Destiny: Rise of Iron Wrath of the Machine Raid Review and Guide

I have played quite a lot of Rise of Iron, enough that I have 3 characters over light level 385, which wasn't supposed to be able to happen until the hard raid but people are finding gear is dropping at higher levels. A big part of my light level is thanks to Destiny's new raid: The Wrath of the Machine. This marks the 4th raid available to Destiny players, and I must say, I quite enjoy it.

I have beaten the raid several times now, on multiple characters. First, let me take you through what all you will encounter in raid.

You, and 5 of your friends (or fewer if you are feeling particularly ballsy), will find yourself in the Plaguelands for the beginning of the raid, being stared at by a giant eyeball, which is actually how you will enter the raid proper. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You feel as though you should cover yourself

First, you must deal with the Archpriest Vosik. Vosik remains immune to all damage until you charge the various generators around the map. Teammates will run around and gather charge by running through the white columns of light. Once they have 4 charges, they must deposit them into a generator within 15 seconds or your dead. The generators need to be charged 4 times. While a couple of teammates are doing that, the rest of the group will be killing the various spawns that appear, especially the giant Shanks that slowly make their way to the generators to sap them of their charge. During all this time Vosik will try his darndest to shoot you with his cannon. Once the generators are all charged they will start dropping SIVA bombs. All players need to grab them as soon as they can and start chucking them at the boss. This is how you lower his shields. Once his shields are lowered, you can start damaging him normally (and don't forget to keep throwing the SIVA bombs as they do massive damage). You will repeat this process until you damage Vosik enough that he will flee into the giant eye, where you will follow...

I really enjoyed this part. It's not particularly hard, and it's rather fun. I really like chucking the SIVA bombs at bosses. I really wished they made a Crucible mode where both teams have to run around and charge their own generators, grab their SIVA bombs, and either slam them in a basketball-like game or shoot them at the opposing team's boss. The first team to kill the opposing team's boss would win. I think that'd be a ton of fun.

Anywho, back to the raid. What's next is a "jumping puzzle". This is not half as hard as the King's Fall raid. You are simply running around in the bowels of the wall in a fairly straight forward fashion. There are exotic chests to be found, broken SIVA fragments for collectors, as well as the first monitor for those players that are interested in getting the new Exotic pulse rifle the Outbreak Prime (more on that in another entry). This is also not particularly difficult, it's more just fun as you hope you will get good stuff from the chests. Eventually, you will find your way to a grate that will drop you in the scariest set of a TV game show this side of the Traveller.

Bob Barker on a bad day

Your team will split into groups of 2 and will take either left, right, or center. Tons of enemies will spawn and you will shoot them down, all the while dodging the Vosik's gunfire. Eventually, SIVA bombs will drop down and you will have to coordinate the throw together to hit Vosik at the same time to remove his shields. After you throw the bombs, one of the TV screens behind him will light up and you must destroy it or you all die for some reason. After 3 sets of bomb throws his shields should be down and you may damage him normally.

After the damage phase, once Vosik becomes immune again, the entire team must run into one of the rooms on the left or right and shoot the energy lock shield to prevent being killed by Vosik's SIVA trails that he'll shoot everywhere. Not even Radiance can get you back from this death as everyone's supers take a hit right before it happens. The rooms are single use only, so you have a bit of a timer with this boss. Once that's done, you rinse and repeat and soon the boss should be killed. There are scary yellow bar captains and explodey shanks that can be troublesome, but good communication and decent gear should take you all the way. Once Bob Barker is finally defeated you are rewarded with some sweet raid loot and a raid chest that can be opened if you have a SIVA cache key, or enough SIVA key fragments to create one. This is very similar to the Moldering Shards from King's Fall.

After this is more jumping and exotic chest finding on your way to the Siege Engine, aka the Death Zamboni.

After the terrible dark on the inside of the wall, you finally make it to the top and into the fresh air. You casually walk across, easily killing the Fallen that reside there, and approach a giant impassible wall (unless you find a weird glitch that lets you skip the entire sequence. Don't do this). While you rack your brain trying to find out how you will scale this giant wall, the Death Zamboni comes to life behind you.

If Mad Max  played hockey...

This wonderful sequence has you desperately killing the freakish amount of enemies that spawn, all the while trying to shoot off the 2 turrets on the Death Zamboni and eventually the face mask, all before the giant engine crashes into the wall, smearing friend and foe alike. If you manage to do this, it's not over. For some reason the Siege Engine has broke down (I wonder who's to blame for that?!). Leaving one teammate behind to deal with a boss that spawns on top of the zamboni, the rest of the group will make their way to the opposite wall to pick up 3 spare parts. The logic of this part of the raid makes no sense but boy is it fun. As a team, you must carry the 3 spare parts to the zamboni in a certain amount of time or you lose. The trick is that you may only carry these gigantic parts for 9 seconds before you become exhausted. You cannot attack while carrying and you move very slowly, and once you drop the parts, you have to wait a while to gather your strength back up. Meanwhile, you are being shot at by skiffs and tons of enemies, and mines will detonate and forever slow you if you don't shoot them before they go off. Everyone must work together and slowly make your way back to the engine, where your other teammate has hopefully killed the boss and lowered the ramp so that you can run the parts up to the engine and place them in the correct positions. It is a wonderfully fun time that reminded me of the beginning of the Crota raid, running in the dark trying to stay together and not die, and try to survive long enough to create a bridge to run to safety.

After you do this you will ride the zamboni and jump off a cliff to go to the next part. There is a chest and another fragment waiting for you on the crags below.

You will head through the server room on your way to the final boss. This part will seem a bit strange, as it isn't really a maze like the Atheon Labyrinth, nor is it particularly saturated with enemies. You will simply go through to the next boss wondering why so much time and space was dedicated to a computer nerd's dreamland. That is, unless you are still trying to get that Outbreak Prime gun. This is the crux of that mission and as I said I will get into that in another entry. But eventually you will simply make your way down a big path going into a giant SIVA diamond ziggurat thingy, where you will meet Aksis, the final boss.

Poor paraplegic Fallen

This lovable cuddle-monster is separated into 2 parts, similar to Vosik in the beginning. In the first part, you will again split into groups of 2 and take either left, right, or center. Tons of minions will pour in and you must kill them while dodging Aksis' fire. Eventually 3 captains will spawn on each side carrying an elemental cannon (shock-arc, null-void, and scorch-fire). Once you kill the captain, one player will pick up the cannon and try to find the servitor that matches the shield of the cannon you picked up that should spawn soon. You must kill the servitor before they make it to a platform and kill you all from Critical SIVA Density (whatever that is). The people using the cannons need to charge their shot in order to kill the servitors, and it MUST match or you will do no damage. Once the servitors are destroyed, they will drop a SIVA bomb, that someone ELSE (ie not the cannon holder because they can't for difficulties' sake) will have to throw at the SIVA pyramid nodes right beneath the boss.

You will repeat this process 3 times, with the last phase having 2 sets of Servitors to destroy (so keep those cannons handy). Once you've destroyed all the nodes you win, receiving another chance at a chest, and a small reprieve before the final fight.

In the final phase, Aksis decides to join the fight proper and lowers himself onto the SIVA node platform, revealing that he had the ability to walk, he only needed to believe in himself...as a giant scary spider nightmare.

Let me go grab my giant boot

This part requires a ton of coordination, very similar to the King's Fall raid in the respect. You will remain in your groups of 2. Tons of enemies will spawn that you will have to kill as normal. This time Aksis will teleport around the room and spray his space aids SIVA swarm clouds at you that persist for a long time. Captains will appear just like before and you must kill them, take the cannons, and find the matching Servitor just like before. Once the SIVA bombs drop, chuck them at the boss, not worrying about the timing.

This time, however, you may notice that some teammates have become Empowered. This glowy blue aura is similar to the Aura of the Unraveler in the King's Fall raid. This is the most crucial part of the entire raid and requires the most coordination. This requires great communication from the entire team as you have to make sure you have someone Empowered on each side. After Aksis takes the hits from the bombs, he'll being to teleport to 1 of 4 locations around the map (left right, front center, back). As soon as he teleports to a location, someone who is Empowered must jump on top of him and slam down, which will stun him. There will be a quick damage phase where everyone will shoot with primary or secondary guns before he teleports again. Another fun part is that after you slam, the Empowered aura will randomly switch again, so you must coordinate to make sure you have all the locations covered in time when he teleports to another location. Luckily, Aksis doesn't teleport to the same place twice in a row, so after the first phase you can more easily have everything covered. Once he teleports, you do the same thing where someone Empowered slams on his back. After that, you do it one more time and then you have your main damage phase. Everyone has to pour as much damage as they can at him. Titans use your Weapons of Light bubble, Nightstalkers use your tether, and everyone use whatever heavy weapon you can (don't forget to use the cannons, they do the most damage when their charged).

Keep in mind that if someone misses their slam, or waits too long, Aksis will shoot his SIVA and wipe the whole team.

Aksis will become immune to damage and either way will shoot his SIVA and then everyone must quickly jump to one of the 4 glowing pillars in the back. Make sure you designate which one to go to as they are one use only just like the rooms in the 2nd Vosik fight, and you will need to use several of them to beat Aksis if this is your first time.

You basically will just repeat this phase as much as you can until you do enough damage to kill him the way you killed Oryx in King's Fall. You must coordinate and communicate everything, and try not to screw up, or die, lol. A death can be worked around but it makes it very difficult. Once you've done enough damage Aksis will teleport to where he began before the 1st phase, and you have one last chance to finish him off before he wipes the board. Hopefully you still have some heavy weapon and cannon ammo, a spare tether or weapons of light handy for the last part. If you can pour enough damage into him, you will have beaten Aksis and beaten the Wrath of the Machine Raid. Congratulations! Have another chance at some sweet raid loot!

I'm sensing a SIVA theme here...

The Wrath of the Machine has a lot of elements to it similar to previous raids: It has the frantic speed run element from the beginning of the Crota raid during the death zamboni sequence. It has the team coordination and aura callouts that Oryx had during the Aksis fight. It has a light version of the jumping puzzle from King's Fall. It has tons of chests and loot possibilities as well.

Overall I was very pleased with this new raid. It's a ton of fun. It's not terribly hard, although the last part requires everyone to concentrate and do their part correctly which can get quite frustrating with certain groups. It doesn't take a ton of time to run through, which I also appreciate, although some may not. The higher your level, the easier it will get, much more so than previous raids I'd say. With the Rise of Iron being so generous in its giving of end game gear you don't even HAVE to complete the raid to get there, although it is a great way of doing so. I don't care for the look of any of the raid gear or weapons, which is a shame, but that is just my personal preference.

I highly recommend you checking it out if you haven't already. It's a very entertaining time and as I said, it's not particularly time consuming or hard, as is evident by the fact that it was beaten in the first day in like 3 hours. We'll see what changes will come with the hard version, which should be coming by the end of the month. I'm guessing just more tears and frustration auras. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this and happy gaming!