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 Dark Below Review and Thoughts

So we got the Dark Below "expansion" for Destiny earlier this month. I wanted to give the expansion a little time before I reviewed it and posted my thoughts. I'm glad I did, because I have changed my opinion about it a couple of times.

When it first came out we were given 3 story missions, although we could only repeat 2 of them so I didn't think that should count. We got a new raid and a new strike (although PS users got an additional strike).

Those lucky PS bastards

 I enjoyed playing the new stuff although I was again saddened at the complete lack of story again. This game has no story at all. Maybe they don't want it to and just want it to be about the mechanics. The mechanics are at least very well done so it has that. It's just sad that a Bungie game has no story when they've had a good history of the opposite.

All the new content can be done extremely quickly and the only reason it takes a few hours is because you have to go back to the Tower to turn stuff in after every new bounty and mission. That gets a little tiring. Also, the new Eris bounties you get aren't really new, it's still just "go there, kill that". But oh well, I'm not sure what else I should have expected.

I want some vehicle missions, or a timed thing where you have to race on your sparrow to get away. Let's see some variety!

But anyway, going back to Eris. She's a new Tower vendor with her own list of items and bounties and her own reputation to gain. Unfortunately, Bungie thought it would be smart to give one of her small amount of daily bounties to specific classes. So every day you get to sit and watch you not gain more rep simply because you are not a certain class. That's dumb. We should have gotten a class specific bounty, but that everyone would get one specific to their class. Oh well, not a huge deal. I am finding that it's gonna take a while to get your rep to lvl 4. I haven't done the math but I wonder if it's actually possible to do before they release the hard raid at the end of the month? In the meantime you can enjoy some new shaders and class items which do look pretty cool.

I think there's a cream for that...

 The new strike is fine. I enjoy strikes and this is more of the same. The last boss, Omnigul, is a bullet sponge like all the others and you are forced to stay in the back room and poke out to shoot like you are for almost all the other strike bosses. There are tons of Hive though and it's fun to mow down tons of enemies while dodging wizard blasts. We also got a new strike playlist although the rewards still suck.

Nothing but hot babes in this expansion...

 Onto the new raid though: Crota's End. I really enjoyed the new raid. I was able to attempt it on day 1 and although I didn't officially beat it until the next week, it was still a lot of fun. I really love the first part of the raid and I think it may be my favorite part of the entire game so far. It's intense and glitch free as far as I can tell. I love sticking together as a group and slogging it out trying to get to the end, all the while getting hounded by enemies and being in the complete dark. You have to choose to stop and try to revive a fallen compatriot, and the joy of reaching a beacon and looking back to see a friend being swarmed and almost taken down, only to be saved by a mass of gunfire from you and your friends is something rarely achieved in gaming these days. And then at the end where you are standing on a glyph plate trying to materialize a bridge and your teammates start going down, and then when the bridge is formed you just rush into the light, all the while being chases by hundreds of enemies. It's great fun.

This never happen. Just run.

 The next part is also pretty fun although now that there is a way you can cheese past it, there's really no point to slugging through to try and beat it legitimately. It's a shame, but when you have a game that simply requires you to do the same thing over and over again for an end goal, you don't care how you do it, just as long as you reach the goal, and you can rationalize using a cheese method in a variety of ways. But then again I think this argument stands in that since there are no directions on how to beat the various parts of the game, anything goes. But anyway, beating this part the way it seems the designers would want it beat is fun and thrilling with everyone standing on summoning plates and then killing sword bearers and rushing over the bridge to kill gatekeepers and the coordination needed is very satisfying when you finally beat it.

You then have a little fun part charging down a hallway destroying some Shriekers on your way to try and jump into a doorway for a nice chest reward.

Then you get to kill Ir Yut, which is the hardest part of the raid IMO and actually the only one that can't be cheesed. Although don't feel bad for Bungie because you also don't get any loot for beating it which I believe is a mistake. In general you have to lure out a wizard on both sides, then kill shriekers on both sides, then finally kill Ir Yut before she finishes her litany of death. It's still pretty fun and with all the enemies being a higher lvl than you it's quite difficult.

If you manage to get this far you get to try and beat Crota. He's a giant knight with a death sword as well as the ability to shoot you somehow. You have no healing in this part and must rely on passing a chalice around (think relic) in order to heal. You also have to kill a sword bearer, grab the sword, and as everyone else drops Crota's shield he will fall to his knees and the sword bearing guardian will go in and hit him to bring down his health. Rinse and repeat several times and you will be rewarded with Crota's End.

Hit him! Hit him!

 There are a number of decent drops in this raid including some fun weapons and cool looking armor that is the only way to get to lvl 32. Also new to this raid are the radiant materials needed to upgrade this raid's armor. You can only get the materials in the raid so it's going to be a while before I will reach 32. Luckily they retooled the drop system to take into account your previous winnings and try to get you something new. I've done the raid 6 times I think by now, and when I've gotten an item of some sort and not just materials, I've gotten something different every time except twice. So I think that's cool. I have gotten everything I need in order to get to 32, I just need the materials now, so back to the grind.

My new goal-weapon

 Alongside the new raid has come the new, and controversial, method of upgrading your old exotics into the new damage ceiling. This has you going back to Xur once a week to see what item he offers an upgrade, then having you fork out 7k glimmer and an exotic shard (which can be bought from Xur for 7 Strange Coins or received from dismantling an exotic item). Then you turn in your old exotic for a shiny new one with its base damage starting out at 300, and then you have to fully upgrade all the perks again to get it to the new damage ceiling of 330 or so, ending with another exotic shard for the last damage upgrade. People shouldn't be surprised at this type of method. It's clearly a way to increase the grind so they can brag about players playing their game, and is an unfortunate part of MMO like games. Most games have some type of system like this, and we all know that 99% of Destiny is a grind so we shouldn't be surprised. It's a shame that Bungie's changes and "expansions" usually are in the form of forcing you to grind some more but that seems to be the pattern. If you don't like it, stop playing.

They haven't released the hard version of the raid yet. This is probably a good thing although I think it's only done for their benefit, not the players'. I believe the reason they did this is twofold: They don't want to be shown up again and see that their hardest content can be beaten in less than a day, which it surely would have been. And they wanted some time to see how people beat it and find cheesy ways of beating it so they can patch it all so to make it extremely hard to beat it when it finally comes out. They also haven't released the raid legendary primary weapons, which will only drop in the hard raid. Oh well. I am still looking forward to trying to get the new stuff as I'm sure they are awesome, but it will be frustratingly difficult I'm sure. If Bungie spent half as much time just improving their game rather than trying to make sure players have a hard time beating it or preventing exploits, Destiny could have been something amazing. It's all part of the business of gaming these days. I also don't really like the new precedent of their definition of a hard difficulty is just to make the enemies be a level higher than you can possibly get. The hard raid I believe will end with lvl 33 enemies, and we can only get to 32. That's not really a good way of making something hard, it's a cop out. Make it hard through gameplay, not simply giving everyone a 20% decrease in damage.

Overall I think the expansion is still worth the money. I will definitely spend enough time playing the new stuff to warrant the cost, even though I have a sneaking suspicion it's more due to the addicting nature of the game rather than actual enjoyment, but I am still having fun playing with friends and meeting new people from all over the world. I really hope Bungie will listen to fans and try to make this game better in good ways and if not with this game, then for Destiny 2, but until then I will slog on towards my quest of getting and doing everything. As of this writing Bungie did make it so we can replay the 1st expansion mission which was previously unavailable, so that's good. It was probably an error but I'm glad they fixed it. Until next time, happy gaming!

Iron Banner 2.0 and Level 30

Boom, I'm level 30 (as my Warlock)! And I reached it actually without needing the Iron Banner gear. In a last ditch effort to get the remaining gear I needed (either the gauntlets or the helmet), I desperately tried to get a group together to do the hard raid. We started at Oracles and went all the way through Atheon. Despite 4 people being lvl 30 we had an annoyingly difficult time defeating Atheon, but in the end I was finally rewarded with 2 copies of the raid helmet, lol. Oh well, I'll take it. There are still a lot of things I would like from the raid, but I was finally able to reach lvl 30! I quickly did random bounties and anything I could to immediately become lvl 30. Now I can play Iron Banner without freaking out.

Now onto the Iron Banner 2.0 discussion: There have been a couple of changes, and they are all for the better, although I still don't think it's where it needs to be. Although I'm lvl 30, I'm still not seeing that much of a difference in the levels. If I, as a 30, am going up against a 26 or 27, they shouldn't be able to do a thing to me. Bungie probably didn't want to penalize lower lvl players as much but I thought the point was that your armor and weapons mattered? It doesn't seem to.

I have been pretty decent in Iron Banner, finishing in the top 3 almost every time. Although I will gladly finish last on my team if we get a win. That's my primary issue with IB. Although it is better than last time with you getting a loser token for every loss (up to 5), but it's still not great. Bungie managed to fit in even more RNG into the game in that it doesn't really matter how well or poorly you do, if your team is good, you will win. That's a good and bad thing. Good in that it stresses you need to play as a team, but bad in that you are punished for simply being a part of a bad team. If I do amazing, I should be rewarded. But in IB I could be thrown in with campers and other horrible IB control players that don't play correctly and we lose, and I get nothing until I happen to win by being placed on a good team. I personally think you should get limited reputation for being in a losing match, and a lot more for winning. I also think you should get a bonus if you are number one on your team. That would motivate people to do more. I've seen too many games where people will sit there idly when they start losing because they know they will get something at the end no matter what. And I get tired of working my butt off only to get the exact same thing as someone who either did nothing, or just joined and did nothing, then to top it all off the last place person frequently gets rewards. It sucks.

Lame

I still would say I'm enjoying IB though. Control is my favorite mode to play in multiplayer, even though I still don't like multiplayer as much as anything else in Destiny. I really like the rewards for this one. You can boots and gauntlets that can help you get to 30! Although I don't need them for my character I'm glad they are giving people a chance to "earn" that last remaining gear they need. That will be a big help for the next expansion. I also like how they aren't as good as the raid gear in that they don't have all the other nice perks. They just add to your light level. That seems fair. I also like how you can buy some special IB guns and I hear there are a couple that can dropped while playing that are exclusive to IB once you reach rank 3 and above. The thing I'm working hardest to get now is rank 5 so I can get the gold shader.

Reaching what will end up being rank 5 is a ridiculous process though. I have been fortunate enough to have a lot of time on my hand lately (usually late at night), to play, but I can't imagine someone who is even a little bit busy getting close to rank 5. Now Bungie has given us a consumable that costs 1 mote of light each that can be bought every day, and every day the event goes on the buff gives you more reputation for the IB. I don't know how many hours I've poured into IB this week but it's considerable. Easily over 10 hours, and I'm only lvl 3, almost lvl 4. I'm hoping I can do it but I actually won't be able to play for the next couple of days so that will be hard. I might have to depend on a late night Monday streak. Also, I need to play some single player to get some glimmer as I have run out purchasing various upgrades.

So if you have the time get in to IB and give it a try. It is much better than last time and hopefully it will be even better next time. Get your gear to get to lvl 30 asap because it's awesome!