Destiny 2 (PS4)

[ZedLeg]

Had my first rage quit this morning. Got to the last boss fight in the endgame quest for Asher on IO. Had already died twice but I'd figured out my strategy, boss had even fallen down a hole so it looked like I was on easy street.

Run out of ammo for my kinetic weapon, switch to energy and see ammo on a platform with enemies on it. Double jump to get on platform while killing the enemies. Watch the platform sail by as I fall into the same hole as the boss.

Swear loudly, turn off PlayStation, sit staring at a blank screen for a good 5 minutes .

[SimianWonder]

I dropped a huge bk this morning.

I fired up D2 and decided I was going to make a start on playing with my Hunter. Select Hunter from title screen, skip opening cut scene. Oh. Second cut scene, where Ghost is telling you to "fly fast" I remember that I really don't like how my Hunter looks. She's an exo, but I tried to make her look like the iconic T-800 from Terminator franchise. She's dark grey, with red eyes, red mouth and a paintwork effect that simulates blood over her face. And I didn't like it. Well, I'm literally ten seconds in, so I jump back to the title screen and delete the character.

Oh st.

During the last couple of weeks I've been using the Hunter as a bit of a dumping ground; the two Hunter exotics sold by Xur? A few superfluous weapons? Yes, they were on the Hunter. The one I'd just deleted. Checked on the Destiny Item Manager confirmed the scale of my f**kwittery. It was all gone.

fk fkity fkfkfk

On the plus side, my new Hunter looks a little less like a fourteen year old boy designed her.

[Moog72]

I keep saying that you shouldn't mess with that useless Hunter class, sooner or later they'll screw you over at a crucial moment or steal your gear

That being said, must have been a horrible feeling of realisation ...

In other news, D2 servers will be offline for maintenance AGAIN tomorrow from 2 to 8pm UK time

Also, thanks to the Clan, I received the Raid rocket launcher from an engram this morning. I just need another launcher of a decent power that I can infuse into it so I can actually use it

[Moog72]

Which quest was that then Zed? I can't recall the individual missions at the moment, let alone the bosses at the end. Was it an exotic weapon quest?

[SimianWonder]

One other thing I forgot to mention; deleting the D1 Hunter seems to have deleted one of my Leviathan raid keys. Apparently it's a known glitch, but still bloody annoying.

On the subject of the Raid, having now done the main thing in it's entirety (thanks in no small part to Adam running team captain) it's both awe-inspiring and frustrating in equal measure. I love the look of everything, you can practically smell the decadence in each white-and-gold room, I love the scale of it, I love the way the design is totally different to anything D1 did, both art-wise and in terms of the encounters within, and I love that there are secrets hidden within that no one has yet seemed to fathom.

I don't like the sparcity of rewards; yes, you get a few tokens from most encounters which can be traded in for new gear, but it takes a lot of tokens to level up and a lot of time to earn them. A full run of the raid, start to finish saw me claim one weapon and one armour piece. That was it. I obtained one weapon through Clan rewards and one more armour piece through levelling up the vendor. I also don't necessarily like the mechanic-heavy nature of some of the encounters, which seems to lean a little too heavily towards King's Fall for my liking. Mess up once? That's likely a wipe. Someone else messes up once? Likely a wipe. Don't get me wrong, I had fun running with the usual suspects, but would I ever want to run it with randoms? I can imagine that being a huge gamble. Also, revive tokens. Yuck.

[ZedLeg]

Moog72 said:

Which quest was that then Zed? I can't recall the individual missions at the moment, let alone the bosses at the end. Was it an exotic weapon quest?

It's called King's Shadow. It's one of the four quests that are unlocked when you finished the main story/hit level 20. I'm not sure if it gives an exotic weapon quest.

The quest asks you to investigate why the Taken are messing with the Vex. The last boss is a real tough Taken Knight with waves of Taken cannon fodder

[Moog72]

SimianWonder said:

I also don't necessarily like the mechanic-heavy nature of some of the encounters, which seems to lean a little too heavily towards King's Fall for my liking

Interesting observation this. As you know, I've only done the first door unlock encounter but everything I've heard and read about this Raid suggests that it is more like King's Fall than any of the others. Long, lots of mechanics, unforgiving, etc, etc. I still haven't seen any spoilers though, so I have no idea what comes next

This is a bad thing, I disliked King's Fall and the fact that Leviathan seemingly takes hours to complete will take it out of the realm of the casual player and those that simply can't allocate that much time in one sitting (me, for instance). Only those that can throw hours and hours at normal mode will get to learn the mechanics meaning that hard mode will be off limits for everyone else - it'll be like Wrath of the Machine all over again, never did do normal mode for that one and hard mode just ended up being frustrating because I had little clue as to what was going on most of the time

Too bad, I was hoping more for a "let's have a laugh as a group" type of Raid experience not a multi hour sweat fest which will only get worse as and when hard mode releases - the lack of drops is also pretty short sighted for such a prolonged experience

[Moog72]

ZedLeg said:

It's called King's Shadow. It's one of the four quests that are unlocked when you finished the main story/hit level 20. I'm not sure if it gives an exotic weapon quest.

The quest asks you to investigate why the Taken are messing with the Vex. The last boss is a real tough Taken Knight with waves of Taken cannon fodder

Hmm, can't even recall that one but I'm heading to that point with my Warlock now so I'll keep an eye out for it. Also, the Taken in general are the worst enemy type ever to be put into Destiny 1 or 2, they are so infuriating in general

[ZedLeg]

I went up another 10 or so power levels just messing around trying to finish some other exotic quests so I'd probably walk it if I went back and had another go now .

[SimianWonder]

Moog72 said:

Hmm, can't even recall that one but I'm heading to that point with my Warlock now so I'll keep an eye out for it. Also, the Taken in general are the worst enemy type ever to be put into Destiny 1 or 2, they are so infuriating in general

Sounds like the quest for the Man O'War linear fusion rifle, which reminds me of the QueenBreaker's Bow from D1.

As I said, I don't want to come across like I'm bagging on Leviathan; from an art perspective it's astonishing, and it's really, really good fun running with the gang. Yes, even with Speckle. I just think it'd be a chore with randoms, due to the demands it places on the fireteam. It offers a variety of challenges, but the one thing that never varies is that it requires constant communication and unfailing execution.

[Speckle]

SimianWonder said:

Yes, even with Speckle.

I find this bit difficult to believe - I pride myself on being not only the biggest liability on any fireteam, but also the least fun.

These are skills I have developed over many years of Destiny

Zed...despite this, if you ever need a hand with anything and see me online, feel free to drop me a message or pop into whichever party chat I'm in.

....Unless I'm in the raid. If I'm in the raid, I'm probably busy being a liability to my team

[ZedLeg]

I've been keeping to myself until I levelled up but I'm at 264 power now so I was going to start getting more involved with the group stuff.

I'm starting to accumulate a fair pile of legendaries now, if I start trashing stuff I know I'm not going to use (like fusion rifles, I hate them) it's not likely that I'm going to hit a point where I would need a specific thing is it?

I must have got 9 or 10 legendaries last night after doing the Faction thing for Dead Orbit.

[Speckle]

ZedLeg said:

I've been keeping to myself until I levelled up but I'm at 264 power now so I was going to start getting more involved with the group stuff.

I'm starting to accumulate a fair pile of legendaries now, if I start trashing stuff I know I'm not going to use (like fusion rifles, I hate them) it's not likely that I'm going to hit a point where I would need a specific thing is it?

I must have got 9 or 10 legendaries last night after doing the Faction thing for Dead Orbit.

I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to weapons, then I reach a point where I just delete a load of stuff in one go. Stick anything that looks like it could become useful in your vault, shard the rest of it. Always try out anything that has a mod on it. If you like it, the mod will help your levelling by infusing non modded weapons into it (you'll get an additional 5 power over the base stat of the weapon used for infusion)

I would hold onto at least one fusion rifle, they're more useful than you think.

[ZedLeg]

Yeah, I'm getting into the habit of checking the mods and playing around with the attachments when I get a new item.

There's a few items I'm keeping a hold of until I can level them up a bit but a lot of it is just sitting there.

[youngsyr]

One tip I learnt from Destiny 1, which is probably a bit late for people now is to hold on to decent weapons at each light level from 1 to 20 - it helps massively when levelling up your alternate characters.

The vault is plenty big enough now.

[Brainpox]

Nightfall is good fun this week. Pretty easy though.

We tried the Prestige mode a few times and got very close. At 300 light I believe it sits above any of the raid encounters and the ads at the end get overwhelming. It's hard to know where to look - and very hard to not look at the timer!

[Digitalize]

Since there's no rolls this time you can just hold on to one of everything really.

Got really close to doing the prestige nightfall, 30 secs more and we would have got him. The barrage of adds along with his powerful attacks becomes overwhelming

[ZedLeg]

So levelling is starting to get complicated. I'm at 266 now and everything I get from random drops and token engrams has a lower power level than the items I'm using, apart from one gun I got from the Dead Orbit guy last night.

If I've read up correctly the only way to keep levelling from here is the weekly stuff like Flashpoint and nightfall or doing exotic quests and hoping that they drop at a higher level?

How do you level items past 265?

Just curious as there's a handcannon I want to use but when I got Drang it was at 278 so I'd be taking a bit of a hit to use another gun.

[paul99]

ZedLeg said:

So levelling is starting to get complicated. I'm at 266 now and everything I get from random drops and token engrams has a lower power level than the items I'm using, apart from one gun I got from the Dead Orbit guy last night.

If I've read up correctly the only way to keep levelling from here is the weekly stuff like Flashpoint and nightfall or doing exotic quests and hoping that they drop at a higher level?

How do you level items past 265?

Just curious as there's a handcannon I want to use but when I got Drang it was at 278 so I'd be taking a bit of a hit to use another gun.

I managed to get from 245 up to 268 in an evening, mainly by completing the weekly milestones, Crucible has been fairly generous to me dropping a few higher power legendarys and the occasional exotic and you can get through games at a decent pace. Ive not even done a nightfall, Trials or any exotic quests as yet, Strikes seem quite inefficient for the time they take so i havent really bothered with those either.

Also you dont need to equip your highest gear now, drops are based on whats in your inventory so you can use your favoured lower powered weapons in crucible.

Edited by paul99 on Thursday 28th September 11:07

[SimianWonder]

Once you're at the 265 mark, you need to be looking for every opportunity to get what the game calls "Powerful Gear", as that is what will help you take strides forwards rather than baby steps. Beating the weekly Nightfall strike is an obvious one, but the Leviathan Raid, Trials of the Nine, and the Flashpoint and Crucible Milestones are also guaranteed sources. Clan rewards will usually guarantee at least two a week, requiring only that others in the Clan complete the Nightfall and the Crucible milestones. You can also get them if the Clan beats the Raid or Trials, but that's a tougher ask. Heroic Public events can also drop exotics which will scale above your level, though drops rates are pretty low; I seem to average one exotic every 20-25 events completed.

One you hit high 270s-low 280s, you'll see blues dropping at higher levels again. I'm currently sitting at 304 on my warlock and most blue engrams are coming in at 294, which is useful for infusion or gunsmith materials.