Pretty much the highlight of the weekend for me was that I got to join in the shenanigans of the Last Wish raid in Destiny 2. This mornings post is largely going to be a rundown of the items that I got to drop this weekend. It was also the farm weekend for the IKELOS shotgun, and unfortunately as of yet I have not seen one drop. I have lost count on just how many times I have killed the level 7 escalation protocol, but it has been enough that I am starting to doubt it exists. Like the paranoia in the back of my head keeps telling me that I must not be keyed for getting loot of the boss. I do however have a huge stack of shaders that drop every single time you down it. I sincerely doubt that tonight I will get enough kills of Escalation Protocol to make a difference, and in truth it seems to be hard to find anyone actually doing it. My friend Warenwolf managed to pull me into a group, so I am guessing this is regional? I wish there was a decent matchmaking option for it.
As far as the raid itself… it was some crazy nonsense. One of the things that Bungie does almost better than anyone else is create some interesting and imaginative raid encounters. I don’t want to go into too much detail but there were of course jumping puzzles and timed burns and of course some relay race sort of encounters to unlock sections of the raid. All of which seemed doable for me who was a complete nub, but unfortunately… I am also one of those people who simply does not grok something when someone explains it. I have to do it myself to be able to understand the nuance of it, and while I feel like I still have a long ways to go before mastering the encounters… I feel like I would also do a lot better the second time in. Thankfully none of the jumping puzzles were anywhere near as stressful as the ones in the King’s Fall raid. An interesting mechanic is that first timers get an extra piece of loot at the very end, and as a result I wound up getting 4 pieces of armor and 5 weapons… one of which dropped from random trash but that still counts. Now I am going to play show and tell with each of them.
A really cool looking rocket launcher that I will never actually use because it doesn’t have cluster bombs. I could say more but really… that is the core problem and I would have used it as infusion fuel if it wasn’t a raid weapon.
This is quite possibly the weirdest feeling auto rifle I have ever used, because it is so freaking slow firing… which you would assume to be extremely stable and it is not. On PC with mouse and keyboard controls it is completely manageable, uncertain what controller would be like with this weapon. It was fun the little bit I played with it, but it also takes the same slot as my beloved Misfit so I doubt it is going to see much play.
This is probably the favorite of the weapons that dropped because it has a decent stat package with triple tap and the ambitious assassin that all of the weapons appear to come with by default. I used this quite a bit this weekend trying to complete the crucible headshots step of the Cayde-6 quest chain, and had some luck. The problem with that step is that I am just not good at crucible anymore, but this is a perfectly reasonable weapon to be using. I also really dig the look and feel of it.
The biggest challenge this weapon has going for it is that it is a scout rifle… and all of the reasons why I would use a scout rifle are largely demolished by the inclusion of bows. This is likely never going to get play from me because even before the introduction of bows… I was not a huge scout rifle fan. That said I won’t infuse it because I tend to collect interesting weapons. It does however have rampage which is a positive that it has going for it if you can get into a situation where you can pick off adds easily.
While this technically didn’t drop from a raid encounter, I saw a shiny golden engram while we were doing the Riven fight and this was waiting in my mailbox after we left the raid. This weapon has some issues, but the majority of the problem is that this time around this is a heavy weapon. In Destiny 1 this was a secondary weapon, which would have greatly improved its utility were we able to equip this in the energy weapon slot. As it stands… it is competing with other Heavy Weapons and comes up very short against both the Thunderlord and the Sleep Simulant that are just better weapons. What made this interesting before was that it was a fusion sniper rifle… which I guess became the linear fusion category as a whole. If they ever tweak this weapon to be energy slot equipped then it will see some play, before then however… it just isn’t worth giving up that slot against arguably better weapons.
I still have not ignited the forge, but one of my attempts over the weekend got me a Two-Tailed Fox to drop, which again suffers from some of the problems that I just talked about. It is a really interesting weapon that is useful in specific niche situations… but I can’t see using this over the sleeper or the thunderlord. Still very happy to check this off the exotics bucket list.
Finally I completed the Nascent Dawn quest chain over the weekend and wrapped up the Polaris Lance. All in all I dig the feel of this weapon, but I would probably use the Legendary Masterwork version that you get in the quest chain step before the Exotic as it would free up the exotic slot for one of the two heavy weapons I keep mentioning over and over.
We also recorded a podcast this weekend as usual and some of the things we talked about are… Black Armory, Last Wish, The Game Awards, Hades by Supergiant Games, Epic Game Storefront, Super Smash Bros Ultimate. If you are someone who likes to listen to podcasts check it out… otherwise zero shame in giving it a skip. I personally find youtube the easiest way of passing along the link, but in the sidebar of the blog is an RSS feed for those who want to use a traditional podcatcher style app. Listening to me ramble on is an acquired taste so perfectly cool with folks skipping if that is not your thing.
