Destiny Update - 12/01/2014

Bungie - Today's patch includes the long-awaited arrival of Exotics weapon buffs, additional acquisition paths for destination upgrade materials, along with additional changes to exotic gear node upgrading in preparation for the soon-to-be-released expansion, The Dark Below.

[martinezjesus1993]

About time they added the ability to buy materials!! It was such a drag having to spend hours looking for materials! And buff Thorn and Bad Juju! And they added exotic shards! Great update Bungie! Keep them comming

[xHeavYx]

I don't play too often, but I'd rather look for materials than having to spend 7 strange coins to buy an exotic shard to update exotic gear.

[Death]

7 Strange coins are much easier to get than 18 Asendant shards.

[martinezjesus1993]

I agree with Death, all you need to do is do the weekly once in level 28 and you get 9 strange coins, its a pain trying to find all the Ascendant materials especially if you are like me and trying to have atleast 3 weapons of each elemental damage fully upgraded in both secondary and heavy, you have no idea how much time this is going to save me.

[orakle44]

you can still look for the materials

[Christopher]

@Death: The problem is, ascendant shards aren't used to buy other things while strange coins are. They're piling the most important purchases on one coinage system without increasing how much coin you get. That means you'll have to be a lot more thrifty in how you spend them and will likely end up having more ascendant material and the like than you know what to do with (I already have at least 30+ of each).

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Well you just said it. You don't play often. For those of us on all the time, it takes a lot of gameplay hours just looking for the stupid things, only to have to find more foevthe next piece of equipment. I have 150 strange coins because Our never has anything worthwhile for me. I'll gladly drop 7 on him for shards.

[Christopher]

*** For those of us on all the time,***

That's just as bad as making decisions based on those who play fewer hours.

*** it takes a lot of gameplay hours just looking for the stupid things, only to have to find more foevthe next piece of equipment.***

I currently play only ~8 hours a week, but I have a ton of time in Destiny. Mostly to just do weeklies and do some bounties when I'm not otherwise playing. During that time I earn a minimum of 9 strange coins. But, during that time I also find a minimum of 3 legendaries (vanguard ranks, crucible ranks, nightfall/heroic rewards, cryptarch level ups, etc.). In addition, I can earn at least 2 astral material each day from the daily heroic. At the end of the day, it is just as easy to get enough astrals to level up a weapon or piece of armor as needed as it is to get enough strange coins to buy a single exotic shard.

With the new method, though, astral materials are legendary only and exotic shards are exotic only. Now what you do is solely based on what type of item you need to level up.

Furthermore, strange coins are still needed for buying any exotic gear or items that most people aren't lucky enough to have drop during raids/weeklies. No increase in how often you get strange coins, though.

So, while it's great that you have 150 strange coins and have more trouble with finding ascendant material, the average player will find it much harder to now use strange coin since they do not just collect it in droves nor do they have the time to do content over and over as much as you do, increasing the chances of finding exotic gear like you do. And, honestly, if you're having trouble finding ascendant material, but have 150 strange coins, I kind of wonder what you're doing with all the legendary gear you find.

It's, IMHO, a flawed decision unless they decide to increase the rate that strange coins are found in the game. It also puts even more focus on doing grouped activities without, still, providing people with a way to do any matchmaking on the content that gives them.

Sure, I solo them, you solo them, but for the average gamer? They aren't soloing the weekly content.

[Death]

I'm going to take a wait and see approach to the new system. It's very easy to level a second or third character to level 20. It's even easier to get to level 25 with these characters if you use the legendary gear you find instead of crushing it. I can do the weekly with each character to get 27 coins. Asendant shards for what ever reason are not my friend. I get the dam energy like there is no tomorrow though. Of course I upgraded all of my exotic gear first since it had the best stats. :(

[StanLee]

Finally a use for my 181 strange coins!

[theDivision]

@cgoodno

Your second comment that is really long the BIGGEST part (and main one I agree with) is them not supplying us with matchmaking for the weekly and nightfall. Destiny is supposed to be a multiplayer experience. They boast about playing with tons of other players but the majority of the time (Without going to the reddit lfg subform) you are pretty much on your own.

IMHO that is the biggest flaw in destiny right now. I don't even have the chance to be social because EVERY story mission and the hardest content does not have matchmaking. How bungie can miss something like that is beyond me.

[CorndogBurglar]

I've spent Strange Coins on weapons from Xur for the past 3 weeks and right now I'm still sitting on 18 of them.

Its not exactly hard to earn strange coincs.

[wsoutlaw87]

I have 30 strange coins right now. You dont need to buy every piece of crap xur sells, and you can very easily get more than 10 every week. How many exotics are you really tring to max out? You can only use 2 at once. Its one shard, but only for the very last upgrade, which you could just not do, compared to the last 3 taking way more energies.

[GameSpawn]

Most of my strange coins on all 3 of my characters have actually come from rare engrams. I've also gotten tons of Motes of Light the same way. I was actually kind of bummed every time this happened because I was trying to hoard up rare weapons to dismantle for Weapon Parts for upgrading (Rares yield 2+ parts per dismantle depending on Primary, Secondary, Heavy and how far up they've been leveled [XP earned] or upgraded [glimmer or material actually spent]).

I've also received Strange Coins as rewards for my first public event per day. Ascendant material is the more common reward, but I've still gotten a decent share of Motes and Coins.

[vickers500]

"At the end of the day, it is just as easy to get enough astrals to level up a weapon or piece of armor as needed as it is to get enough strange coins to buy a single exotic shard."

Not really, strange coins are much easier. Just create two more characters. Sounds like a daunting task, but if you don't want to find gear for a whole new character or try a new character, then you can just make two duplicates of the one you already have, so you can give your current extra gear to them once they hit level 20, which doesn't take much time to get to at all, and do the weekly and nightfall (even the raid if you're ready) 3 times a week. If not all of those, then at least the weekly, which you don't have to do solo, just ask some people in the tower if they want to do the weekly, there's no reason you should do it on your own, that is unless you completely refuse to socialize in this game at all (at which point I'd have to wonder why someone would keep playing a game Destiny if they weren't willing to be at least social enough to invite someone to their game, it's a huge part of the game after all.

And if you don't have the time to grind or farm then perhaps Destiny isn't meant for you. The timesink is a staple of the genre Destiny is in (mmos), and the new system is miles better than the old. Also just to throw this out there, you only need ONE exotic shard to upgrade an exotic, just one, and if you're getting exotics so fast that you don't have enough strange coins for the shards to upgrade them, then it's time you started actually progressing in your game. Look at it this way, you can now spend that time you spent doing bounties and dailies on the weekly instead, get your 9 coins and get your favourite exotic of the week fully upgraded. And sorry, but if you rely solely on xur to get your exotics and your whining about not being able to fully upgrade them without putting in the extra work, then boo hoo. There is a certain amount of playing that must be done, you can't simply have everything handed to you (which xur pretty much already does) and have the game do all the work for you in upgrading it.

[kneon]

It shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes to gather enough materials for an upgrade. Besides now they are awarding materials as mission bonuses. It seems pointless.

I'm can put up with letting people buy materials, but why take away my ability to sell materials? I've sold thousands of excess materials so far.

I'm also not happy about only getting half the cryptarch reputation, my main character is at level 41 but progress will be much slower now.

Over all not happy with the changes.

[martinezjesus1993]

Idk how you did it but it took me and my friends hours to get a decent amount of upgrade materials, even if we would do loops arounds the little areas with lots of materials and chests

[kneon]

I just finished about 35 minutes of patrol on the moon, did 8 missions and picked up about 25 chests. I often find as many as 5 in a minute.

You just need to learn the locations, there are a lot of them but many you can just run by, it's only the caves and rooms that you actually need to enter. And if you worked as a team it would go even quicker as not everyone needs to check every room.

And now I just turned in my "Patrol the moon" bounty and what do I get, MORE Helium filaments. Like I need more of those.

[kneon]

Just did it again on the moon, exactly 30 minutes and 23 chests. I went from 61 to 112 Helium filaments in 30 minutes, that's almost 2 per minute.

I think the problem people have is simply that they don't know where to look. What can happen is that you get a chest in one of the oddball locations and it will stay there until someone finds it. And until someone finds it it can't respawn in the more common/easier to spot locations.

[ABizzel1]

@kneon

The problem is no one wants to run around looting chest for an hour just to get enough materials to upgrade, and after upgrading all your items you're back a 0, and have to start all over again.

Destiny was meant to be a MMO FPS, but for their fanbase it needs to be a FPS first and an MMO second. Console gamers are FPS fans first, which means having to spend hours doing something as simple as upgrading armor, is an instant turnoff for many players, even if they do like the game.

This was an all around good update, and needed to keep people playing the game into 2015. The more accessible it is, the more people will be willing to stay with the game through each expansion. If they keep it a grindfest then people are going to move on to other games they're getting for the holidays.

Removing the "exploits" is the only real problem I have with most of the updates, and it's not because of the benefits. What upsets me is they're quick to patch the exploits, but take forever to implement worthwhile features and updates, such as the party chat issue, the lagging out constantly from all these error codes.

I see huge potential in Destiny 2, but Destiny 1 has been a up and down ride.

[kneon]

But you loot the chests/gather materials while you are doing missions/bounties/public events so it really doesn't take too much extra time. It's not like you are just looting chests.

Besides I don't loot chest for the normal materials, I always have far too many of those. I loot chests for the engrams, ascendant materials, strange coins and motes of light that show up about 2 or 3 times an hour.

[StanLee]

@ kneon

There is nothing to do with the currency anyway. You may as we'll be able to purchase materials. I've been maxed on marks for weeks.

[Burackus]

I also am not happy they nurfed the suros regime again, and I don't play PvP that much for people fussing it's too powerful

[kneon]

@StanLee

Increasing the currency limit would have been a much more useful change.

Every day I need to buy a bunch of ammo packs as I'm always hitting the glimmer cap. I've got hundreds of them now. And I keep buying weapons with my marks just to dismantle them because I keep hitting the 200 mark limit with nothing interesting available to buy.

[BlackWolf12]

You guys are missing the point.

Running in circles for hours just to get enough upgrade materials to upgrade a weapon is very tedious, and get's old very quickly.

It doesn't matter if it is easy, or is doable, it needs to be enjoyable, and right now, it isn't.

It's as simple as that.

Besides, buying materials isn't 100%. You can still run out of Marks and need to farm anyway.

[wsoutlaw87]

that half hour of pointless farming just to get 5 marks? do a tiger strike in 20 and youd get the same thing and, be able to actually PLAY the game. an hour of looting chests for acendant materials? Just do the daily story, a pubic event, or the raid. If you werent wasting all that time farming you would be getting more legendary equipment to scrap and get acendents. Marks and strange coins are easy to come by, farming for materials is just boring.

[kneon]

@wsoutlaw87

It wasn't a half hour of pointless farming, it was 30 minutes of doing bounties, missions and public events where I ended up with more XP, marks, engrams and ascendant materials than I would have doing a strike.

You pick up chests WHILE you're playing, not instead of.

[GiggMan]

I would have said nice update until I read that they fixed the Templar exploit...

Boo Bungie Lol. Still nice update though.

[BattleTorn]

I know, but it wouldn't be the first time they've "fixed it."

So, we'll have to see.

[AKS]

The Templar is not all that difficult. Making sure he never teleports, on the other hand...

[GiggMan]

Yeah that's what I'm saying. Only managed to keep him from teleporting once without cheesing. I can't imaging it on hard but can't wait to try it Tuesday.

The templar itself isn't hard at all.

[Palitera]

Good thing that the reward for not letting him teleport is plain useless.

[Reddzfoxx]

I doubt anyone will miss the 3-6 shards or Energy that is currently in abundance.

[ipach]

you know, i actually don't mind the fresh challenge. it's annoying and will be super challenging on hard, but the raid was starting to lack in the challenge factor. the first few times we raided when we didn't know about the exploit were actually kind of fun back when. definitely sucks from a time-efficiency standpoint, but it's one of the more fun and frenetic bosses in the game

[Dgander]

They are "fixing" everything except connectivity issues and their crappy a** servers.

[BlackTar187]

i don't have these problems at all.

[Dgander]

Maybe you dont but lots of people do. I keep getting stupid animal error messages like fly, bee, zebra etc. Just go look at their forums there are a lot of people there always complaining and bungie barely ever address these problems.

[wsoutlaw87]

no one I play with has ever had issues. You should see if theres something on your end you could do. Obviously you are not the only one, but very far from the norm.

[pivotplease]

I had these issues for the first week but don't get them at all now. My friend playing on the X1 though gets them every time he tries to play so he basically quit the game.

[domford1981]

What? So your happy to get through it by an exploit rather than play it properly?

Edit: missed your lol, thought you were genuinely moaning about not being able to cheat

[GiggMan]

Why is that the first thing people tend to think? I have beat the templar numerous times without the exploit. I have hundreds of hours and two level 30 characters, one before I even knew about the exploit.

Its just a simpler way of doing something that's already simple.

Let me ask you this, have you ever had Atheon cheese and exploit you entire team lol? Such as teleporting only two people or not teleporting you to the appropriate location? What about on hard mode restraining you as you get teleported to Venus or mars?

I'm glad they are fixing issues as I said but I don't feel bad at all exploiting a game that screws you back. An eye for an eye, and its fun.

[BattleTorn]

"In preparation for the Dark Below, Exotic Armor and Weapons no longer require Ascendant Materials to upgrade"

Sayyy whatt?

Glad this has finally arrived!

[Death]

I caught that too. I'll need to check when I get home what the process is to level exotics. We know you need to get material from Xur for 7 coins to finish leveling, but we don't know what material will be used along with glimmer to get there.

[Christopher]

Yeah, but now you can't use legendary disassembles to level them up. So, legendary are used to level up legendary, exotics level up exotics.

[InTheZoneAC]

haven't played at all in close to a full month

far cry 4, gta v, lbp3, dragon age, shadow of mordor, driveclub, geometry wars, borderlands

I hit a wall with destiny after spending hundreds of hours on it and I realized that no weapon is better than the next because they're all balanced around each other. No point in grabbing the next weapon when I know it won't be any better.

Maybe the next expansion will revive my motivation to play this game, but I'm just not feeling it at all.

[Death]

Having three of each weapon with elemental damage maxed at 300 damage per character is a tough grind. Finding a primary with elemental is a bitch. I've spent a lot of time with Destiny and have a Hunter, Warlock and Titan at levels 29, 28, and 25. The Vault still kicks my teams ass every week. It's been fun though since the group I play with have been together long enough that we have had children and have brought them into the fold.

[Christopher]

I can't get my hand on the arc hand cannon. Maxed out Atheon's and Confluence. Leveling those up was much faster than a single exotic, though. Being able to level up just one exotic at a time is really a huge pain in the tuchus.

Of course, with the DLC, it looks like we'll be going for the exact same type of weapons and damage (arc hand cannon, solar scout rifle, void assault rifle). Wish they had decided to mix it up a bit more with the DLC rather than keeping it to the same weapons matched with the same damage types.

[Death]

I found the easiest way to max my weapons is to equip the ones I want to level before turning in bounties and use the ones I enjoy to complete them. I'm a bit irked they debuffed Suros since that has been my go to for weeks. Confluence has been my favorite primary for my Warlock. I'm still trying for Atheon and the Mythoclast. I've been incredibly unlucky this far.

[AKS]

I've got received at least half a dozen Epilogues but not a single set of raid boots. I had to go with Iron Banner boots for all 3 characters to get them to 30.

The Suros Regime needed to be nerfed, but I think they nerfed the wrong stat. I can kill SR wielders just fine with my Vanquisher VIII from normal auto rifle range, but the SR has outrageous scout rifle range that is a major problem on larger maps. They can keep all that other stuff the same, but what needed to be cut down was that outlandish range. The SR's range is nearly as good as my Crusader I, which is a scout rifle. That's just ridiculous for an auto rifle that already has strong damage and excellent stability. That's why everyone was using the same rifle in Iron Banner. You may like the weapon personally, but it's screwing up the entire balance and weapon variety of PvP. Less will also use exotic special or heavy weapons because you can only equip a single exotic.

Most auto rifles are reasonably balanced, but the Suros Regime is not. It probably still isn't thanks to adjusting the wrong stat.

[CorndogBurglar]

But they are different, they just aren't game breakingly different, which is what you want in a competitive type game, otherwise, everyone would just use the same weapon. How is that any different than what you are talking about? Making some weapons significantly better than others is even worse in my opinion, because everyone lucky enough to have it would be owning all the people that were unlucky and didn't get it yet.

The big difference is in damage, range, and stability.

The upgrades are nice too, but they don't usually add enough of a buff to keep one weapon over another, unless its something like Patience and Time, which lets you see the radar when aiming, and also turn invisible while aiming.

But at the end of the day, I thought they had balanced the weapons pretty nicely, with the exception of the exotics. The exotics should be noticeably better than Legendaries, just like Legendaries are noticeably better than Rares.

[InTheZoneAC]

in crucible there are many normal weapons, such as pistols or shotguns that are better than these overrated exotics. People complaining about weapon balance in crucible need to find another game where everyone picks from one or two weapons and can all talk about how greatly balanced it is.

But why do the weapons have to be balanced around each other when not in the crucible? I have plenty of weapons that I like. Having more doesn't change anything because I feel nothing has been added to the game.

[pivotplease]

Man that's so many games to pick up full price for how much time there is in a day. I picked up FC4, LBP3, and GW3, but I'll look into GTA5 and DA:O early next year for sure. Shadow of Mordor hinged on the repetition of AC and non-stop orc fighting and the novelty of the nemesis system lasts only a few hours, so I couldn't see myself getting that despite being a huge Tolkien fan.

[InTheZoneAC]

I haven't played any dragon age before, but I'm playing DA:I on nightmare and the game is definitely GoTY material.

GTA v, FC4, LBP3, LoTR:SoM are all great games as well...

[AKS]

I haven't had a chance to test it out yet (not sure if it has taken effect; I'm not home to see), but I have to wonder from those notes if they overdid it a bit with Thorn. The main reason Thorn wasn't considered to be a strong weapon by many (in addition to not having it, upgrading it, or having experience with it, of course) is that two of the best weapons in the game, Hawkmoon and The Last Word, are exotics in the same class. Thorn was NOT a bad weapon prior to this update, it just wasn't a top tier weapon like Hawkmoon, which may be the best primary in the game right now.

The only key weaknesses of Thorn were the cylinder size (6 rounds up to this point) and reload speed, and it looks like those areas are being buffed. Unless they are very mild buffs, this thing is going to be very dangerous.

In general, the most of the changes look pretty good. I think they screwed up nerfing the damage instead of the RANGE of Suros Regime, but this will help balance things out somewhat. Also, the class-wide nerf to auto rifles hurt the SMG-like auto rifles like Hard Light disproportionately, putting them too close to shotgun range, so I'm glad to see that change to add stability to Hard Light and Monte Carlo. The Pocket Infinity also needed a slightly larger magazine but not the 8 rounds or whatever it used to be, which was just outrageous in PvP. 5 rounds seems OK. Also, I thought Truth had 2 rounds; the notes claim it is being buffed from 1 to 3.

[cell989]

with this update Thorn is about to become a real contender for top weapons

9 bullet mag
Better stability and reload speed
That buff on lingering damage
and an overlooked feature, highlighted opponent with one shot

[Razuel]

it's about time

[cell989]

first of all, Yeeesssss!!!!!!! my Thorn will actually matter now. The bounty will finally be worth doing.

Bad Juju is finally worth using

No more farming for materials is a blessing

Vex is now a beast more so than before

The Truth has been buffed to perfection

No more scrapping the bottom of the barrel for shards, 7 coins will do it

Xur is about to get even more rich

Now the bad news: Goodbye Templar cheese :(

[TRGMatt]

It's funny how fighting Templar legit is fun now, though. Played with some randoms earlier and had a blast with it. AN experienced team will fell him no problem still and I've yet to try Hard Mode with a legit team but the randoms I played HM Templar with managed to get him down pretty far with 5 29s. And they weren't even charging the relic right. Dude refused to hunt down Harpys or we could've had him, I think.

Anyways...back to earning our progress in the Raid again. ANd it's not so bad.

[Tex117]

This is THE patch we have all been waiting for.

The buff to exotics is well received along with the easier path to upgrade both through new and old "ass mats" and the destination materials.

The awful awful grind of farming for materials for HOURS on end is over. There is still a lot of grinding, but not just running around in a circle. We did it Guardians. See you in the Dark Below.

[Krad1989]

who the fuck cares about this game?

[TekKing]

you

[JMyers]

Way to waste your time on actually clicking on the article and commenting then right?

GTFO if you don't care.

[_FantasmA_]

And still waiting for matchmaking in the weekly heroic strike and raid. I've only done the raid 3 times. Its nearly impossible to find 5 people who want to do it. They always complain about how they can't get to level 30 or how bad they want a Raid weapon but they don't to play the actual Raid. Seriously, the Raid is the most rewarding part of the game and its not even accessible to everyone.

[Themba76]

not that hard ive done the raid over 150 times

[Elite-uk]

Well considering the raid has only been available for 15 weeks. that's 3 times a week...3x15=150 ?!....o_O

Had high hopes for this game, I just hope they have learned from all this non-sense and that Destiny 2 is what this was supposed to be. :/

[TRGMatt]

My Thorn is useful in PvE now. :)

[cellfluid]

Public events needs too be intensified and more accessible!!