Glitchy Oryx

Rookie Revenge

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Last night was one of those nights that went in a completely different direction than I was expecting.  If you remember last Tuesday we had a combination of one of the smoothest runs for me personally in Kings Fall with the jumping bullshit.  That then quickly became one of the glitchiest runs once we hit Oryx, and though we put up the valiant fight we simply ran out of time for attempts.  We had agreed to meet up last night, given that it was the night before reset… and give taking down Oryx another go.  We had a checkpoint already saved sitting at that encounter, so in theory it should not have taken terribly long.  That was at least my line of thought going into the night.  However we ran into a myriad of issues, but in part that is why this “Rookie Raid” exists is to get folks through the fights and teach them the things they need to succeed.  I absolutely resemble that remark given that this week was just my third time into the Kings Fall raid at all.  There is still so much about the raid and the various encounters that I simply don’t know… but I am trying to assimilate information as fast as I can.

One of the things that threw off the rhythm of the raid early on was that Wet had to rush to the hospital with his mom.  Jex filled in admirably, and instead of snuggling with Wet in the middle I got to snuggle with his Titan while doing bubble duty.  For leadership we had an alternating mix of Jex and Squirrel depending on the situation, and they both did a great job stepping up to the plate and helping folks through the Oryx fight.  That said there is something almost talismanic about Wets presence, and when that is gone it is noticeable.  It is almost like we need his snarky commentary as a good luck charm to get us through the encounters.  We tried our best to fill in with talk of “MacGuffins” and “Tummy Wumzles” but it just didn’t quite feel the same.  So Wet if you are out there reading this you were definitely missed.

The Haul

On the positive side though it took us an hour and a half worth of constant attempts we managed to get down Oryx.  This was made even sweeter when we all realized that this was Warman’s first Oryx kill after apparently having gone to various Kings Fall raids for the last year on an almost weekly basis.  That right there is why the Rookie Raid exists, to get folks access to this sort of content and I am super thankful to be part of it.  I had wanted to raid myself for ages but never really had the opportunity, and then Squirrel, Wet, Jex and the rest of the Axioma Clan stepped in and bam… I am now doing awesome stuff in Destiny.  I am also falling off things quite a bit because I can’t jump for shit.  My biggest need right now is simply raw light levels, which I am working on a little bit at a time through exotic farming.  Unfortunately I seem to mostly get the same slots… that don’t really need leveling up, however I figure during this weekends Iron Banner I should get a few more exotics.

As has been my habit of late, now the haul for the night.  I was sitting at 25 moldering shards so apparently the “bonus loot” business is in full effect now.  The portion that I did not realize however is that it seems like the moldering shards are consumed upon getting said bonus loot?  I ended up getting three drops from Oryx plus additional shards, but it takes my total shards to 7 so it means that I guess I got two off the boss.  Anyways the awesome thing about last night is that I have a full “set” of armor from the raid and can now look like a Hive Knight.  I also picked up a second Smite of Merain which will just serve as either a spare copy for an alt… or infusion fodder to try and get my Mida Multitool up in level.  What I am looking forward to this weekend however is the return of Iron Banner which supposedly also has a decent chance of dropping me some upgrades.  It seems like the clan as a whole is planning on running stuff with it, and hopefully even though I suck at PVP in general I can get in on some action.  It would really be awesome to be able to hit rank 5 so I can start getting the good drops.

Sometimes We Fail

The Rookie Raid

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For a little bit now, one of the highlights of my week has been the Rookie Raid night with my clan in Destiny.  I think mostly after playing the game for roughly two years… I was really wanting to raid, and getting to step foot in Kings Fall each week has been a blast.  There are still a lot of things that I absolutely screw up, but I feel like I am getting better.  I have always been one of those people that learns by doing, and it simply takes several repetitions before something actually gets cemented in my head.  The highlight of the night was the fact that I actually made it through the ship jumping puzzle on the very first time… and it only took me two tries to get over to the wall and get into the chest nook just after the ships.  This is serious progress because some of those jumps on past attempts took me dozens of tries to actually get.  Similarly I seemed to make it through the piston wall without a ton of issues this week which also felt good.  I ended up jumping to the final platform…  and then got confused thinking I went the wrong direction.  So I guess even I shocked myself that I had made it through with I think two deaths this week, instead of the literally dozens in previous outings.

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I’ve had to develop the practice of sitting down with my character once I have reached the final platform of a jumping sequence.  I wouldn’t go so far as the say that I am afraid of heights, because in real life I can look out over balconies or off the roofs of buildings without much issue.  I can climb up on things without much issue either…  well apart from the fact that I have zero dexterity.  However for whatever reason in video games… I get disoriented and almost dizzy when dealing with jumping sequences.  There are certain games that have triggered this feeling more than others, like Mirrors Edge.  However there are other games that are just as parkoury for lack of a better word… like Dying Light that don’t seem to bother me at all.  It has to be something about the perspective or some technical detail that does it… but whatever the case…  Destiny absolutely triggers these feelings.  So as stupid as it sounds, I feel like every time I don’t fuck up a jump… it is a pretty major victory for me.  It takes so much mental stamina to get me through one of the jump sequences that when I finish… I am constantly afraid that I will do something stupid that leads to me plummeting back down below and having to do it all over again.  So my little practice of sitting makes it seem like it is far less likely for me to somehow get bumped and fall.

Oryx Cheats

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One of the cool things about this week is that I got to learn a few slightly different roles during the fights.  Namely I moved from platform duty to Ogre duty, which is way more my style.  When our group does Oryx we do it “challenge” style which involves making sure the Ogres do not move before they die, allowing all of the blight orbs to spawn in essentially the same place.  This allows us to pop them all at the same time, and deal almost all of the damage to Oryx in a single turn.  That is at least when things work out.  As one of the Titans assigned to this duty, we run complimentary bubbles making sure Weapons and Blessing are both up and dropped in the same place.  This allows us to take advantage of our Touch of Malice and keep from killing ourselves in the process.  The goal is to dip back into the shield between ogres to replenish the shields and give us more life to spend while pummeling the adds.  This works great… until we have to go into the fight without a super bar.  We somehow managed to make it through that round but it was getting super dicey as far as the whole “not killing ourselves” part.  It was during the Oryx fight however last night… that shit just got weird.

I had heard before of the bugs in the Kings Fall raid… but luckily in the previous two weeks we had never really encountered any.  This week however they struck back with a vengeance, starting with several of us mysteriously dying to “misadventures”.  Other times the platform sequence got messed up, or our runner was unable to grab the orb for some reason… having the platform disappear beneath them before the transfer actually happened.  The scariest was when we saw an ogre appear in the default T state that models are generally modeled in… and then disappear quickly… coming up through the ground with the normal animation.  Essentially there was something seriously wrong with the server, and even though we tried several different tricks to right the ship… we ultimately had to call it to time.  The goal right now is to pop back in Monday night and see if we can wreck Oryx given that we have a check point right at the boss.  Sometimes we fail… but even in failing I had a really good time.  The loot on the other hand is starting to get more scarce, and I got some relatively low light level versions of things…  but I did manage to pick up another much needed slot in the arms.  I’ve posted a gallery of the various things, including the 310 Armamentarium chest that was waiting on me at the mailbox.  I am not really sure where along the way that dropped but  but it is much appreciated because I love having the extra grenades.  However as long as I am running Defender, I kinda feel like the Saint-14 helm is a must have.