Good Morning Folks. I played a truly excessive amount of Destiny Rising over the weekend. One of the big takeaways of the weekend is that while you have a limited amount of pinnacle rewards currency… doing content without this currency is still worth doing. Namely grinding Strikes and Gauntlet Blitz can still reward some really good stuff and I managed to pull more than a handful of level 80 mythics over the weekend, that I could then turn around and infuse into my existing weapons to level them up to 80. I essentially got past the Affinity 10 barrier which gives me access to level 80 everything, and as a result I am slowly chipping away at leveling everything that matters to me up to that point. Unfortunately there do not appear to be craftable engrams that reward anything at level 80… so even getting a god roll now means that you are going to have to push it up from 70 for it to be useful.
Speaking of god rolled weapons, I had three stacks of the mythic engram currency so I have been crafting the choice engrams in an effort to pick up better weapon rolls. Essentially in a perfect world I would get weapons with two recommended mythic stats on them… but for now I am cycling through the weapons trying to get ANY weapon with four mythic mods on it. At this point I think I have knocked out all of the main weapons that I am using on my characters, and now am cycling back through and trying to get four mods for all of the mythic weapons. In theory I should probably be focusing on the characters that I actually use and perfecting their weapons… but I am a weirdo and crave variety over specialization.
This weekend I gathered up enough currency to make another pull on the Estela banner and managed to bit pity by 14 pulls. Not phenomenal but I will take it, and quite honestly… this character is awesome. I’ve poured what limited resources I had available to trying to build her up to the level of my other characters. Right now I am still maining Jolder, but also trying to buff up Gwynn, Estela, Umeko, and of course Wolf. In truth I find it that I really don’t care that much about any of the Arc characters right now. I’ve leveled both Kabr and Xuan Wei, but in truth I should probably start putting points into Attal because she seems generally more useful. There just isn’t really an Arc character that I am immediately drawn to, not in the same way that I have various Solar and Void champs that I dig out of the box. I swear Estela sounds like she is being voiced by Felicia Day, but I don’t think that is actually the case.
The only champion that I have not pulled at this point is Ning Fei, which is seemingly a real powerhouse given how much I see him on the leaderboards. I just don’t know that he is really my play style either though, as I have done the trial and did not really enjoy it that much. However I also felt that way about Estela but now that I have gotten used to that playstyle I am really enjoying it quite a bit. Debuffing targets to kill them faster with weapons… seems like a really solid playstyle that none of the other champions are doing in quite the same way. She deals a sort of damage that almost feels like Chaos damage from Path of Exile in that it is able to sap the health of a target…. even if they are shielded. Thankfully the normal banner currency is easier to get so hopefully at some point I will luck into the final character that I am missing.
Ace and I spent quite a bit of time grouping up on Sunday, which is always fun. They managed to beat the campaign this weekend and as such started entering the proper endgame and the “gotta catch em all” phase of trying to collect all of the mythic weapons. Grouping together allowed me to actually knock out a few MVP triumphs as I am normally not the one dealing the most damage with my particular choice of characters. We ran several Gauntlet Blitz, and Heroic Strikes… and then did some of the legacy content so that we could unlock all three elements. Basically in order to send someone out on Iron Commander missions, you have to have beaten the content once the normal way. The legacy elemental strikes all have a bonus when run as an Iron Commander missions, so it feels like the game is trying to push us to do those.
One of the things that really impresses me with Destiny Rising, is that so far every single character I have actually spent any modicum of time playing… is a character that I have enjoyed. Even Xuan Wei who is HYPER melee focused… is really fun if you spend time playing him. It just isn’t a play style that really makes sense for most of the content in the game. Running around on the planets and looking for secrets has been a great way to get used to these characters, and while I was not sold on for example Umeko… she is a character that I have been playing a lot more specifically in some of the PVX game modes. It turns out that having the longest range attacks are really useful in things like the Iron Bar which is this games annoyingly renamed Iron Banner.
The other thing that I love is how much heart the game has. For example I got this random sequence of texts from Jolder at some point this weekend. I am guessing it triggered off some event or triumph that I got, and it will only make sense if you have played the Jolder storyline. However I found it pretty hilarious. The character interactions and the specific character focused storylines have been so much fun to play through. I have a stack of characters that I need to play more, so that I can unlock more of their story… and I honestly feel the desire to do this thing. The only character that feels a bit like a wet blanket though is Ikora, which saddens me… because she was a character I really liked interacting with in Destiny 2. The main problem with her is that the single shot grenade launcher as your primary weapon thing… is a bit annoying to play around. When you run strikes… it just means you are never going to get credit for doing any damage because she is so much slower than everyone else.
There is a new game mode starting in a week or so, and I am super interested to see what it ends up being. I am hoping it is not just a new difficulty level for existing content. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the new timed raid mode… was just a version of the existing raid and not something new. That is ultimately going to be the challenge for Destiny Rising. If they can keep introducing new content, and not just rehashed content… they are going to win the loyalty of a lot of players. That has been the struggle that Destiny 1/2 has been having, is that they cannot seem to keep up with player demand. I am hoping when we get a new story drop, we also get a new planet to explore, or at least a new region of earth. During some of the story missions you get the hint that it might be the European zones that will be coming into the game next as you run into some folks from that region. I would really love to visit Mars again though, because of all of the planets we have played on… that is probably my favorite setting.
Another side effect of playing quite a bit this weekend is I managed to finish off the battle pass. This and the subscription were the purchases that I ended up making for the game, and in truth both have been good. Given how much time I have spent playing I figured it was worth spending a bit of money. Once I got into the endgame proper, the battle pass levels just sort of flew by because you end up getting a bunch of repeatable quests to do 3 strikes as X role. Given that I am grinding a lot of strikes, even without having pinnacle currency… the levels just sort of happened on their own. I ended up pulling the pink skin for the Furies III weapon which is pretty good looking. I am curious what the post 50 battle pass ranks are going to look like, because it seems like you are going to keep getting rewards chests each time you ding a new rank.
All in all I am having a heck of a lot of fun with this game. I even enjoy the card game, which is wild because I have not spent much time playing most card games that are embedded within other games. Essentially it is a game of making the number go up, and not a game of direct engagement. Sure there are specific cards that allow you to remove units from the board, but it isn’t quite so focused on killing players quickly. Everyone has a fixed number of turns to score as many points as you can, and I dig that. Anyways… at least for now I am deeply engaged in Destiny Rising. I am curious how long this present obsession will last. I know this week we have the releases of Hades 2 into 1.0, and then tomorrow is the start of a Diablo IV season and I have contemplated checking that out again. I also reinstalled New World, because there is an event coming up soon… but I am so hopelessly lost in to what you actually need to do in that game to progress anymore.
For now though Destiny Rising in my comfort game. Did you ever give it a shot? What were your thoughts? Drop me a line below.