Guardians Report! A Destiny Thread.

Ah, have no idea, I'll have to check

Stonecutter wrote: I'm a Warlock, 297ish light. I run Zhalo/Hung Jury, Black Spindle/1000 Yard Stare, Void Sword/Whatever LMG I've got with the most light. Still desperately looking for a Telesto. Hopefully Xur sells it soon.

But seriously people. The Hung Jury scout rifle from Dead Orbit in the Tower and the 1000 Yard Stare from the Vanguard guy are two of the best guns in the game, and all you need to get them are legendary marks, which the game gives out 30 of a day.

Hung Jury is basically a laser beam, accuracy wise, and the perks on the one the emo dude sells are triple tap (three precision shots in a row give you an extra round in your mag) and firefly (precision kills make your enemy explode)

1000 yard stare has the highest impact (Impact = damage relative to the rest of its class of weapons) of all Snipers aside from Black Spindle and it has triple tap and mulligan.

This is literally the only video game I've played in the last month and a half aside from Hearthstone on my phone at lunch and before bed.

JohnTheAverage on PSN if you guys wanna run Kings Fall sometime, or just goof off in patrol. Just need the last two calcified fragments in the raid and I can get Touch of Malice.

Jeb, dear god man stop using sidearms in PvE.

haha, I will, I will. But I need a Solar damage weapon to take down shields, and the sidearm is it for now. Everything else in Special is shitty or non-Solar. I think I have something from Arms Day coming in today. Why so down on it, though, it fires like a Pulse Rifle and reloads crazy fast. There's a lot of conventional wisdom about FPSs and MMORPGs that I don't get and I frustrate the fuck out of my rando Strike mates all the time. Sorry, folks, you are carrying me.

I still haven't done Vault of Glass. I figure I will just piss everyone off if coordinated shit is required, so no Raids, Nightfall, Salvage, &c for me. The most annoying I will be is The Worst Guy On Your Clash/Control Team and the Where Is He Now Guy on your Heroic Strikes. And I wear my Deer Helmet on those so I minimize the downtime when you run over to rez me.

I saw some video on Hung Jury--looks smoov. I will pick that up, but it'll be competing with Zhalo. I need good Special Weapons. Preferably ones I don't need 300+ light to pick up. I am going to languish in the 280s for a while. I had to spend Legendary marks on decent Leg Armor. Just having no luck on my Engrams. I ust bought whatever New Monarchy had.

I am slowly bringing a Titan up to 40. I have some good stuff for that class. Once that happens I will get a Hunter to 25 with the Instajuice and keep on plugging away. Man, the obsession is real. It's Hearthstone and Destiny all day for me.

jeb wrote:
I still haven't done Vault of Glass. I figure I will just piss everyone off if coordinated shit is required, so no Raids, Nightfall, Salvage, &c for me. The most annoying I will be is The Worst Guy On Your Clash/Control Team and the Where Is He Now Guy on your Heroic Strikes. And I wear my Deer Helmet on those so I minimize the downtime when you run over to rez me.

I saw some video on Hung Jury--looks smoov. I will pick that up, but it'll be competing with Zhalo. I need good Special Weapons. Preferably ones I don't need 300+ light to pick up. I am going to languish in the 280s for a while. I had to spend Legendary marks on decent Leg Armor. Just having no luck on my Engrams. I ust bought whatever New Monarchy had.

I am slowly bringing a Titan up to 40. I have some good stuff for that class. Once that happens I will get a Hunter to 25 with the Instajuice and keep on plugging away. Man, the obsession is real. It's Hearthstone and Destiny all day for me.

Zahlo (all auto rifles) are short to mid range weapons. Zahlo specifically is the best weapon in the game for taking out trash mobs, but for yellow bar enemies and bosses you're gonna want something that hits harder and has more range. Also, Zahlo is an exotic and you can only equip one exotic weapon at a time so if you get an exotic special or heavy, you're gonna want a legendary primary to use when you're using your exotic. Hung Jury is the gun you want to complement it.

There's some good special weapons in the tower. The Dead Orbit shotgun is good, the Crucible shotgun is ok, the Vanguard shotgun is also good but seems to drop really frequently so maybe save your marks. The aforementioned 1000 yard stare is awesome (and solar.) Really, it's one of the best snipers in the game. The best fusion rifle in the tower is one of the two FWC ones, the high impact one, I forget which one that is specifically.

Have you done the gunsmith quest for the warlock yet? You get a legendary fusion rifle called Susanoo that has a perk that changes its element to whatever elemental ability you used last (so if you're throwing an arc grenade it'll go arc for a bit, then back to its base, which I think is Void)

You also get the Taloc exotic scout rifle at the end of the quest which is an exotic that is situtionally amazing, especially as a sunslinger.

On my main toon, I just got the Susanoo last night. Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but looks great. Switched to Dead Orbit to earn my way to Hung Jury too. I had the Crucible game of my life too! It was Control and I was just rocking it. My first time with > 2000 points, and I almost lead the team. So proud. I used a blue 299 Pulse Rifle and a blue 286 Shotgun, but a lot of it was well thrown Void Grenades and Supers.

In the meantime I am leveling my Titan (now 32) with Strikes. I keep having disconnects and the wait for Bungie to figure things out is excruciating. The sounds come back, but the screen stays dark. I just have to wait it out and look like a tool when the stats come up and it's only got my last 4 kills recorded.

Watched slayerage and company take on Hard King's Fall with just four last night. No one higher than 313 Light, either. It was intense and took a bunch of tries, but they pulled it off.

cool halloween destiny stuffs

Fully upgraded the Hawkmoon and brought it to PvP last night. Pretty good but not perfect for me. I think I need something like the Hawksaw pulse rifle or something to be decent at PvP. I have a decent shotgun but am awful for using it at proper range.

I sure prefer Control gametypes to the Deathmatch stuff

I'll prolly start Halo V tomorrow night but I'm really thinking I don't like the PvP in Destiny and Halo. I hate that if I come up to two bad guys, there's basically NO WAY i can win that situation if I don't have a rocket launcher and even then. Whereas in CoD, I could come up to 3 or 4 tangos and take them all out on my own if I have element of surprise or if I'm just much better than them. In Destiny, that just doesn't work. I don't know why everyone gets a radar knowing where I am at all times. Nuts.

I just started this game, Hunter level 10.

I have no idea what you people are talking about. I can't parse this game for shit. I shoot stuff, stuff falls out of things I shoot, and sometimes I run into stuff that won't die no matter how much I shoot it.

Is there like a short concise "how to play Destiny" guide? Even basic shit like the interface isnt explained well in game. What are these colored numbers coming off of things, how to activate voice chat, what the colored dots above folks in the Tower are....

I can field some of these...

• The numbers next to a toon's name are its level. Your weapons deal damage based on the level difference. So, if you (Level 10) bump into a Level 14 Dreg you are going to have a tough time because your weapon isn't even dealing half its damage. The punishment is pretty severe, so even something a couple levels up is tough as nails. As you shoot the toons, you see the damage you are dealing. Body shots deal plain old damage (120), critical hits (headshots for the most part, there are exceptions) deal more damage (146).
• Damage comes in four types: Kinetic (plain), Void (Purple), Solar (Orange), and Arc (Blue). You're fighting enemies with shields sometimes--they "glow" and have an extra white bar on their life total. The color of the glow indicates what kind of damage you should hit them with or you'll take a penalty by not dealing as much. You can usually just plow through it though.
• Voice chat usually gets activated when you're on a Fireteam. You can use the menus to invite folks to your fireteam and allow others to invite you. You can also just set up a Party (on PS4 at least).
• The colored dots usually mean you have a Quest with that NPC, or you have some stuff for that NPC (like the Cryptarch who turns the little balls that pop out of dudes into guns and armor).

I haven't seen any guides really. I am sure they are out there, but the jist is basically, get quests, when able, get Bounties (you can do this now, or soon as I recall), and use those to level up. Shoot stuff to get better gear. Your gear levels up too, so when you go to tell some NPC about how you finished a Quest for them, put on any gear you want to level up before turning it in.

Hmm, that helps. I've never played an MMO before so there are probably lots of things I'm totally clueless on.

For example, what does levelling up gear do? Fill in those little circles under the "Y" screen that give bonuses? Seems like I"m always finding stuff with a way better score than what I have on. Same with my character. There are several circles filling in, do I actually have a choice in this or are they all times to fill in as I level up (or is filling them in what triggers a level up?). And light. What specifically raises it? It just seems to go up whenever I put on stuff with a higher score, but there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason (the average of all my stuff?). Should I be spending glimmer on new gear? Is there a point to a new bike or ship or are they all cosmetic?

I enjoy the pew pew and I like the visual aesthetic but there doesn't seem to be much meat to the game to justify playing it over Halo, COD, or anything else. Guess I need to get into the team stuff more. I did one strike with some random guys. But we never talked (or I couldn't figure out how to talk/listen), still got through it anyway.

The Halloween stuff is by far the most fun I've had with this game.

Jason, leveling up your gear gives the items perks. Some of these are amazing. Don't bother leveling up anything except for legendary and exotic gear.

Yeah while you level up, you'll find stuff with s better score. Equip the highest attack and defense items to increase your light level which determines the quality of the items that drop.

Don't spend glimmer on gear. You'll always find better stuff. The things worth buying cost strange coins (xur) or legendary marks. I used most of my initial glimmer to join the Dead Orbit faction.

New bikes go faster, that's about it

I've been playing for six weeks or so and I prefer CoD so far. Will probably stop playing now and try out Halo instead

jason10mm wrote: Hmm, that helps. I've never played an MMO before so there are probably lots of things I'm totally clueless on.

For example, what does levelling up gear do? Fill in those little circles under the "Y" screen that give bonuses? Seems like I"m always finding stuff with a way better score than what I have on. Same with my character. There are several circles filling in, do I actually have a choice in this or are they all times to fill in as I level up (or is filling them in what triggers a level up?). And light. What specifically raises it? It just seems to go up whenever I put on stuff with a higher score, but there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason (the average of all my stuff?). Should I be spending glimmer on new gear? Is there a point to a new bike or ship or are they all cosmetic?

I enjoy the pew pew and I like the visual aesthetic but there doesn't seem to be much meat to the game to justify playing it over Halo, COD, or anything else. Guess I need to get into the team stuff more. I did one strike with some random guys. But we never talked (or I couldn't figure out how to talk/listen), still got through it anyway.

I am also new to MMOs, so I also don't get a lot of the lingo. Strikes vs Raids vs this vs that is not well understood for me. I think it's basically that Strikes are very small instances (i.e., 3-person) that start in the big world (i.e., you'll see other players around), but then the Striketeam passes some threshhold (Limited Spawning) and it's just them from there on out until the Strike is done. These have matchmaking. Don't worry about not talking to these folks. I have literally never spoken to a Strikemate and have done dozens and dozens of them.

Raids are more complicated instances that require you to bring a Fireteam and need some solid communication. Vault of Glass, Crota's End, King's Fall are all Raids, and need a group and strategy. There are all kind of folks willing to sherpa you through these when you feel like you are ready, check Reddit . I have never done a Raid.

Crucible is the PvP stuff and don't believe their lies when they say No Level Bonus. This is true, but you bring your own weapons. You will get absolutely destroyed unless you are Lvl 35 or higher, and even then, it'll be tough until 40 because your guns take all day to kill someone. That said, check out Mayhem, when grenades and Supers charge fast. You can get in there and have a good time once you have grenades and supers.

Don't listen to Barney about never leveling blue and green items up. Level your stuff up. When you dismantle it you get more parts, glimmer ($$), and other bonuses (Motes of Light, Strange Coins) in return and you'll want those later. And yes, leveling up activates the perks, like "This gun reloads faster when the clip is empty," or "Longer grenade throw range." The perks progress from right to left, but you don't get all of them, some columns are "pick one" style. Like you can have the wicked scope for long range shots -or- the handcrafted stock for better handling, but not both.

Your Light is exclusively a function of how big the numbers are on your stuff (guns and armor). So, you might have some guns that you really like at 110 Light, say, but a shitty one (small clip, long reload, &c) at 124. I play with my 110, but keep the 124 in my inventory and equip it when I go see the Cryptarch because he looks at your Light level when deciding what you get. So, best practice is to equip Highest Light when decrypting stuff and equip stuff you actually want to play with when leveling up. (Mind you, once something is fully leveled it can't level any more, so you might want to swap something else in for that chunk even if you aren't going to play with it).

Bikes, Ships, Emotes, Banners, Armor Shaders are all cosmetic. No impact on the game at all, unless the game is swag, which it is, and I look incredibly fly. Honestly, I am choking on Glimmer, so I bought a pricey ship and a cool banner. I earned some Shaders. They look nice. Playing dressup is a big part of this. Glimmer mostly gets spent on upgrading your stuff at this point. Later on it gets spent on orders with the Gunsmith, good weapons from the Tower, and buffing stuff, but don't sweat it now.

The game is basically shoot stuff and have fun. Some folks minmax within an inch of their lives. Some folks never want to die and get all pissy when they have to revive you. Whatever man, just have a good time. Join public events when you see them (Defend the Warsat! High Value Target!), help folks out when you can and feel your way around.

So I'm going to try and clear up as much of this as I can:

Leveling weapons just unlocks perk slots (the circles that give bonuses) Perks are what makes or breaks a gun, honestly. There are only so many "Archetypes" of each weapon. When two guns, even with different names, have the same archetype, same perk set and same light level (damage) they're the same gun.

For an example of archetype I'll do the gun I know best: scout rifles.

There's three main scout archetype.

High impact, low rate of fire:

Last Extremity is an example of a high impact low rof
www.bungie.net/en/Armory/Detail?type=ite...ame=Last%20Extremity

Impact stat is 61 (damage it does relative to other scouts) rate of fire is 27

Any 61/27 scout is going to behave similarly to Last Extremity

My boo, Hung Jury, is a 37 ROF 48 impact. This is the Mid-Mid archetype
www.bungie.net/en/Armory/Detail?type=ite...me=Hung%20Jury%20SR4

And a gun like the SUROS DIS 47 is a low impact, high ROF, it's 52 ROF 35 Impact
www.bungie.net/en/Armory/Detail?type=ite...mname=SUROS%20DIS-47

There are a handful of exceptions, and there are going to be guns that have better range but less stability or more stability but less range that fall into those archetypes too, but as Impact and ROF are the two stats that are going to effect your DPS, which is what most people care about.

Archetypes may be "better" or "worse" in terms of raw DPS but the amounts will be so minimal you're best going with whatever feels right to you.

For the record

Impact = Damage relative to other guns of its type, but also just in general (hand cannons have more impact than scouts)
Range = How far a gun will do it's maximum damage. Damage will begin "falling off" past max range. I don't know what the value is
Stability = How much recoil affects the gun, how close two shots are going to be to one another
Handling (hidden stat, shown in some databases but not in game) = How quickly you can aim down sights and how quickly you can shoot this gun when switching to it
Accuracy (hidden) = How much aim assist a gun has
Recoil (hidden) or "recoil direction" or "more predictible recoil" is hard to explain, but basically imagine emptying an entire mag into a wall, there will be a pattern of bullets in a cone or egg shape. A gun with a higher (better) recoil stat is going to have a narrower cone, or a thinner egg. It's different from stability because stability mostly effects how quickly your gun recenters and thus how long your egg or cone is, recoil is how wide the cone is.

Planet destiny lists the hidden stats, you can see them here:
db.planetdestiny.com/items/view/1703777169

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However, leveling weapons is different from ASCENDING weapons. Ascending weapons requires a weapon of the same type (primary, special, heavy, IE, a shotgun can infuse a sniper, but not a pulse)

Only legendaries (purple) and exotics (gold) can be ascended.

You need the gun, some glimmer, 10 weapons parts, (maybe a mote of light or something) and higher light level blue, purple or gold weapon

If you dump a higher level gun into a purple, the purple will increase to either
A) That gun's light level if the difference is 5 light or less
80% of the difference of a gun's light if it's more than 5.

So a 285 into a 280 will make a 285. A 290 into a 280 will make a 288.

Also there's probably some max amount a gun can jump in one infusion cause I tried dropping a 280 into a 200 once and it only went to like 245

If you dump a higher level gun into a gold exotic the math is a little different (4 points seems to be the furthest a gun can jump without falloff) and also they require an exotic shard.

If you get a purple gun with a good perk roll, keep it and infuse it. A purple hand cannon with luck in the chamber and firefly and extended mag? Holy shit, who cares if it's 230 light, infuse that baby like crazy.

Another way of looking at this is: at some point all of your guns are going to be high light levels, once you get there, it's all about perk rolls on the archetype you prefer.

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Light level is very confusing so I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible
1) A higher light level will mean more damage with your super, grenade, and melee attack
2) A higher light level will mean you deal more damage and receive less damage in PVE
3) Your overall light level AND an item's individual light level BOTH effect damage dealt with weapons.

So say you have a 280 scout rifle equipped and a 280 shotgun equipped AND you're light level 280.

You infuse the shotgun to 285 and your overall light goes to 281. Your shotgun does more damage and because your light level goes up your scout will do more damage.

But say you infuse your shotgun to 283 instead of 285 and your light stays at 280. Your shotgun will do more damage but your scout will NOT.

Armor is cumulative so it's less important but yes, if you infuse a gun and it increases your overall light level, your defense goes up.

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Strikes come in four flavors
Map Director strikes: These are the ones you select on the destination screen. They're at a given level. Boom, done.
Level 20 classic strikes: This is a playlist of old strikes that will launch at level 20
Level 36 taken king strikes: This is the standard strike playlist. It launches strikes at level 36, some of them are new to Taken King, some are old strikes made harder and remixed with new enemies
Level 40 Heroic strikes: This is the same as the level 36 strike playlist, but harder. The first three you beat in a week will give you 10 legendary marks each.

As for reviving. All strikes have "darkness zones" (this is when the skull pops up, if you're not sure, it stays on the left side of your health bar. Most difficult sections of strikes are darkness zones. When you're in a darkness zone, if everyone dies, you wipe and go back to the last checkpoint. WHen you're in a darkness zone there's no auto revive. You have to wait 30 seconds and then have an ally revive you.

When you're NOT in a darkness zone, allies can revive you as normal, OR you can wait 30 seconds and self rez.

There are some cool strike specific gear that will only drop on a given strike, but they will drop at ANY level, even on the director, so if you really want Treads Upon Stars you can go into the director and run the strike over and over again for it to drop (It will never drop because the RNG hates you)

Nightfall strikes used to be a bigger deal, now, basically, they're just once a week, they're super hard, they have a slightly better chance of dropping good loot, and they're going to have several modifiers from this list destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Modifier the combat is raid level hard.

All strikes, except the nightfall, have matchmaking. All strikes, except the nightfall, can be beaten by properly leveled players even with dopes in your match.

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RAIDS are a whole different beast. Raids are separate from strikes, they use their own levels and they have mechanics that are outside of regular destiny (The newest strike has a ton of platforming, for example) You need a fireteam and you honestly need mics. It sucks that they're so gated but they're the best content. All of them have multiple bosses. All of the bosses require you to do something beyond just shoot the bad guy in the weak spot, you'll have relics that will protect you from instant kills, you'll have relics that can make a boss vulnerable, etc etc.

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When they say the crucible takes away advantages, they're ONLY talking about damage dealt and received from light level. A gun with x impact will do y damage
to a target regardless of who shoots and who gets shot. My grenades will do as much damage as your grenades if we're using the same class and same grenade.

EVERYTHING ELSE is still in play, meaning if I have more discipline, my grenades will cool down faster. If I have an exotic weapon with a special perk, I still get that perk.

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If you want to play, but you don't know what to do, here's what I recommend.

Start up, go to the tower, go to the bounty board, get all the vanguard bounties.

Don't even look at them, just play, you'll end up completing most of them.

If you want to shoot baddies and have fun, go in patrol and wait for "the taken corruption" events to start, they almost always draw a few players and are really fun with 3 or 4. The Rocketyard on Earth is a good place for this, as are Ishtar Commons on Venus and Scablands on Mars. The Court of Oryx is another good place to fight as a group, but two tips: ONE go in through the breach, not the mausoleum, for some reason this seems to spawn people more consistency. TWO: WALK in, don't run, walk the last few steps. This gives the servers an extra second to match you with an instance that has players in it already (which it's already trying to do.)

If you want to improve your light level and get good stuff, run level 36 strikes (you can run 40 strikes too but if you have all the legendaryies for the week they're just harder and take longer, but maybe you prefer this...)

I hope this helps.

Oh and one more thing when it comes to leveling weapons.

The more you level up a weapon, the more glimmer, motes, and weapon parts it will dismantle into. Realize when I say "more" the difference might be 3 vs 2, or 2 vs 1, but it's still "more."

But you don't need to unlock the perks.

As long as the circles are outlined in green, you're getting more. Eventually everyone hits a point where you have more guns you want to upgrade than you have weapon parts, so you can fully level a gun and not unlock the perks, get the most weapons parts from dismantling, and not dump any parts into the gun.

You can also farm weapon parts with an exotic shard. Go to the exotic weapons kiosk, buy a gun, dismantle it into 3 or 4 parts, get your shard back, repeat until you're out of glimmer. 2500 glimmer might seem like a steep price to pay for 4 weapon parts but eventually it becomes necessary.

Just picked this up. Mostly following quests and shooting thangs, seems simple so far

Man this Halloween stuff is really well done. Lots of fun.

I really screwed up bad last night though. I've been collecting engrams for quite a while, just never finding the time to go back to the Tower to decrypt, what with all the advanced strike playlists and nightfall shenanigans. So last night I finally get back to the tower and go trick or treating with my new Oryx mask! Aweaome fun. Since I'm there, I swing by the Cryptarch and decyper all my engrams. Dozens of them. Including at least one legendary.

I go through my stuff afterwards and I noticed the light level of all this new gear is AWFUL. Like low 200's and stuff. I then realize I decrypted everything wearing my stupid 0 light level Oryx halloween mask instead of my 290 Helm of Saint's 14 . AH NUTS