Destiny 2 Archives - Page 11 of 44 - Tales of the Aggronaut

We Broke Time

December 11, 2019 by Belghast

Yesterday was the opening of a brand new season in Destiny 2 and with it comes a new batch of events to participate in and quests to complete. Thankfully it seems that if you failed to complete any of the “Ritual” weapons from last season they are still in your quest log and seemingly something you can continue to chew on. I am SUPER thankful about this because I have done a relatively poor job at keeping up with these, and as a result I have a massive backlog of things to work on over time. Gone is the Vex Incursion and here to replace it is the Sundial, which involves us attempting to fight back waves of Cabal culminating in a battle with a super powered Psion.

Similar to last season, if you have the seasons pass you get a full set of the armor and an exotic scout rifle called the Symmetry. Taking this to Banshee unlocks the catalyst quest, and for someone who generally does not like scout rifles at all this is a pretty solid weapon. It is fairly fast firing for a Scout Rifle and packs a surprising punch, but I have not really spent much time doing content with it. I have to admit I was a little uncertain of what this season would feel like since the last season dropped at the same time as a whole bunch of expansion content. However as a result it feels like Bungie made this event way more intricate to make up for the fact that we are not also spending a lot of time doing Shadowkeep content at the same time.

Attached to the Sundial is powering up pylons that appear on different destinations. The first of these is on the Tangled Shore and involves doing content there to gain energy, when you then bank into the pylon. Once the pylon has been unlocked you can spend a currency called Fractaline that you get from doing bounties and completing main quest steps in order to further power up the pylon. Each rank seems to unlock new weapons that you can attempt to “forge” of sorts by completing a bounty effectively phasing them into reality. I completed several of these last night trying to get better rolls of the new Auto Rifle called Steelfeather Repeater which is a fast rate of fire weapon that just sounds and feels awesome to use.

Another weapon that I got from the first pylon was Breachlight, which is a truly badass looking sidearm. Normally speaking I don’t really like sidearms, but this is of the pulse variety firing I believe 3 rounds per burst. I can’t say that my particular roll was amazing, but it is not horrible. The main reason why I am getting used to this is that one of the new ritual weapons this season is also a sidearm and requires you to get a bunch of kills in strikes using that weapon class. I like that they are mixing things up each season and trying to get us playing with different weapon types.

Once again there are two weapons unlocked by leveling your way through the seasons journey. For Undying it was an Auto Rifle and a Heavy Machinegun… both weapons that are thoroughly in my wheelhouse. This time around the first one unlocked is a thoroughly mediocre rocket launcher. Ultimately for me there are three perks I care about on Rocket Launchers… Tracking, Cluster Bombs and Proximity Detonation. This has none of those and as a result is not likely ever going to replace my baby Gjallarhorn which has Tracking and Clusterbombs on it.

Another weapon that is absolutely not generally in my wheelhouse is the sniper rifle. I never use them. Like in Destiny 1 I used to use them during burn phases, but it always feels like there is never enough ammunition available to make them worthwhile. The Trophy Hunter unlocks later in the seasons journey and is extremely high impact and long range… which could be useful for using it to break void shields thanks to the Genesis perk giving you back ammunition. It also has Dragonfly which might be useful if you slot in a Dragonfly mod… which reminds me that I really need to spend more time forging weapons so that I can buy more Black Armory mods. I am not exactly excited to have this weapon but that is only because I am not a sniper person.

The weapon I am the most excited about… I think is going to be tied to the Recovering the Past quest line. I loved Saint-14s shotgun from the Curse of Osiris expansion, and I am hoping that we get an exotic version of this through the questline, or at least a better modern legendary version. I feel like I barely had time to scratch the surface of the new content and there are already enough switches to flip to keep me happy for a bit. I am only rank 2 for the season, so over the next few weeks I will be working on grinding out Rank 100 again to unlock everything. I really like the direction they are going with this game and since I am effectively done with Season 19 in Diablo 3, I am ready to go here again.

Mandalorian and Lumina

November 13, 2019 by Belghast

Not shocking to anyone, I spent a good chunk of my evening messing around on Disney Plus, the latest streaming service vying for some of our monthly budget. The reason of course is due to a single show, at least for now. The Mandalorian was in fact enough to get me to subscribe just to watch the first episode, that and a deal that they were running a few months back where you could get a year of the service for somewhere in the ballpark of $60. That was enough to get me to jump on board ahead of time, and I am happy to report that I am not ashamed of this action thanks to having watched the first episode.

I am purposefully swiping screenshots from the trailers that were released because firstly it is easier to do and secondly I don’t want to give anything away. The show so far is very much like a Clint Eastwood style western set in the Star Wars Universe. I am curious to find out some of the back story as this show is set between the fall of the empire and the rise of the new order. It was always my understanding that much like the Empire hunted down the Jedi… they also more or less decimated what was left of the Mandalorian clans. So I find it really interesting to see what appears to be the remnants of the clan alive and well. That said a lot of the lore surrounding the Mandalorians is apocryphal thanks to the whole tossing out of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

I greatly enjoyed this first episode… and am now looking forward to Friday when the next one drops. I wish I could have binged through the entire thing in a single evening, but this is probably much smarter for Disney as a whole given that they can string us along with the Mandalorian while waiting on the various Marvel shows to drop. I personally wound up spending my evening watching Star Wars Resistance after finishing the episode because it was a show that I had never actually watched any of. There is enough meat on the bones of Disney Plus to entertain me for awhile, because even if I watch through the back catalog of all things Star Wars… there are a bunch of Disney things like Phineas and Ferb that I have only watched a handful of episodes of. There is also the entirety of Gravity Falls on the service, another show i have caught the occasional episode but would love to start from the beginning.

In other news I finished up the Lumina weapon quest chain in Destiny 2 and it ends fairly abruptly with you just getting the Hand Cannon at the end of completing the final objective. I am annoyed as hell that it dropped at 948 instead of 950, but that seems to be the case when you finish a quest chain. Weirdly I had been putting off on this quest until the other night I was randoming my way into strikes and happened to kill Xol and notice that I got credit marked off the quest. I had originally read that you had to complete the quest in a single go, but it seems like that only pertains to each objective. I queued specifically for Will of the Thousands, killed 11 crystals and got the weapon dropped in my inventory mid strike.

Now I just need to wrangle some time to play when other people I know are on and go run the strike required for the completion of Thorn. I’ve not been willing to risk it since I seem to die an awful lot to the final boss of Savathun’s Song, it would be nice to at least have another person so that we don’t instantly fail when one of us dies.

Regularly Playing: November 2019 Edition

March 7, 2025November 8, 2019 by Belghast

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last Regularly Playing column. The idea behind this is that I throw out and update once a month talking about what I am playing and what has faded away. It also serves as an opportunity for me to “true up” my regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. However had I updated at the beginning of October you would have largely just seen a single entry for Destiny 2. I was in a pretty unhappy place with Blizzard and it really made me not want to spend much time writing about what I was doing other than Destiny.

However we have a new month and with it comes some new perspectives. I’ve allowed myself to step back from that precipice even though I feel like a bit of a fraud for doing so. I was making myself unhappy by dwelling so much on the bad feelings. I am back dipping my toe into Blizzard things, but I am still largely feeling awful for doing so. However lets get to the list so I can start talking more about each one of them.

To Those Remaining

I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Destiny 2 and if you have read my blog over the last month or so you will have noticed this. Destiny is in a truly amazing state right now and the Cross Save functionality has created this hotbed of players on the PC platform. Over night it seems that PC went from the lowest population platform to the highest as folks are taking advantage of just how much better the experience is on the PC as opposed to the aging console generation. I still only have a handful of people regularly playing but it helps greatly to have Thalen who is also going through a similar renaissance. I’ve more or less given up on most of the AggroChat crew understanding or even latching onto how great this game.

This game was periodically off the menu… but as soon as I eased up on my stance regarding the Blizzard/Hong Kong situation it was one of the first things I logged into. With all of the news about Diablo 4 it has renewed my interests in playing some Diablo 3. I more or less failed miserably at this season but I did managed to knock out the cosmetics for it. I am hoping to get back on track with the new season starting soon and return to semi-regularly playing this with Grace.

This continues to be a nightly thing that I play as I am winding down from the day. I am not super active in it, but generally speaking I play enough each night to knock out the daily objectives. I am not sure what it is about this pattern that I find relaxing but generally speaking as I am wrapping up the last few things I am finding myself fighting to stay awake and can lay down the tablet and slumber peacefully. The release cadence as I have said before really is the piece that keeps me engaged, and the fact that I get a gacha summon pretty often through simply playing the game normally. They are not getting money from me, but they are getting a bunch of active usage.

I’m leaving this one on the list but I have to admit it is hanging by a thread here. I initially stopped playing Classic over the Hong Kong incident as I stopped playing any Blizzard games. However upon resuming play I am finding it exceptionally hard to get back into the slower pace of this game. I’ve become used to the run and gun pace of Destiny 2 and my brain is sorta fighting back against this. I had some experience with this when I came back to Classic after the launch of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep. In theory I probably need a bit more time to figure out how to slide back in and resume my path to 60.

To The New And Returning

While I am in a bit of a holding pattern thanks to activity in Destiny 2, I eased into The Outer Worlds a few weekends ago and am looking forward to maybe getting in and playing some more this weekend. This is pretty much the perfect logical successor to my favorite of the Fallout series, New Vegas. It is a weird remix of Fallout, Firefly, Bioshock and Mass Effect and were I not as addicted to Destiny as I currently am it would have become my primary game. I am sure I will get back in and play some more, hopefully prior to the podcast on Saturday.

This is one I did not expect, but after my ceasing of hostilities towards Blizzard… I am finding myself playing a lot more of Retail than I am of Classic. I got in the other night and did the 15th anniversary quests, but I am also finding myself just running around on the Demon Hunter a bit. The other thing I found odd was that I attempted to log into my Alliance characters and found myself turning my nose up at them because they just didn’t feel right. I guess I made a legitimate transition over to The Horde at some point? I blame Grace.

To Those Departing

I am sure I will pick this game back up at some point but I have had another things on my mind. In truth I will always be more of an MMO player than I ever am a purveyor of Single Player games. This one will get attention because I still have yet to beat it. I just haven’t been in the mood for it of late.

I am sorry Shadowbringers… you suffered a cruel fate at the hands of WoW Classic and never quite recovered. I know there is a new patch, with new content to experience… but I am also not exactly finding myself rushing back to play it. I am not exactly sure what it is with this game but I go through this cycle after the release of an expansion. I play it hard and heavy for awhile… level two characters… and then disappear. It happened to some extent with Heavensward but absolutely both Stormblood and Shadowbringers saw me in exactly the same pattern. Once the overarching story was completed, my desire to keep playing dissipated.

I’ve also found myself simply not logging into Magic the Gathering Arena. This is a game that desperately needs a tablet friendly version. If that existed I would spend way more of that “before bedtime” tablet gaming playing Arena. As it stands when I am at a PC there are just other games I would rather be playing. I’ve also not felt nearly as connected with either War of the Spark or the Eldraine expansions as I have with previous themes. I loved Ixalan, and I think it might go down as probably my favorite non-Dominaria plane we visited. Return to Return to Ravnica felt weirdly watered down as though it were a subject that had been just spread too thin. I am sure I will return at some point but for right now it leaves the list.

You just never had a chance did you Iceborne. You launched at a bad time for me when my attentions were drawn elsewhere to WoW Classic. Then you announced the release of the PC version and I more or less decided to wait. The PC version really is the best version of the game and I found myself just struggling to get used to using a controller again. I am sorry that we just couldn’t come to a workable arrangement. I will see you in January.

Summary

Hopefully I can get back on the wagon of keeping this updated at the beginning of each month. We have a lot of familiar faces on the list in spite of a few of those exiting. I am sure for example I will play through the new patch content in FFXIV at some point, but that point is not now and it is not even really on my radar. My goal is to finish up The Outer Worlds and try and ease back into WoW Classic. However I have a bad habit of abandoning my goals.

Seasonal Ding

November 6, 2019 by Belghast

First off we are going to start off the post with a little bit of “good guy Bungie”. There is a patch coming up that changes the way pinnacle drops work. Currently Pinnacle rewards give you a single point of light, making it exceedingly hard to change the calculation and increase your light past 950. In truth I never quite expected to be needing pinnacles to move me forward but I find myself in the same position everyone else is. After Thursday there is a change coming in that bumps this up to a guaranteed two light levels per pinnacle reward.

Now this week is the Iron Banner and with it comes a bunch of bounties that all reward pinnacle gear. There has been a bunch of talk on the internet about saving up your bounties to turn in AFTER Thursday’s patch, but just in case someone missed this when you log into the game you get the big damned notice across your screen that you see in the first screenshot. I greatly appreciate them going above and beyond to make sure no one was unaware that a patch was coming and that they should not spend any of those precious precious pinnacle loot drops until then.

I’ve now reached the end of the seasonal journey track and still have 34 days left to go until the end of the season. Like I said yesterday I was honestly not sure if I would make it, but I did with plenty of time to spare. Now I am continuing to gain ranks but to the best of my knowledge there is nothing gained from them. It appears that post 100 you gain a Nostalgic Engram every 500,000 experience points, and since each rank is 100,000 xp that is every 5 levels. I feel like that is a perfectly reasonable reward for time spent grinding thanks to all of the xp boosts that come with the seasonal ranks. Now doing this without the pass… probably is a massive pain in the butt.

The interesting thing about the process is that as you move upwards you start getting these perks that say you have a chance of getting one of the weapons from the seasonal journey in various activities. I’ve run a bunch of activities after getting these “scavenger” perks but never actually saw one of the weapons drop. Then last night I managed to get a second Machine Gun and a second Auto Rifle within two matches of hitting Rank 100. I am wondering if the chance of getting these goes up exponentially after hitting 100, or if Iron Banner is somehow juiced to give higher drop rates?

Whatever the case I have shiny new versions of the two weapons. I am not at all certain if they are better than the original rolls that I got, but both have Range Finder which may or may not be useful. I was not a huge fan of either when I first got my hands on them, but I figure I will give them some more testing to determine if they are useful. I might break out the original rolls just to see how they feel as well. The original HMG had Hip Fire and Pulse Monitor, so I definitely think the new version with Quick Draw and Range Finder was an upgrade. The Auto Rifle however I am not sure about with the original having Outlaw/Dynamic Sway Reduction and the new version with Range Finder and Mulligan. Given the spray and pray nature of an Auto Rifle… Mulligan might be a pretty solid perk.

The real win for the night however is that I managed to finish the “Get Guardian Kills with Void, Hand Cannons or Void Hand Cannons” step of the Thorn quest. Slowly bit by bit I whittled away at this for what felt like ages, but thanks to the Iron Banner giving extra credit it seems… I managed to go from just under 50% to finished in a single night. I still need to run the mission for both this and the Lumina so I can get both weapons. Side note I also finished 3 of the 4 bounties available for the Iron Banner. The one that increases thanks to super kills is always the one that lags behind.

Tonight however I am planning on running around in WoW Retail and doing the 15th anniversary quests lest I forget to do them before they disappear. So I logged in this morning to park at the Caverns of Time where they I believe all start. I got the letter in the mail and have the quest step to talk to Chromie, so I will get all that taken care of tonight.