Destiny – Page 30

Xur Week Seven: 10/27/17

October 27, 2017 by Belghast

Xur Destiny 2

This week Xur is located on Io in the Giant’s Scar area. He is off to the left side of that area inside of a cave. If you turn around and face away from Xur you should also find one of the region chests if you have not actually looted it. This week is important because it is the first time Xur is available for PC players, and I have in fact double checked that the inventory on console and pc is exactly the same. I however took my screenshots console side because I am still in the process of leveling all the things on PC and only have the Titan to 20… and even then I am not all of the way through the main story quest. I noticed that the exotics were showing as level 19 and 254 instead of the 270 I was expecting, so wondering if finishing the game is a trigger for that shift to level 20 items. I throw this out there just for folks to be careful when you spend your oh so precious legendary shards this week on the PC side of things. Xur will be available until the weekly reset instead of disappearing sometime during the night on Saturday, so you have plenty of time to grind out more shards or get through the story.

This week for the weapon we have D.A.R.C.I. or as I have referred to this every time I have decrypted it from an engram… infusion fuel. What makes this weapon interesting is that while aiming you can view the health and other information about your target through your scope with the Personal Assistant perk. This blends with the target acquired perk that causes you to have better target acquisition and precision damage while the Personal Assistant perk is in action. My general problem with the weapon however is that I just don’t like medium impact snipers. This weapon has 55 impact and the snipers I tend to use personally are in the 70-90 range. Now is the point where I start speaking out of my depth, but I always feel like this medium impact variety has to be targeted at the crucible right? It has really high stability and handling which should in theory make scoping in on your target extremely snappy. I just have zero interest in using a sniper rifle in PVP, and if I am going to use one in PVE I want it to pack a bigger punch. PC players it will probably still be worth a pick up for the power level bump if nothing else.

As far as armor goes this is a really phenomenal week and includes sort of a greatest hits collection of universally useful items. Actium War Rig is one of the options that you can get on Titan, and if you are an auto rifle fan like me… it is probably going to be what you end up using. The Auto-Loading Link perk causes ammo to loaded into your magazine when you stop firing the weapon at a tick rate of roughly one second. What this means is if you are burst firing your weapon you can greatly extend the amount of time you can put off reloading giving you way more time to mop up enemies. This works extremely well with weapons that have the rampage perk because you can keep rolling between targets without having to take the time to wait for reload, just allowing the weapon to tick once between bursts of fire. Definitely going to pick this up for the power level and to have a more current version of this item rather than the level 105 item the game gives you.

Warlocks have a similarly universally good item in the form of the Eye of Another World helmet. Similarly this is an item you can pick up on Titan and the cerebral uplink perk causes you to highlight priority targets but also improves the regeneration speed of grenade, melee and rift abilities. Its rare that an item just makes everything universally work better, but that is in fact the mission of this helm. Once again I highly suggest picking this up for the power level if nothing else, but for anyone who chose poorly on Titan… then here is a nice second chance to get that item.

I’ve talked about this item before and I am not really sure what else I can add. Knucklehead Radar is one of my favorite pieces of gear from Destiny 1 and I am super happy that it returned to Destiny 2. The upgraded sensor pack causes radar tracking to be active while you aim down sights on every weapon. This is just universally useful and is a crutch that I am not willing to give up while playing my hunter. I used the hell out of the Memory of Gheleon artifact in Destiny 1 year 3… and similarly I love this item. Again if nothing else this is a good level boost for those PC players who are just now getting started. I hope to be able to gather enough legendary shards before Xur leaves on Tuesday to purchase each of these items and have them ready for when I start leveling the Hunter and Warlock.

Xur Destiny 1

As has been the case the last few weeks, I am also doing the information about Xur in Destiny 1 lest we not all abandon the players who are still enjoying that game. You can find Xur in the tower next to Lord Shaxx. This week he brought something interesting… the Jade Rabbit which was previously an exclusive for the PS4 players. I had heard that the embargo had been lifted on selling the PS4 exclusive items, but I am guessing this is hard proof. Here is a quick rundown of what he has brought for us this week.

Legacy Helmet Engram – 29 Strange Coins
An Insurmountable Skullfort – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Crest of Alpha Lupi – Hunter Chest – 13 Strange Coins
Claws of Ahamkara – Warlock Arms – 13 Strange Coins
Jade Rabbit – Scout Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
Hawkmoon and Moonglow Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Tresspasser and Crucible Assassin Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Smooth Destiny 2 Launch

October 26, 2017 by Grace

Destiny 2 launched on Tuesday afternoon and by most accounts it was a success. The only problem I’ve encountered is that the Clan interface seems to be broken. Other than that I’ve seen no bugs, lag, queues, or any of the other headaches that usually accompany an online game launch. Impressive!

I’m recently back from a vacation so I can’t take extra time off to play, but I still managed to get to level 20 already. The main story of the game feels exceedingly short, but this is expected. The meat of the game happens at the level cap of course. I spent so much time running around doing public events and “adventures” that I hit 20 well before I was finished with the story. That meant I got to motor through the story in one go late last night. It didn’t have much in the way of surprises but it was fine. I don’t exactly play Destiny for the compelling story anyway. It did have a couple great cutscenes and some epic battle sequences and that made me plenty happy.

Speaking of happy, the game runs great on my machine and I’m fully converted to PC controls. When I tried the beta, I used a controller since I was so accustomed to playing on the PS4. For the actual launch, I decided to give the mouse and keyboard a try and I’m extremely glad I did. I think if I didn’t have a gaming mouse with extra buttons I probably would like the controller better, since my tiny hands have trouble hitting all the keybinds quickly. However, with my Naga I had no trouble swapping weapons and using my abilities. Since the control scheme is so different I don’t have any outdated muscle memory interfering with my progress. Now I just need to get better at aiming.

Overall my opinion of D2 is that it’s a very solid successor to Destiny. My two complaints so far are that shaders are now single-use, and that you can only infuse gear of the same item type. Otherwise the game is so similar to the original that it feels almost like a PC relaunch instead of a new game. For some people that might be a bad thing but I enjoyed the heck out of Destiny and I foresee a lot of enjoyment of D2 in my future!

Twenty Again

October 26, 2017 by Belghast

I do not have a whole hell of a lot to talk about this morning so the post is going to be brief. Last night I went to the simulcast of Rifftrax Live Night of the Living Dead because there was no way I was going to miss that. Predictably it was pretty great and had also been a really long time since I had seen the original black and white film. There is a group of us from work that do this was a semi regular thing and its always a lot of fun. This however meant that I was giving up play time on “night two” of the PC release to spend time doing stuff in the real world. By the time I got home I was pretty out of it, but I did manage to limp across the finish line to level 20. This morning I spent a few of the tokens I had banked up and managed to get to 211 power level. That means tonight is all about actually finishing the main story because I dropped off before the transition to the planet Io. I have a bunch of goals… not the least of which is to finish the story so I can unlock the “end game” and all of the group activities. The other goal is to gather up enough purple stuff so that I can have the legendary shards ready and waiting for Xur to arrive tomorrow. The theory is to buy the 270 weapon and armor to give myself a boost so that when I start decoding the higher tier engrams that my light level is greatly inflated. Other than that… not a whole lot to talk about this morning so going ahead and cutting this post off.

A Smooth Landing

October 25, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was of course the launch of the PC version of Destiny 2. After years of rough launches I did not attempt to take the day off because I have been bit hard by that in the past. However it appears like everything went relatively smoothly and starting about noon I saw friends poking their heads into the game for the first time. Sure there were some issues, namely that the Clan roster seemed to be non-functional for all but a few people… but I remember us going through that at the PS4 launch as well so maybe that is one of the more fragile systems. There is a reported rash of bannings but I am uncertain how big of a deal this really is given that the internet tends to “memeify” everything to raise the sodium levels. To the best of my knowledge no one that I know got bit by whatever bug is occurring. It has been blamed on discord or obs or any other manner of software… but I know folks who streamed all day long yesterday and most everyone I know is running discord… so I sincerely doubt it is one of those. After years of seeing players cry foul… only to be busted by devs for doing some nefarious shit I am taking this with a giant truck load of salt.

I did not make it anywhere near as far as I had hoped to make it last night. I got a bit of a late start and then had to walk away from screen for a bit to go retrieve sustenance and consume it. At this point I am up to the start of Io in the quest chain and dinged level 14 just before logging for the night. I had visions of hitting level 20 and then potentially wrapping up the extremely long tail end of the story tonight after coming back from Rifftrax. That is just not a thing that is going to happen, however I should be on pace to at least get to 20 on Thursday night. I have to admit a lot of my evening was spent getting used to the keyboard and mouse controls. I didn’t want to simply plug a controller into my PC and continue on like I had been on the PS4. I wanted to get adjusted to playing the PC version, and it took way longer than I had hoped to begin remapping my reflexes. I was super pumped when I noticed that apparently it kept my keybindings from beta so I did not have to try and remap everything. It has been weird learning how to do things like the shield throw with a keyboard and mouse, when previously it was just so instinctive.

Everything comes out so much crisper and clearer on the PC that I noticed something I had apparently never noticed before on the console. I had no clue that Sloan had a bunch of Warhammer 40k purity seals on her left shoulder pad. At first I thought maybe this was an addition to the PC, but after checking the PS4 they are in fact there. The lower fidelity of the PS4 experience just made them not stand out nearly as well as they do on PC because the lighting is massively better. The game really feels like it was meant to be played on a PC and there are moments where you just have to stop and enjoy the vistas now that you can see clearly off in the distance. I sat and watched the ocean and the lightning storms for a few minutes while standing around idly on Titan and they were breathtaking. All in all I think it was a pretty damned smooth launch and the PC version is living up to all of my hopes. I am going to still take awhile to rewire my impulses because right now I feel way more sluggish with keyboard and mouse than with the controller. However I guess it is to be expected considering I played heavily for over three years in this world using thumb sticks.