A guide to Destin'y raid, "The Vault of Glass"

I’ve played a lot of Destiny. My Titan is level 29 with exotic chest armor, multiple exotic weapons and legendary everything else. I’ve played every story mission, strike, daily and weekly mission what feels like hundreds of times over at this point. I’ve even delved into the Crucible and Iron Banner playlists a few times – enough to get my Crucible rank up to three (as well as my Vanguard rank being at 4). Like I said – I’ve played Destiny a lot.

But the only thing I hadn’t done in Destiny was experience the Raid – the Vault of Glass.

That was until this past weekend when my usual strike team finally found a few more teammates on DestinyLFG.com and managed to tackle the monstrous task of completing the Vault of Glass.

Luckily, two of the people we teamed up with had run the raid before and weren’t against playing with first-timers. While my usual strike team didn’t really know what to expect from the raid, I had watched a YouTube video of people playing it and had an idea of what to expect – but I still wasn’t completely ready for what was to come.

Opening the Vault

The first section was simple – defend three zones and don’t allow a certain Vex enemy into it while a door opens. Since everyone in the party was level 28 or above, this was a piece of cake.

Also, it should be noted that the Vault of Glass is entirely populated by Vex enemies, meaning you’ll want to have weapons that do Void damage to deal with the larger Vex’s shields.

After entering the Vault and making our way inside, I realized just how much loot there is to be had. You’re rewarded with items after each section (sometimes weapons or raid armor, but mostly ascendant materials) but there are also chests to be had, if you can find them. Some are on your way to the next objective, but some are hidden.

I should also point out another factor that makes the raids in Destiny so much more different from any other aspect of the game. Unlike the missions and strikes, you get practically no direction in the Vault of Glass. You’re usually given an objective to accomplish or a direction to travel but in the raid, you’re on your own. The first section of the Vault wouldn’t have been too hard to figure out but without the help of experienced players or the internet, I don’t think we ever would’ve figured out how to proceed through the rest of the raid.

The Templar

With the first section complete, we ventured deeper into the Vault. Eventually, you come to an area where you fight the Templar, which looks like the boss at the end of the Nexus strike. When you first enter this area, the Templar can’t be harmed. Instead, you must defend several confluxes from Vex trying to sacrifice themselves. If too many sacrifice, you have to start over. During this time the Templar will send Fanatics at you, Vex enemies that, when killed, leave behind a pool of green slime and if you touch it, you received the Mark of Negation. Every so often the Templar will perform the Ritual of Negation, killing any marked players and the only way to remove it is by entering a glowing area in the center of the map.

After defending the confluxes, we then had to face the Oracles. These aren’t enemies in the traditional sense, since they stay in one spot and are just a glowing ball of light. But you’ll need to kill them as quick as possible because if you don’t, the entire team receives the Mark of Negation. Seven different Oracles will appear on the map with increasingly difficult waves of enemies, such as Fanatics and Hobgoblins on floating platforms outside of the map. Also, the Templar is shooting at you all during these waves.

Once the Oracles are dealt with you can finally fight the Templar itself. While the battles up to this point needed every player to be doing his part in killing enemies efficiently, the fight with the Templar requires everyone be on the same page since killing the Templar requires precise timing and teamwork.

At this point in the fight, a relic spawns (which looks like a shield) and wielding it allows the player a third person view of the action. The relic replaces your weapons with powerful melee attacks but also allows you to cleanse teammates of the Mark of Negation. But its most important function is taking down the Templar’s shields. The relic holder’s super meter will charge (and charges more quickly by killing enemies) and once charged, can fire a projectile that takes down the Templar’s shields. When the projectile lands, some players will be surrounded by a bubble shield that must be destroyed before they can fire on the Templar. Make sure you use small arms to take out the bubble shield – if you try to fire a rocket when the Templar’s shield goes down and you get locked in a bubble shield, you’ll just kill yourself.

The Templar’s shields will only stay down for a limited time and he’ll eventually teleport. But you can block this teleport by standing in a specified zone, leaving him open to attacks for a longer period of time. Though if you do this, the Templar will spawn Minotaur enemies.

Once we finally beat the Templar I got another awesome item – the Suros Regime, an exotic assault rifle. I’d been using a legendary AR up to that point but always wanted the Suros. Though, it’s hard to decide between using that and my Icebreaker sniper rifle, since Destiny only allows you to use one exotic at a time.

The next two sections of the Vault aren’t based on combat but still took us a hell of a long time to complete.

The Gorgon Maze and The Pit

The first is the Gorgon Maze. All you have to do in this area is find the exit. Sounds pretty simple right? Except for the fact that there are several Gorgon enemies roaming the map and if even one member of your squad is seen by them, your entire team dies and sent back to the beginning of the maze. Like killing the Templar, the Gorgon Maze requires a huge amount of teamwork to navigate correctly.

There are a couple chests to be found in the maze but we only found one – which can be found if you hug the right hand side of the map when you first enter the maze.

In the maze, Gorgons will kill you on sight are also attracted by firing your weapon and double jumping. It’s easy to avoid them if you know their patterns and jumping isn’t necessary. I’d suggest looking up a video or checking out this link to the map above. The first time we tried the raid, we were stuck here for a long time – not just because one of us (me) broke down and looked up a video to find the exit but because our team wasn’t staying together and kept being seen by the Gorgons.

After the maze is a short platforming section. Several platforms appear over a vast chasm which requires carefully timed jumps and uses of your double jump to clear. Make sure you also keep in mind that there is fall damage because even if it seems like you’ve cleared it, it’s easy to fly to high and crash and burn.

Once you’ve successfully navigated the chasm, you’re in the home stretch but a long battle still awaits – especially if you’re unfamiliar with the final boss, Atheon.

The Vault of Glass

Once you get to the actual Vault of Glass itself, you’ll want to make sure everyone is grouped in the doorway with a sniper rifle equipped. Directly across from you is a Nexus-like enemy called the Gatekeeper. If you’re all firing in sync, the Gatekeeper will go down quickly but if you don’t kill him fast enough, he’ll move out of sight and you’ll need to find him and take him out before the next section begins.

Inside the Vault there is a floating platform in front of where you enter and on either side, there are two portals powered up by a sync plate on the floor in front of them and in the middle of each sync plate is a small pillar. Across from the entrance door is a larger area where a conflux will spawn (eventually) in front of a massive staircase where the final boss, Atheon, spawns. Keep this layout in mind as I explain the rest of the fight.

The next section is actually a little more difficult than the final fight with Atheon, in my opinion. Each portal takes you to a version of the room that’s either in the past or in the future. The past version looks like Mars (dusty and brown) while the future version looks like Venus (green and full of plant life). After killing the gate keeper, you’ll need to activate the portals and enter them (one at a time) and retrieve a relic.

It doesn’t matter which portal you enter first but three should go in to retrieve the relic while three stay outside to defend the sync plate. Once one team goes in, Vex will begin to spawn (with Hallowed Praetorians) to try and close the portal. If the Praetorian gets to the plate, the portal closes and must be reactivated before the team inside can exit.

The team inside has their own set of problems. One person must pick up the relic while the others fight through Vex to reach the exit. While inside the portal, you’re constantly hit with the Mark of Negation and your vision will continually be obscured into darkness until cleansed. Both teams really have to work together to both keep the portal open and exit the portal quickly.

Once the portal team is back, the conflux will spawn and must be protected. But it must be protected while the same process as above is completed for the second portal. Since there are two areas to protect and only three players outside the portal to protect them, this portion is where things generally start to break down. It’s a good idea to have the player with the relic protect the conflux, one player stay at the sync plate while the third player floats in between, giving support where needed.

If you manage to bring the second relic through, they both disappear back into the portals and Atheon is summoned. Depending on how good your teamwork is, this fight can be completed in a matter of minutes or it can take much, much longer.

Once Atheon is on the field, you can shoot at him all you want but you won’t do much damage to him at all. And keep in mind he is a Vex, so his weak spot is in the center of his body.

After a minute or so, Atheon will teleport three players at random to either the Mars or Venus location. The teleported players will need to let the other three know where they went so the ones outside can activate that portal. (Before a patch, Atheon would teleport the three players furthest away from him, allowing your team to dictate a home and away team, so to speak. But, of course, Bungie changed it up to keep things fresh/be jerks and now Atheon teleports people at random.)

The players outside will need activate the specific portal while also dealing with explosive Harpy enemies (whose name escapes me at the moment). This is where the small pillar in the center of the sync plate comes into play, allowing you to stay out of the blast radius of the Harpies while also keeping the plate active.

The team inside has a similar task as before only now there are several Oracles which must be dealt with before exiting the portal. The player with the relic should concentrate on killing the Vex ground units while the other two focus on the Oracles. This allows the relic bearer to charge the relic and cleanse the team to exit the portal.

Once the final Oracle is killed, you have a 30 second window to do damage to Atheon. Once the relic is out of the portal, everyone should head to that center, floating platform in front of where Atheon spawns. The relic bearer pops open his shield which, unlike a Titan shield, allows you to fire through it so you can damage Atheon but he can’t hit you. To end the fight quicker, make sure that you have at least one Titan in your party who has Weapons of Light equipped in the Defender subclass to power up your weapons and open this shield behind the relic bearer’s. During that 30 second window, you’ll want to dump all the Heavy ammo and sniper rounds into Atheon that you can.

Once the 30 seconds is up, the relic disappears. This process continues until Atheon (or your party) is dead. So as you can see, if your party is equipped properly and working together, you might be able to kill Atheon in 3 maybe even 2 teleports. But the longer the fight goes, the more chance there is to screw up inside the portal or to have sync plate defenders die and those inside trapped in time forever.

The Vault of Glass raid is unlike any other challenge that Destiny presents. It requires great timing, skill, communication and teamwork from everyone in your fireteam and it’s easy to sink several hours into the raid and still not complete it. Luckily, after each portion of the raid is completed you’re rewarded with ascendant materials, raid gear or raid weaponry. In my first raid I got a piece of raid gear for my Titan as well as the Suros Regime assault rifle and in another run, I got a legendary scout rifle that has a perk which allows me to do extra damage to Oracles.

The raid is basically what everything in Destiny builds towards and all players should try to experience it at least once. If time is an issue, know that at the end of each segment you hit a checkpoint which allows you to exit the game and resume it at that point another time (though, only if the same person is the fireteam leader as was when you hit the checkpoint). The website www.DestinyLFG.com (which stands for Looking For Games) is a great place to find other players looking to complete the raid, since Bungie did a less than stellar job of giving players the tools to do this in the game itself.

The Vault of Glass is no joke and one of the hardest trials I’ve ever faced in a video game but completing it gave me a sense of accomplishment like no other game has ever provided.

First Impressions – Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, The Evil Within and Lords of the Fallen on PlayStation 4

It’s been a long time since I got a new PlayStation 4 game. Well, the last one I got was Destiny so I guess it hasn’t been too long but still…I’ve gotten really burnt out on Destiny the last week or two and while the free PlayStation Plus games are fun, they don’t hold my attention for very long.

Well thanks to a “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” promotion at Target this week (that ends Saturday so get out there soon if you want to take advantage), I was able to pick up “Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor,” “The Evil Within” and “Lords of the Fallen.” Three fairly different games which are relatively new and each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  I’m going to try and do full reviews for each, eventually, but for now, I’ll give you my initial thoughts on the short time I’ve spent with each so far.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

The game I’ve spent the most time playing so far has easily been Shadow of Mordor. Out of all three games I picked up, this one had the most buzz surrounding it and got the most praise from people I’ve talked to.

In Shadow of Mordor, you play as Talion, a ranger from Gondor who is avenging the death of his family after Sauron’s army of orcs and uruks invade the land of Udun. His quest for revenge has him taking on an almost endless army of orcs and uruks, assassinating captains and war chiefs in hopes of one day reaching the Black Hand of Sauron. Though Talion is only a lone ranger, he has one ally – an elf wraith who can assist Talion in a number of ways. The wraith, much like Talion, had his life destroyed by the Black Hand and can utilize many supernatural abilities and is bound to Talion throughout the game.

Shadow of Mordor is a third person action/adventure game which has very strong similarities to other popular series such as “Batman: Arkham City” and “Assassin’s Creed.” It most strongly resembles “Arkham City” in that it takes place in a giant, open-world environment, taking on various activities, side quests and main quests. There’s a ton of different collectibles and aspects of Talion to level up which can be a little overwhelming at first but the actual gameplay – exploration and killing uruks – is simple enough and the rest comes over time.

One of the most interesting aspects of Shadow of Mordor is the nemesis system. In this game, one of your main activities will be hunting down the captains and war chiefs in the uruk army. Each of these uruks has a distinct appearance and set of traits which can be used against them in battle – things like beasts that they are afraid of, ways to kill them instantly or personality traits like using poison in battle or will never flee battle. There is also a distinct hierarchy to the uruk army and killing one captain often reshuffles the deck, adding new enemies in different positions of power.

These uruk captains will remember you from previous encounters and their reaction to you will actually be quite different depending on your past interactions with them. For instance, right now I have been at odds with a powerful captain named Kugaluga Blood Storm. We’ve clashed several times over the course of my game and usually when I encounter him he’ll acknowledge past fights and how he has a score to settle with me. It’s really an interesting system and one that serves to draw you deeper into the game world, knowing that your actions have a distinct effect on your enemies and that they will be remembered.

The Evil Within

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a good survival horror game and The Evil Within is definitely one of the more gruesome and challenging survival horror games to be released in recent years. The director of Evil Within is Shinji Mikami, who is the creator of the Resident Evil series, and if anyone can create a standout horror game, it’s Mikami.

You play as Detective Sebastien Castellanos. You start the game investigating a mass murder at a hospital but are quickly thrust into a strange world of macabre beings replete with bloody gore and horrifying imagery. Checkpoints and save points are seldom and you’ll often be close to death as health items and weaponry are also quite scarce. But that should be expected, being that this is a survival horror game.

Evil Within is a very odd game and it’s often hard to tell if you’re in the real world or some kind of strange, supernatural representation of it. Unlike Resident Evil, which told a fairly straight forward story about special forces dealing with a zombie outbreak, Evil Within is much more obscure. Granted I’m only on the third chapter, I still have no idea what is really going on.

I definitely want to delve deeper into Evil Within but I’ve been so wrapped up with Shadow of Mordor, it’s tough to switch between this game and the third game I picked up.

Lords of the Fallen

Have you ever wondered what Dark Souls would be like if it had a discernable story? If you have, Lords of the Fallen is basically your answer.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Souls series. It’s story is too ambiguous and the learning curve is way too steep for someone who hasn’t practically devoted their life to the series. But Lords of the Fallen takes all the difficult combat and XP risk/reward that Souls offers and puts it in a much more visually pleasing package as well as having a narrative which the game makes an effort to tell you about.

Lords of the Fallen is a third person action/adventure RPG where you play as Harkyn, criminal who is given a chance at redemption when an army of evil gods and demons attack the human realm. Combat is almost identical to the Souls series so if you’ve played them, you can jump right into Lords of the Fallen. Magic is handled a bit differently, though, as every class has access to the Gauntlet, which allows you to use various spells. XP and leveling up is also similar, in that you can only spend it at certain points in the game world and if you die, you must reacquire any XP you lost or lose it forever.

There are three different classes, though I didn’t take too long to inspect them. In RPGs I tend to always go with the brawler/fighter character and don’t mess with rogues or ranged characters. What was interesting about Lords is that along with picking a class, you can also pick your magic style. Each class has a different array of spells to utilize and you can mix and match according to your play style.

I’d imagine that deeper into the game you’ll battle monsters and otherworldly beings but I’m only an hour or two into it and so far I’ve only come up against enemies using a sword and shield like me.

Like Evil Within, I’d like to have put more time into Lords but Mordor has its hooks in me right now and that’s the game I’ve been focusing on. Though, I am very happy with each purchase and would say each are well worth the money. Shadow of Mordor is the most accessible game of the three, being that it closely resembles other popular titles. But Evil Within and Lords of the Fallen both offer their own unique benefits and challenges and would appeal to fans of survival horror and action RPGs, respectively. Look out for reviews of each (hopefully) coming up.

Destiny patch 1.0.2 brings fixes for several issues

If you’ve been playing Destiny and have reached level 20, you’re probably familiar with this scenario – be out killing aliens and happen upon a purple engram. “Sweet,” you think, “This is going to net me some legendary gear!” Only, once you get back to the Tower and have the Cryptarch decode it for you, it turns into rare or uncommon gear.

This heartbreaking scene played out more times than I can remember in my game and I’m sure in many other games as well. In Destiny, there are color-coded tiers of value for weapons and gear – common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), legendary (purple) and exotic (yellow). Engrams are special items that are classified by weapon or armor piece but the specifics are unknown until it is “decrypted” by an NPC at the Tower.

Until Patch 1.0.2 was released, a purple engram could be decoded into a purple item but all too often could turn into a blue item, a class below. Personally, before 1.0.2, out of 10-15 legendary engrams I found out in the world or as a reward from a strike or a Crucible game, I only got one or two legendary items and the rest were rare items that I didn’t need. Though, from a legendary before the patch I did get an exotic weapon – the Ice Breaker sniper rifle. I wasn’t too high on it at first, since I’m a Titan and not much of a sniper but the more I use it the more I love it. It has a 6 shot clip and it regenerates ammo and never needs to be reloaded. Also, its upgrades are awesome. Missed shots have a chance to be returned to your magazine and enemies killed combust and have a chance to deal damage to nearby enemies among other perks.

But I’m getting off topic. With the release of Patch 1.0.2, every engram you find from now on will either be that class or better – never worse. This is great news for everyone (including myself) who had become jaded with the fact that legendary engrams never seemed to turn into legendary gear, only blue stuff that usually wasn’t of any use.

The new patch also increases the chance that you will earn or happen across blue and purple engrams. Drops for these items seem to be increased in the PvE modes and now you’re more likely to earn them in the Daily Heroic Mission, the Weekly Heroic Mission and the Tiger-level strikes in the Strike Playlist.

Patch 1.0.2 also adjusts some elements of the Crucible. The time limit for the Bastion and First Light maps in Control and Clash has been reduced from 15 to 12 minutes, to bring them in line with non-vehicle maps in those modes. Additionally, the weight for Bastion and First Light in Control and Clash has been reduced so players will see them less often in those modes.

Fixing the Cryptarch so engrams only give you equal or better gear (instead of usually worse) is one of the biggest fixes that Bungie has added so far. I feel like the fact that engrams usually decoded into worse stuff is a big reason why many players would want to exploit the (now defunct) “Loot Cave” or methods of glimmer farming – so that they would increase their chances of possibly getting good gear since getting legendary engrams didn’t always mean legendary gear. But now that there is a higher chance of getting quality engrams and that those engrams will always be of equal or greater value, I feel like people will be less inclined to try and exploit  areas for easy items and instead try to earn them as Bungie intended.

That’s all for my notes about the patch but since I’ve been playing a ton of Destiny, I just want to talk a little about how my character is evolving so far.

Right now, my Titan is level 27 and over the past week or so I’ve been able to acquire all legendary armor to replace my rare armor. I think first I got purple boots from an engram (the first time a purple engram turned into purple gear). Next, I finally ranked up to level 2 Crucible rep and bought myself a legendary helmet. Then, the very next thing I did after buying it was a Queen’s Wrath mission where the reward was – you guessed it – a legendary helmet. I kept that helmet because I can’t bring myself to break down legendary gear but I wear the one I bought. Next I earned a chest piece from another Queen mission and yesterday I finally found legendary gauntlets to wear.

 

As far as my weaponry goes, I have different loadouts for PvE and PvP.

In the Crucible, I like to use an auto rifle, a shotgun and a light machine gun. In the Crucible, stats don’t matter and so I don’t feel compelled to use my highest quality weapons, but the weapons that will perform the best against people. I don’t like pistols, pulse rifles or scout rifles since auto rifles get so many more shots off and have limited recoil than pistols or other rifles. And like I said before, I’m not much of a sniper so I don’t bother trying against humans. And though I usually get destroyed by fusion rifles in Crucible, I’ve never had much luck with them against people. As far as heavy weapons go, I like having more ammo with LMGs and more opportunity to generate kills than the limited ammo offered by a rocket launcher.

In PvE, I generally load up the best gear I have. Right now, I’ve been leveling up a legendary pulse rifle “Fair and Square” and am working on the last set of damage upgrades for it. My secondary weapon is the exotic sniper rifle Ice Breaker, though sometimes I’ll switch in a rare shotgun or fusion rifle. In my heavy weapons slot, I just got the rocket launcher “Unfriendly Giant” this morning and am going to try leveling that up – though I still prefer LMGs to rocket launchers in PvE as well.

I also wanted to talk about my gear because I finally got my first legendary bounty the other day, the reward for which is the legendary handgun, Thorn. I was really excited to get the chance to complete a legendary bounty. I had heard about these bounties but had never received one and apparently it’s just random chance that you’re offered one.

If you get a legendary bounty you’ll probably be similarly stoked to have the chance at exotic gear or weaponry – until you realize how much work you’re going to have to put in to complete the bounty. These aren’t simple “action-reward” like the Vanguard or Crucible bounties – legendary bounties make you work. Here’s how mine has gone so far:

-Complete the moon strike

(Not so bad, I’ve done this plenty of times. Phogoth was difficult the first time but not so bad once you reach a higher level.)

-Kill 500 Hive

(Wow, that’s a lot of Hive. But still, this is for a legendary gun. I powered through this just running through the Hellmouth on the moon a couple times.)

-Earn 500 points in Crucible with void damage. Deaths set you back.

(Wait a minute. Hold on here. I have to do what? I didn’t even have any weapons that did void damage when I hit this part of the bounty, so I had to go to the gunsmith and buy a green shotgun that did void damage. Luckily, I eventually happened upon a LMG that did void damage as well as finding out that the sticky grenade in my subclass did void damage. But still, with a kill earning 5 points and deaths subtracting 2, this took me a while. But I eventually did it and thought that would be the final step. Oh, you naïve fool, you.)

-Talk to the Speaker and “purify” the weapon

(Apparently the gun was corrupted or something? Well whatever it was, I had to spend a Mote of Light at the Speaker to have the gun cleansed. Now I can start killing, right? Whoa, hold on there, not so fast…)

-Speak to the Warlock Vanguard

(OK and she’s going to purify it more or lift some spell and then I can use it, right?)

-Kill Xyor the Unwed

(Oh come on now!)

And this is where I’m at now. Apparently Xyor the Unwed is a unique monster that only shows up during the final battle of the moon strike. You have to keep killing Phogoth’s minons until he shows up which according to the internet can take between 15-30 minutes(!). So now, I have to wait for my fireteam to be able to play so I can convince them to help me with this because if I tried to do this on my own with a team of randoms, I’m sure they would just kill off Phogoth before Xyor showed up and I’d be out of luck. And after all this bounty has put me through, I’m not even sure I’ll get the gun after finishing this step. So many times I’ve want to just abandon this bounty, telling myself it’s not worth it (mostly during the Crucible step), but I’ve soldiered on, the allure of another exotic gun too great to pass up.

Despite the trials of this legendary bounty, I’m still having a blast with Destiny. Leveling up my Titan has become an addiction and I’m hopefully going to be able to try the Vault of Glass raid sometime soon (mainly because I need Ascendant material to upgrade my legendary gear). But even if I get tired of my Titan, there’s still two other classes I haven’t even touched yet, which really excites me since there are so many Strikes and Story missions to play as well as the Crucible, which is a lot more fun than I anticipated.

Upcoming Destiny events – new multiplayer modes and Queen’s Wrath

(Checkout this link for the announcement from Bungie)

As with the Halo series, Bungie is doing a great job of adding unique content to its latest shooter, Destiny, to keep the experience fresh and exciting. Each weekend there has been a unique multiplayer mode and along with the recently released raid, Vault of Glass, there is going to be a new mode coming next week.

This weekend, Sept. 19-21, the multiplayer mode “Combined Arms” will be active. A team deathmatch mode, Combined Arms focuses on vehicular combat and also, heavy ammo drops will occur more frequently. I can’t wait to try out this mode and see if there’s a vehicle or two I haven’t gotten to drive yet. So far, the only vehicles I’ve found with weapons are Pikes and those larger speeders on Mars the fire rockets. It’d be really cool if there were larger tank vehicles or ones that allow two or more players to operate it – something like a Warthog from Halo, maybe.

On Sept 23 – Oct 6, a new feature called “The Queen’s Wrath” will be active. It doesn’t seem like this is an entirely new mode all to itself, but rather an extended event which will feature new bounties and more challenging missions which will be rewarded with Rare and Legendary gear. There isn’t a whole lot of specific info about Queen’s Wrath, but I would guess these missions will take the place of the Daily and Weekly Heroic Strikes/Missions and feature more intense stipulations. Luckily, it seems that these missions will guarantee Rare and Legendary gear so the reward will be worth the challenge.

Last weekend, the unique multiplayer mode was Salvage, a 3 vs 3 mode where teams battle for control of a relic. It was an interesting mode, not just because it pitted one fireteam against another (instead of 6 on 6 like Clash) but because the objective-based mode required a bit of strategy. For one, you’re able to revive fallen teammates in this mode, unlike Clash or Capture, and your respawn in a little longer than those modes as well. In Salvage, relics appear on the map frequently (one at a time) and to win it, you must first find it and set your Ghost to scan it. But, you get more points for completing a scan or stopping an enemy scan than just starting one, so it’s in your best interest to only start a scan if you know you can defend the relic. Salvage should be making a return to the Crucible playlist, especially since they still issue bounties for it occasionally. According, to the above link, I would guess Salvage will be next weekend’s unique Crucible mode.

In October, an entirely new Crucible mode will be active – the Iron Banner. Normally in the Crucible, players compete on a level playing field, meaning that regardless of levels, weapons and armor, each player has the same stats and weapons do the same damage. In the Iron Banner, players will be able to compete with their weapons and armor at full power. It will definitely be interesting to see just how many high level players come out of the woodwork to dominate in Iron Banner and those below level 20 without rare and legendary gear will probably just want to avoid it completely (unless you’re really confident or have a death wish). There isn’t any mention of the rewards from playing Iron Banner, though I’d bet you have a higher chance of getting rare gear by competing in this no-holds-barred battle.

But the best part about all these new modes and activities? They’re totally free. It’s great in this day-and-age of $15 map packs and microtransactions, companies like Bungie are committed to supporting their titles with unique content to keep the experience fresh, for free.