Had some fun with SoonerDoc and Gooter, helping them through the Heroic and Nightfall. It was rough with them being at 26 and 27, and neither really having great weapons. We actually failed the first nightfall attempt at the final boss. But then we regrouped and did a speed run through the second attempt, before Sooner started running into connection issues during the final boss. He had to disconnect and reconnect 3 times (the actual boss fight took forever!).

When he finally got back, and everything settled down, we got the job done. One got the Thunderlord Exotic Machine gun, while the other got an Armamentarium (I think it was Gooter, who's a Warlock).

Just a nightfall for me. Still have to get it done with my Warlock. Then it's hopefully a hard raid...or two.

I'm going to sit on my weekly heroics until after my hard raids. That way, if I get some raid armor, I'll be able to apply the XP from the weekly heroic to leveling it up. And it's not like I need the coins.

Thanks again TheKing! I'm glad you had fun because you literally had to carry Sooner and I! It was a good deal of fun but I don't want to that again any time soon. The end boss takes forever and a day to bring down even in the cheese spot. I got the Thunderlord (hopefully it is good), my first exotic, and Sooner got the chest (he's a Hunter).

Bring on Xur! I have 18 SCs and 130 VG marks so will go on a shopping spree this weekend.

I will be raid ready soon so we'll have to get a late night DVDTalker Raid Crew going (King, Sooner, me, Roy, Icerat, Cruz.... ). But first, I need Chess to show me his famous farming loops so I can gather spirit bloom and helium to level up my armor.

OK I went and did it. I spent 175 Vanguard Marks on an upgraded Sparrow for my Warlock. Then I went and spent another 175 marks on a second sparrow, this time on my Hunter.

And I might spend the strange coins to buy the upgrade from Xur, depending on what else he has to offer this week.

You'll get a legendary sparrow in the hard raid. FYI.

Glad goot got the Thunderlord, but I kind of wish he'd gotten the Armamentarium. Would have come in handy for that next character, probably a Titan, and it's my favorite Titan armor piece. A blinding shield is a nice novelty, but nothing beats an extra grenade.

Thunderlord rocks

nice score on Gjallarhorn chess ... probably top of my weapons wishlist right now

I didn't get the Sparrow on my hard run. But then again it was just beating Atheon and not the rest of it, so maybe that's why I didn't.

But I'm basically at the point where there's not much else I'm interested in buying with the marks I have. Don't need any more legendary armor, and I have just about every single Vanguard and Crucible weapon. So I might as well buy something...

The upgraded sparrow is better than the one you get in the raid. I have both. The Xur upgrade makes it faster than the raid one... and it doesn't explode (Yes, the the raid sparrow actually explodes if you boost too long).

Plus when you buy it, you can pick the colors. Not that it means anything, but my raid sparrow has some fugly colors compared to the one I bought.

I was in the same situation. A surplus of strange coins and nothing else buy with them.

I got it twice for beating Atheon with both characters because FML. Would much rather have gotten other drops.

Destiny Glitch: Sparrow Surfin' - YouTube

sorry, I cannot embed this at work

Huge, huge props to you. That is the very definition of dragging us through! Was really fun though. Would have been pretty ticked if I had not got reconnected before finishing that final boss after going through it twice!!

Thanks again

So chess invited me into a Hard Raid today. I went in with my Titan, and we started with the Oracles. And we had a really good run with the team he put together. We got to the final room, and thanks to the work of two very awesome players, we got through the gatekeeper after the other 4 of us were killed. Two dudes with shields finishing off the middle conflux was a beautiful thing to behold.

Then we got to Atheon, and again, after a few false starts, we got a groove going. Then I got stuck on Venus. But the others pressed on. Went back to Venus, but I was killed before I could be healed. Still, they got the Oracles, went back through, and the rest of the team put everything they had into Atheon, and he went down!

I got the gauntlets for my Titan, Praedeth's Timepiece, which is an Arc Pulse rifle, and after buying two rare sparrows, I got the Raid Sparrow! So now I have a nice one for all three characters.

Good stuff.

I didn't get a lot of stuff in my 1.5 hard runs, but I did get another Ice Breaker and the raid helm for my Warlock, which will get her to 30, so no compaints. Also got the hard raid ship.

Got the Grim Citizen III from a blue engram

larger clip than my Vanquisher III and better perks (active radar when ADS, and bottom half of clip does more damage)

I have both and prefer the GCIII. Plus, yeah, you got some good perks there.

Another week of raids for me, another week of shards, energy and Chatterwhite. This is really starting to piss me off. Seriously. According to my grimoire, I have now completed the raid 6 full times with my warlock and received NOTHING.

What that doesn't show is, my raid boots were rewarded after the oracle section on my very first attempt. We didn't even beat the Templar and everyone I was with quit because we pretty much all sucked way back then (we were all still Lvl 26-27). I never got around to finishing that first raid attempt, so that run doesn't even count on the grimoire as a completion.

Also, my hard run was from the very beginning, all the way to Atheon before everyone quit out. But I did get the 3 reward checkpoints prior, along with all the chests. But again, doesn't count as a completion.

So that is legitimately 6 full runs on normal plus a hard run completed 90% and not one useful item from any of it. That's some bullshit right there.

Edit: My warlock has literally been stuck at level 29 for a month and a half. Ugh. My Hunter who I only started 3 weeks ago already has more pieces of raid gear (2).

Boy, it really takes no time at all to rank up the raid gear. A few bounties, along with having enough shards for the job, has me up to 3 pieces of 30 gear on my Titan. I need the helmet or chest piece to get to Level 30 there.

Warlock still needs the boots, plus chest or gloves for Level 30.

I've also been doing some Sparrow surfing like in the video. It's awesome!

My Warlock should hit 30 today, but I'm with you 19K/Meat...lots of energy and chatterwhite for weeks. Same for the Nightfalls, which also finally gave me something this week. RNG gonna RNG. I still don't have the Warlock raid gauntlets, but now with the helmet, I can make it work for 30. Should get there tonight unless I take my Titan on a hard raid.

I brought a buddy (Sith) into an oracles checkpoint on hard last night. We all brought our lower level characters (28 hunter in my case) in and cheesed the oracles/templar and then hit the chests on the way to Gatekeepers/Atheon. I didn't get anything interesting, but Sith got the arc hand cannon and a titan chest armor just for that little half hour adventure. I did invite Buzz as well, but he was busy.

I have an oracles checkpoint on hard if some of you 28s and 29s want to grab it and cheese those two hard drops and those 3 chests.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mmpBN7L46AU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Yeah, I'll be doing a lot of that.

I've done Nightfall with all three characters now, weekly twice and one Raid with my Hunter. But once again the Cryptarch screwed me twice yesterday giving me (5) Blue Engrams with my Hunter & Titan whci turned to rare items.

I'm actually looking forward to Assassins Creed Unity next week and even more with Far Cry 4 the following. I'm almost at the point where I feel just going around in circles doing the same things....(3) daily public events, (3) daily Strikes with some Bounties thrown in the mix and once a week try to get in a Raid, Nightfall & Weekly with each character. Leveling up the Cryptarch has been a joke getting Rare Engrams almost 90% of the time. And the Vanguard Points are no better which I've actually just bought Legendary gear to break them down for Shards.

I'd love to get in on some hard raid cheese if you're online today. I have 3 characters that I could do it with. My 2 levels 29's might actually be able to finish it to the end if we have some 30's come along. The hard raid is basically the only thing I haven't done all week with any of my characters so hopefully it will be rewarding... normal raids are not kind to me at all.

would love to be in for hard raid cheesing as well
I can bring my lvl 29 Warlock

The key with Destiny is to always be punching above your weight or it gets monotonous. Nightfalls are great, but you really need to do more raiding to get "next level" stuff and to get to 30. If you're counting on the Cryptarch or other random drops to give you better loot, it's going to be a tough slog. I only do dailies and bounties when I have something specific to level up at this point.

Wish I could have gotten you and Kanjji in last night, because I had two spots. Sith got in with his Titan and made out like a bandit, most importantly with a Fate Bringer.

Cool. Will look out for you.

By starting at oracles, you are only missing one chest, and it's a normal raid chest with only ascendant materials anyway. Getting a checkpoint at oracles also eliminates the requirement to do the confluxes, which are kind of a bitch on hard (time consuming and annoying). I actually think the confluxes are probably the hardest part of the raid on hard.

And if you're running a lower level character (relatively, talking 28-29), getting from the Oracles to the Gatekeepers is pretty easy, even on hard. That's 2 drops and 3 chests, all with double drops (normal and hard).

I already did it on normal, so I won't get the chests anyway. All I need is the "boss" loot. That would be awesome if I could catch you online later.