Happy Xursday! Since this seems to be a fairly popular feature I will be doing a run down of what Xur has this week. Since the Flashpoint is in the European Dead Zone he is found over in the winding cove area. For characters who have yet to hit 20… you can get there by just going west out of town and winding along the coastline… but in truth I would warn against doing this because his items degrade in power based on your level. This time Xur is a little tricky given that the previous three weeks he has been in some sort of a sheltered area, and this time he is up on top of a cliff that you are going to have to do a bit of wall jumping to get to. Another thing to watch out for… the area he is in is patrolled by a group of dregs on pikes. Additionally there may or may not be a public event active at the drop zone in the winding cove area. Essentially this is probably the most dangerous area Xur has been so far, just be careful if you AFK because Vandals could in fact hit me with their wire rifles from where he is located.
First off he is offering the Vigilance Wing, a weapon I am extremely excited to see because I have yet to get one from an engram. This is an odd Osiris themed weapon that you occasionally see in your “killed by” notes in the crucible and now that I see the perks I understand why. The exotic perk for this weapon is Harsh Truths which does several things. Firstly it fires a five round burst which is a bit unique because most pulse rifles fire three round bursts, and hakke weapons are the outlier with four round bursts. A five round burst for reference means a single precision burst kills a second tier mob like a Vandal. The second part of the perk is that when a nearby ally is killed you gain health regeneration and increased movement speed… something that happens constantly in the crucible. Seeing as I just literally got this weapon today I have yet to take it into the crucible so I am uncertain how much difference this makes. I did however run around the EDZ and complete a public event to get a feel for it and my opinions are a bit mixed. Statwise it is probably most similar to the Lincoln Green, with a very odd 530 rounds per minute rate of fire and surprisingly high 33 impact for that rpm. Traditionally the high rate of fire weapons have an extremely poor range but this one has 68 and a medium range sight to go with it making it fairly decent in longer range engagements. The other side of the coin though is the unique sun themed sight means it is extremely annoying for close range fights. The last stand perk plays well with harsh truths in that it gives the weapon improved performance if you are the last member of a fire team. It seems like it is well worth the legendary shards if for no reason other than to get the unlock and a good Kinetic pulse rifle is a bit of a rare item to find.
The Insurmountable Skullfort is another of a list of items that has returned from Destiny 1. Its bizarre because almost all of them were considered second tier items, which makes me wonder if the devs were simply unhappy with the amount of play time that they got and carried them over to potentially give them some new life. Transfusion Matrix causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration and restore melee energy. What this means in play is that there is a really interesting build you can do with a Striker Titan where you have near 100% up-time of the insanely powerful arc shoulder charge ability. This is literally the only reason to use this exotic and is probably well worth the pick up so that you have it in case you ever want to try that build out. Personally since I love my Auto Rifles… I am likely to almost always use the Actium War Rig because it benefits whatever spec I might be in at that time and doesn’t hamper me from switching freely.
Nezarec’s Sin is another really limited use case item because its exotic perk does one thing. Abyssal Extractors causes void damage kills to increase your ability energy recharge rate. I feel like the primary use case for this item is going to be in the crucible and specifically in control or similar modes where you are wanting to stand your ground or camp out a location. This is of course a useful for Void warlocks, but also is triggered by void weapon damage. This means you could in theory build a specific layout with a void energy and a void heavy and be constantly dropping your healing puddle on the ground. I ran this item for a bit of a time and the ability recharge rate increase is significant. Overall however I tend to prefer Eye of Another World that highlights priority targets and has a flat increase to the recharge rate of melee, grenade and your ability. The helm however is well worth a pick up in case you really need to be the one providing an on demand puddle.
And we have our very first repeat item of Xur in Destiny 2. Foetracer helm was offered in week two and my feelings are probably much the same. The exotic perk is Relentless Tracker which causes any mob you scope in on to acquire an X target that you can see through obstacles. Additionally marked targets like this take additional damage when they get to low health range. This is a generally useful item and I am sure there are specific cases where it is extremely solid especially for low health target damage. Personally I am a huge fan of Knucklehead Radar because I like having my radar up while I aim down sight regardless of the weapon I am using. The Foetracer however is probably a much better damage option because at least it does something to increase your output. I didn’t pick these up in week two, but I did this week largely to get a collection unlock. Probably a solid item if you are needing a reasonable exotic to use.
All in all I feel like this was a pretty solid week for Xur. I’ve been wanting to play with the Vigilance Wing as it is an exotic that I had never seen from an engram, so I am super happy about him offering that. The two weapons you can get from an engram that I am still missing is the Sweet Business Gatling gun auto rifle, and The Prospector grenade launcher. As far as armor pieces go… there are still a sizeable number of unlocks on each character that I will hopefully see Xur offering in coming weeks. I am mildly annoyed that on week four we are already getting duplicates, which reminds me all too much of the number of times we have seen weapons like the Hawkmoon or Last Word being sold. What are your thoughts? Are you impressed with what Xur has been offering or are they all old news to you by the time you can get your hand on them? I am interested in your thoughts. One last thing… I decided to start including Destiny 1 Xur in these posts because I feel sorta bad about that incarnation stuck in a game that people aren’t hyped about anymore.
In Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Vanguard area of the Tower. I am not going to go into a lot of detail on this, but the major items he has to offer…
- Suros Regime Auto Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
- ACD/0 Feedback Fence Titan Arms – 13 Strange Coins
- Celestial Nighthawk Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
- The Stag Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
- Legacy Primary Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
- Monte Carlo Weapon Bundle with Superspy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust
- Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust
