Destiny Patch 1.1 Thoughts

We received a patch for Destiny that went live yesterday. Here are the patch notes and my thoughts are at the bottom:

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1.1 : The one about Exotics. And the Raid!

Today's patch includes the long-awaited arrival of Exotics weapon buffs, additional acquisition paths for destination upgrade materials, along with additional changes to exotic gear node upgrading in preparation for the soon-to-be-released expansion, The Dark Below. We're also correcting issues induced by our more recent update to the Raid.

Weapons

Exotics

Exotic Weapons are designed to look, feel, and sound overpowered. At the same time, they are not supposed to break the balance of the game. We hope these weapons challenge the way players think about their loadouts. Exotics will be a constant work in-progress!

General

• In preparation for the Dark Below, Exotic Armor and Weapons no longer require Ascendant Materials to upgrade
• The final upgrade node of all Exotic Gear will require an Exotic Shard
• Exotic Shards can be obtained by one of the following means:
• Dismantling unwanted Exotics
• Purchased from Xur for 7 Strange Coins
• Exotics now start at a higher base Attack value and have a narrowed upgrade range to compensate

Thorn

• Projectiles now briefly highlight targets on impact
• Mark of the Devourer DoT (damage-over-time) upgrade increased against PvE enemy targets
• Reload Speed increased
• Magazine Size increased
• Ammo inventory size increased
• Stability and Weapon Handling increased

Bad Juju

• Magazine Size increased to 8 bursts (was 5)
• Ammo inventory size increased
• String of Curses now also decreases the cooldown of your Super on kill
• Adjusted effects to not block first person reticle

Hard Light

• Stability increased
• Perfect Balance upgrade replaced by Fitted Stock (increases maximum possible weapon Stability)

Suros Regime

• Lowered total damage at the end of the mag on SUROS Regime upgrade to be more in line with the Glass Half Full perk on Legendary Auto Rifles

Monte Carlo

• Stability increased
• Range slightly decreased
• Monte Carlo Method upgrade now also has a chance to fully charge melee ability on kill

MIDA Multi-Tool

• MIDA rounds now have increased knockback against targets in both PvE and PvP

Hawkmoon

• Send It upgrade (which was redundant) replaced by Speed Reload

Red Death

• Rate of Fire increased slightly, but Burst Damage reduced to compensate

Plan C

• Weapon Handling speed increased
• Player Speed increased while Plan C is in hand

Pocket Infinity

• Speed Reload upgrade replaced by Extended Clip which allows the option to increase magazine size (5 bursts)

Vex Mythoclast

• Attack Power increased to 323 (from 300)
• Base Damage increased, fixing bug we introduced in previous patch
• Enhanced Battery upgrade by Extended Mag (this change still allows for a significant upgrade to Magazine Size, but less than before)

Invective

• Reload Speed increased significantly, auto fires slightly slower

Ice Breaker

• Send It upgrade replaced by Lightweight (which was redundant as Icebreaker already had maximum range) 
• New effects for enemies killed by Ice Breaker upgrade

Patience and Time

• Snapshot upgrade replaced by Custom Optics (provides a lower zoom option)

Super Good Advice

• Stability increased

Truth

• Magazine Size increased to 3 (was 1)
  

Activities

Raid

• Fixed an issue we introduced in a previous patch, in which Atheon did not correctly send 3 players through the time gates
• Fixed an exploit where the Templar could be forced off its platform

Daily Heroic Story

• Destination Materials now drop from completing the Daily Heroic

Bounties

• Removed the ‘Relic Hunter’ Bounty 
• Destination Materials now drop from completing the Daily Patrol Bounty 

 

Vendors

• Reduced Cryptarch reputation gain from Engrams, but reputation reward packages now have an increased chance for Legendary Engrams
• Players will now be able to use Vanguard Marks and Crucible Marks to purchase Spinmetal, Relic Iron, Spirit Bloom, and Helium Filaments from the Vanguard and Crucible Quartermasters in the Tower
• Xur now sells a new material, Exotic Shards, to upgrade the final node of Exotics for 7 Strange Coins
• Faction Class Items (ex: FWC Cloak, Dead Orbit Mark, etc.) are now replaced by Faction Emblems in the rank-up reward packages from Faction Vendors

Technical

• Networking fixes, which should reduce the instance of the Bee family of KTOs
• Fixed an issue in which using Xbox One party chat induced a slower frame rate

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Okay, so a lot of stuff there. Let's start at the top with the decision to remove the need for legendary ascendant materials to upgrade exotic weapons. It makes logical sense since the materials say legendary, but it's rather silly to have to get them via Xur. Yes, you can get them dismantling exotics, but let's face it, you pretty much only get exotics from Xur anyway. Sometimes you get them from the nightfall or raid but it's fairly uncommon. Now if you have everything fully upgraded you may need to wait until Friday in order to get the exotic shard you need. Hopefully it won't be too annoying. It would probably be smart to stock up on a few each week just in case. They only cost 7 strange coins so that's nice. I personally think a permanent vendor should sell them but whatever.

Now the various buffs to the exotics you can see for yourself but a couple of points are that the Thorn is finally decent! You practically couldn't use it in light of a number of other hand cannons that were flat out better in every way. But now the Thorn is a beast and I love it.It's such a cool looking gun and I'm glad to be motivated to use it. Now I just need to get an exotic shard ;).

They buffed the Bad Juju but I still don't think it's very good, which is a shame because I think it might be the coolest looking gun after the Mythoclast. The damage and impact are just too low, especially when compared to a number of other guns.

The Suros actually got a nerf, which may have been needed, but I hardly used it outside of crucible anyway. Now I definitely won't.

They actually buffed the Plan C which I am surprised, as that is pretty much universally considered to be the best fusion rifle. If you had it, you used it in crucible. Making it better is rather silly, but whatever.

They boosted the Mythoclast which was necessary. I wish they boosted it more as I am finding it hard to not use the Vision of Confluence and Ice Breaker combo, which in my opinion is the best in the game. It is nice to have a gun that does over 300 damage though, plus it looks amazing.

The Truth upgrade is a little silly since it actually has a magazine size of 2, not 1. So they just increased it by 1. That gun is not going to get used as long as the Gjallarhorn is around.

Now onto the raid fix. They fixed the teleportation glitch. Finally. You can't be too happy about stuff like that because it shouldn't have happened in the first place, but at least they did their job. I must ask why they didn't fix all the other crippling issues that the raid has though? Random minions regenerating health, the relic shield turning off or not working, the glitch where you don't get to go through the gate unless you slowly walk and take turns with people, Oracles not getting killed even though they should have, etc. Baby steps I suppose. They fixed the Templar glitch where you could push him off. That was probably necessary as it was kind of cheap. Now it will just make the raid a little more annoying. I wish they had fixed the crippling issues before fixing something that made the raid easier but it shows where Bungie's priorities are.

The daily Heroic story missions now also drop Destination Materials. And for those of you, like me, who had no clue what they were talking about: Destination Materials are the crafting materials like Spirit Bloom and Relic iron. That's a nice plus. And speaking of the crafting materials, they finally made it so you can purchase them at the Tower! That's awesome and was greatly needed. You can buy them with crucible or vanguard marks at a 2:1 ratio.

All in all it was a good patch, fixing several issues. There are still a lot of things that need to be fixed but I'm still glad for this. It does show that Bungie cares about their game. Now we just need some more content. Hopefully the DLC gives us that.

Destiny Exotic Bounties

So I finally got an exotic bounty. These things are uber hard bounties that net you an exotic weapon. There are many different kinds so I recommend looking up up which quest gives you which weapon so you can make sure you get what you want.

If you get the chance at an exotic bounty (it is completely random), you will be able to choose 1 out of 3, chosen from a pool of 6 different exotic bounties. Mine was called "A light in the dark", and the reward was the Thorn.

It looks so beautiful! My first task was to complete the "Summoning Pits" Strike on the Moon. I hate this Strike but at least I can do it on any difficulty and passed it with flying colors. I now had the Depleted Hand Cannon but needed to harvest the energies of the Hive on the Moon in order to activate it. This meant 500 Hive kills. This wasn't too hard as I need to roam around the moon looking for Helium Coils anyway.

I then had to go to the Crucible, however, and get 500 points. I had to use a Void damage weapon to do this and every kill netted me 5 points, but every death gave me -2 points. I was not happy about this as I don't usually play PvP. I nonetheless gave it a try. I tried it on control and regular deathmatch but the games were too chaotic and random and I'd die in really stupid ways so I knew that wasn't going to work. I then did the 3v3 mode and that worked much better. I was able to stay with my team and knew where my opponents would be so I just had to be good enough to kill them. Enter the Fusion Rifle. With this amazing weapon I was able to get my required kills fairly easily. I also used a Void rocket launcher in case any heavy ammo dropped. But after a while of doing it I finally completed the objective.

I now infused the hand cannon with the horrible darkness of the kills I made and had to go to the Speaker and buy an Infusion of Light off him for 1 Mote of Light in order to cleanse myself. Then I took it to Ikora Ray (Warlock Vanguard) and she gave me my final task: Kill Xyor the Unwed. This great annoyance of Light is found in the Hive Moon Strike again (Curse the Destiny gods!). I had to get to Phogoth but not kill him, and after killing tons of knights and wizards and such Xyor would eventually show up. With some help from my clanmates were were able to accomplish this and I returned to the speaker and was rewarded with my Thorn!

I really enjoyed the bounty, mainly because it allows you to get an exotic weapon, but also because it really is a long journey and when you get to the end of it you have a big feeling of accomplishment. You had to work hard to get this. Now watch me find it on a random drop tomorrow!