This morning I am going to talk a little bit about my love of the Archon’s Forge area in Destiny, and we will see where things go from there. I know I have talked a bit about this in the past, but the Archon’s Forge for me personally alone is worth the price of the expansion. You have to understand that I love milling around in patrol zones, as in that is pretty much my default “I want to play some destiny” mode because it allows me to putter around. So far my favorite patrol zone to date has been the Dreadnaught, because in many ways it felt like an old school MMO dungeon. Back in the days of Everquest and Dark Age of Camleot, dungeons were these sprawling places with no clear path that you were supposed to travel. As a result the community developed designations to break apart an otherwise huge zone into “camps”. The Dreadnaught was similar, with various sections of the map labelled as you zoned into them, with the coolest area being the Court of Oryx. This was an area where you could summon groups of Hive and Taken in the form of mini-boss fights, with the chance of there being decent rewards at the end if you were the person that summoned it. What I liked about it was the fact that three or four players who were not actively grouping, could work together on a shared objective and get pretty reasonable rewards as a result.
Archon’s Forge is very similar but also manages to work in one of my OTHER favorite areas of Destiny… the Prison of Elders. The backstory behind the area is that this is the place where the Fallen come to prove their worth in combat. We as players collect Siva offerings, that you can get by doing various things including Public Events, Patrols and occasionally off Majors. It is a random chance sort of thing, but I wound up getting one pretty quickly. From there you go into the Archon’s Forge area, and there is a terminal that you use the offering on. These come in Green, Blue and Purple varieties which denote how difficult the mobs are that are going to spawn as a result. Unlike the Court of Oryx, the Archon’s Forge actually locks down while the event is going on, so you have to be fairly quick to duck inside in time to participate. Essentially you end up fighting waves of mobs, culminating in some sort of a boss like encounter… generally centered around a major or handful of majors. The two things of note that make this extremely awesome are that first… it seems to be equally rewarding for the players just hanging out and participating and those that are actually giving up the Siva offerings. Secondly it seems to be self perpetuating, in that the encounters themselves drop a fair number of new SIVA offerings… allowing you to pretty much keep the process going indefinitely so long as you have three or four people. Essentially everyone keeps key trading, summoning the next round to keep the loot machine rolling.
The other night after the Final Fantasy XIV raid, I poked my head into Destiny and then spent the next hour and a half at the forge doing short events. What is awesome about it is that not only is this a flood of greens and blues, but I managed to pick up eight legendary engrams during that time period. Additionally I’ve gotten several pieces of armor, ghost shells, artifacts and I am pretty sure at least one of my recent guns dropped in the forge because I have no recollection of getting it otherwise. The big loot comes from killing the mini-bosses and just appears in your inventory much like the end of strike/crucible items do. My only concern is that I believe there is a limit of 20 items in the mailbox… meaning I really need to head to orbit more often while doing the forge. I am probably loosing a ton of loot as a result. I also probably should strip down myself to only the items I need to participate to create more room for said loot, and spend time between matches deconstructing greens. In any case regardless of those logistics… this is one of my favorite places to hang out because it is so simple to just hop in and start doing stuff. I SHOULD be doing strikes… and I managed to finish one of those last night that I had two quests for. The problem is right now my Destiny time is pretty sporadic, and Archon’s Forge seems to fit the perfect amount of “engagement” for me.
