Last night I did not join in FFXIV Eureka shenanigans, largely because I was not feeling terribly sociable. This is was and will probably continue to be a trying week, as is often the case when we come back from a significant break. In my case I was out five days, and while I spent a good chunk of the first day at the hospital… it was still enough time to get thoroughly out of the habit of going to work on a regular basis. Instead I spent my night roaming around in Destiny 2 and doing puttering sort of activities, in part because I had knocked down the vast majority of the major stuff over the weekend. The thing I did not realize however is that yesterday was also the final day of the season, and I am a little bummed out that this was apparently the first season that Greysky Armada will not have maxed out guild rank… and will not be earning the banner pole. I myself have done next to nothing to contribute to this, so in the grand scheme of things I am okay with this… just a little sad.
Instead of doing things on my Titan main, I opted to instead piddle around on my Hunter who has not really been dusted off since the launch of Curse of Osiris. It is really weird to have the start of three different content blocks… Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and Forsaken all on the director map. I play this game incorrectly… and what I mean by that is my preference is to level to the new numerical cap before starting any of the story driven content. My thought process is something like this… if I grind the levels on something like strikes or heroic public events… I can use the story as a light leveling experience, meaning anything I happen to get along the way is actually useful gear instead of something that I immediately relegate to the shard bin. This may or may not be worthwhile but it is the pattern that I find myself falling into over and over again.
Traditionally I have focused on doing nothing but Titan public events, since by the time you down one of them there is often times another one just about to spawn on the other half of that relatively small map. With the advent of planetary bounties, I have started focusing on those instead and knocking out a full round of the planets that I have access to. Each time you turn in one of the bounties it appears to be a significant jump in experience and as a result I am sitting at level 37 out of 50… and wondering if the Black Armory is going to bump up both Light Level cap and Level Cap. Grinding in Destiny is my jam, and I find it extremely peaceful to roam around and knock out patrols and public events.
This process has been bolstered by the fact that apparently the gun I ground for during the Halloween event, may not have a minimum level cap to equip or at least it is equipable at my lowest level which is 30. I was swapping gear around through DIM… and if you don’t know about Destiny Item Manager you should totally stop what you are doing and check it out. Without really realizing what I was doing I swapped my 600 item level Horror Story over to my Hunter… and it equipped without issue. This means that immediately I started getting gear that is way higher than I probably should at the equivalent level. Sure some of it isn’t necessarily usable due to level restrictions… but some of it is and as such this weapon that is an arguably worse version of the Origin Story… serves as a light level booster. Similarly I tried it out on my 289 Light Level Warlock… and once again I could equip it just fine.
With the opening of a brand new season…. I will likely be putting the Huntress to bed once again, however the sheer fact that I am interested in playing my alts tells you a lot about the improvement to the current state of Destiny 2. When the PS4 version released I ground up all three of my classes to 305 light, and used them as a sort of spring board each week to help me level up my weapons… which in turn then drug up the level of my armor. With the PC release… I only had the oomph to get the three characters leveled… but never spent time gearing them other than the Titan. I lost steam… and Curse of Osiris did not really help that, and at which point I seemingly became a player that only really played my main. Now I am back in the mood to fiddle with the other classes and see what sorts of trouble I can get up to with them as well. Essentially the desire to play is greater once more than the total package of content available to me on any one character… which is saying an awful lot given that there are so many opportunities for Powerful/Prime engrams.
Like I have said before… Destiny 2 is in its best state ever, and one that I feel probably rivals the state of Destiny 1 during Year 3 (and honestly the current state since it has largely been frozen in time). If you have access to the game I highly suggest checking it out again. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to holler at me through one of the many channels folks have to holler at me through.