Loot cave was the most efficient form of patrol (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, March 09, 2015, 15:44 (3545 days ago) @ scarab

so could not possibly be the least efficient way to play Destiny.

Though I grant you that you get less spin metal. To make up the deficiit you would have to do some some normal patrolling that was less efficient in terms of:

• loot
  
• killing
  
• high level enemies moving against each other
  
• public event guaranteed gold tiers
  
• cryptarch ranking
  
• grimoire ranking
  
• weapon parts

.

You can pick up some spin metal whilst doing missions near the loot cave but you would get more spin metal foraging around the edges of the divide.

Nevertheless, patrolling became much more time intensive once the loot cave was gone. And foraging around the edges of the divide was a drag.

Have you played Destiny without patrolling?

Generally speaking, I almost never play patrol mode. I used to do it to farm materials, and I still chase down the occasional public event, but that's about it. I'll grant you that the loot cave was more efficient than any other form of playing patrol mode, but that's not saying much in the context of the whole game. When I'm not raiding, I'm playing to upgrade gear & earn new gear. So I need to complete bounties, earn glimmer, find materials, and kill lots of stuff at the same time. The high-level strikes are by far the best way to do all of this at the same time (they didn't give materials back in the loot cave days, but even so). I run strikes with weapon XP and glimmer boosters enabled while completing as many bounties simultaneously as I can. By the end of the average ROC strike I've found 8-10 engrams (mostly blue), plus the XP, marks, and drops at the end of the mission. The average strike takes me about 10-15 minutes. Plus now we have the ROC strikes, which give me a purple engram every 2-3 missions. When you add the fact that we can now buy materials with marks, there is almost no reason to ever go on patrol with a high level character, except for the fun of it :)