Redrix’s Broadsword and Luna’s Howl acquired. (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 18:49 (2291 days ago)

After a heck of a lot of crucible over the past 2 weeks, I managed to complete both the Redrix and Luna quests today. Haven’t spent much time with either weapon yet, aside from a bit of patrolling the Dreaming City. My first impression is that they’re both pretty great, but I wanted to post a few thoughts about the quests themselves.

Redrix Quest

I found this quest fairly straightforward and painless. The only step I was worried about completing was the “reset your Valor rank 5 times this season” part, but thanks to the double/triple Valor week, I sailed right past that goal. Granted, I played way more crucible than I normally would, but there’s still a lot of time left in the season. So I’d say that as long as Bungie continues this tradition of the occasional Valor-boosting weeks, quests of this nature are a nice, long-term, slow burn kind of grind that most players can actually achieve if they choose to.

Luna’s Quest

This quest is a whole other animal. On paper, it’s not too bad. But the competitive playlist is bit of a dumpster-fire of constant frustration. For context, I love competitive play. Trials was one of my favourite parts of D1. I enjoy tough, sweaty matches, and I don’t mind loosing... as long as I feel like I’m playing a fair game. But the comp playlist feels brutally unfair at times. I had some stretches of good luck last week, but the past 2 days were an entirely different story (I suspect the playlist population took a nosedive once the triple-Valor boost ended). The number of times I’d get thrown into games on shorthanded teams, up against 4-stacks who were all already using Luna’s Howl... it was brutal. Also got thrown into several matches where I was the ONLY player on my team, plus a fair number of connection failures (all of which cost me glory rank, obviously).

I managed to complete the final quest step (reach 2100 glory points) ahead of several other steps, which meant I didn’t need to worry about wins while completing the remaining steps. It’s a good thing too. While earning my 100 headshot kills with hand cannons, I slipped from ~2200 glory down to 1800 glory. Prioritizing headshot hand cannon kills AND winning was just too much for me, especially going up against such incredibly stiff opposition. I can also say with confidence that in the hands of a skilled player, Luna’s Howl is unmatched. It’s a fast-firing hand cannon that can 2-shot kill once its primary perk has been activated. Going up against a whole team of those things doesn’t feel fair at all.

In the end, I’m happy that I completed the Luna’s Howl quest, and relieved that I was able to burn through it relatively quickly. I will say that as of right now, my mood is something like “I’m happy I have this cool gun, but you couldn’t pay me to set foot in the competitive playlist ever again”. I’m sure that’ll fade over time, but it does seem to me like Bungie needs to do some serious work on the playlist as well as their matchmaking. I doubt they wanted this quest to leave people hating the playlist, but that seems to be a common takeaway based on what I’ve seen on Reddit.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Just wanted to share a few thoughts while the whole grind is fresh in my mind.