The Black Armory season added a game mode that shooting glowing mobs, picking up orbs and dunking them into a receptacle in the center of the arena generally referred to as “The Forge”. There are two characteristics about this game mode, the first being you have a very short timer in order to complete it and each time you dunk a new orb you gain more points on the clock. Second it is set up on an endless play list where you will keep re-queuing for the forge over and over allowing you to farm it for drops. These two characteristics have lead to a few interesting circumstances in the past, setting up AFK farms.
With the Season of Arrivals, Bungie added in a chance for the new Umbral Engrams to drop from the end of any activity, including unsuccessful forge ignitions. This set up a scenario where players across the game have been AFKing their way to glory since June 9th when the season became active. Players knew about this in part because previously they could farm planetary materials this way. I tried it for a little bit yesterday afternoon and while afking in the background I racked up something around twenty engrams in total. This was patched yesterday evening after being active for six days and allowing folks to essentially grind up to maximum light in the process.
How did this work you might ask, because in theory your engrams should decode at your current light level. Essentially there appears to be another glitch currently active that allows armor-focused umbral engrams to occasionally decode as powerful gear, meaning it will be few light levels over your current level essentially forever ignoring the soft cap. The seems to only work if you purchase armor-focused Umbral engrams one at a time, but through this slow process of working up your armor folks have been able to max out their light at 1060 for the season. If I got roughly 20 engrams over the course of an afternoon, you can multiply that out over the length of six days of 24/7 AFKing with only a short trip now and then to clean out their mailbox.
This method of AFKing the forge largely worked because the AFK time out in Destiny is much longer than the fail condition of the forge. You are effectively matched with players of your own light level, and as a result afkers would artificially lower their light level to sub 700 with even New Light players starting at 750. The idea being that you would only match with players who were also afking, and as such every 50 seconds the match would complete on its own as a failure and then start a 10 second timer kicking folks back to orbit. So essentially once a minute roughly you had a shot of an engram dropping.
With yesterdays patch Bungie made a simple tweak that stops the Forge from queuing up players again, essentially making folks manually queue each time. The funny thing is… folks are still afking the forge even though they are having to queue back up every minute. If you are just wanting to farm Umbral Engrams, the fastest method I have found so far is one particular Nightmare Hunt, namely Dominus Ghaul. It doesn’t involve an awful lot of trash, Ghaul himself is pretty easy to take down, and in my experience you get an engram almost every time you complete the hunt. Better yet you are actually gaining experience which helps move your seasonal journey path forward.
It is my hope that with the breaking of this farm, that folks will actually start doing the planetary events again because in truth I find them pretty fun. However it was impossible to do pretty much anything that involved other players so long as the loot farm was active. I would have been fine legitimately farming forges as well, because it is one of my more favorite activities. However it is real hard to solo a forge when the other two players are perma AFK. I did one last night and even with two players it was a bit of a challenge to hit the timer, but we did it. This is not a grand start to a season, but I do seem to have the inkling to play once more knowing that come September a bunch of activities will be gone from the game. I think my play is more a farewell to the old world more than anything else at this point.
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Yesterday was the big reveal stream for where Bungie is going in the near future laying out a long term road map. As the countdown ticked to the show beginning, the screen showed a sequence of all of the places we visited starting with Destiny 1 all the way through Shadowkeep. All of this to hype us up for the big reveal, and then as the countdown ticked to zero we were presented with this screen. We sat in 8 minutes of 46 seconds of silence as a sequence of slides played out in front of us ending with a number of links to organizations that need our help in the Black Lives Matter movement.
I have to give Bungie huge credit for the way this played out. By hyping us to a fever pitch with the “best hits” reel playing out in the moments as the countdown ticked down, this came across with maximum effect. Those 8 minutes and 46 seconds that the Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck felt like an eternity. I guess I must be following the right crowd because I saw nothing but respect for the display. I still throw some serious side eye that it is to corporations we turn for solace in this time of global need… but it only makes me think more than we are sliding into a shadowrun esc corporate hellscape. That doubt aside however, I still greatly respect Bungie for their actions in not only donating to causes but also in taking time out of their big moment to make sure we remember.
Over the last week we have been getting fragments of a video showing two characters heading towards what we can only assume is Europa. Eris Morn and the Drifter have been characters that are all too willing to blur the lines between the Light and the Dark, so it is befitting that they represent what is ultimately the envoy in dealing with the Darkness. Over the last season the ships were a present threat looming on the Horizon, but now they have arrived and are interacting with the various planets in our solar system in what appears to be a similar manner to how the traveler was described.
The big reveal however is that we are adding a third to this rogues gallery. The Stranger is a character that we have heard nothing from since Destiny 1. She is the infamous source of the line “I don’t even have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain”. She is also the one who called our Ghost “Little Light” and represented a character that knew far more about our circumstances and predicament than our then fledgling guardian first stepping foot into the Ishtar Sink on Venus. Now she has returned at the same time the darkness has returned and appears to be the individual ushering us into the new expansion.
I said earlier that Bungie laid out a roadmap, and in doing so they have announced the next two expansions and with that dispelling any rumors that a Destiny 3 was waiting in the wings. This in theory begins a regular release cadence of a new expansion coming out every September with the first being Beyond Light in 2020, The Witch Queen in 2021 and Lightfall in 2022. Additionally we have an established structure of four seasons per year, which in theory means every three months an infusion of new content. The feature addition for 2020 is that console generations will be able to play together without purchasing the game again as we transition between the PS4/Xbox One to the PS5/Series X. They also hinted that a feature on the longer term roadmap was unifying the players so that there was a single Destiny platform.
I played through the first mission, but that is pretty much as far as I made it last night. I’ve had this fraught relationship with Destiny since the introduction of the seasonal model. Especially with the season pass unlocking a number of items, but only if you manage to make it to level 100 each time. Instead of prompting me to engage and grind away, this has prompted me to check out since I know I won’t actually manage to achieve that goal unless I swap to ONLY playing Destiny. One of my frustrations has been that the seasons set up content that only lasts while that season is currently happening, and in theory content will be sticking around for several seasons afterwards solving one big problem I had.
They also however presented a new problem. They talked about the introduction of the Content Vault, and shelving old content that isn’t seeing much play time. This means that they are going to be removing a number of destinations and activities connected to them including the Leviathan with the release of Beyond Light in September. They said however that they were going to dig into the Destiny 1 vault and pull back out some content from there like the Cosmodrome. Pending they cycle content in and out of the vault on a pretty good schedule, then it might not be a bad thing. I am just not entirely certain how I will feel about losing what is currently my favorite grinding Destination… Titan.
In truth I am not really sure how I feel about the entire model going forward. Like I said, last night I only played long enough to make it through the first mission and even then only because the game didn’t give me a choice. As I loaded into the game the mission started without me having any ability to stop it. After playing through, I went to the Tower, did a bit of maintenance and then logged out to play PSO2. I am not nearly as the friends who are deeply engaged with this franchise. Yesterday for them seemed to be a re-ignition of a spark, and I am pretty jealous of.
It would be a lie if I said I would not be there playing Beyond Light in September. I like the concept of wielding the darkness and growing the abilities we have access to. However due to the stance of rolling out new content and removing old content, I am wondering what exactly we will sacrifice in the process. My preference will always be with constantly expanding the world, making it a more exciting and vibrant place to play. However it seems Bungie feels like they need to shrink it down a bit to keep from having to restart once again with a new game to keep the scope manageable. I understand that desire, and I absolutely do not want Destiny 3 to cause the same big reset that Destiny 2 did. For now I mostly just have to mull over these thoughts and determine at what point I will engage with this franchise again.
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This evening I am going to go see Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, and I am sure tomorrow I will be posting my thoughts about it. However this morning I am going to continue our journey down memory lane as I talk about the games that were important to me over the last decade. Each time I think I am walking into a slow year… I sift through the titles that released and keep finding things that were extremely important to me. Let’s get started.
Elder Scrolls Online
Elder Scrolls Online – PC
I am not sure if there are words to express how important this title is to me. I could have in theory included this game on 2013, because it also played heavily into that year for me as I began testing it in February. I’m a member of the Psijic Order, the original team of testers that stayed with the game as it progressed through various phases and I am super proud to have stomped a bunch of bugs… or at least reported them prolifically. This game mattered me to not only because it is Elder Scrolls a setting that I adore, but also that one of my good friends worked on it. While this didn’t turn out to be the “WoW Killer” like I had hoped, it is a game that I keep revisiting to spend time wandering through its amazing storyline. In fact it seems like it might be time to dust off my characters and pay another visit over the holidays.
Transistor
Transistor – PC
This game was the game that more or less inspired the AggroChat game club concept. It was a title that spontaneously we all happened to be playing at exactly the same time, and then as a result we recorded what felt like three full shows worth of discussion as we dug deep into the title and our feelings about it. We tried to make this function artificially as we constructed the concept of the Game Club, but it never felt quite as fresh or in the moment because there was always a time when more than one of us were never really that into the chosen title. Supergiant Games is a phenomenal studio and I am willing to play pretty much everything they put out. Transistor was this fluid fusion of music, story and interesting ARPG gameplay that created a total package that we all kept returning to over and over. Collectively we deemed this to be the game of 2014, and it still holds up. I would have loved to have played this on the Switch as it is now my modern platform for this type of game.
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Wolfenstein: The New Order – PC
I love Wolfenstein as a franchise and I have been a huge fan since I first got my hands on the original Apogee title from a shareware disk sold by the local bookstore. I obsessed with the game and editing new levels for it, and then as each new game has released I have spent time playing it. After Return to Castle Wolfenstein the quality of the games fell off significantly, so I was completely excited to see a brand new game being worked on by Machine Games a Zenimax studio. This game is both a sequel and a re-imagining of the entire experience and I loved every moment of it. The screenshot is from one of my favorite sequences where you are scaling the side of the eponymous Castle Wolfenstein, but the images never quite do it justice. There were so many really cool big set pieces in the game, and it wove with it a really interesting storyline that provided the action I craved and the character development that Kodra craved. It is a magical time when a game is planted firmly in both of our wheelhouses.
Divinity: Original Sin
Divinity: Original Sin – PC
This game is going on the list for a few reasons, but not because I necessarily played it over and over and managed to find deep revelations in it. The first reason why it is on the list is because it presents something that has never really existed in my memory before this game, a two player classic PC role-playing game experience. You can start the game as either one character with a swappable NPC, or you can have two different players controlling each character that is on screen and as a result end up having competing goals and objectives. The other reason why it deserves to be on the list is the sheer depth that this game has. You will go insane trying to track down every single thread and quite honestly this paralysis lead me to not get terribly far in the game as a whole. When I encountered the first town I effectively spent all of my time doing what seemed to be a near endless number of side quests and completely tilting my way out of the main story. I want to revisit this game but set some guidelines about what sorts of quests I am willing to partake in.
Destiny
Destiny – PS4
Destiny is the reason why I bought a Playstation 4. It was the single game that was willing to sell me on purchasing a console and I did so more or less to play in the Alpha that was exclusive to that platform. I saw in this game so much promise that I absolutely wanted to be in. However the initial game-play experience was a little lacking for me and I bounced out of it only to return when Taken King released. From that point forward however there has never been a time when I have not at least been playing Destiny a little bit, and I never quite realized just how much this franchise would come to dominate my game time. I love everything about this world and its rich lore… and the subtle mechanical differences between each weapon that make them all feel so unique to me. I view Destiny and Destiny 2 as a continuum and together they are probably my favorite game of this decade.
Where Bel Was Mentally in 2014
It was a really interesting year because it marked the birth of our weekly podcast AggroChat. It also marks the year that I officially transitioned into management or at least was an official supervisor. Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls also dominated my play time, but since I had already talked about it in 2012 I figured that was probably enough of that. It was a pretty good year and considering we record AggroChat 280 this weekend, we set up a firm foundation that seems to still be working.
The dawning event is live and once again we are baking cookies for the various NPCs that can be found in Destiny 2. This was a really fun event last year and was worth a mountain of experience. This time around it seems as though we can keep doing bounties indefinitely as Eva once again has the ability for us to buy more bounties. I didn’t get time to play nearly as much as I would have liked last night because we had holiday errands to run, but I did manage to knock out the first few quests and unlock both the chase weapon and the first form of the sparrow. Something of note… the game seemingly remembers all of the packaged you delivered last year and as a result I already had the “deliver packages” requirements finished.
Last year I posted a long list of all of the ingredients, and these are largely still valid. However I am going to copy and paste from that original post to keep them concise. Essentially every recipe requires three components, a green item that you get by killing specific types of mobs, a blue item that you get from specific kinds of kills, and then dawning essence which drops from pretty much everything while the event is going on. You get 5 for example from completing a Heroic Public event, a few from opening chests etc. you are going to need 15 to craft anything until you can “masterwork” the oven… which last year was unlocked by crafting one each of all of the packages if I am remembering correctly.
Green Items – Based on Mob
Cabal Oil – Kill any Cabal Enemies
Chitin Powder – Kill any Hive Enemies
Dark Ether Cane – Kill any Scorn Enemies
Ether Cane – Kill any Fallen Enemies
Taken Butter – Kill any Taken Enemies
Vex Milk – Kill any Vex Enemies
Blue Items – Based on Kill/Damage Type
Bullet Spray – Kills made with “Machine Gun” type weapons – Auto Rifle/SMG/HMG
Delicious Explosions – Explosive kills aka Class Grenades/Rocket Launcher/Grenade Launcher
Electric Flavor – Arc Damage based Kills
Flash of Inspiration – A kill that generates an Orb of Light – Supers or Masterworks
Hackberry Tart (Benedict 99-40 – Tower Annex) – Cabal Oil and Multifaceted Flavors
Hot Crossfire Buns (Ada-1 – Tower Annex) – Ether Cane and Balanced Flavors
Fried Sha-dough (Visage of Calus – Triumph Hall?) – Dark Ether Cane and Superb Flavor
Lavender Ribbon Cookies (Saint-14 – Sundail?) – Vex Milk and Personal Touch
Thousand-Layer Cookie (Riven – Dreaming City?) – Taken Butter and Delicious Explosion
Having not made all of these recipes yet, there are a few I am not quite certain about how to deliver them. Namely Visage of Calus, Saint-14 and Riven… and for those I have given my guess. But also indicated that it is a guess by slapping a ? at the end.
The chase weapon I got pretty quickly after doing an initial series of turn ins. It looks and feels like a slightly modified Antiope-D. The slightly faster rate of fire makes it feel a little more jumpy than the Antiope, but all it all it is a reasonable option for a primary slot submachinegun. More than likely I will keep using Exit Strategy in this slot when I have need for a Kinetic submac, but this is a reasonable option and is kinda cool looking if gold and blue is your thing. There is an ornament on the store that makes it look really nice, but has the standard 700 silver pricetag attached to it.
I am a much bigger fan of the vehicle this year. The sleigh was somewhat entertaining… but the sound effects associated with each time you boosted got on my nerves. I’ve not had a chance to actually use this one but it seems like it is more standard fare with each unlock just adding an additional perk as opposed to the gimmicks like glimmer explosions. It is more or less a snow mobile and I am fine with this.
My hope is tonight to spend more time working on both the Saint-14 quest and baking more cookies. I’ve already gotten 3 levels however since starting the event, so I feel like it is a good time to grind things up. What were your thoughts about dawning so far? I like that the event took the packages delivered last year into account for rewards. I am bummed that SRL the Sparrow Racing League did not make another appearance. That is the one event from Destiny 1 that I miss the most, and I am hoping that someday they bring it back as an actual game mode.
