Last night I spent the entire night playing Destiny 2, and I am now starting to feel a little guilty about not logging into World of Warcraft Classic at all. So much so that right now my plan is to play tonight and see just how far behind I am in the curve. There were a few players pulling ahead of me and I feel like I am probably going to be several levels behind the pack. Unfortunately… I have been having a blast in Destiny 2 and just have wanted to spend my entire evening playing that. It would be easier were I sitting at the level cap in WoW to alternate back and forth between the games.
The Chest Mini Game
Yesterday I posted a picture of these ominous Hive themed Yeti coolers on the moon with Symbols on the front. When I encountered them they appeared to be locked, and when Deej made some post yesterday about our moon findings… I replied with a picture of the chest as a joke. However I got some very serious replies, including what exactly we are supposed to do with them. I apologize for the crappy quality picture but I am trying to illustrate something badly. You notice there are symbols on the front in a specific order I personally refer to them as E A and 0 because the first looks like an E without the back and the last looks like when you draw a zero with a slash through it to differentiate between it and an O.
This is going to require some squinting maybe, but if you look in the upper left corner of the image you will see the E symbol and if you look in the middle of the right hand side you see the A symbol. How spread out they are is the reason why you got a rather crappy image to illustrate this point. Behind where my camera is currently is a column with the 0 symbol. Essentially to open the chest you shoot the symbols in the order shown on the box. If you are doing it right the symbol will begin to glow with that ominous shadowy hive energy. When you have shot them all you end up with a normal chest that you can open and usually a piece of gear.
Another thing that I spent my evening doing is punching things. Like I normally punch a lot of things already, but what I mean is that I used finishers to punch them into oblivion. I had not quite figured out the finisher system the night before last, but I have it on lock now. Essentially when an enemy gets low you will see a glowing orb over their head and they will start to shimmer a little bit. This is the indication that they are primed and ready for your finisher, much in the same way as it works in the 2016 Doom game. My finisher was set to the G key but I rebound it to 7 which is the key that I use on my mouse as my combo point dump in MMORPGs.
The interesting side benefit of using a finisher is that apparently it counts as the damage type of whatever sub class you have equipped, but also doesn’t consume a melee charge. This meant that when I landed on Titan and got a Destination Bounty of kill 30 things with Void damage… and I had no Void weapons on me… I was able to punch things to death for fun and profit. Normally speaking I would have just logged into Destiny Item Manager on my second monitor and swapped over a void weapon. However while that appears to be fixed now, for awhile that was not updated to work against the new user interface. I would imagine that it will also count for those “Void Class Abilities” bounty objectives as well, since your damage is being dealt by the class, but I am not 100% certain on that.
The highlight of the night however is that I found out that you can in fact get back into the Cosmodrome without deleting a character. When you log into the game a bunch of stuff happens, especially if you had the Solstice of Heroes armor waiting on you. Banshee gives you several objectives so I completely missed that you also gave me an exotic quest called “Pain and Gain”. This involves going into the Cosmodrome and in the area is a Fallen Walker that you can defeat over and over. Doing so drops one of the items that you pick up from the New Light experience.
So you can essentially farm the walker until you have gotten all of the items that you would have gotten had you deleted your character. The first time I took down the walker the chest that spawned gave me the Arcadia-Class Jumpship from Destiny 1. The second time I got the item I was hunting for… the Khvostov 7G-02 or the weapon you start the game with. This is still among the best feeling guns in the game and I am really hoping we get the exotic quest at some point during this expansion cycle to go get the version of it from Destiny 1 that had swappable perks. I loved that weapon so much. The other item I could have gotten was the white “Generalist Shell” but honestly I didn’t care enough about it to stick around and kill the walker a third time. Supposedly it is capable of showing up on the Heroic Mission playlist as well.
If you keep going with the mission you end up discovering a completely new area of the Cosmodrome which involves a really nonsense jumping quest. Thankfully I was forged in the fires of the Dreadnaught and managed to do the entire sequence on the first try. In the grand scheme of things none of the jumps are terribly difficult. The hardest bit is trying to figure out where you should jump to next especially in the last set of jumps before arriving at the treasure room. You are rewarded a copy of the Risk Runner exotic which I had and if you keep moving you end up fighting a boss that awards you its catalyst which I did not have. Risk Runner has become one of my favorite weapons in Destiny 2 and more or less takes the place of a shotgun as one of my secondary weapons of choice.
All in all I am having a blast in Shadowkeep, and I feel like I have really not even scratched the surface. I need to do a strike which I have not done to progress the storyline. Instead I wound up doing a Nightfall… which thanks to the new mode allows you to matchmake and queue for them. There are things I miss… like all of the different ways to get powerful gear. I feel like this is going to turn into a rant at a later point when I am sitting at 900 light and have no real way to get higher. However for the moment I am having a blast. I really want to get the 100 levels of the seasonal pass thingy as well, so we will see how the grinding goes.
Tonight however… I plan on likely being back in WoW Classic to try and catch up with what has been going on over there.
First lets start off with the fact that I love this new character screen, where you see what sparrow and ghost shell you have equipped. Last night Shadowkeep launched as well as the New Light experience, and there were a lot of problems. That is not to say that the problems did not resolve themselves eventually. However we were stuck in the weirdest queue that would start at 16,000 jump up to 22,000… back down to 8,000… back up to 22,000 and then eventually at some point let me through.
I say at some point… because I had some real life stuff pull me away from the screen and about an hour later when I got back home I was sitting in game. All told according to Steam I played about 4 hours last night, which involved very little progress in the main story and a lot of faffing about on the moon. Because of the way that Steam tracks time in a game… I am guessing the entire time I was sitting in queue it was counting me as playing because I most definitely feel like I didn’t make 4 hours worth of progress.
The Moon is doing something that I not so secretly hope that we see a lot more of. It is revisiting an area from Destiny 1, expanding upon it and showing us what has happened since we last visited. If I am correct the above screenshot is roughly where we originally zone into the Moon in Destiny 1. I spent a lot of my time roaming around and revisiting destinations from the first game, because I spent an awful lot of time on the moon grinding random stuff, and knew it extremely well.
The only initial annoyance is that you start with effectively all of your gear at 750, and the moon is significantly higher level than that. I managed to get my light up to 770 and this area that I used to farm in Destiny 1 is still showing with all of the mobs having a Skull symbol, which I believe means they are higher light than I am. Everything hits really freaking hard right now so it is going to take some time to get my feet back under me. I am wondering about maybe grinding out some strikes to see if I can get my light level up a bit before doing much more of the sort of thing I really enjoy… wandering aimlessly.
One thing I am noticing on the lunar surface is that I am finding a bunch of chests that look like this that are currently unopenable. I am guessing that something at some point will give us access to these through some sort of a minigame like have existed in other areas. There were so many intricate farms on the Dreadnaught that I am really hoping that this is the sign of those existing here. I remember farming chest keys and then going through the process of tracking down how to find the chests. I’ve taken screenshots of two of these, and they have the same symbols on the front, which I assume will mean something at some point.
The only real frustration that I have is that there appears to be no way to play through that first mission of the New Light experience. It has me contemplating sacrificing my Warlock… which I have done nothing on since before Forsaken… in order to play it through the new starter experience. I am also completely confused about how content unlocks work in this new area of the game. I logged into my PS4 copy and I had access to all of the areas and was flagged for showing that I had access to the seasonal path. However it also prompted me upon logging in to buy Shadowkeep. So I am deeply confused as to if I do or do not have to buy it on multiple platforms. I don’t have much of an opinion yet other than the game as a whole is going to take some adjusting to.
Later today something really cool is about to happen. Firstly the new expansion for Destiny 2 is launching and Shadowkeep will be playable on all platforms around 10 am CST. There is a complicated release matrix that is available , but alas for me I will be at work and won’t get to play until this evening. The other cool thing that is happening is that Destiny is launching its Free to Play experience. So this morning I am going to do a bit of an informational post for new players and players who maybe have not followed any of the happenings of the last few months.
What is New Light?
New Light represents a re-imagining of the new player experience for Destiny 2. Instead of throwing you in the middle of the Red War Campaign, it sort of eases the player in a bit slower with doing various activities associated with the destinations and guiding the players through that experience. Additionally and most importantly it is completely free for anyone to download regardless of platform, and includes a shocking amount of content. You are essentially getting all of the Destiny 2 “Year One” content, aka the base game (Red War), Curse of Osiris expansion, and Warmind expansion.
This also gives you access to all of the core activities like Strikes, Crucible, The Leviathan Raid and various reoccurring events like the Iron Banner. You also apparently get access to some of the year two content like the Black Armory Forges, Gambit/Gambit Prime and The Menagerie which is sorta like the LFR version of Destiny 2 raid content. In addition to all of this… you can be viable to hop in and play with you friends in content on day one minute one. They have changed the way the world scales and you could hop in and do a strike moments after you first create your character.
You can get New Light on the following platforms:
Yes as part of the divorce from Activision, Bungie is no longer going to be available through the Battle.net client. For me this was largely a positive since the vast majority of the games that I own and or play are through the Steam launcher. For some people however this might be a negative as I found out from one of my friends yesterday. Of the various platforms that Destiny could have moved to, I feel like Steam was probably the best option. There would be way more gnashing of teeth had it moved to the Epic Games Store for example, or insisted that we install yet another game store client on our machines.
At the time of writing this all of the Bungie systems are offline for maintenance. However if you played on Battle.net and are wanting to continue playing that character you will still be able to move after the systems come back online later today. You need to go to Bungie.net/PCMove to initiate the process. However as the above advisement states it will not be an instant process and there may be some lag time before your character shows up on steam. Ultimately the process requires you to log into your Battle.net account and then into your Steam account and it creates a mapping and starts the character move process. If you did this prior to the systems going offline, then your Steam character should be sitting there waiting on you when you install either the New Light client or Shadowkeep.
What is Cross Save?
Again the systems are offline, but when they come back online later today you will be able to configure Cross Save. Essentially if you have played Destiny 2 on any platform in the past, you can keep your characters and move them forward with you if you choose to swap platforms. For example I had characters on both the PC and the PS4 and once everything was linked up, I was able to choose which set of characters would be my “Cross Save” and available on all platforms. Since then I picked up Forsaken when it was on sale on the Xbox One and have been able to play the same characters on all three platforms seamlessly.
To make it work all you need to do is go to the Bungie.net/CrossSave page and associate the accounts for each platform with your Bungie.net account. It will then ask you to select which account you are going to promote to your cross save. Now these other accounts won’t actually “go away” but will instead be suppressed as the characters from your chosen platform loads. You could in theory go back and reverse the decision at any point and play different characters on each of the separate platforms. My hope is at some point in the future they give us full cross play as I have friends that choose to play on each of the platforms, but my chosen platform is the PC. I could however load up any of the clients but I am limited to only that group of friends on a given client.
How do I Convert Heroic Events?
One of the most common activities in Destiny 2 is that of the public event. Some activity will spawn in on your destination and you can get good experience and some gear by completing it. However you get significantly better experience and loot if you manage to convert it to the heroic version. At times the process of converting it is directly in competition with actually completing the event, and as a “KinderGuardian” you can frustrate players by not knowing how to transform the event. As such I feel like one of the more important steps is learning what you need to do to convert each activity. I wrote up a post some time ago, but since then a bunch of new event types have been released. Thankfully Mesa Sean released a video today walking through the process of converting every single event.
I Feel Like I Am Missing Some Lore
There is a lot of story to Destiny, and sadly most of it is not told through the natural flow of in game narratives. It is instead told through things you interact with in the world, side quests, items that drop and add notes to your grimoire, and some of the higher end content like raids. Additionally there is a wealth of knowledge that never transitioned over from Destiny 1, and as a result you can feel like you are at a massive debt of knowledge as you enter this world.
Destiny 2 is not really a narrative experience. It is a game about excellent gunplay and fun activities that you can complete with your friends. That however does not mean there is not a mountain of interesting lore behind the game. As such I once again am pimping this excellent video from Byf, that outlines everything we currently know about the lore of Destiny. It is a four hour long video that outlines the origins of the various factions and Guardian doesn’t even factor into it until around the 2 hour mark. If you want to understand what came before… then watching the first 2 hours and 56 minutes is well worth your time as that takes you up through the beginning of Destiny 2.
For those who are new to this blog, I run a semi-monthly column of sorts where I track what I have been playing over the previous month. This does a few things but largely it allows me to track over the course of the years what I have been into at a given time. My blog serves as a bit of a record to jog my memory and help me firmly plant when certain events are happening. Also it allows my readers a window into what I am up to and what my thoughts are about a thing in short form. I also generally try and use this moment in time as a point to “true up” my sidebar widget.
To Those Remaining
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC / Switch
This one is sorta hanging on by a thread at this point, not for want of desire but more for lack of time. I have however booted it up and made a bit more progress over the past month as well as starting the Switch version. Word of warning, I would say if you are ONLY going to buy a single version of this game, maybe don’t buy the Switch version. It has some slowdown issues and the graphical fidelity are not up to snuff from what I have been used to with the PC version. As it stands I own copies of this I believe for every platform… largely because I want to support the hell out of this title and see more games in this series released.
Destiny 2 – PC / Xbox One / PS4
I have been playing considerably more of Destiny 2 than I had in the months leading up to now. There is a bunch of exciting stuff happening not the least of which is the enabling of Cross Save. I can now play my guardian on every single console platform in addition to the PC and have gone through the process of moving my character from Battle.net to Steam. I am super pumped about the launch of Shadowkeep coming up in October. Of note if you have ever played the PC version then it would behoove you to go through the process of moving your character from BNet to Steam because after October 1st it will not longer be accessible through the BNet client.
Diablo 3 – PC
I legitimately thought this one would be leaving my list this month. A new season started at the tail end of August and with the impending launch of World of Warcraft Classic a few days later, I fully expected to just skip out on this season. However I found myself once again logging in on a Friday night for the ritual Grace and I have maintained for the last several seasons. It is enough of a thing that it felt weird NOT to be playing Diablo 3 on an opening night. I had a lot of fun and we ran Demon Hunters just to make the season a little easier to complete. I’ve made it as far as unlocking the seasonal rewards and I am not sure if I will push any further.
Dragalia Lost – Android
This one is going to likely maintain a permanent slot on my list. Unfortunately I don’t really have any new screenshots because I no longer play on my phone where it is super easy to take screenshots. On my Galaxy Tab S4 I have to do a complicated volume down and power button to take a shot so I never do it. On my ZTE Axon 7 phone it is a 3 finger gesture to take a shot, and I am wondering if there is a way to restore that functionality to the tablet with an application or something. This game keeps my attention because they keep rolling out new events, with either brand new or revisiting boss encounters for me to play with. I pretty much play enough each night to complete the daily objectives and then head to sleep.
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers – PC
I went from hot and heavy to barely at all on this one. I got in, completed the Shadowbringers story and leveled the Warrior to 80 and my Samurai to 80 as well. Then I disappeared once again because other things released that pulled away my attention. I will continue to play this it fits and spurts for the remainder of this month I am certain, because my attention is being funneled super hard away from almost everything else that I have on my plate. I would really like to level a Magic DPS and a Healer so that I can see all of the Shadowbringers role quests. Still a great game I just am waiting on more story content to drag me back into it.
Magic the Gathering Arena – PC
My attention span for this game has been limited this month, but with the upcoming release content for Throne of Eldraine and the Brawl event happening right now I want to poke my head back in. I have to say though I would play this WAY more if I could play it from my Tablet. My winding down and bed routine would probably include a quick rush through Dragalia dailies and then a few matches of MTGA. I feel like they are missing out on a lot by not having a tablet client, though I guess in theory I could stream this from bed with Parsec. I should investigate how feasible that really is. I sorta wish that I could configure Parsec to work in a sort of console friendly mode where instead of my desktop I am presented with a board of icons of applications to launch.
To The New and Returning
Monster Hunter World Iceborne – PS4
I am a sucker. I did in fact buy this on the PS4 to be able to play it now… when I would way rather have just waited to play it on the PC. The PC version is so superior to the PS4 version for my purposes… however for some reason Capcom is maintaining a staggered schedule of releases. I still love the game and as a result they are getting two purchases from me. I am what is wrong with games and I know I should feel ashamed. I am honestly not sure how much time I will have to devote to this but I really want to poke around and try and get used to a PS4 Controller again.
World of Warcraft Classic – PC
This is the grand daddy of all things on this list and is consuming the most of my time. As of last night I hit 28 on my Undead Warrior and am about halfway to 29. I have plans already made to run Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deep tonight with guildies, and this game is dominating my headspace at the moment. I cannot fully explain why it feels so good but god does it feel good to be back in Vanilla WoW. I knew I would be playing it because Grace had never gotten to experiment, but on some level I fully expected it just to be the two of us running around and doing nonsense. Instead we have a legitimately large guild full of friends all seemingly digging this experience. Long live House Kraken!
To Those Departing
Final Fantasy V – Android
This one largely lost focus somewhere around the Earth Shrine. I probably will return to it because I really like the idea of legitimately playing this without the Four Job Fiesta rules. That said on some level I agree with Ash on this one that the rules actually improve the game. Right now I feel like I need to do all of the things to min-max my characters, whereas playing under the rules dictates my actions. It limits the scope of what is available and causes me to focus on specific strategies. That said now that I know this is a reasonable option I might sign on next year for the Fiesta from my tablet. I just wish this version synced with any other version of the game so I could pop between playing on the PC for example and the tablet. Everything should have cross save.
Summary
The last several months have been pretty stable to be honest with not a lot of changes happening. Mostly a few things shift into focus as a few other things fall out of focus. I expect this month will be about World of Warcraft Classic with a side dish of Monster Hunter World Iceborne and a little bit of Destiny 2 especially as we get closer to the launch of Shadowkeep. Destiny has made me wish that literally every game had cross save if not cross play. I am mostly fine with having to buy a client for each platform, but I would love to be able to carry my characters over to it. There is no reason why Diablo 3 on the switch couldn’t have connected to Battle.net for example, and I have zero excitement over Overwatch Switch as it stands because I fully expect that it will not be connected to Battle.net either. I want more ability to play with my friends on the characters I have already spent time building, because quite frankly I don’t generally have enough bandwidth to level something new.
