Hi guys,

Today I wanted to talk to you about something that Destiny players have been talking about since the game came out, namely the ability to trade weapons, armour pieces and other items with other players.

I have a very firm personal idea about whether trading should be in Destiny, but if I came out and told you that at the beginning it would make for a boring post! So in the name of a reasoned argument, I will maintain my air of mystery for a short while...

Let's look at the positives of trading first, balance of frequency. What I mean by that is the randomness in this game(or RNG as I will be referring to it as) can stop you getting the rewards you want for a very long time. My introducing trading people will get the reward they want, by sacrificing a reward they don't want. For example, I have had 2 Hawkmoons(check out my review for it Here!), 2 The Last Words, 2 Lucky Raspberries, and 3 Knucklehead Radars. However, I am yet to acquire even my first Ice Breaker or Mida Multi Tool, so surely it would be fair for me to swap my Hawkmoon for an Ice Breaker? Well this works on paper, but I think that in practice it would feel hollow for me to get my first Ice Breaker like that. I still live in hope that one of these days a Nightfall will drop one, or I will become extremely lucking in a Raid or even a Dragon Strike of Crucible Match. The thought that I would be handed one on a plate somehow makes the experience less rewarding. However as a counter to my counter, Xur exists in the game, this means that next week he could sell the Ice Breaker and I would doubtlessly pick it up, the same can be said for the Mida Multi Tool!

They are the positives of trading being added into Destiny, now let's look at the problems! As many of you should know, the Gjallahorn(the most powerful weapon in the game) was recently sold by Xur, this means that basically everyone in the game now has the Gjallahorn. This means that there is a slight(if not major) imbalance in the game. Thankfully this will not last long, as it has been recently confirmed that the Gjallahorn will not be coming with us into Year 2! However this kind of imbalance would constantly be happening because of the Trading. Imagine people who play this game all the time, I know of several people(leaders in the Destiny Twitch directory) who have probably earned over 10 Gjallahorns since the game was released. If these copies could then be distributed to other Guardians, the afore mentioned imbalance caused by Xur selling the Gjallahorn would be a near constant problem. The counter to this is that it might force Bungie to balance weapons more frequently, due to the number of people who will have the powerful weapon. Another issue with trading is the potential for duplication glitches, but I won't speculate on what glitch might be brought into the game.

Now I have looked at positives and negatives of introducing Trading into Destiny, let's look at some of the ways it could be balanced if it were to be introduced! Firstly the option that springs to mind is that you must have completed 5 Strikes and a total of 5 hours play time with the person you want to trade with. This might discourage people from selling weapons online, like they are doing with Flawless Trails Passages at the moment. Secondly, you could make it so that the traded weapon is slightly less powerful than it legitimately earned counter part. For example at the moment(at the end of Year 1) the highest Attack Stat is 365, maybe traded weapons could be capped at 345 instead. I think one of these, or any other nerf would need to be introduced to traded weapons, in order to balance them. 

This whole time I have been talking about trading Exotic items, maybe they could introduce trading, but limit it to Legendary or lower tiers of rarity. If this were the case I think the only limitation that would need to be put in place was that you aren't allowed to trade Raid weapons or Trials of Osiris weapons. The problem with that is the fact that you are then left with a rather small pool of items that can be traded, so I doubt it would be worth implementing just for those few items!

All in all, I would be very happy to never see trading introduced into Destiny, I think I wouldn't feel I earned that weapon as much as getting it randomly. The ability to give the most powerful weapons to nearly everyone could be exploited very easily, which would reduce the balance of the game even further than it currently might be! Be sure to let me know what you think of trading being introduced into Destiny on Twitter!

Thanks for reading,
Ed

Hi guys,

If you didn't know last night(or afternoon depending on your time zone) Bungie held a Twitch reveal stream for the Tower, and looking ahead to Year 2. This is the first of three Twitch based reveals they will be hosting over the next few weeks! We learned about tons of stuff, and today I wanted to talk to you all about my highlights!

First up, I will start with the most obvious feature that many people myself included(you can check out my post on it Here!). Vault space is increased significantly Vault Space, it is being doubled to be specific! This means that we can now carry 72 weapons in out vault at any one time. The Armour section is also being more than doubled with 72 slots of armour as well!

Then we have probably my favourite set of additions, and they are the Legendary weapons, and how we acquire them! Firstly the Gunsmith in the Tower will now have a reputation meter, which can be ranked up by using specific White weapons, and completing specific challenges with each weapon. When you reach Rank 1, you will be allowed to purchase legendary weapons for 2,500 Glimmer, there are five to purchase each week, and they will be delivered to you every Wednesday(I presume 24 hours after reset!) which will now be called Armsday. Now I have a few things that I would like clearing up, firstly does our reputation with the Gunsmith reset each week, if not we are basically being given legendary weapons each week. Last night we saw that all five of the weapons required only Rank 1 in order to be ordered. Perhaps your reputation stays the same, but each weapon requires a new rank, so only when you have reached rank 5, will you be able to purchase all the weapons each week. Which leads me onto my next point, which is the number of weapons we are allowed to purchase, perhaps there is a cap per week, of say 2! All speculation aside, I am incredibly excited for this change, and I can't wait to learn the specifics!

Then we have Legendary Engrams which we will now be able to purchase from the Crypatch for varying levels of Legendary Marks(more on them in a second), it was also confirmed in the stream, that these do have a chance to decrypt as Exotic! This is an excellent what of gambling to get new weapons, that aren't available to purchase from the vendors! Don't worry about people spam buying them either, as they cost 135 Legendary Marks, which is a nice amount cheaper than the vendor weapons(by 15 marks).

I've mentioned Legendary Marks a few times now, so let's look closer that them! Gone are the separate Vanguard and Crucible Marks, in place we will now have Legendary Marks. This currency will now be one of the most used in the game, as you can buy a very wide variety of weapons and armour, from specialist vendors including New Monarchy, Dead Orbit and Future War Cult. I adore this change, as there are many faction weapons that I would like to buy now, but because I don't play tons of Crucible, I don't accumulate many Crucible Marks, and thus can't buy many! Due to the vast number of things you can spend these new Legendary Marks on, there will no longer be a cap on the number you can earn per week! You can still only hold 200 Marks at once, but you can spend those, earn more, and repeat the process as many times as you like! This is another amazing change that I am very excited for! As you can see below, this character is now earning 10 Legendary Marks for completing a Strike rather than the current 6 Marks. This could be due to some unknown buff, maybe from the new Ghost shells, but the ability to earn 10 per Strike is very nice!

One of the other things that was shown off during the stream was the new Ghost Shells, these will be purchasable from most of the vendors in the tower. Notable The Speaker now boasts a collection of Blue(Rare) Ghost Shells, and other Vendors such as the Crucible, will sell Legendary Ghost Shells! I can't wait to see what the Raid Ghost Shell looks like!

Then there are the Exotic Blueprints, these store all your Exotic items, be them armour or weapons, even if you have dismantled an Exotic before, you can "re buy" it now for and Exotic Shard and a few other materials. It is unclear whether when you pull an Exotic out of these stations it will still have the experience you previously earned on it, if I had to guess, I would say yes! While we are talking about Exotic Blueprints, the Gjallahorn was shown in Deej's Year 1 section of weapons, but then it wasn't shown in his Year 2 section. I strongly think that this means that the Gjallahorn will not be coming with us into Year 2. Assuming that this is not a glitch at actual fact, we can see some other Exotics that will not be coming with us into Year 2.

The Thorn, Hard Light, Necrochasm and Vex Mythoclast are all not shown in the Year 2 Primary section, despite clearly being available in the Year 1 Primary Section. My first thought was that this meant that these weapons would not come with us into Year 2, however I am very sceptical that they would not allow us to take the Raid Exotics(Vex and Necrochasm) into Year 2, for that reason, I think this image shouldn't be something we should base large theories around!

That will do it for me, be sure to let me know what you favorite feature from this live stream event is, in the comments below!

Thanks for reading,
Ed
Twitter

Hi guys,

You have probably noticed recently that I have been doing more content about Destiny, I'm really enjoying playing and writing about Destiny, and you guys seem to be enjoying the Destiny focus. There will still be a variety to my website, it's just that at the moment Destiny is where I have the most fun, which is why today I want to bring you my first review of an Exotic item, and I thought I would start with my favourite, Hawkmoon.

I'm sure any Destiny player is aware that Hawkmoon, Monte Carlo and Forth Horsemen are all exclusive to the PlayStation consoles. But seeing at they will be added into the loot pool on Xbox with the release of The Taken King, I thought I would review it for you! I was very lucky recently, and got Hawkmoon and the Vex Mythoclast in one drop from defeating Atheon on Hard mode. In the short time since I got my hands on this weapon I have fallen in love with it. I have unlocked all the perks on it, including getting it to 365 damage, so let's get into my thoughts!

One of the first things you will notice when you pick this weapon up is the impact, you are not doing this weapon justice, it has one of the highest impact ratings I have ever seen on a primary weapon. It also has an amazing stagger ability to it, which proves very handy on any major enemies(those with yellow bars), sadly it has no affect on bosses, as far as I can tell. The range for this weapon is in the medium department I would say, with the gun struggling to preform at longer distances, especially when considering the low zoom optic automatically fitted on this weapon.

The thing that I love most about this weapon is the magazine size, which clocks in at a whopping 13 rounds, this is higher than every other hand cannon in the game, with the popular Fatebringer boasting an 11 round clip(pre patch 2.0, it seems it will be reduced to 10 after the patch). It has a fairly low recoil on it, making it easy to land multiple precision shots(again this is pre patch 2.0 which seeks to make this harder). Now we have spoken a little about the base stats, lets look at the perks and what they do for the weapon.

In the first column of perks there are Accurized Ballistics, Field Choke and Aggressive Ballistics, I have opted for Accurised Ballistics, as it adds range and impact at the cost of stability. As I said the stability is very manageable so this trade off is a good one for me! In the middle column of perks we have, Hammer Forged, Quick Draw and Speed Reload. Now seeing as Hammer Forged is the only perk to offer a meaningful reward in my opinion, that is the one I have opted for, as it increases Range and Impact, in exchange for nothing!

This weapon doesn't really have an exotic perk like other exotic weapons, rather it has two perks which work together to increase the damage potential of this weapon even further that the base stats. We have Luck in the Chamber, which means one random bullet will deal greater damage! Then in the normal Exotic Perk slot we have Holding Aces, which means two more bullets dear bonus damage! This then means that 3 out of your 13 bullets will deal considerable bonus damage, meaning that it is incredibly potent against all enemies, including bosses!

In the short time since I unlocked this weapon, it has become my favourite Exotic in the game(though I have just acquired the Gjallahorn for Xur so we will have to see how long it keeps that title!). I have already racked up nearly as many kills with is as my Thorn, which used to by my most used weapon. All in all this is an amazing weapon, that all players(Xbox included) should aspire to acquire, though that is easier said than done!

Thank you very much for reading,
Ed
Twitter

Wow, okay guys we have just had a massive amount of information about the upcoming expansion to Destiny, The Taken King. So I want to break down what we have learnt, and talk to you about some of the hidden bits that were shown in the new Game Informer Youtube Video. First of all go and check out the Game Informer articles they have released talking about all this new information. Check them out Here! So let's start talking, firstly Peter Dinkladge will not be reprising his role as our Ghost, instead legendary voice actor Nolan North has recorded all of the lines from our current Ghost. This means that after TTK has launched we will not hear a peep from Dinklebot! In previous trailers we have seen a different skin on the Ghost in our hand, at the time I assumed that we would be getting interchangeable skins for our Ghosts. However it is possible that the colour of our Ghosts will just be changing for good.

The next thing we have to talk about is the fact that Year 1 legendary weapons will not be coming with us into Year 2, that is right your beloved Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence, will not be with us for long on our journey into the Dreadnaught. Game Informer have said that we will use old weapons for the first few hours of The Taken King, but quite soon we will need to upgrade to the new arsenal! I personally am very happy with this change, though I would have liked to see it only affect Raid Legendaries, I don't see a particularly large problem with letting us keep non-Raid legendaries. However Cozmo the join community manager for Destiny has come out and said that we shouldn't dismantle our legendaries yet. More details as to why we shouldn't will come via the Twitch streams Bungie will hold for TTK!

Along with this weapon change, so to is the way we level up, if I am interpreting the information correctly then light levels will be a thing of the past. We will now only have to level up our characters based on XP. This will mean that we are not constricted with our armour choices, in the current version of the game you have to wear quite specific armour pieces in order to stay at the level cap, this seems to be changing with TTK!

Moving onto the trailer that Game Informer released which included loads of hidden bits. Firstly and perhaps most excitingly for me, we have this picture:

So here we have a Stormcaller Warlock who is killing Vex on the multiplayer may Blind Watch. Now it is my strong belief that we will see a horde mode implemented into Destiny similar to the Infinity Ward Call of Duty games. Where by you have to kill enemies on the multiplayer maps! Not where it says Vex Destroyed, I believe that this is the wave progression meter! Note also that in the heavy weapon slot for this character is the picture of a sword! Could this be the artefacts that were teased some time ago? What ever it is, it has a ammo counter for it!

Just a little thing here but the enemies we will be facing will simply have the prefix of Taken before their names. Also a look at the new Titan subclass Sun Breaker!

If my eyes are not deceiving me this is either The Strangers Rifle, a reward from the campaign of the base game. Or it is the Fate of All Fools, and Exotic scout rifle that seems to be featured as part of TTK. We already know that the Fate of All Fools can only be acquired via an Exotic Bounty.

Finally we have a look at 2 new weapons that we will be able to use once The Taken King has been released. On the right is what I believe to be another Exotic Scout Rifle, the Jade Rabbit, which similar to Hawkmoon, Monte Carlo and The Fourth Horseman, will be exclusive to Playstation players for the first year of TTK. Then on the right is a shotgun, which very well may be a shotgun rewarded from the new Raid in TTK. I am basing this of the aesthetic of the weapon, which has a distinctive Hive feel about it, though obviously I could be wrong!

That concludes my thoughts on the new information released about The Taken King, be sure to let me know what you think of this new info in the comments below!
Thanks for reading,
Ed
Twitter

Hi guys,

If you in any way keeping your eye on Destiny and where it is going then you will probably know two things. The Taken King(a massive expansion, also known as TTK) will be kicking off Year 2 with a bang on September 15th, and secondly shortly before the release of TTK patch 2.0 will be released. This patch will include many things including weapon balancing. Today I wanted to talk to you about some of the features that have never even been talked about by Bungie before, that I would like to see added to the game, starting with the weapon inventory.

I would like the inventory for both armour and weapons to be set. So I can bind a weapon to always be in the same place in the cubes next to my active weapon. Many times I have needed to whip out a specific weapon quickly but I take more time that I want to finding it. My plan is that say my Dry Rot 32 Shotgun is always in the top left square, thus any time I need to bring it out in a hurry, I know where it is!

An issue that the community has been complaining about basically since the game was released is the size of vault space given too us. The principle of the game is to collect rare weapons and exotic items. This is somewhat stopped due to the very limited space available to us in the vault. When you take into account you are given 36 spaces for weapons, but that won't even take all the raid weapons plus exotics. I would like it to be so the vault space is at least 100 spaces large, I would love infinite space with a search/organisation feature, but I doubt that will happen. Especially when you think that there are rumours of legendary ascension going into Year 2(which I fully support), we simply don't have enough space for these treasures!

The next thing on my list is quite a big one, and that is Sparrow races, I would like to see a Mario Cart style system where by there are orbs that you need to pick up to replenish your boost, and tight corners and long straights that will make you have to decide whether you want to use a legendary Sparrow with no air brake, or a green sparrow which will excel on the corners!

Another thing that players have wanted for quite a long time are weapon shaders, this would give us the ability to customise the aesthetic of our weapons. However I see two problems that might stop Bungie giving us this feature. Firstly exotic armour pieces are not affected for the most part by the armour shader you have on, if this translated to exotic weapons then they wouldn't be as nice to use! Also with weapon factions seeming to be playing a larger part in Year 2, I'm not sure Bungie would want to cover faction specific colours(such as Suros weapons with Red, White and Black) with other colours of a shader that take away from the unique properties of that weapon faction!

Strikes are one of the largest parts of PvE in Destiny at the moment, but these become stale quite quickly, I personally have completed 133 Strikes since the game came out according to bungie.net. These are only played for the loot rewards at the end, and never for the fun of the strike. I would like to see modifiers introduced to strike playlists, which would be set per strike on a weekly basis. So say Phogoth for one week would always have Void Burn on it, but the next week it might have Angry on. My only fear with this is that people will quit out of strike playlists even more that they do now, if a modifier comes up that they don't like. Maybe if you could opt into the modifier playlists, which have slightly higher chances of good rewards!

They are the biggest things that I would like to see added, along with minor changes such as it would be nice to exchange Sapphire Wire(and other class specific pieces) for weapon parts. This is mainly because reforging is depleting my weapon parts much quicker than I had anticipated!

If you think I have missed any major features that you would like to see added to Destiny if the future, then start a discussion in the comments section!

Thanks for reading,
Ed

Hi guys,

Today I wanted to talk you all through my typical gear set up I use when playing the Crucible in Destiny! I will put my hands up right now and say I use one of the most typical loadouts in the Crucible at the moment, but I still wanted to walk you through what I use and why! Firstly an overall look at my loadout:

So at a glance it I use as a primary weapon the Thorn, a Shotgun(Matador 64) as my special weapon, and for my heavy I use the Wolves' Bane, which in my opinion is the best weapon to come out of the Queens Chest!

First let's look more closely at my primary weapon choice Thorn, it is one of a select few weapons that are currently considered the best in the game. If you have ever picked Thorn up they you will know that people aren't lying when they say this, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. It actually doesn't have the absolute quickest time to kill in the Crucible, that prize rests with The Last Word(a weapon I can't fully get along with for now). Some people say that you are a lesser player if you use the Thorn, however it is the weapon that I have the most fun with, and also how I perform the best. So I see no reason not to use it under the current balance scheme. It has the ability to kill an enemy with two shots to the head, and then the DoT(Damage over Time) will finish them off. The only exception to this rule are Warlocks wearing The Ram, in which case three head shots are needed to finish the job.

Lets look at the class and perks that I opt for in the Crucible.

So for my jump I use Blink(takes some getting used to but it's worth it), in my my super ability I use a AoE(Area of Effect) which sends out a circular blast radius around me. I use this when ever I'm in a tight situation, it doesn't always kill enemies, but it can give you time to prioritise targets! For my melee perk I use Fast Twitch which dramatically reduces the cool down of Blink Strike. There is no point in my opinion using the invisibility perk or the backstab perk, I don't find that either of these are as useful in moment to moment combat as a Blink Strike which is nearly always active. For my two passive perks(stat buffs) I have prioritised armour and agility, armour for obvious reasons, and agility because I want to be able to slide and immediately sprint again, which isn't always possible with low agility!

To partner with my aggressive play style, I use Quick Draw which means my weapons ready immediately, which partnered with quite high agility works very well! I could use Fleet Footed, which means I can slide further and reach a higher top speed with my sprint, I do use this from time to time, but I find the buff of Quick Draw very useful. Lastly I use Hungering Blade, this is a semi useful perk, but I use it partly because I really don't want the other two perks, the first increases the duration of arc blade for each kill. The second perk means you turn invisible after crouching in one place for a certain time, but again tying into my aggressive play style I have never done this in Crucible.

This brings me to the end of my class perk selection, I will briefly touch on my armour choices, though these are largely irrelevant. For my Legendary armour I either ware my gear that gives me level 34(for Iron Banner or Trials of Osiris), but the rest of the time I ware low level Legendary gear to give it some XP! My Exotic of choice is the Knucklehead Radar, which means that whenever I aim down sights with a primary weapon I can still see my radar. Possibly because I'm not a good enough player yet, but I rely rather heavily on the radar to know where people are, so always knowing I have a radar active is good to know!

Now let's move onto the meat and bones of the loadout, the weapons! As I mentioned earlier I use the Thorn as my primary weapon, this is always the slot that I use my Exotic in. I vary between the Red Death, Thorn and The Last Word, all of which are very powerful! For my secondary weapon I use the Matador 64.

I reforged it until I got Shot Package, which basically makes it affective at a greater range. I would not advise trying to reforge to get two perks of your choice, shot package in its own with this weapon will make it very affective! In a typical match I will probably get half of my kills with a shotgun, half with Thorn, or another primary, so a good shotgun is vital for me. I still plan to use this after the 2.0 patch has been released as sniping is a weakness of mine! Lastly there is the heavy weapon that I use!

The heavy weapon that I use is called the Wolves' Bane, this is a random drop from the large loot chest at the end of any level Prison of Elders(PoE). I love this weapon because it is quite a slow firing high damaging weapon, and can take an enemy out in very few bullets. It is more efficient to use a machine gun in place of a rocket launcher for my money, because you can get far more kills with it if you know what to do. The perks are of very little consequence, and once I get enough motes of light and weapon parts I will be reforging it to try to get a larger magazine perk!

There you go guys, my set up for Crucible matches as a Bladedancer, if you liked this then let me know on Twitter and I can release a guide for my Gunslinger!
Thanks for reading,
Ed