Ready For Launch

Ready For Launch

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.

Ready For LaunchThe 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.

Ready For LaunchThe 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.

Ready For LaunchThe 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

Ready For Launch

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.

Ready For Launch

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.

Ready For Launch

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.

AggroChat #178 – Games and Monetization

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Tamrielo

aggrochat178_720

We admittedly had grand plans and a whole list of things we were originally going to talk about this week.  However once we opened the monetization can of worms it sort of dominated the show and a hour and a half later we decided it was probably just best to leave things to being a weird single topic show.  This week we are down a Grace and a Thalen and Kodra is recording on different hardware while travelling himself.  As a result there are a few rough spots that we attempted to clean up in post production, but corrupted audio is corrupted audio.  All in all I feel like this is a really important show because it talks about the whole monetization thing from a series of different angles.  I highly suggest you fight through the few rough spots because we unpack a lot of things during the course of this show.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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.

Xur Week Six: 10/20/17

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

 

Bust Week

Bust Week

I had this hope of being able to hit the 305 power cap on at least one of my characters prior to the release of the PC version this coming Tuesday.  This is not something that is going to happen, in part because all of my luminous engrams were largely slots that I already had filled with something sitting at 305 level already.  Yesterday morning I wrapped up the powerful milestones on my Hunter and last night I finished them up on the Warlock.  With the Hunter I managed to move up a single point taking her to 304 and with the Warlock I managed to shift slightly to 303 from 302.  So in truth I did make progress… just not on the character I was hoping to.  The core problem is the duplicates that you wind up getting in the game, or at least the fact that it keeps giving me items for the same slots.  For example on my Warlock I have 4 305 helms, my Hunter 3…  my Titan none because he actually needs that slot.  I miss the slot based infusion system from Destiny 1 year 2 and beyond so much, because I would in theory have multiple characters at 305 light were that still the case.  The other annoyance for me is the number of duplicate weapons I keep getting, for example the game thinks I apparently love Pulse Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Grenade Launchers, and Sub Machineguns because I have several of those waiting to be infused into something the moment I get my hands on another kinetic mod.

I guess the silver lining here is just how many weapons I now have at 305, but unfortunately I have yet to get a single auto rifle for infusion fuel so while I am actually doing events I am still not at my maximum possible power level.  For max level primaries I have the options of the Antiope-D, Vigilance Wing or Better Devils.  For max level energy slot I have the option of Conspirator, Last Hope or Inaugural Address.  Then in the power slot we have a silly number of options pretty much including any power weapon that I would actually want to use.  In theory there is still hope because I could start grinding something on the Titan and hope for exotics to help pave the way.  There is also the Nightfall engram that may or may not include something useful, and similarly the raid engram.  All of that said though I feel like there is a very slim chance that I am actually going to get 305 power this week, and will in turn simply not hit it on the PS4 for some time given starting next week I am really only going to care about the PC launch.  Basically any progress I made on these characters will go into hibernation mode until I can reach a similar place on the PC side of just progressing each week through doing the milestones.  At that point I will probably start doing six characters worth of milestones, because I do silly things.

Going to take this moment to plug a few things before I wrap things up.  I am on vacation the next few days so that is in part why I am getting a late start this morning with the blog.  Firstly I want to plug Beyond the Light the clan-agnostic Destiny 2 PC discord.  The idea being that since so many people will be in so many different clans at PC launch, we can sort of use this to help bind a community together among the greater blog and twitter sphere.  Secondly Greysky Armada our FFXIV/GW2/etc guild has a presence in Destiny 2 PC.  I’ve talked about this before but as it stands I will be keeping my characters on PS4 side in Tequila Mockingbird, but on the PC side I will be with my Greysky crew.  Lastly with the PC launch coming up so quickly… if you find you need help getting started or answering questions please let me know.  I am sorta an overflowing font of useless information about the games that I obsess about… and I most definitely obsess about Destiny/Destiny 2.  More than willing to answer questions or help folks out if they get lost along the way.  Actually Lastly….  the PC version is now available for pre-load through the Battle.net client and I got it installed on both my desktop and laptop last night so that I am ready to go.  I suggest you do the same to beat the day one patch rush.