How to level for the raid (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 17:08 (2796 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Apparently once you hit 350, decoding engrams is no longer a viable way to significantly increase your light. For the PS4 crew getting ready for the raid, the way to do it seems to be running SIVA strikes, CoE, and Archon Forge. We should all do these thing together the coming days!

We have friends in town this week; I played a bit yesterday morning, before they arrived, but I'm not sure if I'll get a lot of time this week to play otherwise.

But I have to say, even though we've gone through this before, I'm surprised (and a little saddened) by the idea that getting more than 15 levels above where you were YESTERDAY (well, 15 hours before this post was written) needs to be gamed.

I think I'll look forward to a much slower progression - one that's really only allowed to me because I'm not AROUND to be sucked into the current feel. (That is: if I were playing this week, I'd be doing exactly the same thing - and that makes me sad.)

I would feel the same way, but after about 4 hours of play all that's even left to do is level up. There is hella little to do in this expansion compared to TTK. Yesterday afternoon I'm sitting there with no active quests, and no quest icons. After you play the story missions and the new strikes, nothing is left but the raid.

I... I can't even.

Until yesterday, I hadn't had a quest icon visible in the director for almost a year. And I haven't had any leveling even AVAILABLE for more than 6 months (all 3 chars at 335). And yet I STILL found stuff that brought me back to play nearly every single day.

I wasn't lamenting the quantity of new content - I was lamenting the single-minded attitude towards it. My wife chewed me out at one point on our recent camping trip - I was trying to optimize the driving home, and at one point complained that she was asking for too many roadside stops. She reminded me that the POINT was the roadside stops. It was supposed to be about the journey, not the destination. Something you get told in all sorts of aspects of your life, all the time, but rarely internalize. I was just commenting on seeing it again.

Yeah, I know, you're raiding in a week and a half or something, and want to be sure you've got an appropriate light level. So it IS the destination, for you. And that makes me sad. That's all.

Speaking purely for myself, I have no doubt that I will continue to spend time with friends in Destiny, and continue to have a good time. I don't think that negates Cody's point, however. After playing the TTK content for a year, I was very much looking forward to having a batch of new content to enjoy playing over and over for the next while. I had the day off work yesterday, so I was able to spend about 8 hours playing RoI over the course of the day. In that time I was able to complete all the new quests, bounties, and activities available to me. It's not a big deal, but this expansion does feel surprisingly light on content, and I went in with low expectations. But that's not really the part that I find disappointing. For me, after only a brief time with all the new content, I didn't want to do any of it anymore. The new Patrol zone, the story missions, Archon's Forge... I'm already "done" with them. Of course this is totally subjective. I'm sure some people will love Archon's Forge or the new patrol zone. I'm just a little bummed that after waiting all this time for a "new" activity to help mix things up a little, I feel like I'm doing the exact same activities with a different skybox in the background (to be fair, that skybox is worth the price of admission alone. The art team has really outdone themselves!)
I guess I have similar preferences to Cody in terms of Destiny: for me, the Raid and Trials are the real draw to the game. I still have high hopes for both of those activities coming up. I just keep running into the issue I've talked about many times; the activities I really enjoy require a whole bunch of grinding to get to them, and I wish I enjoyed the grinding more, or alternatively, I wish the grinding wasn't necessary.