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Ready For Launch

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 by Belghast

With the launch of Destiny 2 on PC tomorrow I mulled around at great length over this extended weekend on how to best commemorate the moment in blog form. Over the course of the last seven weeks since the launch of Destiny 2on the PS4 my blog has been filled with a bunch of information about the game in general. For the most part I have tried very hard to stay the hell away from story spoilers, but inevitably some of them will have made their way through that mental filter. As a result I thought today I would sit down and write out some general tips about the game, links to tools that I use, and the sources of information I consume.

The Classes of Destiny 2

One of the most important decisions that you are going to make from the moment you fire up the game is what class best fits your play style. Ultimately you are probably going to roll one character of each class because your vault is shared between all of your characters. However you are still going to likely end up with one you consider your main. For me I have been maining Titan since the moment I set eyes on the class and nothing so far has caused me to stray too far off the path. However I have friends who feel equally passionate about the Warlock or Hunter. Essentially each class has a core fantasy that it is based around and I am going to take a few minutes to talk about each and their specializations.

The Titan

The core class fantasy is the “Space Tank” for lack of a better term for it. This is a beefy class that benefits from increased resilience. Among the guardians these are the front line defenders and have a storied history surrounding the defence of the last city on earth and the Tower. It has specializations based on each of the three core elements in the game.

Sentinel – “Void Captain America” – this class wields void energy and can form it in a shield that they can then use to attack enemies. This can be thrown as a ranged attack, used as an enhanced melee swing or consumed to generate a protective bubble.
Sunbreaker – “Super Hammer Bros” – this class wields fire energy and uses it to hurl flaming hammers at their opponents. There are various tweaks that can be chosen like one that causes the hammers to leave flaming puddles on the ground.
Striker – “Hulk Smash” – this class wields arc energy and uses it to slam down at the ground causing a giant area of effect attack knocking enemies back and dealing damage to them. Additionally there are tweaks that let the class crash into opponents when running at high speed and general a much smaller but equally effective version of the slam.

The Warlock

The core class fantasy is the “Space Wizard” and you are going to wield magic energy and sling it at your opponents. The core stat for the Warlock is recovery causing them to bounce back from damage quicker, and they also serve an interesting role as a sort of field medic by being able to drop a shield regeneration puddle on the ground. Once again they have specializations based on each of the three elements.

Dawnblade – “Flaming Angel” – this specialization sees the Warlock equip a flaming sword and sprout wings of fire allowing them to hover in the air for short periods of time hurling down fireballs with each swing of their sword.
Voidwalker – “Void Nuke” – this specialization involves channeling the void into a giant ball of energy that they hurl at their opponents. Additionally they have the ability to devour energy with their melee hits that they can then use to regenerate their shield.
Stormcaller – “Emperor Palpatine” – this specialization channels the arc energy into bolts of lightning that fly forth from their hands as they float in the air. There are some tweaks that allow them to teleport while in this state leaving puddles of electricity on the ground.

The Hunter

The core class fantasy here is something along the lines of a “Space Ranger” they combine aspects of rogue, gunslinger and the traditional gambler archetype into one class. The core class attribute is mobility which will allow them to have a slightly higher base movement speed, and similarly they can dodge out of harm’s way. They have potentially the widest variety as far as their specializations go.

Gunslinger – “Three Shot Wonder” – This fire sub class allows them to fire “golden gun” which are three shots that effectively one shot any player and take off a sizeable amount of damage from bosses. Additionally the class gets the interesting perk of being able to use a ranged melee attack in the form of throwing knives.
Arcstrider – “Pole Dancer” – This class has the most interesting weapon in the form of a staff made of arc energy that it then uses in a combo system to cause extremely high damage melee attacks. If you can master the class you will be able to leap across the battlefield and do some really impressive things.
Nightstalker – “Void Archer” – This specialization literally allows you to materialize a bow out of void energy and fire it at your opponents. When fired at something other than a player it leaves a ball of void energy on the ground that tethers and blinds targets nearby causing them to take extra damage.

General Tips and Thoughts

Get Your Unlocks Out of the Way – There is going to come a point in the main story quest where a number of the NPCs start giving you side quests. Each one of these is something you are going to want to do because they will ultimately unlock the endgame activities. Especially if you are not level 20 yet these are a good boost of XP when they finally unlock.
Trash Your Early Exotics – You will get a few exotics through the main story quest but they will be locked to a specific power level and you will out level them. You could in theory infuse these up, but remember that you can always rebuy your exotics at 205 power level from the collections tab in your vault for only 10 legendary shards. I found it easier just to pick them up again once I hit level 20 than to keep infusing them.
Save 5 Blue Scout Rifles – Once you hit 20 there will be a planetary quest chain that will require you to dismantle 5 blue or better scout rifles. When you hit this point you are going to be in a mad dash to get them to drop unless you simply start banking them while you level.
Adventures Give Unlock Points – generally speaking while you are leveling the various planetary adventures give you unlock points for your subclasses just like leveling up. Make sure you check each one and I highly suggest hitting up the ones that have a skill point waiting for you.
Do Public Events and Lost Sectors – You will be handed one specialization for your class, but in order for you to get the other two you have to unlock them through drops. These come from doing stuff on planets like Lost Sectors and Public Events. If you happen upon an event I highly suggest doing them so you can finish unlocking these specializations.
Learn How To Convert Public Events to Heroic – One of the interesting things about public events in Destiny 2 is that they all have some trigger that allows you to push them into a Heroic version where the rewards are significantly greater. I highly suggest you check out the guide I wrote some time ago on how to convert each of them. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to convert an event when some player is actively working against you without likely meaning to.
Hold Off on Powerful Rewards – There will be milestones that state they reward “powerful rewards” that ultimately give you what is called a Luminous Engram. You want to hold off on using these for as long a possible because they are going to be your single best way to get power level increases once you have hit the 270 soft cap. Once you have finished a milestone you can hold onto the reward without turning it in and at the end of the week when reset happens they will be automatically mailed to you.
Multiple Classes Multiple Rewards – Ultimately if you want to maximize your luminous engrams you are going to probably end up rolling one of each class because they will all get their own set of milestones to turn in. While armor does not swap between classes, you can swap your weapons via the vault or some of the tools I will share with you below. This will allow you to keep bumping up your power level by doing multiple sets of turn ins, each time swapping your best gear onto the next character.
Keep Returning to Tess Everis – As you level your character Tess Everis the Eververse vendor will keep giving you free packages. When you reach the level cap of 20, each time you fill an experience bar you will get a “Bright Engram” aka one of the same loot boxes that are sold with the cash currency. You gain a rested buff that will allow you to get three of these easily each week by doing stuff in game. As a result the cash shop option really is not needed or that appealing.
Save Legendaries You Like – unlike the exotics mentioned above… there is no way to reclaim a lost legendary other than to hope it drops again. The infusion system allows for you to take a weapon that you loved while leveling and bump it up to current levels. More importantly start looking out for gear with legendary mods on them, because they will help you bump your power levels up more than normal gear. Ultimately gear is going to be personal preference, test everything and keep the things you love.
Join A Clan – This one I almost forgot but joining a clan is going to unlock a bunch of things eventually. However up front joining before you have leveled is going to help you in two ways. Firstly your leveling experience is going to count towards clan experience and help level the clan. Secondly you will gain more than the 5000 xp needed to unlock the first clan luminous engram, which is going to be your easiest powerful gear reward each week. Additionally once the clan has leveled it is going to unlock a bunch of perks on the clan banner item Hawthorne is going to hand you.

Powerful Tools

Destiny Item Manager is the single most powerful tool that I use with the game because it does a few things that you just can’t do without third party intervention. Say you are going on a strike but your forgot your favorite weapon in the vault. Using the game interface this would require a trip back to a social space to retrieve it and then having to requeue for the activity. Destiny Item Manager allows you to swap gear in and out of your vault and between your characters while in game… even in the middle of an activity. Additionally it has some really interesting tools that allow you to filter and compare stats on gear as well as a really badass duplicate item finger to help clear that vault clutter. If you so choose you can create weapon loadouts and swap them in and out of your character with the click of your mouse. It is also remarkably mobile friendly so I highly suggest checking it out.

Destiny Sets is a relatively new tool that I just started using. Functionally it shows you every single piece of gear in the game and where it comes from. More than that it also keeps track of the items you have and the items you still need. When you are running three characters this becomes extremely useful especially if you get an item… and are short on inventory space and cannot remember if you needed it or not. This gives you a quick at a glance rundown allowing you to get back in the action quicker. This was super helpful during both Iron Banner and Faction rally in trying to track what I had and what I was missing on each character.

Destiny Tracker is the defacto tracking and statistics site. It harvests information from the bungie api and keeps track on all sorts of stats. This is heavily used by PVP players and even has a tool that lets you track what is going on in the current game. Until recently this was how I was sorting out how much time I had spent playing this or that activity. However a current bug is causing the API to return the incorrect amounts of time, and this has affected both this site and Wasted on Destiny.

Informational Sites

Bungie.net – the official website for Destiny and all Bungie games. This is especially useful for the This Week At Bungie column that usually appears on Thursdays.
DestinyTheGame Reddit – if you are on a low sodium diet then I would probably suggest staying away from this site or the next site. However the official/unofficial reddit is still a decent source of information.
Destiny Official Forums – this can have gems especially if you are having a very specific problem with the game. However for the most part it is a good deal of angry players lashing out at whoever they can. I highly suggest you maybe limit your time here.

One of the problems with the Destiny community is that there really isn’t much of a blog presence. I guess in truth this is only really a problem if this is your preferred method of informational intake. I am honestly likely the closest thing we have to a dedicated blog… and I am not dedicated to ONLY Destiny. Instead you find yourself venturing onto YouTube to get your drip of information and analysis. I preface this section largely because you will need to shift your thinking and effectively treat these sources as though they were blogs.

Helpful YouTube Channels

Arekkz Gaming – While he plays a significant number of other games his Destiny 2 videos are some of the best on YouTube. They are will scripted, informationally dense and are extremely timely. This is probably your best condensed source of the news without a lot of extraneous commentary.
Unknown Player – This is still an excellent source of news but since he is primarily a PVP player it is going to more of a focus on the crucible and trials meta than a lot of other sources. Still definitely someone I listen to on a reasonable rotation.
Mesa Sean – As a fellow “old man gamer” I love this guy because I relate to him on several levels. He makes an effort to be a positive voice for the community and shrugs off a lot of the salt when it is floating around.
Patrick Casey – aka Holtzman – Patrick used to do a good deal of the videos for planet destiny, namely the deep dive technical videos and when he left that channel… it was clear that he was the real force behind that information. Now his channel is packed full of the most technical and in the weeds information but sometimes you want to deep dive into the performance of a specific weapon.
My Name is Byf – While still a great source of news, the reason why I go to Byf is for the lore behind the game. Before the console launch he did this amazing two hour long video explaining the majority of the lore behind the original Destiny game and I highly suggest you check it out if you have the time.
Myelin Games – This is a very lore centric channel and does some amazing deep dives and speculative journeys that piece together what we know and theorize about what we don’t. If you get hooked on Destiny and want to know more about the universe, then by all means check this channel out.

I feel like I have just dumped a ton of information on you. It will take some time to synthesize or even decide if you want to synthesize it. The Destiny universe is a rich one with so many different rabbit trails running off in interesting directions. Similarly the Destiny community is extremely awesome in building tools or sharing information. If you find yourself having issues in your PC launch journeys feel free to drop me a line and I will try and answer whatever questions that might arise. Either that or join the Beyond the Light discord community that I have created for the PC launch. I have so much love for this game and I am ready to share it with all of the new people just getting to play it for the first time now that it is on PC. If you are curious how I actually plan on leveling myself after already experiencing the game multiple times… I also wrote up a post about that.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

October 20, 2017 by Belghast

I am technically on vacation right now and as a result I am getting around to making my Friday post much later than normal. I am not sure how much this matters given that I am not one of the 4 am youtube crew that posts the news the moment Xur shows up. This week I think we can officially confirm that Xur likely only has one spawn place per planet, because much like Nessus last week… he is in the same location as before on Titan. This means he is inside a little hut in The Rig sections of Titan, just a short distance from the drop zone. You will potentially wind your way past some high value targets, so make sure you keep an eye open for either a weirdly named Captain or a pair of Servitors as you move to where Xur is. The fallen will not go into the room he is located in, but they will absolutely hang out at the door and shoot you so you might need to do a little clean up on the way in as well. Without further delay lets get into what Papa Xur brought us today.

For those who played either the Console or PC betas, Sweet Business was the weapon handed to titans in Shaxx’s armory during the homecoming mission. I decided then that I didn’t much care for it, but we will get into that a bit later. This represented the only Exotic weapon I had yet to see in Destiny 2 that was not tied to a quest. I am still technically missing the Rat King and the raid Shotty but I purchased Sweet Business for literally no reason other than to get the collection unlock. Sweet Business seems to be one of those “your mileage may vary” weapons because I personally do not like it at all. However it has a legion of fans that love to use it. My issue is really a two part problem, firstly it takes awhile for this weapon to ramp up to maximum output. Secondly 99 seems like a lot of bullets until you are firing these out at the maximum RPM after the ramp up time and then it feels like you have next to no ammo reserves. This is miserable to use in the crucible because you effectively need to treat it as though it were a fusion rifle and predict the target coming into your field of view and make sure you are firing ahead of time. The huge benefit of this weapon though is that it causes a massive amount of flinch in targets due to the High-Caliber rounds, and in most cases you can kill the target before they ever recover and deal damage to you. It is certainly fun to play with but seems like a gimmick and I tend to prefer more reliable weapons in my kinetic slot.

The Doom Fang Pauldrons are both a week one repeat and available through the main story quest when you finish Titan. That said they are really amazing arms if you prefer maining the Sentinel sub class on your titan. The exotic perk Horns of Doom makes it so that shield bashes during your super reset the cooldown of your melee charge, allowing you to throw your shield yet again. This allows you to get a nice rhythm of throw, bash, throw, bash, etc until you run out of super energy. This also stacks nicely with Code of the Aggressor that gives you a second shield throw out of the gate, however it only gives you one free throw instead of one each time you get a new melee charge. Well worth picking up if you chose another option during that main story quest or even if your old one is woefully low light.

The Raiden Flux is yet another week one repeat but a similarly sub class defining one. From what I understand this is the defacto exotic for Arcstriders in part because the Exotic perk allows you to extend the duration of your super. I personally prefer playing Gunslinger because of the utility of throwing knives, but I know a ton of people who like the acrobatics of the energy staff/spear class. There isn’t a whole lot more that I can really say about this item other than if you don’t already have it you should probably go ahead and pick it up. I will likely never stop using my Knucklehead Radar because I like 100% uptime on my tracking… but this is seemingly a great option for that one specific sub class. I’ve shifted towards preferring to use more generic non-class specific exotics, but I will always be missing out on some nifty intrinsic perks that come with matching the right item to the right class.

Do you like the punch things a lot? If so Winter’s Guile may be for you because the exotic Warlord’s Sigil perk causes melee kills to increase your next melee attack. This perk stacks up to 5 times and you have roughly 2-3 seconds between kills to keep the chain going. So in situations where you are getting swarmed you are going to be able to punch your way out of trouble, especially with devour active. I’ve heard reports of players punching tier 1 enemies for 3000 damage with a full 5 stack, so these can dish out silly amounts of damage. It almost makes me a little jealous that this is a Warlock item and not a Titan item. The negative side of this… is that they are SUPER situationally useful. How many times are you really in a situation where you have mobs stacked in a fashion that you can really hit one every two seconds? To make matters worse Warlocks have the slowest movement ability, which means you are going to have to rely on the very hard to use blink if you want to do any sort of gap closing. Titan skating between various mobs in the same room seems doable… Warlock blinking is a much more challenging proposal. If you are up to the challenge then by all means grab these and punch some baddies.

For Destiny 1 players, this week Xur is located at the Tower in the Vanguard area on the right side. I am not sure if anyone cares about this but it sorta makes me feel better that I at least do. Waiting on Xur to show up was always a magical thing and seeing how much stuff the old school version carries… makes me hope they give the updated version something other than a handful of repeat Exotics. Lets get into the goods…

Legacy Primary Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Immolation Fists – Titan Arms – 13 Strange Coins
Graviton Forfeit – Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Transversive Steps – Warlock Boots – 13 Strange Coins
Super Good Advice – Heavy Machinegun – 17 Strange Coins
Invective and Storms Reproach Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Suros Regime and Basilisk’s Glory Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Jiangshi Finally

October 18, 2017 by Belghast

One of the issues with Destiny 2 is what I have called the progression problem. I am stuck in a gravity well right now and finding it impossible to get out of it. I’ve been sitting at 304 for two weeks now and once again the Tuesday reset has come and given me no forward momentum to break free. In there were I raiding or doing the nightfall on a regular basis I would be opening up more chances to get unstuck. However if you are not doing raid, trials or nightfall… essentially you have three milestones each week to have a shot of improving your overall power level. Last night I streamed for the first time in a very long time, and on Twitch no less… so you can in theory see the entire journey of what I do on each character every week. Unfortunately I got two sets of arms and a chestpiece, all of which armor slots that I already had and also as a result… I am no closer to 305 than I was at the start of the evening. Right now I am down to needing helm, boots and class item and unfortunately Destiny 2 doesn’t really give me any options to do some activity that targets those specific slots. I need to try to get the Nightfall in this week for no reason other than it offers a few more chances at getting some progress.

To add insult to injury I got nothing really from the Cayde-6 chests including one of them literally dropping nothing at all. Bungie is apparently still tracking down this bug so I fired off a few responses to them stating what I did. I literally landed on the planet Titan and started chasing chests, with the 3rd chest I opened in a row producing no results. I am sure this is some sort of anti-chest farming routine that takes away rewards if you open too many chests in too short of time. The thing is… do we really need this? What are they trying to prevent, given that there is no actual economy in this game to protect? This honestly feels less like protection and more like purposeful throttling of the player base, which is sort of the theme I keep feeling with them tamping down the number of sources we can use to improve our power level. I am wondering if post TwitchCon this weekend things might loosen up a bit. My working theory is that they are trying to keep the console community strung along until the PC release happens… that way they do not have to maintain two vastly different release schedules. As a result I have this feeling that the PC time table will be accelerated in an attempt to get the two platforms back in synchronization.

Yesterday I talked a bit about chasing some of the rarer drops from the Gunsmith and one in particular… the Jiangshi AR4 by Omolon. Other than the fun hanging out while streaming… last night was a bit of a bummer because it meant that I felt like I made no progress. As I was winding down the evening… I opted to spend down my Gunsmith packages a bit and much to my shock finally got the weapon I had been questing for. Granted I am still looking for the Frontier Justice Hakke Scout Rifle… but that is a mission for another day. I played with this weapon quite a bit in the crucible as I started the weekly grind process on my hunter… and other than the fact that it needs some infusion fuel… it is so damned good. I had latched onto Uriel’s Gift and generally use that weapon, but the Jiangshi is also extremely fun and probably going to get some rotation along with The Number. The big thing this weapon has going for it is the stability and the big strike against it… it lacks Uriel’s overpower High-Caliber rounds. I have a feeling that post TwitchCon there is going to be a massive nerf of High-Caliber rounds and as a result the other weapons that are not Uriel’s Gift are going to start to shine a bit more. I would love to stream more often because I had a lot of fun last night, but not even sure when I would make it happen on a regular basis.

Lowering the Banner

October 17, 2017 by Belghast

The first Iron Banner of Destiny 2 is officially over, and in spite of my comments yesterday… I did legitimately enjoy myself for a good part of it. It was only towards the end when things started to really grate on my nerves. Last night for example was a really bad night where a combination of my general fatigue, my left index finger being sliced, and the fact that somehow I had gotten into what Destiny Tracker calls the platinum bracket… served to lead to a series of not so fun matches. I had every intent to grind out the daily milestone on each of the three characters, but in the end only managed to complete it on the hunter. I am a little disappointed that I never got the Hand Cannon, but from what I am seeing my luck was considerably better than most players. Here is my final haul for the 60 matches of Iron Banner I played over the course of last week…

7 or 8 Unique Weapons – lots of dupes dropped
5 piece set of Titan armor – lots of dupes dropped
2 of 5 pieces of the Hunter armor set

All in all that really isn’t too bad of a haul for the very first running of Iron Banner. This ultimately gives me the entire set of Warlock gear and most of a set of Hunter gear to get next go round. Additionally there is still the chase for the Hand Cannon. That is way more useful loot than I tended to get from several months worth of Iron Banner during Destiny 1. Sure it was interesting to get a bunch of different weapon rolls… but ultimately most of those wound up being trash. The likelihood of me getting that god roll weapon was pretty limited, and in truth I think I like having a fixed point to focus on rather than not only hoping to get an item… but hoping it isn’t a garbage fire stat wise. There are still a significant number of legendary drops that I have never seen. For example I am still chasing the Jiangshi AR4 from the Gunsmith, and its not just a collector thing… I really want to play with it because I loved the green version I got while leveling.

As far as the weapons go… I am not sure if I really have it in me to do a review of them all. I spent some time last night while grinding out Io tokens playing with them all… and most of them are completely reasonable. I realize that is not exactly a glowing review, but in many cases I already have a weapon I just like better in that slot. The Time-Worn Spire is a really solid pulse rifle, in an era when that entire class of weapons seems to be outclassed by practically anything else. I’ve become a huge fan of the Forward Path auto rifle as well, but it has some pretty stiff competition for my time with the Origin Story and Ghost Primus. The real breakout weapon for me shockingly is the Wizened Rebuke, if for no reason other than the fact that you can hit 100 impact with it if you so choose. That said I feel like the weapon performs better if you are outfitting it for 95 impact… which still makes it significantly harder hitting than all but the Shock and Awe in my vault. Sure it has insanely slow recharge rate, but if I am going to use a Fusion it is likely going to be in a PVE situation where the charge time isn’t that big of a problem. Essentially this just became my legendary fusion of choice when I cannot for whatever reason use Merciless as my exotic.

The other weapon that I found myself shocked to actually enjoy is Guiding Sight the Scout Rifle. This lives in the same archetype group as Does Not Compute, Song of Justice VI and Haunted Earth… and in truth it felt better to use than any of those. When I use a scout rifle, I want something with really good impact and range because I am effectively using it as a surrogate sniper rifle. This fits that bill nicely because it will one shot a Vandal and has armor-piercing rounds to help with shields a bit… though I feel like that perk needs a buff significantly. Sure it will drop a shield faster than a normal kinetic weapon, but it still feels horrible as compared to even an unmatched elemental type energy weapon. I’ve said this over and over… that I am not really a fan of scout rifles as a whole, however when I do use one I want something along the lines of this weapon. Between Guiding Sight and Manannan SR4… I feel like I am set as far as scout rifles go. Basically at the beginning of the week I had a good deal of time collecting loot in the Iron Banner, but as we wound down… it started to feel like a house guest that overstayed its welcome. I opened around thirty packages in total and in the future I really need to tag out significantly earlier when I am still enjoying myself rather than trying to force a grind I was no longer enjoying.