Destiny Raid Groups/ General Discussion

[xclusive_brett]

I will try and be on tomorrow afternoon, but got to take the car to the shop in the morning so not sure what time. Need to run the nightfall and the weekly with my alternate character. I NEED THAT GUN!

[PMPB]

I used my stash of strange coins last night to buy myself the IB. The only gun I've been lusting over since the game launched. It's awesome, but I gotta say, progression on it is SLOW. Additionally my normal reflex of hitting the reload button doesn't have any effect, and then I remember what gun I'm using.

[TheVelourFog]

Anyone wanna raid tonight? Psn: The_Velour_Fog25

[wheelhaus]

I'll be doing a PS4 VoG normal raid tomorrow at noon MST if anyone wants to join up, level 28+ please.

[The_Understated]

Xbox One: VoG happening tonight at 7pm EST. Send me a message if you want in, we need 2 more

[n2oinferno]

Originally Posted by TheVelourFog

Anyone wanna raid tonight? Psn: The_Velour_Fog25

If you see me in raid tonight soon feel free to join us. Started up as three but Ethereal joined up as we killed tempar, so we three/four manned most of VoG and got to gatekeeper. We'll be wrapping up tonight. Not sure when, but yeah.. supposed to happen.

[f0rge]

I need to do Crota tonight, I need SO many shards to get to 32. It's depressing actually.

I have 20 energy and 17 shards, even if I could convert the energy to shards I'm still 26 shards short.

This is where not having 3 characters starts to hurt I guess.

[M-17]

Originally Posted by wheelhaus

There's plenty to do while leveling up to 20, that's where the bulk of the "story" exists. The rest of the story is in Grimoire cards that you unlock by killing enemies, character upgrades, finding ghosts, etc. Someone's Grimoire score is one way of seeing how much of Destiny someone has experienced). They are snippets of conversations, stories, and all kinds of cool stuff that helps tie the universe together, and they can be read on your acct on bungie.net. There's still huge holes, but a lot of people are afraid Destiny has one of the greatest stories that will never be told. (BTW don't trash your beginner gun, if you did but have a spare character slot, then start a new character and make it to the tower to stash it in the vault. Its grossly underpowered but well balanced; good for Crucible where all weapon damages are equalized (not true in Iron Banner).

Experience/leveling up- Getting to level 20 is all experience based, doing bounties really helps, some bounties are to kill enemies a certain way, some are replaying missions over with harder settings, etc. Good news is it can come pretty quickly. Once you hit 20, experience only gives you motes of light at every 80k rollover (they are a rare currency, similar to strange coins). Weapon upgrades are experience based, and some things give you timed exp boosts (like consumable "telemetry" items that last 30 min, best used right before turning in a bunch of bounties- and the weekly "nightfall" strikes that last until the weekly reset Tues AM).

Leveling past 20-
This is where it gets tricky/grindy, but its where the meat of the game lives. Now you can use legendary and exotic weapons/armor. As you level up beyond 20, you'll unlock new features, such as daily heroic missions (better rewards), weekly strikes and nightfall strikes, strike playlists, and raids. Item and gear drops are RNG (random number generated/random number god), but they're also not. Items that drop will either be lower than what you need, right at your level, or very slightly better than what you have now. So don't expect to see any legendary or exotic stuff until you're around the mid-20 range. Level 20 armor has "light" ratings, and more light means higher levels, so your level progress is mostly based on what gear you find. Legendary and exotic stuff (only one exotic weapon and armor can be used at a time) have much bigger upgrade paths that improves their light level substantially and makes them more worthwhile to hold on to.

Vault of Glass raid gear caps at 30 light (only good to reach level 30), vendors now sell gear with 33 light (gets you to level 31) and Crotas End raid will drop 36 light gear, good for level 32. CE is also the only place that drops Radiant Shards, the material required for upgrading CE 36-light raid gear.

Those numbers might sound confusing, but the cumulative light is what you're looking for. Level 21 requires 21 light total, level 22-30 each requires 11 more. (So as an example, level 25 would require 65 light). Level 21 and 32 require 12 light each, so 32 needs 144 light total. You can equip gear in any combination (exotics are also worth 36 light, but you can only use one at a time). The raid helmets are extra hard to come by, so I usually recommend people buy an exotic helmet first.

Damage/defense-
As you level up, each weapon will do 100% damage to the enemy at/below your level. As you fight enemies higher level than you are, you will do roughly 20-30% less damage per level, until they're 4+ levels over you, where you can't hurt them at all and they can probably one-shot you into oblivion. This is why a level 32 and a level 20 using the same weapon both take exactly as many shots to down a lower level enemy, they're both already doing 100% damage. Defense is the other way around, The higher level you are, the better defense you have regardless of enemy level.

Xur-
He's a vendor that comes to the tower for 48hrs only on weekends (Friday around 2am to Sunday around 2am, depending on your timezone). He sells a limited selection of exotic stuff, and exotic upgrades if you have V1 items.

Factions and rep-
Vanguard is kind of like the government PvE faction, Crucible is the generic PvP faction, and then there's Future War Cult, Dead Orbit, and New Monastery, which are all PvP factions. If you're wearing a faction class item (a hunter cloak, warlock bond, titan mark, etc) then your rep bonuses can go to that faction to level up your rep. If not, they default to Vanguard/Crucible. You can buy items from the faction vendors as you level up with Vanguard/Crucible/Faction "marks" that you earn based on activity, Vanguard marks for PvE, Crucible marks for PvP. Once you hit rep level 3 and beyond with a given vendor, You're awarded a legendary weapon/engram from their pool of items, and a commendation. Commendations are required to purchase certain things.

Thank you very much. So many good points mentioned.
Since my last post, I already reached level 22 and it didn't take as long as I thought it would. I just need to catch up on the story mission a bit more and I'll be ready to dive into Crucible, Strikes, Raids, or whatever else that's multiplayer based.
Funny thing, in the beginning, I was keeping a lot of stuff based on their stats and realized I didn't need to keep most of them and recently started to get rid of them. I might have the original gun from the beginning, but I'll take your helpful tip and start another profile to get it back if I got rid of it.

Thanks again.

[n2oinferno]

Anyone else watching the HM Crota streams? Oh boy, that's gonna be fun. It's like Bungie went "fuck you guys for cheesing HM VoG so much!"

[MokSpeed]

Why is that funny again? lol.


I find it ironic how in the beginning Bungie said they looked forward to seeing what different creative ways we come up with to beat the raids they've created. Then they go around and patch everything basically saying "No f**k you, you're going to raid the way we want you to."

[f0rge]

Originally Posted by MokSpeed

I find it ironic how in the beginning Bungie said they looked forward to seeing what different creative ways we come up with to beat the raids they've created. Then they go around and patch everything basically saying "No f**k you, you're going to raid the way we want you to."

And their different and creative way to make hard mode more difficult:
-make enemy level 1 higher than the max player level
-add more enemies
-make anything that isn't a base thrall a major (yellow health)
-remove the Chalice so you can't heal at all during the Crota fight.

That doesn't seem inventive to me, seems more like punishment. It also sounds incredibly tedious.

[MokSpeed]

Slowing player progression =/= additional game content.



I guess Bungie is just doing this to prevent people from hitting level cap prior to the next DLC release.

[f0rge]

Originally Posted by MokSpeed

Slowing player progression =/= additional game content.

I guess Bungie is just doing this to prevent people from hitting level cap prior to the next DLC release.

They didn't need that, won't stop the people with 3 characters, only further screws the people with 1.

I'm still like weeks away from Level 32 and I've had all the armor (except helmet) for 2-3 weeks already.

[53Driver]

This is pretty much why I don't care about the Raid anymore. Sure, I want to do it and certainly the chance at getting cool gear is always high on my list. I just don't understand the business philosophy of this company anymore. I still play because I enjoy 90% of the game and playing with friends makes it even better but I feel like Bungie is constantly giving the finger to it's players. As it stands, I rarely have the time to dedicate 2-3 hours on doing the Raid and that's if you can even find 5 other people who have the time and desire to do it. For now, I'll just keep doing the stuff I enjoy and if I get the time and opportunity to do the Raid then it's cool but not going to stress about it for sure. And making something so infinitely hard as to make it almost a chore to do doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I can't imagine how long it will take for a group of "average" players to complete the HM Crota Raid now.