Are you playing in an actual vacuum? Not with any friends or discussing the game or anything with people? Most of the Dreaming City stuff I know about (to inckude the week 3 visits) I learned from people I was playing with who either experienced it themselves or were told by someone to go do it/taken there by a different friend. The Dreaming City supports the old sneakernet learning patter like the original Legend of Zelda. Obviously you can look up guides online, but I’ve only done that for a few collectible items. Everything else is word od mouth.

Which is how it should be and is awesome.

Even if you bug the counter, you always get the same interaction as everyone else is getting that week, so if you're thinking about watching them on YouTube or something, don't worry. Personally, I'd recommend searching Oracle visits by week number, so you get the non-Mara visits too in order.

Gotcha.

Thanks. I've watched a couple of videos now and I've seen... I think three scenes?

If you really don't like Blind Well, you should just watch them. They might eventually loop around - the alternative is they would just end (seems unlikely) or Bungie will keep making them forever (also unlikely). Either way, you still won't like Blind Well, so you might as well just treat them as visual Grimiore, which is best read outside of the game.

I can deal with doing a few a week. I wouldn't seek it out beyond that, but now that I know there's a payoff it is not a big deal.

It's just that... the game screams out a bunch of stuff it wants to do. I just don't know why this isn't featured... at all.

Post-reset the map lights up with indicators. Opening any destination produces the "HEROIC ADVENTURE AVAILABLE" notice. There's loot, of course, but the activity is just the same as when you played it last.

Pursuits shows me things I've agreed to do and things the game wants me to do.

Every vendor in the Tower flashes at me insistently because I'm sitting on thousands of unredeemed resources, because it doesn't make sense to buy under leveled items that I then have to invest Cores in to upgrade since I'm not at the cap yet.

The map highlights for my player the Raid and Nightfalls because of available rewards-- even though I'm underleveled for both.

Milestones also lists activities. Although here 3rd party apps seem to do a better job of actually identifying what rewards go with what activities.

I guess for me, more exposition, more dialogue, and more character developments and interactions would be worth a little notification, or a To-Do List item. The campaign leads one mission/quest into another until it finishes. These sequences continue with that, but it's hidden behind knowing what "offering to the Oracle is" and what/where that means, PLUS the assumption that repeating this content, unlike repeating just about anything else, leads to something new.

Oh and then you have to carry that item to a specific part of the level that you can't drive a vehicle to and that is not marked on your map even after you've been there. (I am coming to dislike Destiny's approach to maps.) You just have to remember that that's where it was. I wasted 30 minutes at some point looking for a place to put the Offering because I had mistakenly gone to the top floor of the Observatory instead of the main area.

Shattered Throne, Ascendant Challenge... very similar. Unmarked locations, items and odd interactions required, apparently not intended for solo play, all in darkness zones and require starting the entire activity over again if you die once. I thought the Throne was a neat place to try and explore until I found out making one exploratory jump into the darkness dumps you back to the start of the activity.

Apparently, the visit counter is kind of messed up and you can exploit it on purpose by hijacking other people's visits.

Okay... which would matter I guess if all you want is the triumph, but I actually want to see the content. So making the game think I've visited more times than I have is not really helpful.

Even players who are cataloging these visits in videos are all referring to them differently-- some by week, some by visit, and if the counter is buggy that probably doesn't make things clearer.

At this point, we know the significance of attempting to communicate with Mara, having just completed a mission that leads us to the Oracle. So when I see that one of Petra’s weekly bounties offers a reward that lets me activate the oracle, I jump straight towards completing that. And all I need to do to complete that bounty is spend some time in the Blind Well. This is also reinforced by the fact that the Blind Well is one of the only activities I’m able to complete in the DC at this time, because I’m still too underlevelled to do the other things I’ve come across. So I spend an hour or so doing some Blind Well, complete the bounty, then go to the Oracle and communicate with Mara.

I didn't like Blind Well. So little to no reason to do it. My experience doesn't match yours with regard to levelling, because while wandering into the Blind Well, the activities I saw operating there weren't below my level, but far above it. Mechanically it seemed sort of similar to Archon's Forge or Court of Oryx except easier to matchmake than either but less interesting than the Court. Meanwhile, patrols, story missions, and non-heroic public events were accessible, and those contributed towards the completion of the other bounty.

From that point onwards, I know that speaking to Mara is something that is available on a weekly basis, and it only requires a few runs through the Blind Well each week to access it. Which is why I don’t buy this argument that it’s all convoluted and hidden from the player and that the only way to figure it out is by reading reddit. It’s all laid out within the progression, and within the bounty system. Some players miss it. Fair enough. But it isn’t an impenetrable puzzle. If you’re paying attention when you pick up your bounties that first time in the DC, you’ll catch all the info you need.

It is not an impenetrable puzzle. It presumes a greater level of interest in just playing what the game puts before you without clear signposting of the result. Of the available weekly bounties, I always avoided the Blind Well one because I had no interest in playing it. I did the other weekly bounty instead because it was activities I did find fun to do -- resources, patrols, public events, etc.

None of this is overtly broadcast to the player via top-menu prompts or anything like that, but for players who are invested enough to still be playing after completing the campaign, it really takes very little time and a general understanding of how leveling in Destiny works to come across the communications with Mara.

You have made my point for me.

I was not invested post-campaign as I saw no reason to be. I was not attempting to level up for the raid, and historically there has been little or no content of interest, story-wise, between the end of the campaign and the start of the raid.

From that point, it’s easy to see how things could go in countless directions for different players. But the thing about the DC is that it is setup in a way that rewards investment, without directly requiring it.

There is nothing in Destiny 2 that does not require it, except the campaign.

If you’re interested in uncovering the mystery of what’s going on there, you will continuously find little bits and pieces of the story as you go back and do more activities there each week. And that’s really all they are: little bits and pieces. You’re not missing anything of major consequence if you miss out on these interactions. But if you are invested in the plot surrounding the DC, you can catch all of the interactions with Mara by playing for an hour or so each week (more if you are also doing the story missions, obviously). And if you miss a week here or there, it really isn’t a big deal.

I guess I'm still not getting it. So is there a story there or not? Should I be working to catch up? Is it even possible? If I start doing these activities now, will I get dialogues that other players previously saw, or are the ones available in each particular week available to everyone, meaning the past ones are just gone into the ether?

For me it's not possible for these items to be the bits and pieces that hint at what is going on in the game world AND so meaningless that it doesn't matter if I miss them? So it's worth playing Blind Well for an hour to get, but no big deal if I don't, and haven't since the campaign dropped?

I am not trying to make things out to be more complicated than they are, and I don't think there's any real obfuscation going on here. My past experience with Destiny is that there is new content to be consumed at various times, and not at others, but now it seems that new content that would have been of interest to me had I either known it was available, or had availed myself of sources outside of the game in order to access it, during a period where normally there is only mechanical repetition, and access to this content is tied deeply into the same activities that drive the progression (not the progression itself because I know they are not gated, but tied into the compulsive model that says you have to check in with the game on regular intervals and complete activities within certain time frames or lose access to that content.

If these were quests towards loot or achievements or triumphs I wouldn't be that bothered-- Destiny has worked that way from the start, and I understand it. I suppose it's sort of like the in-game Grimoire, except that you can always earn a card by doing a thing, and once having done it, you can always look at the card.

So these bits of character development for Mara are only accessible at certain times, for a limited time, and tied to a very specific activity. That just doesn't make me particularly happy-- less so because I wasn't interested in that particular activity, because that's not such a big deal-- more so because it seems like you have to go outside of the game if you want to see what I would have missed, and once I'm doing that I might as well just watch all of them that way and go back to not playing.

That's ok. I'm so far behind I didn't know she was alive to talk to and thus this very thread warning about spoilers was a spoiler.

Yeah, the main title probably should have been "The Oracle" instead of Mara. At the same time, it's been like 2 or more months since people could have comfortably found out, so I don't think it's a spoiler at this point for the general public IMO.

To be clear, I wasn’t accusing anyone of wrongdoing. I was just saying I’m far behind.

Most of this dialogue hasn’t been particularly consequential. It’s just building the sense of frustration and desperation that the awoken in the DC are facing, trapped in a time loop. The meetings with Mara are usually just nice little bits of character development, but there have been a few surprises. On one occasion, our arrival interrupted a meeting with another visitor. And then this week, Mara herself was absent, but we got the cutscene (which is by far the most consiquential plot development so far).

Wow. That makes it seem even worse than I thought.

They've locked the character development behind a grind now.

I mean... kudos I guess for them being so meta about acknowledging all the repetition going on, but...

Listen, I hate the Destiny grind. A lot. I'm not happy with the Forsaken grind and I'm kinda hanging back a bit to "play catchup" every time the ceiling rises.

That being said, the Mara stuff was never behind a grind. On corrupted weeks especially, the Blind Well isn't hard to "matchmake" into and it really doesn't take long. Like, an hour a week for the lore isn't a grind, is it?

If you don't know it's there because the game doesn't tell you, if it requires a specific activity and that activity requires others, and if missing it one week means you don't ever get that content (I'm not clear if it works that way but it seems like it does) then perhaps "grind" is not precisely the correct word, but I would not call it a great experience to have.

Basically if you're fully engaged, playing on a daily or weekly basis, you have a chance to choose the activity that might lead to this and then you'd know to do it.

Otherwise read reddit and forum threads or watch others' videos and see what you're missing.

But if you're taking a break from the game and don't want what you're saving for later to be spoiled, it's sort of disconcerting to find out there's content you missed and is just gone.

It's sort of like online gaming now is the way live TV was back before you could record it. It's odd, is all.

I mean no disrespect here whatsoever ever, but the way your comments come across to me is as if you’re willfully making things out to be more convoluted than they are in order to paint them in a negative light. I’m sure that’s not what you’re actually doing though :) Let me back things up a bit, though.

The Foresaken campaign was short. You could get through it in 4-6 hours, easily. After you kill Uldren, you’re presented with a pathway to the endgame. You reach the Dreaming City, and you’re presented with an area that is clearly meant to be a destination that you’ll be returning to over time (this is made clear by the fact that many of the enemies and activities in the DC are above the ~500 power level that most players are at when they reach it).

Like all patrol zones, the DC has a vendor; Petra. You walk up to her and see that she has daily and weekly bounties. There’s also a Milestone that says “complete 2 of Petra’s Weekly Bounties in 1 week”, or something to that effect. Now, if you’re still playing the game at this point, you obviously have an interest in leveling up. So that milestone, and the other powerful drops provided by Petra’s weekly bounties (which are displayed right on the bounties themselves) should get your attention.

At this point, we know the significance of attempting to communicate with Mara, having just completed a mission that leads us to the Oracle. So when I see that one of Petra’s weekly bounties offers a reward that lets me activate the oracle, I jump straight towards completing that. And all I need to do to complete that bounty is spend some time in the Blind Well. This is also reinforced by the fact that the Blind Well is one of the only activities I’m able to complete in the DC at this time, because I’m still too underlevelled to do the other things I’ve come across. So I spend an hour or so doing some Blind Well, complete the bounty, then go to the Oracle and communicate with Mara. From that point onwards, I know that speaking to Mara is something that is available on a weekly basis, and it only requires a few runs through the Blind Well each week to access it. Which is why I don’t buy this argument that it’s all convoluted and hidden from the player and that the only way to figure it out is by reading reddit. It’s all laid out within the progression, and within the bounty system. Some players miss it. Fair enough. But it isn’t an impenetrable puzzle. If you’re paying attention when you pick up your bounties that first time in the DC, you’ll catch all the info you need.

None of this is overtly broadcast to the player via top-menu prompts or anything like that, but for players who are invested enough to still be playing after completing the campaign, it really takes very little time and a general understanding of how leveling in Destiny works to come across the communications with Mara. From that point, it’s easy to see how things could go in countless directions for different players. But the thing about the DC is that it is setup in a way that rewards investment, without directly requiring it. If you’re interested in uncovering the mystery of what’s going on there, you will continuously find little bits and pieces of the story as you go back and do more activities there each week. And that’s really all they are: little bits and pieces. You’re not missing anything of major consequence if you miss out on these interactions. But if you are invested in the plot surrounding the DC, you can catch all of the interactions with Mara by playing for an hour or so each week (more if you are also doing the story missions, obviously). And if you miss a week here or there, it really isn’t a big deal.

Most of this dialogue hasn’t been particularly consequential. It’s just building the sense of frustration and desperation that the awoken in the DC are facing, trapped in a time loop. The meetings with Mara are usually just nice little bits of character development, but there have been a few surprises. On one occasion, our arrival interrupted a meeting with another visitor. And then this week, Mara herself was absent, but we got the cutscene (which is by far the most consiquential plot development so far).

Wow. That makes it seem even worse than I thought.

They've locked the character development behind a grind now.

I mean... kudos I guess for them being so meta about acknowledging all the repetition going on, but...

Listen, I hate the Destiny grind. A lot. I'm not happy with the Forsaken grind and I'm kinda hanging back a bit to "play catchup" every time the ceiling rises.

That being said, the Mara stuff was never behind a grind. On corrupted weeks especially, the Blind Well isn't hard to "matchmake" into and it really doesn't take long. Like, an hour a week for the lore isn't a grind, is it?

If you don't know it's there because the game doesn't tell you, if it requires a specific activity and that activity requires others, and if missing it one week means you don't ever get that content (I'm not clear if it works that way but it seems like it does) then perhaps "grind" is not precisely the correct word, but I would not call it a great experience to have.

Basically if you're fully engaged, playing on a daily or weekly basis, you have a chance to choose the activity that might lead to this and then you'd know to do it.

Otherwise read reddit and forum threads or watch others' videos and see what you're missing.

But if you're taking a break from the game and don't want what you're saving for later to be spoiled, it's sort of disconcerting to find out there's content you missed and is just gone.

It's sort of like online gaming now is the way live TV was back before you could record it. It's odd, is all.

Most of this dialogue hasn’t been particularly consequential. It’s just building the sense of frustration and desperation that the awoken in the DC are facing, trapped in a time loop. The meetings with Mara are usually just nice little bits of character development, but there have been a few surprises. On one occasion, our arrival interrupted a meeting with another visitor. And then this week, Mara herself was absent, but we got the cutscene (which is by far the most consiquential plot development so far).

Wow. That makes it seem even worse than I thought.

They've locked the character development behind a grind now.

I mean... kudos I guess for them being so meta about acknowledging all the repetition going on, but...

Listen, I hate the Destiny grind. A lot. I'm not happy with the Forsaken grind and I'm kinda hanging back a bit to "play catchup" every time the ceiling rises.

That being said, the Mara stuff was never behind a grind. On corrupted weeks especially, the Blind Well isn't hard to "matchmake" into and it really doesn't take long. Like, an hour a week for the lore isn't a grind, is it?

I honestly have no idea how that Triumph works. The first week Mara was there, I ended up with 2 out of the 7 required meetings. I was still only using a single character at the time. I seem to remember someone here got three out of the seven the first time she visited.

Honestly, I sort of bet that she’ll just continue to show up every three weeks, and you’ll eventually be able to get the Triumph by visiting her 7 times, but who knows if that’s actually true.

2/7 is where I am now, which is weird-- because I have only done the Oracle offering twice, and the first time it was just a recording, and the 2nd I went to the throne room, but Mara was not there. And the triumph specifically mentions being there when Mara is there.

I am also guessing that the "season" ends before I can get to 7.

Most of this dialogue hasn’t been particularly consequential. It’s just building the sense of frustration and desperation that the awoken in the DC are facing, trapped in a time loop. The meetings with Mara are usually just nice little bits of character development, but there have been a few surprises. On one occasion, our arrival interrupted a meeting with another visitor. And then this week, Mara herself was absent, but we got the cutscene (which is by far the most consiquential plot development so far).

Wow. That makes it seem even worse than I thought.

They've locked the character development behind a grind now.

I mean... kudos I guess for them being so meta about acknowledging all the repetition going on, but...

I mean, on one hand that sucks and I think there should always be a way to come back and do them. On the other hand forsaken has been announced as a very much a live game as well as the fact that Bungie has stated a lot that they wanted to make this game a hobby. And if you let a hobby go for a while... you will get rusty and fall behind.

You can always catch up with a hobby you fall behind with.

Apparently now there are entire scenes with Mara I will *never* see unless I watch someone else play them, because they were only available in the particular week in which they went live.

I'm not saying either thing is better or worse. Or that I like it. I'm just saying it's not like we weren't warned.

I'm kinda saying it's worse, I think. I feel like the incentive to do the grind after the usual stop to the campaign, in the gap between the last story mission or strike and the raid, where nothing new happens, and there's usually just repetition, no longer incentivizes me to do that grind, because the raid will come out and be finished and become a solved problem before I could ever get to it. And there was never any reason to do the raids except for themselves, because usually there was no other activity you needed to be raid-level for.

Sometimes I'd grind and then not end up raiding much, but this time, I just dropped the game. I felt like I'd seen most of it, and did not feel like doing more patrols, more strikes, more Blind Well, more crucible, or more gambit for the loot or to see numbers go up. I watched others play the Raid instead.

Usually when new content dropped, the grind to catch up was much easier than the grind to reach max light. In this case, not so much. And the grind itself isn't directly relevant to the story reveals here, except that there really was no precedent in Destiny's past to indicate that you needed to do the same set of activities every week in order to see more story, or that having not seen it, you'd never get a chance to see it again.

We know she is in contact with The Nine about positioning some sort of weapon(?). She was even going to meet with someone or something that would not act kindly towards Guardians.

I just realized this could be Ada-1...

tl;dr, Petra knows stuff we don’t