For the first time, we'll be only two-thirds blind tonight, but I've asked the "spoiled" guys to allow us to figure things out.

To be fair, we haven't yet succeeded in beating the encounter your group is on - but yes, we have figured it out. Don't worry, we'll stay quiet!

Also, I don't know about the rest of the team (and I'm sure this depends on other factors we'll have to play by ear) - but if Kermit is the only one that has a hard-stop time at 11 EST, Chewbaccawakka said he can probably jump in to keep going (or maybe Disciple, who is currently signed up as a tentative...)

The second encounter (the one in your spoilers) is mostly intuitive, but has 1 element that my team was never going to discover on our own. We're playing with a "1 night then spoiler" rule, so each night if we had at least 2 hours on a boss fight and didn't get it, we read the strat online. We were not going to figure out that 2nd encounter's little trick any time soon (though we may have cleared it anyway, since our DPS was so damn good). That being said, we did figure out every other aspect of the fight, so we were damn close.

I'm curious which part you think your team would not have figured out? (MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW v)
It took us several tries before one of us noticed that the back of the runes would light up to tell you the order, but even without knowing that you could pretty easily work out a system to guess the correct order. For a long time we also thought that you just needed to hide from the light to survive the oculus but that obviously didn't work. Eventually we realized that the pillars were protecting us and that's why they dissapear. The final key for us was realizing which player was going to get the red bubble. Once we knew that it was just a matter of working hard to get our DPS up and not die stupidly. :P

The thing we missed was that the player with the red bubble could reset the countdown timer by killing adds. Prior to learning that, we were just chaining deaths and resses as we all focused the boss.

The score screen gave that away for us :-)

Ah, I forgot about that part as well. I didn't have to deal with it though as I was calling out the order and focusing on DPS.

When I say 1 little button press, I mean someone accidentally jumping while on a pressure plate tower, or missing their jump up to one. I'd say only 1 in 7 attempts do we even get the relic because people aren't good at standing still and killing ogres. The fact that there's literally no margin for error in that initial setup is brutal since you have to do that exact thing 4 times over the course of the fight.

Did you know that you only need 3 people to jump on the plates? The plate under the relic does not need to be activated, this allows you to have 2 roamers to help the 3 on the plates with their ogres (although there are still 4 ogres).

But yeah, jumping on the plates in the wrong order is bad and easy to get wrong. Fortunately it's mostly a communication problem and not a skill problem. It would be nice if it were a little easier to "reset" than having everyone start over. I suspect there's an easier way than a full reset, I just don't know what it is yet.

First of all, it's a 10 minute fight. About average, as far as Raid boss encounters go.

2nd of all, you have plenty of margin for error most of the time. There are just a few key spots where everyone needs to be perfect. My group has beaten him twice, and both times we suffered multiple deaths through our successful runs. We often had people die while detonating their bombs, or our roamer would get crushed while fighting the ogres, or someone would get swarmed while in the other dimension. In all of these cases, we were able to press on, get the revive, and make it through.

There are of course certain parts of the battle that need to be done properly with little margin for error, but I think Bungie hit a good balance: demanding enough to feel rewarding, but with enough room to breath to feel doable.

Crota was far worse, IMO because success often relied on lack of bugs ruining things for you. Your team could do everything right and still fail because of broken encounter mechanics.

Crota and Aetheon were definitely the bugs beating you rather than the boss. Agreed!

When I say 1 little button press, I mean someone accidentally jumping while on a pressure plate tower, or missing their jump up to one. I'd say only 1 in 7 attempts do we even get the relic because people aren't good at standing still and killing ogres. The fact that there's literally no margin for error in that initial setup is brutal since you have to do that exact thing 4 times over the course of the fight.

I agree that there is very little margin for error during that sequence, but I'd add that once you get the hang of it, it's fairly straight forward. I'd say the most challenging aspect (depending on the player) is the relic runner making the jumps around the room.

You might already know this stuff, but there are a few things our group found helpful:

The obvious setup is to have 1 player assigned to each plate. With another player assigned as the relic runner, that leaves 1 final player left over. We would call this player "the floater". The floater's job would be to move around and help take out Ogres as they spawn. After staggering Oryx, the floater would remain in the relic holder's bubble and focus on keeping Oryx's chest open while the other 4 players go detonate their bombs. The floater is also in charge of replacing one of the other 4 players in their role if they die at any point.

Now here's a more subtle trick. When the relic spawns, you need to activate the plates in the correct order, starting with the plate immediately counter-clockwise to the relic's position. The catch is that you only actually need to activate the first 3 plates... the final plate (the one located directly below the relic) does not need anyone to stand on it. What this means is you actually can have 2 floaters moving around, helping take out Ogres and adds, until it is time to detonate the bombs (when the 2nd floater will need to resume their regular duties).

Once we stumbled on to this, dealing with the ogres became much easier. Since the Ogres spawn in the same order that you activate the plates, the floaters can rotate around the room and help kill the ogres in no time. They are tough, but they crumble quickly under simultaneous fire from 3 or 4 guardians :)

Hope that helps!

Mostly because I am an ass. But if you're failing 6 times out of 7 because your team can't stand still on a plate, or somehow failed a 4 foot jump, the mechanics aren't the problem. Getting the order right is one thing, and miscommunication can be a killer, but if you've got that part down but don't know how to stand in one place for 20 seconds I don't know what to say.

I do wish it worked like that, Cody. It would be nice. It's pretty much a given that my group will have start over completely, although there's only three original members tonight, so maybe the three subs will prove to be much better than the three of us that can't make it tonight and they'll get through.

I don't even really mind starting over. Now that we understand the encounters, I don't anticipate we'll have too much trouble with them. We'll wipe some, sure, but we can probably get an encounter a night done in two hour sessions without struggling, and with a little more exploring thrown in.

The biggest problem I foresee is keeping a team together for that long, and if we can't, finding other unspoiled subs. Hell, we started on Thursday, and lost one person to scheduling conflicts after night two, had two subs last night, and three tonight. It's just hard to plan things out for that long with six people across the country (world?).

But what you're discussing actually seems to be more of "is the raid too long" than is it too hard.

This had occurred to me too, during our first run. But then our 2nd run clocked in closer to 3 hours. We're doing it again tomorrow night, and I'm expecting we'll get through in closer to 2 hours. We'll see how it goes.

Basically, I think the first few times through are always going to be the most demanding, especially if you're figuring it out as you go. I don't think we'll have an accurate sense of how long the raid really is for another few weeks.

Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Once we know how the encounters work, it drastically cuts down on completion time, and that's to be expected.

My issue is that the first time is arguably the most important, and if you want to remain unspoiled, the longer you go, the harder it is for that to happen. If the raids keep getting bigger and more complex, it gets harder still.

I wonder if it would be better to have more smaller raids with more frequency, than wait for a single large Raid as we did with going from TDB to King's Fall. I don't think Prison of Elders was a great substitute for a Raid despite having raid like mechanics. Skolas felt more like lesson in tedious bullet sponge boss time.

If we could get a Raid for every new expansion that was closer to 8-10 hours long for an average group on the first go round on normal, I think I would prefer that over waiting 9ish months for one big one. I would also prefer a smaller time commitment as well. I think this would make it easier for everyone to go in blind and finish with the same team, which is something many of us desire.

Having said that, I'm totally happy with what we have. This raid is amazing in so many ways. It looks great, has crazy puzzles, is begging to be explored, tricky bosses that require strat and teamwork, and it will be great for those who desire to perfect techniques.

I'm fine with a long raid… so long as the way to progress towards 310 doesn't involve getting lucky on drops from the raid. That might turn out to be the case, I don't know. Right now it looks like you'll only be able to get 310 items from 4 sources:

1. Exotic Engrams
2. Special Quests
3. Raid drops (hard mode hopefully is 310 always)
4. Trials of Osiris?

We are back to the problem of not being able to hit max level unless you get raid boot drops. Worse now since you'd need THREE to infuse your good boots with heavy ammo perks up to 310.

Everything would be so much better if infusion was 100%. Why it's 80% is beyond me. Even at 100% it'd still take longer than in HoW.

I'm hoping the new light system makes hitting 310 not necessary, even for the hard mode raid.

I get what you are saying, and I submit that having a better light level does somewhat affect the difficulty of the raid, but what I'm addressing here is cheapLEY's comment about the initial length of the Raid and allowing a team/player to go through it unspoiled. I think that shorter Raids more frequently spaced would make it more enjoyable for casuals or those with less free time in general. Perhaps if the normal run took out a few encounters say a jump puzzle, a maze, and a mini boss fight, but then all of what we just did was available in the Hard mode release to give the hardcore guys that lengthy run and something new to explore to boot.

Addressing your comment, I personally haven't had any problems with any of the max level techniques from any of the versions of Destiny. I don't care about max level, and it really felt cheap for me to get max level in HoW so easily on all three characters. While I do play alot, I'm still casual hardcore. I don't have a desire to do the grindiest of the grind, or play the most punishing difficulties. I only attempted and completed Skolas once, and it was only to help someone else fill their team. I like the idea that there are people above me in ranking because they are willing to do the work I am not. They should be rewarded. Their level should be higher than mine. I don't think it should be tied to their gear though, with that we do agree. I think that to reach max level you should have to complete every single thing in destiny.

EVERYTHING includes, all story missions, all strikes, all raids on normal and hard, all prison of elders 32, 34, 35, any quests that are story related and not for a specific piece of gear (this is tricky and may need to be altered), all gold chests, all ghosts, 1 trip to lighthouse, reached level 5 in one IB, at least 1 completed nightfall of the current expansion, all calcified fragments, and maybe more. This probably seems grindy, but I don't give a #$%#. Max level should mean something and if someone can do all this, they deserve the awe people will have when they spawn in to the tower and everyone is like AWWWWEEEE shit, he's a FORTY!!!!! :)

I'm fine with a long raid… so long as the way to progress towards 310 doesn't involve getting lucky on drops from the raid. That might turn out to be the case, I don't know. Right now it looks like you'll only be able to get 310 items from 4 sources:

1. Exotic Engrams
2. Special Quests
3. Raid drops (hard mode hopefully is 310 always)
4. Trials of Osiris?

We are back to the problem of not being able to hit max level unless you get raid boot drops. Worse now since you'd need THREE to infuse your good boots with heavy ammo perks up to 310.

Everything would be so much better if infusion was 100%. Why it's 80% is beyond me. Even at 100% it'd still take longer than in HoW.

I'm hoping the new light system makes hitting 310 not necessary, even for the hard mode raid.

Luke Smith posted (can't remember if it was on Neogaf or Reddit) that 300 is the max level for all content we'll be playing in the near future. Having gear that drops with ratings above 300 is a way to combat the "forever 29" syndrome that plagued vanilla Destiny. With the current system, you can be stuck with sub-300 boots or whatever, and still pull your light level up to 300 with other gear. Going above that is just a bonus.

I haven't done tier 3 yet, but I don't think the bosses change their mechanics, it's just that the boss rotates every week right? Sort of like PoE was. Qodron fight always happens the same way, but it won't be Qodron every week.