xur Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Since I did this last week I thought I would continue with it for at least another week because Xur brought something I had been wanting. This time around since the weekly flashpoint is Titan, Xur is located on the section of the planet called “The Rig”. To get here you will have to cross some areas of the map that have lots of mobs on them, but thankfully none of them seem to be willing to follow you into the actual room he is located in. Previously in Destiny 1 Xur arrived Friday morning and left Saturday at Midnight PST. This time around that does not seem to be the case because he was up on Nessus until the reset happened Tuesday morning. I am not sure if this was intentional or some sort of a bug, but regardless I would suggest checking him out today or tomorrow just to make sure.

This time around he has brought the Wardcliff Coil or for those of us that played Destiny 1 and followed the dataminers… the Dubious Volley. Honestly I think Dubious Volley is a much better name for what the weapon does, because it is essentially an anime missile launcher. What I mean by this is if you have ever seen something along the lines of Robotech where a bay of missiles opens up and then they sorta fire in a bunch of different directions… that is what this weapon does. In use from what I understand it feels a lot like a Gjallarhorn that ONLY fires Wolfpack rounds… but way more of them. One of the problems I have heard is that as the mini missiles are tracking in… if a mob moves close to you… it will in fact blow you up too. This is one of those fabled weapons that we never got in the first game… so I am absolutely picking this up so I can play with it now.

The Feedback Fence is an item from the first game… that in truth no one actually used. There were a few super edge case builds that you needed to run if you were going to optimize this… which is a bit sad given that they look amazing. Functionally to make it work you need to run around punching things… and then letting something else punch you to explode it. This makes it extremely unpredictable, and not that useful given that the cases you really want to unleash damage on a target… are most likely cases where they don’t actually melee you. The number of bosses that reliably melee you is pretty limited. I would suggest only picking these up if you simply need the light level and using them as infusion fuel.

Do you like Solar Grenades? If so then these are probably the gloves for you. I like grenades quite a bit but in general I am not a fan of the changes to the fire subclass for Warlocks, so as a result I am probably going to give these a pass. This is the second week in a row that we have had a solar specific item on Xur for Warlocks which is a little disappointing. I used last weeks chest piece only until I got a legendary chest that I could it into. All of that said, this does not take away from the fact that this really is a good item. It increases the duration of your solar grenades and causes solar melee hits to increase grenade energy regeneration. If you want to be a mad bomber this is probably going to be down your alley.

Once again I have not even started my Hunter yet so this is an image that I borrowed from the internet, and then overlayed the stat block. When zooming in on a target this helmet will place a little red X over it. When that target gets low health you begin dealing significantly more damage to the marked target. The drawback here is that if you focus on any other targets for any length of time it will shift the X and that may or may not be what you want to have happen. Another edge case that is super useful is in the tracking of a mob that might be running from you… like how some high value targets do these days. I am personally not that interested in this helm, and plan on just sticking with the chest piece from last week that increases my Arc Strider stuff. Folks are saying however that this is a really powerful pickup and I can see why because in theory it just gives you bonus damage on a target, which would be nice for boss burn phases once the boss gets within “execute range”.

One of the tidbits of information that we knew going into Destiny 2 was that Mister Shadow Tentacles himself… Xur the Agent of the Nine would no longer be showing up in a social space. That meant that we would need to find him somewhere on a planet. At first I thought this would be somewhat of a scavenger hunt, where we had to scour the planets to find where he was hiding. However that does not appear to be the case because they put a familiar IX logo on the director map. This week Xur is located on Nessus in the Watcher’s Grave area, and in this case he is up high in a tree next to a golden vex scannable item. The other things that we didn’t know were the level of items he would be bringing…. and the cost. We knew that legendary shards would be the universal currency for lots of different things and now replace the familiar chase item… Strange Coins. It appears that everything is 270 and I have verified with a few videos of Xur that regardless of the players power level he seems to be handing out that same static level. The basic set up is similar to Destiny 1 in that he is bringing a single weapon and a piece of armor for each class. This week we have…

Merciless – Fusion Rifle – 29 Legendary Shards
Raiden Flux – Hunter Chest – 23 Legendary Shards
Doom Fang Pauldrons – Titan Arms – 23 Legendary Shards
Wings of Sacred Dawn – Warlock Chest – 23 Legendary Shards

If you only have the Legendary Shards to pick up a single item… I would say buy this thing. I was lucky enough to get it as an Exotic Engram drop while leveling… and this thing is amazing. It has a weird perk on it that speeds up the recharge rate until you get a kill. This combined with a perk that increases your damage if you reload after getting that kill.. makes it a machine to melt mobs. Especially on bosses the fact that it keeps getting faster lets you pour some insane damage into the boss in a very short period of time. This thing completely decimates the ship that flys in on the Cabal extraction event for example. This was one of the first legendaries that I infused up, simply because I like using it that much.

I went ahead and picked these up because I didn’t already have them. Effectively when you are in your super mode… kills with the shield bash reset the cooldown of your shield throw. I could definitely see this being useful since in general you only get one throw per sentinel super. Similarly melee kills help give you super energy… and since I run around punching everything already this should be a good exotic for me. The only problem is… I am currently using another exotic just for the light levels so in theory I need to find something to replace it with before I can rock these.

For the Warlock Xur is selling the Wings of Sacred Dawn, which is one of the fanciest chest slot items I have seen in game so far. The truth is however that I largely just bought this for the item level to help give my Warlock I am currently leveling a power boost, so I can start double dipping on those sweet sweet powerful engrams. The perk is Tome of Dawn, which causes you to suspend midair while aiming while you are in your super. Precision hits extend this effects duration allowing you to stay up in the air frozen longer. Since I don’t really like Dawnblade as a subclass and went Voidwalker the moment I got it as a drop and have never looked back… this really is all about the 270 light level for me and nothing else. If you like Dawnblade your mileage may vary.

I had to swipe an image of this one online, because I have not even begun to start my Hunter leveling… since it is probably the class I like the least in Destiny 2. I went ahead and picked this up however because I had the shards… and once again it will be a power level boost when I finally get around to leveling and equipping a third class. The perk on the item is called Synapse Junctions… which causes quick successive attacks with Arc Staff to increase damage output and the duration of your super. In truth this is probably a good item for me since I mostly like the Arc Staff super ability. Again however… its really about the 270 light.

One of the slight disappointments comes not from the exotics themselves… because I really do think that he brought a decent load out of items. What I am a little disappointed in is the fact that he ONLY brought the exotics. Previously in Destiny 1 there were a ton of other items that he sold… most of which are no longer still in the game. What I would have loved to see him sell in their place however were maybe some really nice gear mods to help those players who have yet to hit that 280 plateau get there. Additionally I would have loved to see him offer Fireteam Medallions as an alternate way other than Eververse dust currency to get them, since they appear to be the replacement for three of coins. The best method of getting Exotic engrams appears to be running one of those and chaining heroic events. Speaking of which… I need to do a lot more of that. Anyways regardless of anything else… I am just happy to see the Friday tradition of finding Xur continue into this new game.

Xur Week Two: 9/22/17

Happy First Xursday!