True Reviews, Updates and Common Sense Opinions
The new dungeon, Prophecy, was released at 5 pm PST yesterday, the first day of the new season in Destiny 2, Season of the Arrivals. I’ve put together easy to follow instructions on how to finish the encounter.
Continue reading “Prophecy Dungeon Guide (simplified) | Destiny 2: Season of the Arrivals”
The new exotic machine gun, Xenophage is available in Shadowkeep now that Festival of the Lost has begun. The quest isn’t too complex, but there are moments where it gets a bit meticulous. I’d say the hardest part is the boss fight at the end. So take a look at the steps below. I did my best to simplify them for you in written form to get straight to the point.
If you only need a strategy to defeat the boss at the end, scroll to number 6.
Continue reading “How to get Xenophage, strategy to beat Volmar, the Tempted (boss) – Easy guide | Destiny 2: Shadowkeep”
A big piece of playing any looter shooter involves optimizing your gear set to be most efficient in the game. In the Destiny universe, we have been grinding for gear since 2014. Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is no different. (Full Destiny 2: Shadowkeep review available here).
Continue reading “Easy guide to level up to 900 light, 920 light for raid | Destiny 2: Shadowkeep”
I made an interesting choice for this exotic questline. I started the quest on my hunter, but it’s account-wide which will come in handy later. It’s simple enough to start the quest.
Start the Quest/ Boons:
You’ll see a huge statue of Calus. When you approach him you’ll see four daily bounties that you need to pick up and complete in order to get purple Boons.
Go to Werner on Nessus and open the chest to the right of him. It will give you the Invitation exotic envelope in your pursuits and you’ll need to visit the Visage Tribute Hall by clicking on the icon on the Nessus map.
These boons will be turned back into this Calus statue in order to give you a discount for buying your tributes.
Your invitation bounty will turn into the Golden Hero bounty and prompt you to turn in tributes in order to make progress. You’ll need 18 in total to get the Bad Juju mission to open for you.
You’ll open up a door behind the statue and you’ll open up all of your tributes there.
Discounts:
Now, here is the discount workaround. If you only do 3 Visage bounties on each character, you’ll be able to get more than 4% discounts a day.
For instance, I did 3 on my hunter and 3 on my warlock. Please remember not to do more than 3 bounties per character per daily reset because you’ll get glimmer instead of your discount boon.
This is how you’ll be able to use fewer resources to fill up your tribute hall.
Once you have turned in 18 tributes, you’ll get a Pest Control message and then a Reality Shutters prompt you next to the chest in the middle of the tribute hall.
Once you click that, ‘The Other Side” adventure will be available at the chest with the Bad Juju’s Ahamkara’s skull in the case.
You can rally the flag once you start the mission.
This mission is based in the ascendant realm. You can solo it if you’d like. It’s not a timed encounter and you can always use your optimum loadout to melt majors in the encounter.
My loadout included Outbreak Prime, Calus Mini Tool Submachine Gun, and Bane of Sorrow Machine Gun. I ended up swapping my loadout around during the final part of the mission. I chose Blast Furnace, Beloved and 1K voices.
I played it slow at the end especially because of the axion darts and shriekers.
Once you finish the mission you’ll be able to open the chest and your Bad Juju is yours!
Yay!
Catalyst:
You need 45 tributes for the catalyst to be available for you. You can use the same method to earn your discount as before. It will save you time and resources. After the catalyst is available, you’ll pay 7 legendary shards to buy it from Calus statue.
Materials and Resources:
Here’s the thing, this mission can certainly feel punishing to the players that don’t store up resources. Players who don’t have a wealth of materials and resources to buy tributes outright will feel like they are left behind. The everyday player won’t feel the squeeze so much. Most likely because they have a wealth of materials to use without running out.
Glimmer will deplete very fast because the cost of the tributes is very high. But, it’s time to get used to this type of game in Destiny 2. As we phase into the MMO era of Destiny, it will be the player’s responsibility to predict the necessity of materials to make headway in the game.
I predict even the hardcore-est of players will feel the materials squeeze at some point during Shadowkeep.
Anyway. Good luck in your quest!
Apex Legends is a high octane, intense concentration, three player team battle royale. The new season just released last week and guess what, it’s hard!
I finally put time aside to jump back into Apex Legends and I was not expecting to be so out of my element in Battle Charge.
But I guess that is what happens when you take long breaks from something that you didn’t really spend a lot of time in to begin with.
But I digress.
I went in with a full team of three and I quickly found out that there is a high learning curve and in order to be of some use to my teammates, who have played somewhat since season 1, I needed to “Git Gud”.
So if you are like me and want to give Apex Legends an actual place in your gaming rotation and don’t know how to get in the rhythm or you just want to giggle at the 3 things that became apparent to me in my first game, read on.
How to survive a match in Apex Legends:
1.Location
At this point, assume everyone is better than you because they’ve been playing longer and more frequently than you. Enter defense mode from the moment you choose a location to jump to. I found the road less traveled is kinder to newbies like myself. So choose Skull Town. Always choose Skull Town.
If you’re lucky, no one will follow you and you’ll be able to get body armor and a half decent weapon. I managed to save my life by throwing a grenade point blank. It was the first thing I found, my teammate was screaming immediately and I panicked! It worked out. Not for long but it felt good.
2.Button Configuration
Check your button configuration before you start the game. I know it sounds like common sense, but I didn’t realize that Apex Legends swaps around your buttons. When I finally picked up a weapon I didn’t think about my buttons. I ended up in a fight with another player, every shot I took was followed by a half-cocked melee attempt, and it got me killed.
That’s because my melee and shoot buttons were too close. I was told I was turning too fast.
HUH!
Anyway, I changed my butting configuration to Button Puncher and I had better luck for it.
3.Pinging can be annoying
Pinging is good sometimes, but you’re annoying if you ping too much. I was bleeding out. The incoming team sniped me and I was trying to be helpful, so I hit my R1 and pinged the enemy location.
How many times? More than a couple.
My pinging ended up being more of a hindrance than a help in that situation. My advice is to ping once or twice and then use callouts. Especially if you are in a party with people you know.
Honorable mentions:
A few things that happened to be very annoying during my first game included …
Granted, I am not a battle royale player per say. I’m use to a “regular” PVP environment, but I’m sure I can enjoy Apex Legends once I get down the basics. I played as Lifeline and I’m thinking she’s newbie friendly. You can judge for yourself.
Much like the Thorn and last word quests, the Lumina proved to be a tedious and grindy set of tasks full of shenanigans. I won’t say it was bad because it utilized a lot of different activities currently in the game. But it definitely gave me a reason to moan and groan from time to time.
When I finally finished the quest took a deep breath in a sigh of relief. Of course, I was taking notes in preparation for this specific blog. In hindsight, I could have gotten the quest done significantly faster.
I did a lot of testing to find out which activities would cut down the grind time and award the most points or percentages for my time spent. Especially on the Fireteam Leader portion of the quest line.
For science!!
My research is your gain! Below is the easy way to acquire your Lumina exotic hand cannon, including the fastest activities that give the most points at specific parts of the questline.
Quest line bounties in order (simplified):
My Strategy:
The fastest way to complete Bearer of Evil is to go to the Blindwell. I know by using this tactic you will spend a lot of time in the Dreaming City, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because its the easiest way to get it done.
The population is very high in Blindwell this week. Having so many people in your instance will make your orb creation go by fast because the orbs count no matter who they are coming from. My group finished this step in one tier III run, plus a bonus heroic charge.
For the Rose Reveal step, you’ll be completing Defend the Light and Face the Horde at the same time. At least you can.
Stay in the Dreaming City, equipt the risk-runner for your Defend the Light bounty. If you are a titan, pop that rally barricade as much as you can and shoot everything.
Realistically it took us (a team of three) 5 full tier III runs to complete Face the Horde, but 2 full runs to get the multi-kill portion done.
Completing the Nightfall is standard practice at this point. We went for 100k because that’s just what we needed. But, getting to 50,000 points is fast. We ran Strange Terrian.
For the Fireteam Leader step, I would advise you doing Menagerie only. I had a full team of six. My standard fireteam, plus three people from Bungie.net’s LFG. We all ran with the rose and it took Three solid runs for me to complete the bounty. Each run granted 20 points.
Unfortunately, I had already struggled through a strike, a Gambit match, two nightfalls, and two forges only getting for 21 points. Then went to help a buddy to the Menagerie and boom discovered a huge point boost. So, just stick with Menagerie.
However, if you are a glutton for punishment and tediousness you could try some of the following. I’ve written the corresponding points next to them.
Strikes: 3 points
Gambit: 7 points
Black Armory Forge: 4 points
Nightfall: 7 points
Menagerie: 20 (with a full team of Roses).
Strength in Numbers has one step that is completely a luck of the draw. That step is killing an invader before they kill a member of your team and before 10 seconds have passed (not on my watch metal).
You might get lucky or really be good at predicting where the invader is going to spawn. I personally got lucky. I put on my Truth and when I finally spotted the invade all the way across the map I aimed and fired. I know it’s cheap, but it worked.
My orbs were a third of the way finished by the time four Gambit matches passed while I was trying to get my invader kill. I finished them up in Blindwell.
We played three crucible matches and got the guardian hand cannon kills.
Bloom is the easiest part of the quest. You have to destroy 11 crystals before defeating Xol in the Will of a Thousand strike.
You can choose this strike off of the Mars map and do it with matchmade players if you need to.
Crystals are present in the first room, the second room, and the fifth room. Xol’s boss room also has crystals. I finished shooting my crystals by room two. After you defeat Xol, wait until the end of the strike and your Lumina will drop.
YAY!
I stayed in the Dreaming City for most of my grinding with the exception of the Menagerie but, I think it was a simpler and easier way to get things done.
The final encounter of the raid with Gahlran incorporates all of the mechanics that we’ve experienced thus far. Think back to the Hive Ritual. The final part of the raid involves crystals, Witches Blessing (WB) and Non-Blessed (NB) player combination attacks, and using Witches Vessel to swap assignments.
If you need the second and third encounters – click here.
Encounter 4: Gahlran, The Sorrow-Bearer (part 2) – simplified
First:
Shoot Gahlran in the face to start the encounter. A green puddle/plate will spawn in the middle of the room. It’s just like the Hive Ritual at the beginning of the raid.
Three players step into the puddle to get WB and go back to your NB partner.
Three Gahlran’s will spawn in each sector of the room. They’ll be huge and they will shoot firebombs of death from their hands. Try to avoid those.
Second:
While your avoiding firebombs, kill ads and don’t forget to destroy void crystals when they spawn.
Remember, a player who has Witches Blessing (WB) and a non-blessed (NB) player need to team up for a combo attack to destroy the crystals.
Also, don’t forget to use your Witches Vessels to swap blessing between you and your partner.
In this encounter, EVERYONE can use the same vessel to do a massive swap of the blessing.
Third:
When you are not destroying crystals, kill enemy mobs. WB players kill knights and NB players kill thrall, acolytes.
Non-blessed players will also be responsible for ogres if they spawn. IF THEY DON’T SPAWN, that means a deception aka immune Cabal buddy has spawned instead.
Fourth:
If the deception spawns, you’ll need to team up for another WB/NB combination.
You need to get Gahlran to destroy his own deception.
How:
Coax your deception to the platform in front of big Gahlran. Do the WB/NB punch or shoot combination on the deception and that will stun the deception and leave him standing.
Next, wait for Gahlran’s hands to turn green. You and your partner need to shoot his hands until he stuns and then wait for him to draw his sword and slam the platform in front of him.
The platform should still have a shieldless deception on it and the sword slam will kill him.
Each group will need to do this in their own area. Three deceptions should be destroyed in total and then the damage phase will start.
Fifth: Damage Phase
Remember there are three Gahlran’s, one in each section. All of them will try to raise their green hands to their heads. Don’t let them!
Phase 1:
In your group of two, you and your partner should be shooting each hand to stun him. After he is staggered, shoot him in the head. This will reveal the actual Gahlran.
Swap blessing at the vessel and then meet up with the group that Gahlran stayed in front of.
Phase 2:
After everyone meets up, shoot his hands until he stuns and then do DPS to his face. You’ll have to repeat this practice three times. Do as much damage as you can before the third phase is over.
After you do the hands, face stun routine three times, Gahlran will go immune. When he goes immune, you will have to repeat the process of phase 1 again by baiting the deceptions again.
Don’t forget to swap your Witches Blessings at the Witches Vessel as needed.
Enraged comes after you’ve done phase 1 and phase 2 three full times. So do as much DPS as you can and kill Gahlran before enraged comes.
We are picking back up in the Crown of Sorrow raid with encounter number two. It’s a jumping puzzle. It uses a lot of the same mechanics as the first encounter. You can find the first encounter: HIVE RITUAL – by click here.
Encounter 2: Jumping Puzzle
Remember the Witches Blessing? It’s still important.
Things you need to know:
First:
Three players grab the WB. Get back in your 3 groups of 2 members.
Second:
Platform upward while making sure you are destroying all of the crystals.
You can shoot the ones without a shield from far away, you will need to get close inside the bubble of the crystals with shields.
Encounter 3: Gahlran, The Sorrow-Bearer (part 1) – simplified
Things you need to know:
First:
There will be three deceptions in the room in each section. Hit a deception to start the fight. Two will disappear. Whichever one stays is the real deception and its goal is to ruin your life, especially if you are low light.
If he stays in your section, it’s best to stay back and stay high so he can’t hit you. One of his hits kills especially if you are low light.
Just avoid him and kill mobs. Your group with be the last to wall to come down.
If you have a green puddle in the back of your area, that is the witches blessing. You will be responsible for giving the rest of the team blessing. ONLY ONE playing in the group of 2 should pick it up.
Blessed players shoot thrall and knight, Non-blessed shoot acolytes and alternate killing ogres.
When the time comes, you will need to go over to the Witches Vessel that will spawn to your RIGHT. TWO players from the blessed-giving team step in to the vessel, ONE player from the receiving team steps in to the vessel.
This should make one person on the receiving team blessed and SWAP the blessing for the team that started the encounter blessed.
If you are the team with no deception and no blessing to start, you will be the FIRST team receiving the blessing and your wall will break down.
Kill your ad mobs and your ogre and wait for the blessed team to meet you at the designated vessel.
Second:
After you use the third vessel to break the walls down for the team with the deception, all the walls should be down.
EVERY TEAM MEMBER should RUN to the available witches vessel, SHOOT the vessel at the same time and get assigned WB or NB.
Damage phase then begins.
Well of Radiance with Luna Faction Boots is very helpful with this section.
Third:
Damage Phase
To break the deceptions shield, a WB/NB combination NEEDS to punch or shoot him at the same time to allow the rest of the NB teammates to do damage.
There is should be 3 or 4 blessed players, giving you 3 or 4 opportunities to do damage.
His shield will keep coming back. So make sure you have your WB/ NB teams ready to keep cycling punch combinations until everyone with WB runs out and damage phase is done.
If you are blessed but not punching, step back out of the way or you will lose your blessing. I prefer the numbered method to determine who will punch 1st, 2nd, rd, and 4th.
After the phase ends, go back to your teams, punch the deception again to make the walls come back up and repeat the cycle from part the beginning.
Rinse and repeat two more times until the encounter is done.
CLICK HERE FOR THE NEXT ENCOUNTER.
Rinse and repeat two more times until the encounter is done.
I finally completed the new raid in Season of Opulence for Destiny 2. Crown of Sorrow has a lot of mechanics to learn, but they recycle during each encounter in the raid. Once you get the mechanics and timing down, you should concern yourself with DPS to make sure you can handle enemy mobs and stun bosses.
Loadout Suggestions:
In my team, we had a variety of options being used. I actually encourage using what you are most comfortable with so that you can be the most effective.
My team:
Solar Hunter with Celestial Nighthawk/ Aeon Swift and bottom tree Golden Gun
Solar Warlock with Phoenix Protocol and Well of Radiance
Solar Titan with Melting Point/ Hammers
Void Hunter with Orpheus Rigs and top tree tether
Void Titan with Ursa Furiosa and shield
Solar Warlock with Lunafaction Boots and Well of Radiance
I kept trying the exotic Aeon Swift because I have a full set of ordnance mod gear to boost my grenade regeneration and any Aeon gear grants specific energy to your teammates. I thought it’d be helpful. I can’t say whether or not it made a difference, but it’s nice to try things.
Also, keep in mind Ursa Furiosa, Phoenix Protocol, and Orpheus Rigs only fill your super energy back to 1/3 to 1/2 of your meter now. So you are mostly relying on team orbs and killing enemy mobs. So any help is better than no help.
Suggested Weapons include an SMG and a machine gun for certain. SMG’s are the best at breaking shields fast and machine guns do good damage especially with a major mod on it. High impact snipers work as well for majors and DPS. For bosses, use what you are comfortable with. Whether that’s a 1k voices, a machine gun, grenade launcher, or a rocket launcher is up to you.
Encounter 1: The Hive Ritual (simplified)
Things to know:
First:
One member from each group should step in the green puddle at the front of the door. This starts the encounter and grants them Witches Blessing. Each group should split off into left, middle and right side to defend.
Players without the Witches Blessing (WB) or Non-blessed (NB) players are responsible for killing enemy mobs (thrall, acolytes). Players with the WB kill knights.
If you don’t have the corresponding blessing you won’t be able to do damage.
Second:
Void crystals will spawn. A WB player and a NB player need to punch or shoot the crystal at the same time to destroy it.
EVERY PLAYER should join at the Witches Vessel (purple globe) and shoot it together. This will swap the WB to players who didn’t have it previously and players who had WB will now be NB. Your timers will be refreshed and this will prevent you from wiping.
Third:
Two ogres will spawn. One with WB and one without it. WB players kill the ogre with Witches Blessing and NB players kill the ogre without it.
Fourth:
Void Crystals will spawn again. Repeat the combination blows with WB and NB players from earlier.
Wait for the ‘Witches Vessel Awakes’ message at the bottom left of the screen and then EVERY PLAYER should join at the Witches Vessel purple globe and shoot it together to swap blessing again.
You may need to swap WB a few times before you see this message because it will refresh your timers and prevent you from wiping.
Enemy mobs will spawn again, kill them and then look for a lamp to turn on. After you’ve done three more phases, all FOUR lamps should be lit and the encounter will be finished.
Look for the chest to spawn across a gaping hole in the room leading to the stairs for the jumping puzzle.
Recap:
Accept the blessing
Kill assigned enemy
Destroy crystals
Swap blessing
Kill ogres
Destroy crystals
Swap blessing
Repeat 3 more times
WIN!
CLICK HERE FOR THE NEXT ENCOUNTER.
I started playing Rage 2 two weeks ago. I wrote my initial thoughts piece about it the same week it came out. I posted my thoughts just as I reached the leveling part of the game for your Dagger faction in order to progress in the story.
My initial opinions of Rage 2 were positive. You can read the entire rundown about the beginning of the campaign in my previous blog – I’m playing Rage 2 and… (review).
Update:
The grind of leveling up the faction allies was fine. It’s what you can expect. The level requirement to continue forward with the main story was level five for Lily, Marshall, Kvasir, and Loosum.
After you reach level five with all of the Dagger allies, you can continue with the main campaign. You end up fighting with General Cross, the leader of the Authority before the final boss encounter.
Boss Fight:
It’s a complete fake out. It seems like you are in the final boss fight, but it’s actually the fight before the final fight.
Cross is a bullet sponge at first, but then a cool mechanic kicks in where you need to destroy his tech to stop his immunity.
Quick Tip:
In between killing the enemy mobs and shooting at Cross, you need to shoot the tech hanging from the machine.
That allows you to go straight for Cross. However, he was baiting us all along. He was only buying time while he prepared his new clone body.
Do you know what this situation reminds me of? The Sixth Day. Not plot-wise, but the way Cross keeps cloning himself to make himself “better” and transferring his memories into a different host in order to take over the world. That reminds me of the ending of The Sixth Day.
Cross ends up getting away in his new clone body, but we acquire his old head as a DNA sample to help Dr. Kvasir. Kvasir makes the Nanotrite serum to stop Cross from being able to clone himself.
The Authority Stronghold and Final Boss:
The final mission of Rage 2 involves infiltrating the Authority stronghold and killing General Cross. That’s the main goal. There are two parts to the break-in. The first part involves driving and the second involves going through mobs of enemies in a mini maze on the way to Cross.
This part felt a little unnecessarily prolonged, but I understand why it was there.
When you finally get to General Cross, he activates his gigantic body ogre beast extension. There are three phases to the fight. The mechanics mirror the same actions that you use to kill the regular ogres throughout the game.
Phases:
Be mindful:
After you finish the encounter, a cut-scene makes our player character stab Cross in the eye with the Nanotrite Virus and it infects us as well.
Lily comes to save us and it seems like the player character is probably going to die from the virus.
Roll credits
Dr. Kvaris is able to save us somehow. We wake up to all of the Dagger allies telling us there’s still work to be done and then we are inserted back into the open world to finish up side-missions and level up factions.
Final thoughts:
General Cross’ entire plan was to wipe out humans and replace them with clones. Our mission was to stop the creation of said clones and kill Cross because he killed Lily’s mother. In the process, I think we saved the world too.
That’s a pretty straight forward goal.
You have the option of keeping the game going after you finish the main campaign. And if you are like me and only did the minimum leveling for your Dagger allies so that you can move on with the story, you have plenty left to do.
The gun play feels great in Rage 2. It’s fast-paced and the combat is the best part. It’s a pretty solid and entertaining game.
Ask me how many times I ran ‘Zero Hour’ before I finally found the perfect loadout combination, with the perfect amount of luck in the jumping puzzle, and the greatest optimism from my teammate.
Between May 8th and May 9th, it took 10 times to finish the Zero Hour and finally receive the Outbreak Perfected!
Loadout
I ran a Warlock because I knew I was going to be a mess if I tried to use my hunter. My loadout included top tree Nova Bomb, axion dart grenades (I contemplated switching to scattered but I didn’t), Skull of the Dire Ahamkara and strafe jump (the best decision I ever made for the jumping portion. It’s more controlled than any other Warlock jump).
I used Go figure (with Armor piercing rounds, hip-fire grip, and high-impact reserves), Arc Ikelos_SMG_v1.0.1, and One Thousand Voices (very helpful at the boss if you are lucky enough to have ammo).
My clan mates were both Titans. The only thing I know for certain one ran solar hammers with melting point and Whisper of the Worm (he did have the catalyst) and the other ran void shield with Arbalast.
Strategy
Initially, I used Riskrunner because of the Arc Shanks shields and a void Edgetransit, and sniper as a primary but I found myself running out of heavy ammo fast and that’s not good for the boss room. After I switched it up, I was still able to get rid of the arc shanks using Ikelos and I had to rely on my teammates or my grenade to break the void and solar shields.
My Nova Bomb focused on the servitors. If timed right, you can blow up the servitor and the shanks around it, get your super back because of Skull of the Dire Ahamkara, turn around and kill the next servitor and his shanks as well.
My teammate used Whisper of the Worm to post up and snipe the Walker Tanks that spawn after the servitors. In our case, after the Walkers neck opened he was able to get critical shots off while we used our sub-machine guns to shoot into the neck or clear ad mobs.
We did shoot the boss periodically throughout the encounter leaving him at half health by the time the final Walker was almost down. I used my Nova bomb and emptied One Thousand Voices into ton the boss, while the solar Titan used his hammers to clear ads/minions, and then the void Titan used shields to finish off the Walker tank.
We finished the encounter with seven seconds left.
It was satisfying.
Tr3-Vr tips:
In the Tr3-VR room, never leave a man behind. If one person gets left behind in the room, and the other two teammates go to the next elevator room, Tr3-VR will box the room off and will instant death the player left behind every time. In my experience, there is no way to get out of that room alone.
The best thing to do is split off going left and right to spread out the room and make Tr3-Vr chose which way to go.
Whoever is fastest could run alone. If two are running together and Tr3-Vr is coming, find a cubby hole in the wall. One person should stay out of the cubby, one person should stay in the cubby. Let Tr3-Vr satisfy its blood lust, DO NOT respawn, just wait for the revive.
If two people try to sit in a cubby, one will die and have to respawn because their ghost will get stuck up in the wall.
Worst case scenario, you need two people in the room to make it out alive.
Overall thoughts:
This mission was fun. My clan mates and I had a great time playing through it. After we beat it, we went in to figure out the Heroic mission course. We figured that out so we plan to finish that soon as well.