future War Cult.  The reward Is obviously the Exotic version of the Stranger's Rifle aka No Time To Explain given the callback to the Exo Stranger dialogue from the first Venus mission.

 

Apparently part of the quest line involves killing Atheon, so there is you answer to the question, "Are the old raids obsolete?"