Destiny Archives - Page 11 of 46 - Tales of the Aggronaut

First Week on PC

October 30, 2017 by Belghast

This is one of those mornings when I am not even sure where to start the post. It is like I have all of these disconnected thoughts in my head and am having a very hard time wrangling them together into something that follows any manner of logical progression. Destiny 2 released on the PC last Tuesday and since then I have played a significant amount of it, only really taking a single night off to go do something else. According to WastedOnDestiny.com I’ve played 32 hours of the game since release… which is officially more than I played Destiny 1 on the Xbox One. On the PS4 I managed to make it to 267 in that very first week, and on PC I managed to break the 265 cap and push on to 271 which makes me happy. I am nowhere near as lucky as my friend Raz was… who is sitting at something crazy like 282. There are ways to do this… but they involve madness and way more grinding than I was able to get in this week or really wanted to do. Additionally I started working on secondary characters and managed to push the Hunter to 18 while recording the podcast… and finished leveling it to 20 and making it through all but the final quest last night. I also started up my Warlock and got her to level 8, which was mostly about getting my 5000 clan xp to help level Greysky Armada. We managed to hit rank 3 which is extremely awesome and is largely made possible by the fact that myself and Wolfy started leveling the clan a bit on PS4 before the release of PC.

On Friday night we decided to give the Nightfall a go, which in truth I was uncertain about given that I only actually completed the Nightfall once on the PS4 side… and even then it was a bit of a pain in the ass. I also remembered us being significantly higher than the 250ish we were when we tried it. Together Tamrielo, RustySpork and I managed to get the boss down with about 3 minutes left on the clock, which is not good enough for the rat king… but makes me happy nonetheless. Yesterday afternoon I gave it another attempt with Mor and Grace and once again finished… but just barely with me taking down the boss via a couple of pulse grenades and auto rifle fire at about the 1 second left on the clock mark. Mor was just barely at the 240ish requirement for zoning in, so I feel like in the future so long as we are bringing in 260s we should be fine for this. This week also was a bit of an aberration in that it was extremely easy to cheese the objectives because of the modifier giving us insane grenade and melee regeneration. Striker Titan with double grenades meant I could clean out a bunch of adds almost as fast as I could throw them. They still hit insanely hard though and I just don’t have the recovery yet that I really should for doing harder content. This largely comes from just wearing a bunch of scraps instead of something resembling a full set of gear. I am really hoping in a few weeks I can get the full set of Titan Iron Banner gear again because it makes for a really excellent base for shenanigans.

I would have finished the Hunter but instead I took a lengthy break Sunday afternoon and worked on doing the weekly milestones on the PS4 side of the pond. I have to say after playing so much PC… the console version just feels sluggish and odd. Everything seems to move more slowly, which makes the crucible much easier… but everything else feel really odd. Not only was the visual fidelity much lower than even my laptop running at greatly downgraded settings… but just the movement speed of my character felt slower. I noticed this when doing some of the intro missions where you are limping through the city… on the console there was a specific point I could make it to before my character was forced to pause for a moment. On the PC I could make it considerably past that point before I was forcibly halted, so my running theory is that the PC version just has faster movement speeds. Weirdness aside I did manage to get used to the controller again and finish up Clan XP, Call to Arms and Flashpoint milestones which were enough to finish pushing me to 305. I feel much better hibernating the character now that it is sitting at the level cap rather than being just slightly under it. I will probably keep logging in at least once a week to finish off these easy milestones however because I feel like I need to keep contributing some Clan XP to TQMB in addition to all the work I am doing PC side with GREY. Eventually once I have gotten my PC characters to a more manageable state I am sure I will start doing those three main milestones on six characters… 3 on PC and 3 on PS4. It takes me roughly an hour to do all of the things needed to earn those three luminous engrams, and after a point that becomes my routine of logging in a new character each night and getting their progress.

I am absolutely loving playing the game on PC because it fits my play style considerably better. With the console it forced me to be in the room I have my PS4 set up in, but with PC I can either be playing it on my gaming desktop or downstairs on my laptop. The laptop doesn’t run it perfectly and I am having to throttle it down to 720 p and a few other considerations… but it runs well enough for me to be able to do almost anything I might need to do. For something like a Nightfall where there is a timer on the line I wouldn’t want to push it… but It is more than fine for some strikes or crucible. My activity of choice however is still doing public events and random token farming through chests and patrols. My goal for tonight is to attempt to push the hunter through the various things needed to unlock her three easy luminous engrams, and then to maybe get her through the Nightfall. From there my goal by next weeks reset is to have my Warlock finished off so I can start triple dipping on the powerful rewards front. While it has been a pure joy starting over on the PC… I do still want to arrive back at where I left off… and hopefully in a much faster time frame than the seven weeks it took to get me there on console. I am booned by the fact that the game seems to have traction among the AggroChat crew and with that means that there is likely going to be raiding before too much longer. I am assuming the raid will open up tomorrow much like it did on the console side, and then I am assuming next week we will have faction rally once more. Destiny 2 on PC is pretty much everything I had hoped it would be.

Twenty Again

October 26, 2017 by Belghast

I do not have a whole hell of a lot to talk about this morning so the post is going to be brief. Last night I went to the simulcast of Rifftrax Live Night of the Living Dead because there was no way I was going to miss that. Predictably it was pretty great and had also been a really long time since I had seen the original black and white film. There is a group of us from work that do this was a semi regular thing and its always a lot of fun. This however meant that I was giving up play time on “night two” of the PC release to spend time doing stuff in the real world. By the time I got home I was pretty out of it, but I did manage to limp across the finish line to level 20. This morning I spent a few of the tokens I had banked up and managed to get to 211 power level. That means tonight is all about actually finishing the main story because I dropped off before the transition to the planet Io. I have a bunch of goals… not the least of which is to finish the story so I can unlock the “end game” and all of the group activities. The other goal is to gather up enough purple stuff so that I can have the legendary shards ready and waiting for Xur to arrive tomorrow. The theory is to buy the 270 weapon and armor to give myself a boost so that when I start decoding the higher tier engrams that my light level is greatly inflated. Other than that… not a whole lot to talk about this morning so going ahead and cutting this post off.

A Smooth Landing

October 25, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was of course the launch of the PC version of Destiny 2. After years of rough launches I did not attempt to take the day off because I have been bit hard by that in the past. However it appears like everything went relatively smoothly and starting about noon I saw friends poking their heads into the game for the first time. Sure there were some issues, namely that the Clan roster seemed to be non-functional for all but a few people… but I remember us going through that at the PS4 launch as well so maybe that is one of the more fragile systems. There is a reported rash of bannings but I am uncertain how big of a deal this really is given that the internet tends to “memeify” everything to raise the sodium levels. To the best of my knowledge no one that I know got bit by whatever bug is occurring. It has been blamed on discord or obs or any other manner of software… but I know folks who streamed all day long yesterday and most everyone I know is running discord… so I sincerely doubt it is one of those. After years of seeing players cry foul… only to be busted by devs for doing some nefarious shit I am taking this with a giant truck load of salt.

I did not make it anywhere near as far as I had hoped to make it last night. I got a bit of a late start and then had to walk away from screen for a bit to go retrieve sustenance and consume it. At this point I am up to the start of Io in the quest chain and dinged level 14 just before logging for the night. I had visions of hitting level 20 and then potentially wrapping up the extremely long tail end of the story tonight after coming back from Rifftrax. That is just not a thing that is going to happen, however I should be on pace to at least get to 20 on Thursday night. I have to admit a lot of my evening was spent getting used to the keyboard and mouse controls. I didn’t want to simply plug a controller into my PC and continue on like I had been on the PS4. I wanted to get adjusted to playing the PC version, and it took way longer than I had hoped to begin remapping my reflexes. I was super pumped when I noticed that apparently it kept my keybindings from beta so I did not have to try and remap everything. It has been weird learning how to do things like the shield throw with a keyboard and mouse, when previously it was just so instinctive.

Everything comes out so much crisper and clearer on the PC that I noticed something I had apparently never noticed before on the console. I had no clue that Sloan had a bunch of Warhammer 40k purity seals on her left shoulder pad. At first I thought maybe this was an addition to the PC, but after checking the PS4 they are in fact there. The lower fidelity of the PS4 experience just made them not stand out nearly as well as they do on PC because the lighting is massively better. The game really feels like it was meant to be played on a PC and there are moments where you just have to stop and enjoy the vistas now that you can see clearly off in the distance. I sat and watched the ocean and the lightning storms for a few minutes while standing around idly on Titan and they were breathtaking. All in all I think it was a pretty damned smooth launch and the PC version is living up to all of my hopes. I am going to still take awhile to rewire my impulses because right now I feel way more sluggish with keyboard and mouse than with the controller. However I guess it is to be expected considering I played heavily for over three years in this world using thumb sticks.

Weapons I Will Miss

October 24, 2017 by Belghast

I cannot fully explain just how damned hard it is going to be to make it through today. What I mean by that is I did not take the day off for the launch of Destiny 2 on PC, and I know that it will be launching halfway through the day and I will start wishing I was home and able to be playing. While I have played the hell out of Destiny 2 on the PS4, the PC beta just felt better to me than the console interface. Destiny 1 was the game that essentially taught me how to play shooters on a console, and in spite of how much progress I have made in my ability to get the controller to do what I want it to do… it still feels like a foreign territory. When I sat down to play the PC beta, it was like coming home… everything that had been slightly off with Destiny was set right just by being able to use a keyboard and mouse. I realize that after the hundreds of hours that I have poured into the console version there is going to be an adjustment period, but also one I am more than willing to deal with. When trying to decide what to blog this morning I thought about what I would actually miss in the transition. It wasn’t the sets of gear from Iron Banner or the Faction Rally that I farmed up, or the fact that I had three almost power capped characters. Ultimately the part I am going to miss the most is my arsenal of favorite weapons. As a result this morning I thought I would talk a little about each of them.

Kinetic Weapons

In order for me to love a Hand Cannon it needs a handful of attributes, the primary being an extremely high impact rating and the secondary being a decent magazine size. With extended mag I am able to take the magazine to 13 rounds, and the 84 out of 100 impact definitely fits the bill as well. The fact that the weapon has another of my favorite perks… explosive payload which causes an AOE damage burst on impact is just icing on the cake. The last few nights I have been farming tokens on Io and running around with this weapon equipped and having a blast shredding mobs. This comes from the crucible so I am absolutely hoping I get an early lucky drop. While there are a bunch of other hand cannons that are vying for my attention… Better Devils keeps winding up my favorite.

I feel like Origin Story is likely the best kinetic auto rifle in the game, though I am sure I would hear some logical arguments on that point. Ultimately why I love it is that it feels rock solid and stable in the slightly slower/harder hitting 450 rpm category. It has fairly good range and can take down targets at a distance so long as you are firing controlled bursts. The rampage perk is amazing especially if you are dealing with waves of enemies, and you can even leverage this extra damage if you are fast enough to get in additional burn time on bosses. The good thing about this weapon is that it will probably be the easiest to get because you get the choice of it and two other weapons from finishing a strike milestone after you hit level 20. As a result I take comfort that I won’t be going without this one for too terribly long.

Among the most fickle weapon choices in my line up is Antiope-D… one of the weapons the Gunsmith offers but is on a significantly rarer drop table. I’ve turned in over a hundred gunsmith packages and I’ve only gotten one of these in total among all of my characters. What makes this weapon so special is that while a submachine gun it lives in the slower 600 rpm bracket and as a result has significantly better stability and recoil pattern than its cousins. The end product means if feels like firing a Destiny 1 Hakke auto rifle like the Zarinaea-D, which was among my favorite weapons in year one. This is part of my base crucible loadout and does a great job of shutting down enemy players when they get too close for comfort, but also has enough range that you can chase them a little with it. I am hoping the luck is with me and I am able to find this fairly early on. If not there are some reasonable replacements… but nothing will ever tarnish the memory of this weapon.

Energy Weapons

Uriel’s Gift is a beast and there is really no other way to describe it. This is the other half of my stock crucible loadout and the weapon that does most of the work as far as getting kills from range. Much like Origin Story it lives in the more stable 450 rpm bracket for auto rifles and features quite possibly the single best perk right now in the game… high-caliber rounds. For those unfamiliar this causes your target to flinch making it much harder for them to keep the targeting reticle trained on you. Now this works for NPCs and causes them to sort of stun lock while you are fighting them… but for enemy players it is extremely frustrating because it makes it insanely hard to actually fight back. Additionally the weapon has Tap the Trigger which gives you extra stability and aim assist when you first engage a target. I fully expect this weapon to be nerfed in the near future, but for the time being I am loving using it. This one can come from Nessus, Gunsmith or an Engram because I have seen it drop from all three, so I am hoping that ups my chances of actually getting one quickly.

Generally speaking I am not a big fan of Scout Rifles and will talk at length about this fact if anyone gives me half a chance. There is an entire cult of the MIDA Multi Tool that I just do not understand because the weapon feels horrible to me. The irony is… my favorite scout rifle the Manannan SR4 is in that exact same archetype bracket. I am not exactly sure what it is about this weapon… the look, the feel, the sound and visual effects… but whatever the case I like using it. It does not hurt that it also has explosive payload that I talked a bit about earlier. Lately I have been pairing this with my Better Devils in grinding planetary content because the combo gives me nice reliable ranged kill options and up close and personal stopping power. This is primarily a gunsmith package drop as far as I am aware and I am hoping I get it pretty early. Truth be told I will likely infuse my MIDA into it when I finish that quest.

Power Weapons

While I have flirted with other shotgun options, much like its name… this is the most reliable and battle ready. I’ve gotten it from a few sources but it still remains my go to shotgun for melting bosses that I can actually get up close and personal with. Thanks to Destiny 1 spoiling me… a shotgun has to have the full auto perk in order for me to really care about it. This actually seems to be pretty damned rare as far as weapons go in Destiny 2. While I have found a few options with it, this gun seems to be the most reasonable to use and capable of dishing out the sort of damage I am wanting. Hawthorne is one of my favorite characters, so it is only fitting that her signature gun goes down on this list as well.

I’ve talked about this weapon at length the few times I have mentioned it in this blog. There are those who call this the Destiny 2 Gjallarhorn and it is maybe not that incorrect of a statement. The amount of sustained damage this thing can pump out is significant, especially when you combine it with a rapid reload ability like the titan rally shield or hunter dodge. The exotic perk Conserve Momentum causes non-lethal hits with the weapon to lower your charge time. This is significant and after a few shots it feels like an almost instant fire fusion rifle. I regularly use this to single-handedly melt the cabal gunships during public events to push it to heroic in a single round. It will oneshot most yellow bars and help you shred anything else. Its biggest negative is the relatively small magazine size at 8 and the sluggish reload speed… which is ultimately why you want to pair this with some sort of a speed reload mechanic. Regardless if you get your hands on this weapon I highly suggest checking it out. It was the very first exotic I got in Destiny 2 on PS4 so hoping I find it again quickly on the PC side.

So these are my favorite weapons so far and the ones I use in the most regular rotation. What are some of your favorites that I missed? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know what weapon you are looking forward to getting again.