I have The Last Word *long* *story time* (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Sunday, November 16, 2014, 22:13 (3457 days ago) @ bluerunner

For good or ill, I have a story to go with it, like Bungie seems to want (a lot).
http://www.bungie.net/en/Legend/1/4611686018430224533/2305843009219629106#context=strike&section=none
What you're seeing there is, well it's not as much as I was expecting, but that refers to the game that earned me it.
I was catching up on Twitter and I saw Bungie mention Xur had this, and after a cursory look over it I decided even though it had less impact than my current hand cannon, Nifty Biscuit, which itself was lower than some I'd seen and not kept, it would probably make up for it, if not all the time then at least against very high-level enemies (because that's what attack is for, right? still waiting on that manual), and it could be fun, which is after all the point of a game. I thought I'd have enough strange coins, but it turned out I needed three more. The weekly heroic strike, of course, is the only guaranteed source of strange coins. The bottom tier pays out a guaranteed three strange coins for beating it, and I hadn't gotten around to attempting it this week. I'd been unable to get through the weekly alone before but last week I'd finally managed it and my gear was upgraded to the next level this time, which also meant higher defense, so I figured it was just a matter of time.
That brings me back to that game.
I started late in the afternoon, later than I had intended to. I stopped to get food, use the bathroom, and do other things, and made sure I was back in time to have the game not boot me. I ate dinner mostly a few bites at a time between encounters. I spent at least half the time in that game on the final boss fight.
I threw everything I had at Aksor, and that greedy pig, that glutton for punishment, asked for more, and that sly fox teleported all over the place, and that weaselly coward had wave after wave after wave of Shanks come in, a bunch of servitors, eventually invisible guys and snipers-- those snipers are fucking something else, I could've sworn even the Jackal snipers in Halo 2 on Legendary weren't as rapid-fire as them, or at least not this one that ended one of my most promising attempts, not to mention they kept getting me from two or even three sides at once. I tried every single primary weapon I had to no avail-- they didn't seem to help, and some really seemed to do worse, so I eventually went back to Nifty Biscuit-- which at least left me more confident than ever that hand cannons are the way to go, at least for me. A big part of it was all the Shanks, the ability to one-shot them was just so helpful, my scout rifle could do it but it didn't feel as smooth or as good as my hand cannon, and it didn't do as much damage, despite being legendary (The Calling, if you're curious) and having a damage upgrade while my hand cannon was only a rare.
I called for backup, first one person and then another. By this point I was several hundred kills in and I had already lost track of how many times I'd tried the boss fight. I didn't like the admission I couldn't do it myself, but I liked the admission I couldn't do it at all even less, and I didn't know if I would be able to get the coins any other way. I waited on responses, I waited for a "maybe" to get back to me, the maybe was a no but I prodded and said it would only be ten to fifteen minutes and convinced him, and meanwhile I kept pushing and tried switching my machine gun for a rocket launcher, which didn't seem to make a difference. Eventually I got someone to help me and after a few more tries we got farther and I was reminded it doesn't stop at invisible guys (who I'd gotten good about dispatching with my shotgun) and snipers (who I'd gotten somewhat better about hiding from and taking potshots at-- do they really need to be yellow-bar?). At the very end a Skiff shows off and drops off captains-- I thought it was one with some support, but I saw another, and another-- a whole bunch of 'em! It's madness, I tell you, with all the other stuff going on, I don't know how I could've dealt with them and kept putting the hurt on the boss. I believe the attempt after we first got that far was when we finally cracked it.
That brings me back to those game stats again. In that game I logged well over a thousand kills and effectively a quarter of a day (about five minutes short of eight hours), and it was actually most of an hour into the next day.
I brought us back to the Tower and of course one of the engrams I picked up turned into a strange coin. It was just the one, so it wouldn't have really mattered one way or the other, but it was a little reminder that yes, RNGsus and Rahool are laughing at my pain. (As a side note, maybe it's my awful memory, but I'm kind of shocked I haven't seen anyone point out engrams and weapon drops are dodecahedrons, AKA D12-- it's like they're telling us, "No, seriously, the dice hate you". This is some Old Testament style RPG shenanigans. Did my dad break some ancient taboo years ago when he played D&D?)
I went to Xur, I looked things over again, and I bought the gun.
The size was unexpected, and I think it's fitting. The little spin is nice. The gold looks really good in third-person but I feel it should be shinier and, well, gold-er in first-person. The comment(s) from a while back about how it doesn't mechanically and visually work right kind of bother me, but that doesn't ruin it for me, and I might have been bothered anyway because I was aware of how single-action and double-action work. (Another side note, am I seeing things or does your Guardian pull the trigger on hand cannons with their thumb? Is that common?) I tested it on the riffraff in Old Russia along with those anomalously strong Hive near the patrol spawn that night in comparison to Nifty Biscuit, and since then I've also used it on the Moon and in a strike, and the damage does indeed leave something to be desired, but it's not significantly below my previous status quo, and there are damage upgrades for attack, and a different kind of damage upgrade-- I'm curious about that and I'll wait to see what it does, because it doesn't show stat changes on hover like most do. I'll see how it goes in the long run, but I can say it's not awful and it's not bad, and even if it was bad, after this, I think I'll be holding onto it for a nice long while, and that's all right with me.