Light and Poms

Losing Light

This marks the second weekend of attempts to get a black spindle, and I am quickly reaching a point where I no longer want it.  The first weekend was a tale of me largely spending the entire day either waiting to get a group or making attempts on it.  For whatever reason Bungie seems to keep choosing Sunday as the day for Spindle runs… which is not exactly prime time for people playing the game.  On top of that… Sunday is normally a day that I have stuff that needs to get done, and instead for two different weekends my world has focused around trying to get a Black Spindle.  I reached a point yesterday where I wanted to reach through the internet and punch whoever it was that designed this mission.  The individual parts aren’t all that bad… but combined together is just maddening.  If you could simply respawn at a checkpoint before the 10 minute timer starts on the Ketch it wouldn’t be so bad.  I would happily grind that until we finally got it… but instead it is the frustration of having to clear to a boss… then do the run across the temple… then unlock the various chambers… then FINALLY go up into the ketch and do the “real” mission.  So you have 10-15 minutes of bullshit before you reach the point at which it is omg serious mode.

We tried several different methods of attempting to down the boss, the main one being that we jump to the middle and burn him down with swords.  Towards the end we started trying to just whittle his ass down while keeping the adds under control, and honestly neither really worked well.  Anytime we ducked outside of the entrance tunnel we would get wrecked, and almost one shot.  I guess that is the biggest frustration is that the room has no place where you can really set up OTHER than the entrance tunnel and clean out the adds.  The geometry of the room means that someone is always getting hung on something and stuck awkwardly out in the open… which means they are essentially dead.  I am not sure what is up with the mission but it felt like we did significantly worse than the last time…  and this time around I am 304 and decked out in raid weapons that deal extra damage to taken.  I know I am the albatross around the neck of the group, but I am not exactly sure what I am doing wrong there.  At this point I am not likely to spend another weekend of attempts on this stupid weapon… when I have two sniper rifles that I enjoy using already.  Sure this is the best sniper in the game, but if it quite literally makes one of my party members slam their controller down against the desk breaking it…  it is not worth the hassle or frustration.

Pom Pom Squad

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The highlight of the weekend however for me was getting a Pom Pom Beanie on Friday evening while playing Division.  Strangely enough this seems to be the chase item for most people because they are actually rather rare.  I have given food and water to every single person that I meet along the street asking for it… and have a huge amount of clothing options… and have gotten exactly one pom pom beanie.  Now these also can apparently appear on the appearance vendor that unlocks with the security tier, but I have yet to see any there.  What is awesome about mine is the fact that it fits so perfectly with the colors that I already choose…  black and green.  Other than that last night I got a string of awesome weapon drops…  and I finally abandoned my beloved LSW for a couple of ACR variants and eventually a P416…  which all seem to feel the same when firing them.  I also found an upgrade for my SRS marksman rifle but unfortunately the upgrade was only a green so it won’t last nearly as long.  That seems to be my combo of weapons of choice… a fairly accurate assault rifle that fires well in single shot/bursts and a marksman rifle for headshots.  This allows me to either spray and play, for random two mob encounters on the street… or get more strategic for larger groups.

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I am consistently amazed at the wide variety of feelings this game can make me feel.  There are moments when I feel stirrings of patriotism and sentimentality like when I come across a memorial like the one above, or improvised banners hanging out of windows that say slogans like “Can’t Keep NY Down”.  Then other times the game gut punches you with feels when it comes to finding a phone message from before the infection, or as society was crumbling.  Like last night I picked up a message from two parents that were coming into town to see their child because they missed them… and it feels all the more tense knowing that they had no clue what they were walking into.  We had a lengthy AggroChat show talking about the morality of this game… and for whatever reason it stirs something completely different in me.  I absolutely feel like the good guy, the one trying hard to bring some sort of order to a fallen city.  Sure the only thing that separates me from the looters is the badge I am wearing… but I am also saving countless random people from executions or muggings as I roam the city streets.  I might be more vigilante than righteous crusader, but I am okay with that.  I think you miss some of the nuance of the game if you are constantly focused on this objective or the next, and aren’t really participating in the events that happen on the street.  I cannot count the number of times I have rolled up on a group of Rikers with their guns drawn on a civilian, and even though it is a nameless faceless NPC…  I saved them from certain death.  Had I been a little slower on the trigger finger they would be dead on the ground, and those are the moments I feel heroic.  Those are the moments when I don’t question what I am doing in this game.

8 thoughts on “Light and Poms”

  1. Regarding the Black Spindle, I got mine last night (mostly carried) and I have some tips for ya.

    1. It’s really hard. Like incredibly hard. Like I was grouped with two full raid helpers who have done it dozens of times and it still took us about 3 hours. I was low-man with a 308 light level (they were 318 or so). Even then, we only won by about 4 seconds at the end.

    2. You aren’t being carried. It is literally impossible to do this mission with 2 people, so if you’re getting to the final room with 6+ minutes left, you’re doing your part. The final room is a steep learning curve though.

    3. The shields are real (or at least were last night, unclear if they always are that brutal), so weapon damage type is super-important as is group composition. We ran Hunter (shadow/bind spec), Titan (Solar, weakness punch spec), and Warlock (Arc, Crowd control) spec. We also carried complimentary weapons. So I ran Telesto (void weapon) and a solar machine gun to go with my Arc weaponry.

    4. You can’t really die. That 10 seconds minimum downtime is critical. I was new to the fight so at the start I had 4-7 deaths. By the end I had 1 per run tops and it really made a difference in how close we got (we actually got the boss down 3 times but couldn’t clear all the adds in time).

    5. Add control is actually arguably more important than boss dps on this one, cause you will end up pinned down in the entrance tunnel. I was the stormcaller warlock and once I got the “feel” of when to do an add clear, it got considerably cleaner. Not easier, just cleaner.

    I’d also suggest that, from what I’m reading, you’re making the fight harder than it has to be. If you’d like I’m happy to outline how we did it in a separate response.`

    • Yeah at 304 I was the low man on the totem pole and we were getting to the end room with about 6 minutes to go… then struggling from there in. The shields I think are the big thing. We need to coordinate our secondaries better so we can drop shields fast.

  2. RE Destiny: Don’t forget we’re getting a Light Level increase in April too, and for all we know we’ll get weapons that make Black Spindle to no longer be the weapon to have. Maybe. What do I know, I hit like 295 light and got stuck… sometimes being a solo gamer works against you!

    Re The Division: I feel the same way. Yeah I’m a hard ass a lot of the time but I’ve seen enough of the horrors that the Rioter and Cleaners are doing that I feel like the good guy for sure. I think they do plenty to show how ‘evil’ the bad guys are to justify me being judge, jury and executioner. Oddly the one thing that bothers me is when a passerby freaks out as though I am threatening him/her. I want a ‘reassure civilian’ option!

    If you pick up all the phone recordings as you move through zones, I’m sure you got the one where the little kid calls his dad saying someone is trying to break into the apartment? The father is stuck in traffic trying to get home but until he gets there it’s an 8 year old boy trying to hold off rioters. That one sent chills down my spine and my eyes actually welled up, thinking of what a dad in that position would be feeling…and finally making the decision to tell his son to go and get the gun out of the closet.

    • God I know…. I just want to be “look guys I promise I won’t shoot you”. There are a lot of things that tear me up about this game, but none of it is related to my actions. Its a bad bad world and there are a lot of people suffering in it, and I just wish I had more ways to help them proactively. I do like though that as you build out your base it becomes populated with some of the people you save. Like I just noticed last night that Lau’s sister is there with her guitar playing in the corner. Things like that give me a glimmer of hope.

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