Pete's Thoughts of Dark Below So far (No spoils) (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, December 09, 2014, 08:29 (3873 days ago) @ petetheduck

Hope you don't mind me joining in. Megathread form up on Cody?

- Commendations are rubbish. I thought maybe they would be an alternative to Marks; a weapon might cost 1 Commendation instead of 150 Marks. No, they cost 1 Commendation AND 150 Marks. Commendations are just meant to slow progress, nothing more.

And what's worse, you don't get any commendations for your existing level. I'm at 15 with my Vanguard, yet I have zero Commendations to show for it, so what's the point of keeping track?

I took a brief tour of the Vanguard and FWC vendors this morning and wasn't impressed, but I don't think vendor items are meant to compete with Raid gear. So, meh.

Assuming you plan to run the raid weekly for the gear, the armor is meh indeed... But not the weapons. The Vanguard sniper has Armor Piercing, which, while it has a smaller magazine, is a terrific perk that you couldn't get before outside of random drops.

- Eris' ship is okay. Not as impressive as that of the Queen's Emissary. It just doesn't feel like an impactful addition to the Tower.

She's a guardian, and one who's been living off the grid for a while. You expect her to fly the Heart of Gold?

- The story missions felt like an appetizer for Crota's End, especially with the introduction of new mechanics that I expect to encounter again in the Raid (for which I am avoiding spoilers). Some of these new mechanics can really ruin a guardian's day, especially the one at the end of the first story mission.

Super Poo Water FTW.
I was telling someone how cool it was that you had an invisible timer to do things right, as you were steadily losing ground. Can't wait to see this mechanic in the raid. These things look permanent...

I was playing hard solo and was fighting for survival in the final encounters in the first and third mission. The third mission has hints of The Last Array, minus the chance to catch your breath. The second had a more forgiving arena, where I was able to set up a defensive position. Nice music, though.

Definitely some solid missions to solo. I did almost everything but the weekly solo, and I had a blast... Can't seem to replay the missions, though...

- Regarding new geometry, the second story mission and strike feature spaces already revealed by tricksters during the Destiny Beta. The third story mission features a very nice linear space that I enjoyed exploring and had not seen before--it felt like it belonged in a strike. It made me even more excited for taking on the Raid.

Number of things I never saw before. And the ones I had seen are no less "new" to me, since the experience in them was new.

- There doesn't seem to be a way to replay these missions from the Director, which is odd (unless I'm overlooking something?). The Quest design, returning to the Tower constantly to talk to Eris, just slowed things down and didn't really contribute anything to the experience or seem to add any value. I guess Bungie was trying to give the community something that felt like a cohesive story through this linear design, but I was happy with the original Director approach to mission availability. These missions felt as disjointed as everything else in Destiny; one didn't lead into the next, they could have been done in any order.

Yeah, that's odd. Wonder how they'll address that...

- The strike was a blast. As a level 30, the first playthrough was only available at level 26. There seemed to be a significant increase in the numbers of enemies compared to other strikes and between my Firefly/Explosive Rounds Calling, Hezen Vengeance, and Nova Bomb, things were blowing up everywhere. Very fun; I never felt like I ran into a bullet sponge wall like the Devil's Lair's. Just Fallen and Hive and explosions. The thralls pouring out of those doorways made me excited for the Raid, again. I was throwing Nova Bombs and hiding inside their vortex just to catch my breath.

Agreed. Wish there were more ways to get around that final area, as verticality seems to be creeping into the gameplay.

- The target patrol bounties Eris gives were fun. I would love to see the bounty experience become a kind of scripted patrol, where you're given bounties like the planet harvest, XP goal, and a few kill targets. You land on the planet and then work your way through all of the bounties in a single session.

I did like picking up three related bounties that essentially added a new "story" mission to the game...

- Does Eris sell anything worth buying? Looks like I might need some upgrade materials from her after Raiding, but that's about it. Nice that there's an exchange for Raid upgrade materials, from one type to another. Again, there are other solutions to that problem, like not requiring materials, but hey.

Upgrade materials, which a neatly interchangeable if you need one more than the other (if only we could swap Shards for Energy... Oh Speaker...)

- I got Murmur. Absolutely underwhelmed.

Everyone gets murmur. Give it a chance to grow...