Destiny; Challenge Mode Review

Hi Guys,

The last three weeks have seen a new event added to the Kings Fall Raid in Destiny, Challenge Mode, which has changed the way you need to kill one of the three main bosses. Today I want to do a recap of the three challenges, and talk about whether they are worth doing, and how challenging they actually are.

So in the first week we had the War Priest, which needed to be killed after the Aura was held with a different person every time. The Aura holder being the first person to step on the last plate. This was a rather disappointing challenge, as many people did it with either no change or little change to how they normally did the encounter. The team I did it with had no challenge what so ever completing it on Hard, and the reward was the 48th Calcified Fragment, an Emblem(only on Hard Mode), a guaranteed 320 on Hard, 310 on Normal, weapon to drop and a guaranteed 320 Hard or 310 Normal Arfifact to drop. By completing it on Hard Mode for the first time that week on any one character, you would you Normal and Hard Raid rewards, as well as Normal and Hard Challenge mode rewards. So I got a 320 Sniper, 310 Rocket launcher, a 320 and 310 Artifact along side the random rewards for completing the encounter for the first time on that character in the week. So looking back it was a disappointing change to the boss, but exceptional loot for those around light level 300 or 310. So people geared up and prepared for the Golgoroth Challenge the following week.

Golgoroth came around and was far more challenging that War Priest.... for the first few hours, then people worked out a way to make the encounter much easier, whilst still completing the challenge, which was that everyone had to hold Golgoroths gaze at least once per cycle. So what people worked out you could do, is the normal one Orb strategy where everyone drops down into the pool and does damage on the boss, they rather that doing damage for the following 5 gaze fazes, it is simply passed around safely from the side of the pit. I would be very surprised in Bungie intended this, as they said in a weekly update, "but apologies in advance to those that run the single-pool strat for Golgoroth"(full article). Anyway Bungies intentions aside this was much closer to what I had been imagining, it took me around about 2 hours to complete it, though I did need to find a second group to attempt it with, as I couldn't get it done with the first group. The rewards for Golgoroth followed a similar pattern to War Priest, with a guaranteed 320(Hard) or 310(Normal) piece of Armour, along with an emblem if completed on Hard, the 49th Calcified Fragment, and an artifact or two depending on difficulty. People then moved their sights to Oryx Challenge Mode, and speculation was everywhere as to what the challenge would be!

The following Tuesday rolled around and this one took a little longer for people to work out the challenge, people came to the conclusion, still only hours after the challenge was pushed live, that you would have to detonate all 16 orbs at once to complete the challenge. Many people, myself very much included, were very surprised by this, as when this strategy was first found a few months ago, many people could show that it crashed a lot of peoples consoles. Clearly hidden in one of the patches since these reports, that was fixed, and now people knew how to complete the final challenge. What you have to do, is save up four bombs in each area, totally 16, and then detonate them all at once, taking Oryx down to his last stand in one foul swoop. By doing this you will face 3 Shades of Oryx, as you won't need to run after the first cycle as there will be no damage done to Oryx. This challenge was by far the hardest for me to pull off, I attempted it with several groups, the majority of which disbanded due to the difficulty, however I eventually bested Oryx and claimed my prize, of either a Primary Weapon or Helmet at 320(Hard) or 310(Normal) Light Level, then the now standard 320/310 Artifact, an emblem(Hard Mode only) a new awesome Ship(Hard Mode only) and the much coveted 50th Calcified Fragment. Now assuming you have earned all the previous 49 fragments(as I had done), many people assumed there would be an amazing reward for collecting every fragment, after all it is a very hard thing to collect them all. What did we get I hear you ask? A Shader. Nothing more, nothing less. This has angered many people, myself included to some extent, and while some believe that there will be an Exotic quest that unlocks after a certain amount of time, I myself believe that we have had our reward, and will earn nothing further from the fragment collection. I'm okay with this, as the journey those 50 fragments took me on, was an amazing one, and while it was occasionally gruelling, it was worth it in the end, even if it all led to a Shader, we all will still have the tale of the 50.

Thank you very much for reading, I will post again after Christmas now, so I hope you have a wonderful time!
Ed
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