TheKing

Alright, it's that time of the week again: Xur is back!

And it's another mixed bag.

For the third week in a row, the Titan gear is the Armamentarium, again with a higher discipline number than the previous two.

Hunters get the Lucky Raspberry Chest Armor.

Warlocks get the Voidfang Vestments chest armor for the second week in a row. Oy.

The engram is for a helmet.

Finally, the weapon is a new offer from Xur: The Patience And Time Sniper Rifle. Does Arc damage, and once upgraded it will give you active camouflage while aiming the gun. Also while aiming, your radar stays up. 17 coins and it's yours.

So there we go. Xur can be found in the main vanguard hall, next to the Crucible gun dealer.

Buy some shit!

OK, I bought the gun and engram with my Hunter. And for the second week in a row I got what I wanted from the engram: the Mask Of The Third Man.

Also bought the Lucky Raspberry and Voidfang Vestments. I've become an Exotic collector!

K&AJones

Well that is mix bag.....I already have "ONE" Armamentarium for the Titan and grabbed that Alpha Chest for my Hunter last week when I got him above Level 20. However I'll take a chance on the Helmet as my Warlock could use one.

The Sniper Rifle sounds interesting with the camouflage feature and the Arc Damage and would be useful against Captians, Knights and Minotaur but most of time these are close to mid-range enemies. I'll see what I have among the three characters but I'd almost rather have a Legenday Arc Fusion in my secondary and a good Exotic Primary.

chess

Jesus Xur, really?

Was hoping he'd have either the Ice Breaker again or the Heart of Praxis Fire.

I bought the gun (for some reason) and two helmet engrams. Ended up with the Skull of Dire Whatever for my Warlock, which is sort of what I wanted most, and the Helm of Saint 14 for my Titan which seems slightly better than Inmost Light. Not too bad, I suppose.

Also did a raid with randoms last night and got the chest armor for my Warlock. It was literally the only thing I got other than energy a few shards and chatterwhite. But I did see some new cheese methods that I think will get us through the hard raid up to Atheon.

Me007gold

PandT should do great for the next raid.

TheKing

The Helm of Saint-14 is sweet for Defenders. Blinding enemies that walk in is awesome.

I'm curious what cheese method you saw. Did you see the method of using grenades to knock the Templar off the map?

19K

A couple cheese methods I know of:

In between each of the phases of the Templar fight when he summons all those fanatics, you can all hide in the spirit bloom chest cave. It saves anybody dying in between rounds.

When the oracle phase begins, you can all wipe and start at the very top. One guy jumps down and hides to start the round, but the other 5 can stay up top and snipe the oracles from a distance.

Also, the grenade trick still works to knock the Templar off the cliff.

Pretty much the only part of the Hard raid that's difficult (other than the Atheon battle) is defending the 3 confluxes at the start of the Templar phase. It's really the only time you're out in the open and having to fight things. Once you get by that and get to the oracles, it's a cakewalk up until Atheon.

Edit: the gorgon maze is trickier in hard mode too because there's more of them patrolling, but there's still a path to avoid them if you know the area.

Why So Blu?

Wow, I could go for some of that Hunter gear and sniper weapon. Let's see how much $$$ I have. See you at the tower.

Me007gold

You can also cheese the start at the mission where you open the gate. If every one goes to the right, there is a cave, you hide in there for a few minutes untill you hear the spire forming then you go up to the gate. If its not open you drive your sparrow into the side where there is a small opening, jump off and it glitches you into the vault.

Why So Blu?

Was only able to afford the Xur's sniper rifle. Not enough to scoop up the armor.

musick

don't forget, extra hour of sleep ... I mean Destiny ... this weekend

Why So Blu?

Finally played with one of the jack o laterns on and the sound effects that emit from it caught me off guard especially the woman screaming. I thought someone was being attacked outside the house!

TheKing

Turns out Xur has an extra item for sale...but only if you're wearing the jackolyte.

Don't get too enthused though, it's just a perk that changes your respawn animation to include bats for 24 hours.

Why So Blu?

Ha, nice!

Played a bit today and ended up scoring a Legendary Pulse Rifle from I don't even know where. I did the Vanguard Strike on Venus and killed the Archon Priest. I guess I'm collecting Legendary and Exotic weapons now.

TheKing

OK, I am here to tell the tale of our little group conquering the Raid.

Let's see, it was me, K&AJones, chess, musick, Kanjii and a random person we managed to convince to join us on our adventure. We struggled a bit with the opening, but pushed through. Did very well until we got to the Oracles. After a couple of failures we knocked that out. The Templar went down easy...literally.

We got through the maze on our first try! Well, not counting the two deaths on the chest, but the actual maze was quick. Kanjii just can't do the jump as a Hunter, so she dropped out and rejoined us all once we got the door open.

The first part of that final room was easy, and then we met Atheon...and the real battle began. Random teams really makes it tough with so many inexperienced players like we had. You really need solid relic work, and early on we struggled with that, as chess was the one that knew what he was doing.

Of course that meant he spent most of the time not being teleported! We started figuring things out, and 4 of us really were solid with the relic by the end of our 2 hour+ battle with the glass bastard. In the final run, we had him down and ready to die. Going to finish him off with just one more run, and we get Venus, plus I was killed right before the teleport, so only 2 got sent over to Venus.

I got revived, and booked my ass for the portal, went in and starting shooting oracles like there was no tomorrow. And somehow, some way, even with all those setbacks, we cleared Venus, and got in the room, and sure enough, Atheon went down! It was a trilling moment, and a hell of a lot of fun.

I got the Leg Armor for my Titan, as well as the Vision Of Confluence Scout Rifle from Atheon. Good haul, and a good first run for me as a Titan in there. And now I'm solid with the relic too.

Great job everyone. Always awesome to kick Atheon's glass!

musick

^ crazy fun indeed
that was the first time I got to get through it from start to finish

TheKing

OK, I now have a new favorite weapon in the Crucible.

The Vision Of Confluence is a badass. Once you get the full auto upgrade, oh man is it sweet. It's like the Suros, only just a hair slower. But it does more damage, and is pretty damn accurate being a Scout Rifle. My first game with it, I had a K/D of over 2:1. Though I did get a Titan Drop 4-way kill on some dudes who thought they were safe in a bubble shield. HA!

chess

Definitely epic! Atheon battle from my perspective:

• Round 1-2: Relatively uneventful other than my not getting warped at all, but a few other people had it figured out by now.
• Round 3: Mars...Buzz either doesn't get cleansed or glitches and doesn't get through, but either way, he's stranded and blind and I think dead on Mars.
• Round 4: So, of course we go to Venus. But at least I get warped. It's Venus, so we're kind of hanging by a thread anyway, and we only have one or two outside, but we're hanging in there.
• Round 5: Shit. Venus again. And we hit rock bottom. Buzz is still stranded and somebody glitches passing back through the portal, and I think they found their way back blind only to get insta-killed. But I'm thinking they were a sunbro, because it seemed like they were up and cleansed pretty quick. Still, a tense moment, thinking we're down to four...and almost certainly screwed.
• Round 6: Hey, it's Mars and we can finally get Buzz up! But only two warp, because Buzz is still in there. But the relic part goes relatively smoothly, and I think it was Kanjii's hunter with me, because the oracles seemed to go down with a minimum of drama. We finally get Buzz. Hell, we might actually pull this off. And Atheon's health is pretty low.
• Round 7: Oh hell, it's Venus, and for some reason there are only two of us again! Scott explained why above, but I had no idea why at the time. Either way, I let the plate team know that I needed some help, BARELY take out the Praetorian with the relic, cleanse whoever was in the back, turn around to see Scott come through the portal at the end like an angel with an auto rifle, run down and cleanse him...holy shit, we made it out!!! Cleanse on the other side bitches!!!
• Finale: Pop up the shield, everybody's up, everybody's lighting him up, life is good.

AMAZING SAVE between Scott with the assist, Kanjii with the two-man Buzz revive, the short and probably sometimes one-man teams who kept the portals open, and I'll take some credit for relic duty on the last 4 runs, 3 of which were Venus.

chess

I've run the raid with two characters this week and haven't gotten a single weapon...not even a duplicate of a current weapon.

But I did get my third piece of raid armor for my Titan, so I should be able to get him to 30.

And I got a second armor piece for my Warlock.

K&AJones

I've had my share of what I call "Epic Runs" in games like the first Halo on the first XBox, to some COD in 4-player coop in Veteran mode to countless Gears of War Horde mode to reach the infamous Level 50. But last night has to rank right up there near or at the top....

After almost everyone had left except me and kanjji, I told her it wasn't the amount of issues, glitches, being so close so many times, miss-steps, slightly out-of-sync only to finally succeed. It was the fact everyone stayed thru it for so long. I could understand if we all played regularly together but that wasn't the case and major kudo's to the one random; he only played with Chess out of the rest of us and even Chess expressed some doubt inviting him. Simply an outstanding and amazing run...Well Done!

For me the night was very well worth it since I finally got the missing piece to complete a run to Level 30...Kabr's Forceful Greaves. I now have three Kabr Armor and two Exotic Helmets. I also picked up what appears to be a good gun...The Vision of Confluence Scout Rifle which does Solar damage, can be used in full auto and does special damage to Oracles. Played a bit with it before calling it a night and the range & accuracy was impressive. From the YouTube video it seems auto mode is close to the Suros but wins on impact and range. Points from head shots were double that of the Suros.....

...anmd getting (8) Shards and some Energy was added bonus for pretty much a memorable night.

19K

I'm starting to hate all of you with your lucky drops. I've probably done the raid beginning to end about 10 times across all 3 of my characters. I only have one single piece of raid armor for my Warlock (which I got at the Templar on my very first attempt) and literally nothing on 6 full attempts since then, which includes a full hard run all the way to Atheon. I have absolutely nothing for my Titan who has done two full runs. All I ever get with him is acendant material and Chatterwhite. every. single. time. But hey, at least I've got 100 energy and 46 shards in my vault, so that's good... not.

TheKing

He hates it so much, he said it twice!



Boy, after giving us the final mission as the daily yesterday, today's mission is quite the respite.

chess

Have raided with all three characters this week. No guns. Not even a duplicate.

Me007gold

Had a great raid with my 2nd character. Got the boots I needed and the Sniper. I should be at lvl 30 tomorrow. Still need to finish with both characters. At Atheon with both, not sure if Ill be able to finish this week. But with my exotic helmet, hopefully Ill be a lvl 30 tomorrow with some bounty's. If any one is down to help me finish, I have the final check point, should be on most of the day tomorrow.

TheKing

After getting the Boots for my Titan in the Raid, I'm finally closing in on a second character hitting Level 29. Just need some shards to max the boots and he'll join my Warlock. Still haven't tried a Raid with my 28 Hunter.

K&AJones

I won't make it tonight but I'd like to throw in my name in the hat for a Raid tomorrow night if some want to give it a go.