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Xur Week Twelve: 12/1/17

December 1, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

This is potentially the last of these Xur reviews that I will be doing on this blog. It is not out of a lack of interest, but more than next week with the Curse of Osiris the reset time is changing and with it when Xur arrives. Right now Xur shows up in the middle of the night and as a result by the time I shower, get ready and sit down to blog is available for me to talk some shit about what he just brought. Starting next Tuesday however that reset time will shift from 5 am my time to 11 am … long after I have already been at work for a significant amount of time. This is a boon for the career YouTube types so they don’t have to wake up quite so early, but not really for me so alas this is probably the end of my recent Friday feature. The flash point zone this week is the EDZ which means Xur is hanging out near the Winding Cove drop zone. There is technically a cave that allows you access to the ledge he is on… but I never can remember where the entrance is and just end up jumping up the rocks to the right of where he is at.

Sweet Business is a really cool sounding weapon that winds up being a horrible idea. Maybe I am being a bit unfair but in truth I have never been able to get much out of this gun. Firstly it requires some wind up time while firing before it arrives at its final rate of fire and as such true damage potential. The perk payday in theory helps with the wind up because you can fire it from the hip relatively well and as such start firing ahead of when you are actually needing to deal damage to a target especially in the crucible. The magazine size of 99 seems really awesome… but given how fast this fires you will be empty and suffering the pretty horrible reload speed before long. Where the gun really lacks however is in the total ammunition you can carry. Payload might help your magazine but it doesn’t actually seem to help your pool of ammo and when I attempt to run something using this weapon I find myself always starved for kinetic ammo. Definitely pick it up if you do not already have the weapon, but I am not a huge fan of it.

Do you want to punch things? Do you want to punch all the things? Then these might be the gauntlets for you. In the grand scheme of things they probably are not that good, but are pretty fun to at least play with while running around doing planetary content. The biotic enhancements per does two things really, firstly it greatly increases the range of your punch allowing you to hit targets at roughly the distance warlocks can. On top of that it gives you a version of surrounded where the damage your punches deal increases based on the number of targets around you. This is insanely fun against boss type encounters with a lot of minions and would potentially pair nicely with either the Sentinel or Striker trees that allow you to gain health regen on kills. Definitely a pick up if you do not already have it… and in truth I am even going to log into the PS4 and buy this since it is the only Titan exotic I am lacking there.

Arc Bolt is one of those grenades that only seems to work in really ideal conditions. This chest is all about making that grenade be able to chain a little further, giving you some wiggle room on what those ideal conditions actually are. The problem is… there are WAY better hunter exotics than this one and in truth until Arc Bolt gets some sort of a rework it isn’t exactly worth building an item loadout around. The positive however is this version does come pre-slotted with an arc grenade recharge mod so at least they realized the only edge case anyone would ever want to use this item. It’s worth picking up for unlocking but not really much more than that.

Do you like Nova Bombs? Do you want to always be Nova Bombing? Me too… sadly this helmet won’t actually let you do that thing. The perk Actual Grandeur in theory grants you super energy on Nova Bomb kills. The rate that I have seen is that if you are able to Nova Bomb and kill five targets, it will take your super bar roughly to the halfway point. So sure this does a decent job of regeneration but it also falls drastically short of the dream of being some sort of Evil Ryu throwing void fireballs. In my experience if you are dedicated to Voidwalker you are far better off with Nezerac’s Sin or even the Eye of Another World. Once again, pick it up for the unlock because Bungie occasionally balances exotics to make them better and you might as well have it in your collection.

Destiny 1

This week Xur is hanging out at the Reef and offering a few items, including a Helm I never managed to get on my Titan. This week he is offering.

Legacy Primary Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Eternal Warrior – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Young Ahamkara’s Spine – Hunter Arms – 13 Strange Coins
The Stag – Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo – Primary Auto Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo with Royal Flush Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Trespasser with Crucible Assassin Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

November 17, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

This week we have a phenomenal week for Xur at least as far as I am concerned. He brought a bundle full of goodies that I either had never gotten to drop or did not yet have on the PC. As a result this week is an extremely expensive week for me personally. As is always the case he can be located on the Flashpoint location and in this case that is Titan. You can find him in the rig section in a building devoid of enemy spawns. That said be careful because they will absolutely stand at the doorway and shoot you while you are hanging out and doing your business with your face tentacled friend. You might need to do a little pre-clear before you duck inside. Let’s get on with the goodness.

Hard Light as a gun has always been in the marginal category as far as usefulness goes. It was never a bad weapon but it also never really stood out in the pack. The year two Hard Light feels better across the board but still is far from the best Auto Rifle that you could be using in your energy slot. That said the it is still a really interesting weapon because of its ability to shoot around corners and the fact that it lacks damage fall off. That is however a deceptive thing to say given the way Hard Light works in that it fires a volley of projectiles that go bouncing around as they hit surfaces, meaning you can in theory “curve the bullet” and fire around corners. While the gun doesn’t have damage fall off there is absolutely accuracy falloff the further from your target you get because you increase the likelihood that it will encounter something else and cause the trajectory of the original round to shift. All of this is still in the fun and interesting but not amazing category until you bring into play another intrinsic ability of the weapon, and that is to shift the elemental damage type by swapping around your perks. This isn’t near as handy as the playstation exclusive sniper rifle that has a keybind allowing you to do it on the fly… but it does serve as an excellent prism/match game weapon that can shift to whatever element you happen to be lacking. If you do not already have this it is well worth the pick up and I know I personally am definitely going to be grabbing this for the PC since I’ve yet to get it to drop otherwise.

The Synthoceps are another fun and interesting item, but maybe not best in slot at anything. If you are a Titan you probably like punching things… and these gauntlets improve the way you punch things. The exotic perk Biotic Enhancements increases your melee range and improves melee damage when surrounded. That last bit can be a slight improvement if you only have a few targets around you to a massive improvement when you are fighting packs of things like thralls. If you combine this with something like the striker melee build… you can do a number of very interesting things and cause massive amounts of damage as a melee titan. Similarly this would benefit the sentinel spec path that causes you to regain health on melee kill, but not nearly as much given that spec cannot really chain melee abilities in the same fashion as Striker. This is an item that I had yet to get so I am definitely picking it up for the unlock, and more than likely going to try out a striker melee build around it.

Do you really still want to punch all the things even as a Warlock? Karnstein Armlets are a set of exotic gloves that are effectively all about punching things as a warlock. They have a built in version of the devour perk, though as I understand it significantly weaker that causes you to gain health recovery on melee attacks. Note that it says attacks and not kills so in theory just punching things are going to help slowly regenerate your health. While doing this punch happy life you are also slowly increasing the regeneration of your melee, grenade and class ability. I am absolutely certain there is a build out there that could make the most of this… and I feel like double dipping with devour is maybe a great option. Sometimes you look an an item and think to yourself… I can build something around this and that is definitely the case with these gauntlets. If nothing else I wanted to pick them up simply because I did not have the unlock in my collection.

The Lucky Raspberry is a returning item from Destiny 1 that more or less kept the same ability. Probability Matrix the exotic perk causes your arc bolt grenades to chain significantly further than in their default state. Additionally dealing damage with your arc grenade has a chance of recharging your grenade. This means that if you drop your arc grenades in a large pack of mobs, it is extremely likely you are going to get a proc and return your full grenade charge. This makes this item a beast for doing something like the Nightfall on the weeks where every kill counts towards gaining back time on the clock because you can wait until arc burn and become a mad bomber dropping grenades everywhere. The rest of the time however you are probably not going to see enough mobs tightly clumped to really make this worth using. Occasionally in the team shot environment of the crucible you can drop one and take out an entire team… but that is going to be the exception rather than the rule. Still a very interesting chest to pick up and at least add it to your collection.

Destiny 1

Xur had a similarly interesting day in Destiny 1 as he brought a couple of my favorite items. Firstly the Armamentarium is the chest piece that I want back for my Titan more than anything because it simply gives you a second grenade charge. Right now I am so enamored with striker titan largely because it is the only spec I can have this functionality back. Similarly once I found the Bones of Eao I never looked back because it started enabling me to quad jump as a Hunter, a piece of utility that beat out every other possible exotic that I might want in that slot. The Warlock helm is largely forgettable because it is their version of the Alpha Lupi chest that Hunters and Titans have… but Xur did bring the Universal Remote which is the very odd primary slot shotgun. Lots of stuff worth picking up if you don’t already have them… and I would say for Titan and Hunter these are absolute must haves. Enough so that I am legitimately considering grinding out the strange coins so I have them on my Xbox One account. Here is the full run down of what he is selling.

Legacy Chest Engram – 29 Strange Coins
The Armamentarium – Titan Chest – 13 Strange Coins
Bones of Eao – Hunter Boots – 13 Strange Coins
Light Beyond Nemesis – Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Universal Remote – Primary Shotgun – 17 Strange Coins
Dragon’s Breath and Tigershark Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Nemesis Star and Meteorite Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Xur Week Nine: 11/10/17

November 10, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

It’s that time again folks… time to go traipsing through otherwise dangerous areas in search of Xur. I am very quickly going to run out of original things to say since the limited pool of exotics seems to be generating a bunch of repeat weeks. This was a huge problem with Destiny 1 as well and made worse by the fact that they do not seem to put the exotics on a rotation of any sort. There were several that we never actually saw sold by Xur in Destiny 1 and thusfar there is a whole slew that we have yet to see sold by him in Destiny 2. You can find Xur in the Watcher’s Grave area of Nessus where he is up in a tree. You can either hop up on the ledge and hop across or run a narrow path up the side of the tree. He brought a few gems so lets check out his stock.

There are two exotic grenade launchers… one of which is good and the other is likely the worst weapon in the game. Thankfully the Prospector is the good one and probably well worth picking up. It is a bit of a weird weapon to get used to because of the Excavation exotic perk, which keeps your grenades from detonating while you are holding down the fire trigger. This has a bizarre interaction with the fact that this weapon has auto fire… allowing you to pump out an entire magazine of eight grenades without actually detonating them and then detonating them all at once. The only problem with this is that these are not sticky grenades so there is a bit of bounce when you fire them out without instantly detonating them. The blast radius is rather small as well which again leads this to be a weird option because each grenade is not going to damage a very large area. As a result this is really good when you can fire them down into some sort of enclosed area and then detonate all of them at once for a massive explosion. More often than not I simply use this as a decent single fire grenade launcher which gives me more predictable results. If you are wanting a work horse rather than a gimmick… I highly suggest checking out Berenger’s Memory or Play of the Game legendary grenade launchers instead.

I actually had yet to get an insurmountable skullfort on the PC side yet so I was happy to see this item show up. This is one of those situationally good items that allows for a slightly degenerate build. The primary interaction is between Transfusion Matrix the exotic perk and Code of the Earthshaker path for the striker titan. The perk causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration… which is actually the reversal trait from Code of the Juggernaut. This becomes a great farming build because Seismic Strike and the AOE damage it deals… means you are going to be getting back lots of melee energy from the second part of this perk, allowing you to maintain damned near 100% up time. On the battlefield what this means is that you can zoom around slamming into things rather than actually firing any weapons. There are a few things that you could do to improve the reliability like slotting two arc melee recharge time mods, but when it works… it is insanely fun. This is mostly a PVE build concept and every time I have tried to shoulder charge in the crucible I have paid a hefty price for it.

I’ve talked about this item at length several different times, so I am not sure what else I can really add. The Eye of Another World is one of those items that passively all of your abilities work better. This is the sort of set it and forget it always on item that I tend to favor, because it requires zero attention to detail. Unless you are going for a specific gimmick build… this is probably your best all purpose warlock item. If you don’t already have it I highly suggest picking it up. If you want more dialog from me on this check out one of the many other Xur posts where I have talked about it.

Similarly the Foetracer is a generally good item and I have started running it lately because it tends to help finish off mobs in Nightfalls. Relentless Tracker perk visually marks your enemies after targeting them for a short period of time and causes you to deal extra damage when they reach low health. That last bit helps and it is just enough of a change to make killing things seem faster which is always the name of the game in a Nightfall. I do however miss my constant tracking radar while using this item, but I am trying really hard to learn to live without it. Again I highly suggest picking this up, and also once again I have talked at length about this item in the past in any one of the many other times Xur has offered it.

Destiny 1

This week in Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Tower directly across from Lord Shaxx. He finally restocked his inventory and is no longer bringing the Jade Rabbit, so hopefully you Xbox players picked that up while it was still available. Interestingly Xur in Destiny 1 seems to be taking a queue from his personal in Destiny 2 because they both brought the Insurmountable Skullfort. Let’s check out his items this week.

Legacy Arm Engram – 29 Strange Coins
An Insurmountable Skullfort – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Radiant Dance Machines – Hunter Boots – 13 Strange Coins
Claws of Ahamkara – Warlock Arms – 13 Strange Coins
The Last Word – Hand Cannon – 23 Strange Coins
Dragon’s Breath and Tigershark Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Xur Week Eight: 11/3/17

November 3, 2017 by Belghast

Xur this week is located in the European Dead Zone near the Winding Cove drop zone. He is located on top of a hill that has an actual path to get up there… but I never can seem to find it… so I end up hopping up the rocks. In some ways this is a disappointing week and in other ways… for Titans at least it is a potentially exciting one. This represents the first week I have been able to do the entire screenshot thing on the PC as I now have Titan, Hunter and Warlock up to the appropriate levels to get the items at the 270 maximum level. Lets get on with the items he brought for us.

Destiny 2

This weapon is a little disappointing because it is one of the items you can get from the quest at the end of Io. Additionally it seems to be an acquired taste. Some folks absolutely love this thing… and others completely hate it. It is essentially a pulse rifle that doesn’t fire like a pulse rifle, and in order to get the most out of it you sort of have to line your shots up like you were using a scout rifle. That said it does seem to be considerably more reliable on the PC than it ever was on console. If you can learn to use it you can shred things, but it takes a lot of getting used to.

Mask of the Quiet One has become this defacto crucible relic of choice for a lot of Titans. The perks do a few things… one of which is actually important and the other not so much. The lesser of the perks is that Void Ability kills grant health regeneration, which rewards a chunk of health back to your bar when you kill a target with any of your void abilities. This is useful for Sentinel Titans but fails to trigger on shield slams making it a little fiddly. The perk everyone cares about however is that when you are damaged you gain melee, grenade and class ability energy. Again this is rewarded as just a chunk of your energy bar and why this is so insanely popular in the crucible is the fact that you are ALWAYS getting damaged. Just the act of running around while trying to avoid taking damage… ends up seeing you take plenty of damage to make this item useful. I picked it up because I do not already have a copy on PC side, and is well worth hanging on to just in case you find it useful.

We’ve seen Nezarec’s Sin before from Xur and again it is a mid range item that to some extent gets out shined by several other Warlock exotics. The perk Abyssal Extractors activates on void damage and causes you to gain a tiny sliver of energy back to grenade, melee and class ability. This is interesting because the item says void damage and not void ability kills meaning you can proc it off of an energy or power weapon if you are carrying one of that type. The biggest problem with the item is that the tick rate of this ability really is not that fast, and for me at least gets outshined by Eye of Another World which grants 10% increase to your recharge rates for doing nothing. The only way Nezarec’s Sin would be useful is if you are really married to the voidwalker spec, and even then… you are probably going to be better off just going with the Eye still. It is worth getting the item for unlock purposes only.

Do you love the Crucible? Do you really like using Tripmine grenades? If you answered yes to both then these might be the right exotics for you. If not then they might still be worth just getting the unlock because they look awesome. These are essentially a worse version of gauntlets of the same name from Destiny 1. I say they are a worse version because the old ones used to give you an extra tripmine grenade charge, making it extremely useful for trapping up multiple spots in an area. In Destiny 2 they lost the extra charge and instead gained additional duration which is nowhere near as sexy. The other interesting benefit is that they now highlight targets damaged in your grenade blast, making it easier to see which players may or may not have been weakened and giving you the ability to track them through walls if you are going to chase them down. This is a situationally good item for players who really like the crucible and really like trip mines… if you are neither or these things then you can pretty comfortably pass them up. They are still largely worth the unlock slot to me however.

Destiny 1

In Destiny 1 this week Xur is located at the big gate near the speaker in the Tower. Once again he is offering the formerly exclusive Jade Rabbit scout rifle giving a weird second chance for Xbox One users to get this up. I am sincerely hoping that this is not going to be what he brings every week from now on since Destiny 1 has gone into maintenance mode. Of the items available Twilight Garrison is especially interesting because it gives Titans the ability to do a midair dodge attack.