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Destiny |OT4| Get your ass to the Vault of Glass and help Timmins find better pants

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This is critical for upgrading your preferred Legendaries and Exotics which take orders of magnitude more XP than the weapons you'd been using up to this point. hmm *writes down*

This artificial restriction that is sooo deeply constraining to so many people has not stopped me from reaching level 28 in 16 days, and I did not play as hardcore as I could have (despite playing a fuckton).

I'm at a loss, honestly. If the game were less restrictive, there were more guaranteed legendary drops, there were much higher engram decrypt rates, you could accrue more marks within a week, or any combination of the above, I'd be level 29 completely maxed grinding for raid gear already instead of a few days from now. Is that really that much better? It's not like no one has been able to get there by now and I'm at the cutting edge. Plenty have. So where am I going wrong? What would have been the appropriate timeframe to hit 29 out from launch?

The game would be better if all those things were true, yes. Because 28 or 29 aren't the big deals. Having each slot be the perfect item you want is the final goal. I'm 27 and capable of 29. I have a few exotics and a piece of raid gear. Almost none of it is remotely what I actually want. However, trying to get the things I actually want, even inching closer, isn't really possible in a remotely fun way because of the excessive rarity of legendary gear, even poorly rolled legendary gear.

You can hit level 30 but have stats you absolutely cannot stand and weapons that are subpar with their scopes and various other mods. Being level 30 means very little to me. That's how loot games work, which is how the Destiny endgame was sold. You hit level cap in Diablo and now you work on getting the perfect things for your class. And it throws you a bone fairly frequently, even if it's not the thing you want. Here, 9 times out of 10, you aren't even getting a legendary despite the drop rate being perfectly fine for one.
 
This is exactly how I feel about it. My wife got to 27 in no time but I'm stuck at 25 because of RNGesus. He just won't give me anything good. I'm Cryptarch Rank 10 and still haven't received even a legendary weapon yet... so unlucky.

I literally have no idea what you are talking about. ANYONE can hit level 28 with 4 vendor mark armors. With queen event you only need 130 marks and rank 2. It could be done in under 1 week. When you are level 28 you can do ALL of the content in the game, including the raid at max efficiency. The ONLY thing level 29 and 30 do is give you increased efficiency in the hard mode raid.
 
The end-game activities were just singing last night. I was at level 27, close to 28. I had already done the daily mission, but still needed 8 ascendant shards to level up.
.
  • So I grab some Queen's bounties for Ether Drops & Fallen Headshots and head to Earth.
  • I do patrol missions while I wait for public events.
  • I do public events and get a couple ascendant shards, but I need helium too.
  • So I turn in the Ether Drop bounty and pick up the bounty to do 6 patrol missions on the moon.
  • I also turn in my engrams and get nothing, but the cryptarch is now only 150 rep from level 7, so I buy a few grams to level him and get a care package. All crap. Maybe next time.
  • I head on the moon and do patrol missions, get headshots and scour the moon for chests and helium.
  • I finish the bounties I was working on, but I still need shards, so I turn in the Queen's Bounties for Queen's Wrath mission tokens.
  • When I turn in those bounties I also get an exotic bounty for Invective, the shotgun.
  • I do two Queen's Wrath missions and immediately break down the chest pieces for shards.
  • Now I have all the mats, so BING, level 28.
  • But wait, I have that new exotic bounty, so let's work on that.
  • Need to complete 5 strikes without dying? Let's go!
  • So I grab the Queen's bounty on fallen walkers and head on the Devil's Lair Strike on level 8.
  • I do that 5 times, while working on grimoire card rewards for captains and that walker bounty. Finish. Turn that in!
  • And then I realize I only need 4 more strikes to finish my other bounty, so I start working on more strikes.

Then I realize it's 1 am and I have to be up early.

Destiny.... stahp!

Yes, that shit is killing me lol. There is always something to do! Destiny kills my OCD. Though, the weekly reset is always my favorite because of the weekly, nightfall and the raid reset.
 
There has been some incredibly helpful posts in this thread (particularly Hawkians, others as well), but when RNG isn't on your side, this game becomes a chore.

According to bungie, I've played my Hunter for 28 hours and outside of queen's wrath gear, I've dropped exactly ONE purple engram. ONE, in 28 hours worth of play, and it wasn't even for my class.

All the while the other standard members of my fireteam drop 2-3 a night and all have at least one exotic equipped. Now I ain't hating on my friends, I mean, good for them, but it's no fun being left out of every single loot party moment.
 
Damn I already have almost enough new tips and tricks from things I learned yesterday for another post o_O

Working on leveling guide part 3 for now though. This will have useful info for anyone at level 22-24, but be primarily focused on going RNG-free from 26-29.

Whoever is making OT5, here's links for the post!

Post-20 Leveling Guide Part 1
Post-20 Leveling Guide Part 2

Dax's Guide to Patrol Missions

Tips and Tricks Vol. 1
Tips and Tricks Vol. 2

Without reading through the whole lot now, do you have any tips for quicker ways to upgrade Legendary or exotic weapons besides simply having them equipped when doing missions/crucible, or when you're accepting completed bounties? I'm finding that they are taking way too long to level up, even with all the former.
 
I'm not sure anyone really likes them, but they're a very important part of gameplay. They change the flow, they shake things up and for that brief window they remove the control of the battle, or at the very least challenge it, from the player. It creates a shift that allows the enemy to control the pacing for a moment, or provide cover for larger enemies to get into a position that allows them to be a challenge.

Variety is the spice of life man. Everyone hates them, because they take control of the situation away from you as a player, but it's an important thing to maintain variety during combat to have units like that.
I've leaned toward using my super for swarms, it makes short work of any mobs and I can get back to shooting the higher level bastards before they position themselves properly.

And my god, I'm loving Sunsinger so far. Not even halfway leveled up and I already feel like a fool for thinking that it would be worse than Voidwalker.
 
That's a completely different avenue of discussion, though. People aren't shooting at the cave in Skywatch to get upgrade mats (what are your referring to, shards? you can give them VERY reliably right now without RNG), specific exotic weapons or exotic bounties, raid gear, or the exact legendary they're looking for. They want basic advancement. That's what the complaint about Destiny having "crappy loot" equals.

People that are grinding the cave are doing so because they are too lazy to play level appropriate content and challenge themselves. They are receiving the crap drops that they deserve for doing nothing.

The key difference here isn't that there is no RNG present whatsoever. That would be ludicrous, and in fact I'd have very likely already accomplished everything I want to in the entire game. It's that RNG is not required to progress. And one can absolutely make it to 29 without the need for a single "lucky roll" of the engram dice. That's important.

Yep. Couple that with the fact that I did not start regularly seeing decent random drops until after I was over level 24. That is when you shift your focus to doing things like the night fall that hit you with a 500 vanguard rep bomb, and 20% extra experience for the week, as well as a guarenteed legendary level drop (8 shards is a legendary drop).

I don't get what people are comparing this game to when they say "you still need RNG if you want X in particular!" Like, in D3, if you want a very specific unique item, how do you work for it? Is the answer buying it from the auction house (does that option still even exist)?

And people need to realize that if they actually start playing the game, X in particular is far more likely to drop as a reward for the raid, nightfall, or as a loyalty gift from one of the factions.

In other words, people need to stop bitching about the cave and start playing the game. If the cave was as powerful as everyone seems to think it is it would be breaking the progression design and Bungie would be trying harder to fix it (see the gold farming spots getting nerfed). But it does not break progression because it only slows you down.
 
Do any of you use scout rifles for high level strikes? I found he MIDA Multi-Tool last night and it's really great - I love it.

What I'm wondering though is if any scout rifle in the game can compete with the overall DPS from an AR on a major+ ranked enemy. In my experience with constant AR dps vs SR dps - the AR seems to come out on top in total damage dealt.. would you agree?

Just curious on your thoughts towards the standings of primary weapons... If someone was going for the most efficient strike/raid play-through I believe the best overall primary is an AR. If you do agree with this, what could Bungie do differently to bring scout rifles to a more even playing field? Maybe allow their maximum damage value to go past that of ARs that are the same level? The nice thing abut the MIDA is it's clip size is double that of the average SR which helps the overall DPS.

Not viable in pvp. You make them viable by nerfing the ARs. The accuracy required to be good with the SR is too steep considering you can get ARs that have similar range.

I was watching a vid with someone with a red dot AR just snipe machine gunning people at long range. It's crazy good
 
Destiny |OT5| ♪ nooooo onnneeeee farms like gaston, no one grinds like gaston, no one shoots spawning hive in a cave like gaston ♫

I would pay good money to see a MP/SP montage of a Titan Striker set to Gaston's song, just saying.
 
Is Bad Juju "bad"? I want to now if there is light at the end of this tunnel.

I just unlocked auto-reload last night.

got damn.

Its still not gonna make it useful in PvP.

But doing patrol missions, bounties, strike missions, running around farming, etc. It fucking slays.
 
Not viable in pvp. You make them viable by nerfing the ARs. The accuracy required to be good with the SR is too steep considering you can get ARs that have similar range.

I was watching a vid with someone with a red dot AR just snipe machine gunning people at long range. It's crazy good

Yeah... It doesn't help that the release patch nerfed scout rifle damage by like 8% while it was nerfing AR by 7% and some other stuff. Yet the AR nerfs are almost impossible to see lol. Not sure why they hit the Scout, it felt about perfect during the beta.
 
Not viable in pvp. You make them viable by nerfing the ARs. The accuracy required to be good with the SR is too steep considering you can get ARs that have similar range.

I was watching a vid with someone with a red dot AR just snipe machine gunning people at long range. It's crazy good

They're perfectly viable in pvp.

You can't tear around the map running right up people and blasting them in the face, but you can take it slower and more considerately and take out any AR user from mid to long range with ease.

ARs are just easy to use, they're not unbeatable at all.
 
Be happy with Thralls. It's a lot more frustrating when its a single Knight or Minotaur coming at you and will kill you with a single touch.

I like mowing down the thrall, it's kinda satisfying. Like you said, many other enemies in Destiny are way more annoying.
 
They're perfectly viable in pvp.

You can't tear around the map running right up people and blasting them in the face, but you can take it slower and more considerately and take out any AR user from mid to long range with ease.

ARs are just easy to use, they're not unbeatable at all.

I agree they're viable, but hand cannons are too, as are pulse rifles if you have a good one. But the AR being effective in almost every situation, depending on the one you have, on top of being easier to use means there's little reason to use something else besides "I just want to be different". I really enjoyed using a scout in the beta, but now they feel slightly less effective and that's unfortunate x.x

Edit: Also, if someone's really good with the other weapon types, they're going to slay with an AR because adding that extra pinpoint accuracy etc to an AR does make it pretty much unstoppable haha.
 
Is the level 18 story mission the final mission?

I have yet to beat the story because I keep getting sidetracked with better stuff (Nightfall went down last night, but not after my team did first... and second... BUT THIRD TIME WAS THE CHARM BABY! No, I didn't get carried through it, what are you talking about?)
 
They're perfectly viable in pvp.

You can't tear around the map running right up people and blasting them in the face, but you can take it slower and more considerately and take out any AR user from mid to long range with ease.

ARs are just easy to use, they're not unbeatable at all.

Exactly.

It's all just about practicing your accuracy. I can win a face-off against a AR user with my hand cannon (Devil You Know 12 shot) 70% of the time now. 3 head-shots and they're gone.
 
I thought hand cannon was a joke in PvP at first, but now it is the only primary I use. It helps keep me in a rhythm and not just spaz out spraying AR bullets everywhere. I've had my only first place finish with the hand cannon. Here is a clip I uploaded of some hand cannon and bladedancing kill streak action from a Control match I played the other night with a buddy. PS - I am still not very good at PvP, just having way more fun with the hand cannon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLvQuS3t9o&list=UUy4upnjfmNUYod8xoZYExUw
 
You already do Nightfall/Raid this week man? I just hit 27 last night.

I haven't done the raid, but did the Nightfall / Weely Heroic. That being said, I'll still help you out, Rugioh, you know that. Titan Defender bros for life.

**

Anyone else really looking forward to Xur? I got the Titan helm last week and have 23 coins as it stands right now. I got the Daft Punk Titan helm last night from the Nightfall, so I'm pretty open to anything he has right now.

Best part is, even if he doesn't have what I want right now, it allows me to stockpile....!

...is there a Strange Coin cap? It's in the inventory so I doubt it, but....
 
There is a (bad deal) material conversion for Rep and Marks, but yeah- one of the changes I WOULD make to this game is introducing an easier route for PvE only players to get Faction gear (either by earning Crucible marks alternately or allowing faction vendors to accept Vanguard marks).

oh, my friend here and I, we love them.

I hate PvP, its not for me so I would like to see more stuff for the PvE people.
 
Yah.

Take things into your own hands and double tap share before a match.

This is what I've been doing but it's annoying to then have a bunch of video of you navigating menus before match saved in your library (since a double tap saves the video if it's already recording)

*sigh*
 
It was so marvelous when I hit rank 2. I went from level 21 which I was stuck at for the longest time to level 25 and now one armor upgrade away to level 26 in 2 days.

Nice!

I feel a little silly, I spent 25 motes of light on the buzzard wooflock bond from the speaker (Which I love btw). Only to probably swap it for "The Tethering" void bond Shax sells if only for a little while lol.
 
People that are grinding the cave are doing so because they are too lazy to play level appropriate content and challenge themselves. They are receiving the crap drops that they deserve for doing nothing.



Yep. Couple that with the fact that I did not start regularly seeing decent random drops until after I was over level 24. That is when you shift your focus to doing things like the night fall that hit you with a 500 vanguard rep bomb, and 20% extra experience for the week, as well as a guarenteed legendary level drop (8 shards is a legendary drop).



And people need to realize that if they actually start playing the game, X in particular is far more likely to drop as a reward for the raid, nightfall, or as a loyalty gift from one of the factions.

In other words, people need to stop bitching about the cave and start playing the game. If the cave was as powerful as everyone seems to think it is it would be breaking the progression design and Bungie would be trying harder to fix it (see the gold farming spots getting nerfed). But it does not break progression because it only slows you down.

What content, you mean the sames 5 strike or the same shitty patrol quest they been doing for hours?. This game is a loot game so players shouldnt have to buy shit in order to lv and get new gear. They should play a level 26 strike or do good in pvp and get great gear but we all know that not the case in this game.
 
Nice!

I feel a little silly, I spent 25 motes of light on the buzzard wooflock bond from the speaker. Only to probably swap it for "The Tethering" void bond Shax sells lol.

Are bonds like the capes in that your class vanguard sells the exact same items under a different name for fewer marks?

Well not exactly the same, the way shaders affect them are different but they're the same model... I bought my Ghost Angel from the vanguard because the colors were handled better AND it was way cheaper. I could get both a piece of gear and the cape the first week lol.
 
I want to play Iron Banner just to get the Titan Mark again. It was my fave Mark. I don't like any of the stuff I got right now.
 
What content, you mean the sames 5 strike they been doing for hours?. This game is a loot game so players should have to shit in order to lv and get new gear. They should play a level 26 strike or do good in pvp and get great gear but we all know that not the case in this game.

The bad part is that strikes are completely worthless except Nightfall for gear haha(after passing the blue tier). Like, there's not even a chance except the default mob drop rate, which makes it pointless. Loot games still usually give bosses a higher chance of giving stuff. But not Destiny =p
 
I honestly feel like this game is a less good version of Borderlands.

I am only on level 8. Tell me how wrong I am and that it truly does get better after level 20.
 
I honestly feel like this game is a less good version of Borderlands.

I am only on level 8. Tell me how wrong I am and that it truly does get better after level 20.

Oh, this game is like a less good (aka, worse) version of Borderlands? I haven't heard that comparison made :)
 
It's insane that I still have not received a legendary or exotic drop in this fucking game yet. I love destiny but damn it's frustrating lol. I'm gonna leave this shit on remote play and have my dude sit at the cave for a few hours and see what happens
 
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