The raids all have checkpoints, which is very casual friendly. The check points reset each week though, which can suck early on when everyone is inexperienced and slightly underpowered. It just depends, once you have it down, you can finish a raid in around an hour or less, but early on, budget 1-2 hours per check point, and most raids have 4-6 check points.
I can finish Hard Mode Vault of Glass in 90 minutes, I can finish Hard Mode Crota's end in less than an hour, but the new one, King's Fall, hell I played four hours last night and only got through the first 2 check points.
Holy cow. That is a time sink. I am sure it is awesome. But having not played Destiny since launch, I am used to maybe the 30-45 minute raids. That sounds crazy.
I downloaded the demo. Man the shooting mechanics feel so good. It is pretty fun mindlessly shooting stuff. It is a pretty good break from the grind of Bloodborne. My only real complaint so far is the damn loading. But this is a PS4 issue in general. I'm too used to my PC.
One more question, how long are the endgame raids? Are we talking like an hour to get something worthwhile done or is it like WoW or other MMOs where you have to have like a 3 to 4 hour block of in interrupted time?
Depends on your group, the specific raid you're talking about, and also the age of the raid. Vault of Glass (the games first and still signature raid) took the first group around 10 hours I think to figure out and beat. But if you have a good group today, you can beat it in about an hour. Crota (2nd raid) didnt take as long the first time for groups, maybe a few hours? Now, with a good group you can knock that thing out in 25 minutes.
Jury is still out on Taken King, but I think it will be in the middle between VOG and Crota.
Bottom line, if it's a bunch of beginners or people under-geared, it will take awhile. If you have some veterans, you can knock them out pretty quick.
Yes, this game is a massive time sink. I'm more of a few hours here and there kind d of casual player, and Bungie.net says I've played this 336 hours since I got it on Christmas day 2014. If you have an addictive personality type, stay away while you still can.
What day do you want to start next week? We need to give it a few hours. To be honest I think we could have taken the war priest but we were down a whole gun.
You know what, we should have had the guy who was down a gun be first rune/totem/whatever holder. The way we were playing, I was first rune guy a lot, and I have one of the highest DPS of our party, and either trying to kill an add or dying within 8 seconds was holding us back.
We also never had weapons of light going. I think if we tether, drop a weapons of light, and make sure the rune holder kills one add, we'll have him dropped in 3. Waiting until the fourth and final attempt is too risky, because from what I can tell, he enrages early most of the time and it's game over. We had the other phases down cold, I think we can breeze through that relay race thing in one shot now.
My next raid attempt is going to be this Thursday. I can start as early as 6pm. tdshum might be on his "on" schedule this week, I don't know, so we might have to rotate meat or hobbs in there. I'm booked solid this weekend, so that will be my only shot this week. I'm hoping to do the nightfall at least once tuesday after work.
Yeah, I was really pissed when I realized that he only had a sword. The only reason I didn't actually chew the kid out is because he's Hobbs' nephew. That's what saved him. Remember how I remarked at the start of the raid about the fact that we had 4 warlocks two hunters and NO titans. I knew that the weapons of light would have been a huge help. As far as Meatplow goes, I don't think he will be raiding any time soon. I already talked to Proxy and he said that he's pretty sure that he can go on Thursday night and Cluster is also up for it. I can try to get rogue back in too if you want.
Yeah, i go back to work tomorrow and won't be available until 9:00 most nights. Thursday I won't be home til around 11. So today is pretty much my last shot for this week.
Yeah, i go back to work tomorrow and won't be available until 9:00 most nights. Thursday I won't be home til around 11. So today is pretty much my last shot for this week.
Yeah, we really could have used you the other night.
So I bought it yesterday, played about 10 hours already. I have 1 character that I'm levelling up normally and 1 that I boosted to 25 with the Taken King token. I thought that would come with 25 skill points to upgrade my subclass but i guess not?
Huh, I figured the way that would work is it would max out whichever subclass you started with. Shouldn't be a big deal, I maxed out storm caller in like the first weekend of play. It goes fast. Make sure you get bounties each day you play, and it will go quick.
Thanks for the advice--I'm doing a hunter for the normal progression and I jumped to 25 with the warlock. I only played the first mission on Taken King and it was great--the Taken are fuckin spooky!
My main character is a warlock, but I've grown to like them all. I haven't even touched my hunter since TTK, but goddamned if I haven't played with enough hunters to know they are an orb making machine with the void stalker.
Stormcaller with Impossible Machine gloves is my go to now, though with the Sunsinger I really appreciate the Tlallok scout rifle that becomes a superweapon when you sit on your super charge, I used to hate being a sunsinger since people get so pissed when you waste it by using it before you die, gah, it killed me. Tlallok definitely takes the sting out of that.
We raided again last night and spent about 3 hours getting to the second mini-boss, who appears to be a real bastard. Can't wait to try again next week!
Yo, so I made my 1st character a hunter, which I'm playing through the original Destiny with.
Do you guys have any suggestions on what I should make my 2nd character that I plan on using for The Taken King? I was leaning towards Titan, but thought I'd ask in case there is an obvious decision that I'm not realizing as a noob.
So @Tony I got it for ps4 and was planning on running with some of you guys once I got my feet under me. Is there a certain type that would benefit the group more than an other?
@AManIsNoOne Titan Defenders, Warlock Sunsingers, and Hunter Night Stalkers are the most useful in general, but other classes are nice for clearing enemies. We have a good mix of every class so it doesn't matter too much what you pick.
I ended up going with the Titan. I'm fine with everything except the shotgun secondary weapon. I'm hoping the Titan isn't married to it.
Also, I've been doing all the missions by myself and haven't met one I couldn't do solo yet. I see that the options for fire team size on these is 1-3. Does that mean they're designed for you to do with other people? If you do it with a team, does the level stay the same or is consequently harder with more enemies?
You can trade weapons between characters using the vault. The rewards for gunsmith quests seem to be the only exception. The size of the fireteam doesn't affect the difficulty. Most story missions can be done solo assuming you're a high enough light level. You'll want three people for strikes. Most strikes do match making, but you'll need to find people for the nightfall. I would also recommend finding people for heroic strikes, since they can be difficult with randos. And of course you'll need to find five other people for raids once you hit 290.
I just landed at Level 40. Its surprisingly easy to do once you focus on the bounties. I had mostly just been doing missions and all my friends were passing me like crazy. So I focused on getting bounties and before I knew I was just around the corner from 40.
I am starting the Taken King stuff. Super enjoyable and glad I decided to hop back into it...though you are right A.Ron, I have an addictive personality and you couldn't pull me away if you tried. Once again if anyone wants to add me on PSN: Garthman00
I am a member of the Bald Move Clan, but I don't think I've run into anyone yet who was playing at the same time as me. Now that I'm at a decent level (though still crummy in comparison the vast majority), I'd love to give some of those harder raids a go.
I played a huge amount of Destiny when it first came out, but stopped after being stuck at level 27 for two months straight. The game refused to drop any purple or higher weapons for me, and although I had good armor, the only materials I ever got were weapon improvements. A real kick in the face, if you ask me - the loot system killed my interest.
How would you recommend the Taken King with regards to the gear and loot drops? I don't want to bother spending money on it if that's not been changed by an extreme amount. Not sure whether it matters, but I'm an Xbox One player.
Titan is a good choice. The Sunbreaker is arguably over powered in the crucible, and it's an add clearing machine for PVE. With helm of st-14, the defender titan is also one of the most invaluable PVE nitches, so yeah. Good choice! I agree with Tony, they're all good, and you'll eventually try all three.
Heff, they've fixed two things about the end game loot to ease the "forever xx" problem of not being able to get max light level. One, all blue and purple gear drops with random light level, but the "median" light is around your current light level. So you don't have to raid for a specific piece of gear to hit an arbitrary level. As your over all gear gets higher and higher, the average light level drop does as well.
Also, all legendary and greater gear can be "infused" with other more powerful gear. So let's say you got some sweet looking light level 272 boots with a sick INT/DIS roll and more rocket ammo, or whatev. Then you get a 297 light pair of shitty boots. You can infuse the 297 into the 272, and you'll get your nice boots to 80% of the different between the two.
The final thing is, light levels don't matter "as much" anymore. Like, the raid is light level recommended 290, which is pretty easy to hit with normal play. But you can do it at 288 and your damage drop off isn't going to be killer the way it is when you're a level 32 trying to hard mode crota at 33.
I got to 290 in the first week of TTK, and now I'm at 299 with minimal raiding, I have yet to kill Oryx, or even make it past the second raid boss. The only thing magic about hitting 300 is that exotics will start dropping at 310 (probably higher now with Hard Mode Oryx coming out this week), which should make the march to 310 easier. But there is no content that I can't do at 290, let alone 299. I was soloing heroic dailies at 280, and at 295, my nine year old and I can two man most of the night fall strikes, which is at best like having 1.5 guardians, and is sometimes actually a de-buff, haha.
But, there are still some grindy aspects. Some of the exotic quests are bonkers, especially the exotic sword quests, which will require several hours of a fairly brutal and mind numbing grind if you want them quickly, and you will, because they are totally badass and awesome, and they nerfed the weapon parts drop rate last week, so that's been a bit of a bummer since I'm an absolute infusal whore. It's just nothing like year one. In fact, before the weapon parts nerf, I would have said they eliminated all grind aspects of the game; I was getting more then enough off all materials just playing the damn game as intended, and yeah, the exotic sword quest kind of sucked, but if you do it while bullshitting with friends and/or listening to podcasts, it was the work of an evening or so to get very cool and fun to use weapons, and that's better than praying to the random number gods for them to drop.
So I finished the "main story" from year one; I beat the heart in the black garden and destroyed the darkness yada yada yada. Some mysterious robot chick gave me a purple "Stranger's Rifle" but it was a level 14. The speaker gave me a choice of armor as a reward--all of those were level 16. The mission itself was (I think) level 22 and I was a 30 when I beat it. Why did I get such crappy weapons? (And no, there are no hidden properties or anything--equipping them definitely takes a big chunk out of my light level and they weren't super-powered when I road-tested them.)
Yeah, any year one mission will only give you year one rewards. I've found the strike playlists to be the fastest way to level up until you're raid ready.
Comments
My next raid attempt is going to be this Thursday. I can start as early as 6pm. tdshum might be on his "on" schedule this week, I don't know, so we might have to rotate meat or hobbs in there. I'm booked solid this weekend, so that will be my only shot this week. I'm hoping to do the nightfall at least once tuesday after work.
Yeah, we really could have used you the other night.
I am starting the Taken King stuff. Super enjoyable and glad I decided to hop back into it...though you are right A.Ron, I have an addictive personality and you couldn't pull me away if you tried. Once again if anyone wants to add me on PSN: Garthman00
I am a member of the Bald Move Clan, but I don't think I've run into anyone yet who was playing at the same time as me. Now that I'm at a decent level (though still crummy in comparison the vast majority), I'd love to give some of those harder raids a go.
How would you recommend the Taken King with regards to the gear and loot drops? I don't want to bother spending money on it if that's not been changed by an extreme amount. Not sure whether it matters, but I'm an Xbox One player.
I got to 290 in the first week of TTK, and now I'm at 299 with minimal raiding, I have yet to kill Oryx, or even make it past the second raid boss. The only thing magic about hitting 300 is that exotics will start dropping at 310 (probably higher now with Hard Mode Oryx coming out this week), which should make the march to 310 easier. But there is no content that I can't do at 290, let alone 299. I was soloing heroic dailies at 280, and at 295, my nine year old and I can two man most of the night fall strikes, which is at best like having 1.5 guardians, and is sometimes actually a de-buff, haha.
But, there are still some grindy aspects. Some of the exotic quests are bonkers, especially the exotic sword quests, which will require several hours of a fairly brutal and mind numbing grind if you want them quickly, and you will, because they are totally badass and awesome, and they nerfed the weapon parts drop rate last week, so that's been a bit of a bummer since I'm an absolute infusal whore. It's just nothing like year one. In fact, before the weapon parts nerf, I would have said they eliminated all grind aspects of the game; I was getting more then enough off all materials just playing the damn game as intended, and yeah, the exotic sword quest kind of sucked, but if you do it while bullshitting with friends and/or listening to podcasts, it was the work of an evening or so to get very cool and fun to use weapons, and that's better than praying to the random number gods for them to drop.