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Raid Encounter 4 *SP* (and some general raid discussion) (Destiny)

by cheapLEY @, Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 21:51 (1990 days ago) @ breitzen

We tried that encounter for the first time last night.

We actually completed one round of it pretty quickly (but wiped right as we did so), but we didn't really understand how we did what we did.

Our three plate people took screenshots of the symbols for a few rounds, and we spent a lot of time looking at them and comparing. Our leading theory was that the right symbol for one person had to match the middle symbol of the next person in line, and we had some luck with that for a while, but it seemed like it would randomly fail sometimes, even when it shouldn't have. I just chalked it up to us maybe mixing up a callout or something, not cleansing the right plate, or the symbols being mixed up (which bird was it again?).

I spent a lot of time after we signed off last night looking at the screenshots we took, and I eventually noticed the circular glowing lines that connected the outer symbols, and that that pathway moved right through the upper circle that glowed when we cleansed correctly. I thought I had it figured out at that point--just that the outer symbol on any given plate would match the center symbol on another plate, and that it would have to move through the upper circle.

That got us halfway there. My leading theory at this point was that it would work like a classic combination lock and be on a rotation. Clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, and that would tell us which plate to cleanse first. We would know to cleanse a plate that needed a clockwise rotation based on which "round" it was. That didn't pan out though.

Bluerunner noticing that picking up the orbs from the Eyes of Riven gave one of two possible status effects put us on the fast track to figuring out what needed to happen.

We ended up with the folks on the plates just calling out their center symbols. We started at the room we entered from (dubbed "machine" for the big machine hanging from the ceiling), moved counter-clockwise to "crystal" then finally to "tree." So, as we called out the center symbols, the plate people looked at their own symbols and determined if it would need a clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation. When the orb was acquired, that person called out which buff they had, then whoever needed that buff on their plate called that out (after we collectively called out which room was open, where Knights were coming from, etc.).

My general thoughts on the raid so far:

I like it a lot. I am really loving the variety of the encounters. I love the sort of flexibility that the first one encouraged, with figuring out which symbols should be ignored on the fly, and where those were, whether someone needed to rotate to another section to pick up the extra plate, etc. As silly as it is, I really liked figuring out the solution to not screwing up the hidden doors. We had problems for the first night trying to get everyone into an independent cubby in time. squid's showerthought of numbering from 1-6 solved that, and it's the simple things that seem obvious in retrospect that really make the problem-solving of encounters fun.

I like that the next encountered switches tracks pretty hard--it's just an endurance run where you get a little bit better each time, progress just a little bit more, to where eventually you know exactly where everything will spawn, exactly where you need to stand to be protected while hitting the next group of enemies. It also had the flexibility in the Oracle rooms with possible subs being necessary for the times someone might end up on the same plate. This might still be my favorite raid encounter (although I'll admit to being just a little bummed at how easy it was the second time we did it--the challenge definitely seemed to be in figuring out the best strategy for efficiency).

The ogre encounter was really daunting at first. This was probably the one we struggled with the most so far. We struggled to deal with all the ads and still do what we needed while staying alive. A team in the 370s with Whisper can seemingly very easily one phase him, though. We had him down to a sixth of his health left (probably actually less than that) in one phase, and we'd have had it if our orb runner had just ignored that and dealt damage, too. I did like this encounter quite a bit, too. It's a good combat focused encounter, I think.

I like the fourth encounter the least right now. It's good, and well designed, I think, with a good escalation. I think I'm just sort of over the whole "call out symbols that no one else can see" thing as a mechanic. I feel like it's definitely run it's course after this raid. They relied on it pretty heavily for Leviathan, and they definitely leaned into it for The Last Wish. I hope we see something else for the first raid lair.


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