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!

Destiny: Rise of Iron Review Part 2

Onto Part 2 of my Rise of Iron Review! If you missed Part 1, here it is. http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/09/destiny-rise-of-iron-review-part-1.html

Rise of Iron introduced to us a whole slew of new things. We got a new record book, new ornaments, new types of artifacts, and of course new weapons and armor. We also got a new strike and 2 of our old strikes got minor facelifts. And lastly, I want to touch upon our new enemy. So let's dig in:

Yummm...grinding....

We got a new record book, similar to the SRL and Moments of Triumph record books of the past. These have been great ideas. It keeps players working towards something, and it's exciting when you get to a new level. The best part of this record book has to be the awesome armor that comes with it (see below). While the armor won't be catapulting you into high light levels, it sure does look awesome. The look of this can also be changed using the new Ornament system that Destiny offers.

Ornaments are things that can be added on certain weapons and armor in order to change their appearance. Random chance boxes can be bought with real money, but they can be earned in game. They can be gotten in a nightfall or raid, or from treasure chests that can be won weekly. These are a great idea. It's a chance for players to customize their look so we can all be precious little snowflakes. For instance, each of the Rise of Iron record book armor can have an ornament added to it to turn it into a sweet iron furnace-looking armor:

Is this Destiny or some weird Dark Souls DLC?

For you wannabe Lord Saurons out there

We also have new artifacts. Artifacts in Destiny have just been little modifiers that change your attributes. They haven't been anything too special. But in RoI, they have changed them up in a pretty significant way! You can earn these ornaments from weekly quests. Based off of 8 Iron Lords, each new artifact grants its user some kind of special ability. For example, one of the artifacts available this first week is the Memory of Jolder, which gives the player unlimited sprint! Another is the Memory of Timur, which allows you to convert enemies to your side for a limited amount of time! One of the ones I am most interested is the Memory of Radeghast:

No, not that one

The Memory of Radeghast allows you to use your heavy sword to reflect projectiles, rockets, even some supers! My mind races with the possibility of reflecting raid boss shots back at them, and the hilarity of watching a Hunter get killed by his own Golden Gun.

A face only a mother could love. Now THAT'S blind love!

We also got a new strike called the Wretched Eye. In this one we get to go fight Frankenstein and his monster. Well...run from his monster anyway. This strike feels different from previous ones. There is a lot of vertical movement in this strike as you go down into the depths of what looks like old missile silos, searching for your prey. All the while you are harassed by enemies. You are trying to find a Devil Splicer High Priest, who apparently likes to capture Hive Ogres, remove their eyes, and use their pew-pew-ness to power his own weapons. The final area is by far the best part as you need to dispose of the bullet spongey boss, all the while avoiding the Reagan-smashing blind Ogre that's stomping about with hands that look like they are made of WWII submarine mines. It's great, thrilling fun, all the better when done on Heroic Mode or during the Nightfall.

We also got 2 older strikes that were revisited: Sepiks Perfected and Abomination Heist Siva Phogoth. Sepiks Perfected has us revisiting our very first strike and rekilling our very first strike boss. The strike plays out mainly the same, although the enemies are slightly different, and the path is slightly different. At the end we fight the aforementioned boss, only this time he has an invulnerable shield that we have to take out by first killing a captain with the matching shield color boom gun. Once the shields are down (thanks Admiral Ackbar!), we can lay waste to the boss. My thoughts are those mechanics will be coming back in the raid.

However, Bungie got smart and removed all our old cheesing spots by putting respawning turrets everywhere, so we have to stay outdoors. Probably my favorite part of this strike is the awesome guitar music in the background. It definitely comes as a surprise, but it's a welcome one, and I wished more of Destiny had such epic music.

Abomination Heist has us revisiting Phogoth. Honestly I can't recall too much of a difference other than enemies. There is one part where you have to traverse some tomb ships that served as a pleasant reminder of the King's Fall Raid, but other than that the strike is pretty lackluster.

We also can get loot in a different way in the strikes. Now there are things called skeleton keys, which can be used on the treasure chest located at the end of every strike. Opening these things gives access to rewards at the top light level, and rewards can be specific to the strike. So if you really want that Darkblade Helm, just save your skeleton key for the Darkblade strike. However, good luck finding skeleton keys. I am finding those things harder to get than a Vex Mythoclast.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about the new enemy: Siva

I'm sure there's a cream for that...

***Story Spoiler Warning!!!*** Siva used to be a nanotechnology used in the Golden Age to help the human colonization of the galaxy. At some point it went rogue and became more of a virus. The Iron Lords attempted to destroy it but only managed to contain it in the Plaguelands, losing most of their members in the process. It is this weird red looking Twizzler mess that has infected everything.

Exactly like this

The Fallen, who are always up for pirating and using whatever they need to in order to win (Like Vex stuff in the House of Wolves), have brought it upon themselves to take it to the next level of evolution.

The new Splicer Fallen enemies are "enhanced", says the game. Honestly they are just reskinned, but they do behave slightly different just like the Taken did. They all have a red/black coloring about them and usually shoot red lasers, unlike their blue-brethren. The basic soldiers have peg legs for some reason.

Peg legs are great for snow traversing

The snipers shoot multiple bursts instead of one beam, and another thing Siva does apparently is burst out of your head when your head gets shot, to go and find who did and kill them in a red mist.

I feel about the same way I felt about the Taken, although the Taken did at least arrive in a unique way. Fallen Splicers are basically just reskinned Fallen troops that borrow some abilities.

In my next article I will hopefully get to talk about the new raid, and compare it with the previous ones. I hope you enjoyed this, happy gaming!

Destiny: Rise of Iron review Part 1

*shields not included*

Well it's been a while. Who knew having 2 kids under the age of 3 would be time consuming? Anyway I am back now and I'd like to continue to talk about the various video games I am enjoying. Today I want to talk about Rise of Iron. This will be a 2-part article as I have a lot to cover. So sit back, and enjoy the wall of text ;).

I wanted to first briefly comment on the recent DLCs:

Shouldn't we be facing the other way?

The Taken King DLC: I did not do a writeup of that DLC for a variety of personal reasons, but it was not because I disliked the DLC. I greatly enjoyed the DLC and the raid will probably go down as my favorite in the series. I really enjoyed what it brought to the table, especially in regards to infusion. The theme, story, grimoire, combat, music, weapons, were all top notch and I still use a lot of what was there, not to mention the 3 new classes! Since it is so old I won't bother going further into it, although I'm sure I'll reference it from time to time.

He seems friendly...

House of Wolves DLC: I also really enjoyed this one. Prison of Elders is one of my favorite activities that Destiny has to offer. It gives me the fun boss fights with slight mechanics, but without the time investment. I really liked the story and a lot of weapons looked really cool, even if they weren't terribly useful. I definitely wished there was more to do, and would have loved a raid, but what can you do?




Alrighty then, now going back to more recent affairs. Destiny's newest DLC Rise of Iron, released this past Tuesday. I have spent many hours playing the new content. I have not tried the raid yet but I plan on doing so this weekend.

*Wolf pets not included*

I started my journey as a lowly 334 Warlock. I actually did not attain the top light lvl from the previous expansion, mainly because I didn't see a need to, especially knowing this expansion was going to greatly increase it. After the first mission I was already at 336 so I was not worried. I breezed through the very short campaign. I was very intrigued by the story but it really never went anywhere. I love the Iron Lords and Siva seemed like an interesting enemy, but I felt we never really got a chance to get to know either. The campaign was over and I guess we pushed Siva back for the time being. We learned a little of what happened to the Iron Lords but I'm definitely sitting here waiting for more. Perhaps the raid will further fill the gap.

I do appreciate the number of other little missions that have popped up since. I hope there are a bunch more. The mission to get the new Gjallarhorn was very fun, so many enemies! The mission to get an upgraded version of the very first gun we all ever got, the Khvostov, was also fun. The gun is very interesting because of the the variety of ways it can be used (single shot, burst, or auto), but I doubt it will be used much.

Hmmmm....lava

I have enjoyed patrolling the new area called the Plaguelands, although I have gotten the feeling I have figured everything out. I hope that's not the case. In TTK I felt so overwhelmed by all the stuff to discover in Oryx's ship. It was awesome. This one has a couple of little laser grids I need splicer keys for, but they are easy to get and don't really hold anything interesting in them. Luckily, there is plenty of grimoire to discover with the various ghosts and the new Dormant Siva clusters (think Calcified Fragments from TTK). The Plaguelands don't feel nearly as busy as Oryx's ship though. It is only the first week though, so maybe it will populate. This leads me to Archon's Forge.

Archon's Forge is supposed to be RoI's (Rise of Iron) version of the Court of Oryx/Prison of Elders. The concept is great, but the execution feels lacking. Right now the only way of participating in the Archon's Forge is to happen to be there when other people are starting it which for me hasn't happened yet (you also literally have to be there before they start or you're locked out), or you have to have your very own Siva offering. I completed a green (uncommon) run by myself easily enough, and I did a blue (rare) one with some friends. We tried a purple (legendary) but we couldn't finish it, even with a full fireteam. Hopefully once we become a high enough light lvl we should be fine.

Siva offerings have been extremely hard to find. And the worst thing is that you can only carry one at a time, and your vault can only hold one at a time! It's very annoying. I have 2 legendary Siva offerings right now but I don't want to get rid of them because they should drop the best stuff, but it's very hard to find people to do them and until I do, I cannot get any more. I have yet to finish the bounty for winning a specific Archon Forge enemy, and the experience has left me a little salty. There are also no fun little raid-like mechanics like in CoO or in PoE, just enemies to kill. It's rather bland. I understand the reason why Bungie can't have people running the event tons of times is because it's a place where you can get end game light lvl rewards.

This is one thing I am both happy and sad with this DLC. I like that there are multiple avenues to getting to the maximum light lvl. In the base game, the ONLY way to get the max level was to beat the raid on the hardest difficulty. Then later we got the Iron Banner, which allowed PVPers the chance to get the hardest stuff, and then Trials of Osiris, which gave the elitist of the elite PVPers some exclusive gear. And over the next couple stuff we've gotten different ways of getting stuff at the max lvl. But this DLC we can get it everywhere. I can get it from the raid, from Archon's Forge, from Iron Banner, from Nightfalls, from Crucible from random drops. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I am the top level right now. I still have a ways to go. I have been impressed with my slow but steady race to the higher levels. Never have I felt stagnant in my climb. Every Heroic Strike or Nightfall has given me something that has increased my light. It does feel like I've cheated though. It could just be a personal thing, but being at a high light lvl doesn't really feel special anymore. Maybe the bragging rights come from the specific armor you unlock or something, but I know it was a better feeling being at the top lvl when Vault of Glass came out, or when Trials of Osiris dropped and you got some of that gear.

Complete with bonfire!  Rekindle!

We also got a new social space, Felwinter's Peak. It's this wonderful Iron Lord's temple on top of a giant mountain. It's pretty awesome. The view from on top is amazing, and you can see all Earth has to offer it seems. I love the wolves that are scattered about, and the NPCs are all very entertaining. I wish it was bigger, but then again I probably wouldn't use most of it if it was.

I'm sure I'll nail the landing...

You can attempt to climb the mountain in order to get a Siva cluster, as well as bragging rights. It has been the most frustrating thing I've done so far, lol. I made it finally, but it took me more deaths than a Nightfall, and I quit due to frustration multiple times.

All in all I am enjoying my experience with Rise of Iron. We shall see how long the DLC can keep me entertained because I am getting the feeling I've seen everything, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Well I think that's enough for the time being. Stay tuned for the next part where I talk about the new ornaments, the new artifacts, some of the new weapons and armor, the new strike and updated ones, the new enemies, and maybe even the raid! Thanks for reading and happy gaming!