Category: Destiny Crucible

Vault Expansion Was Limited

Sci-fi shooter Destiny will be getting the House of Wolves downloadable content pack soon, and Bungie has revealed more information on the patch players will be getting prior to its release. Detailed on the official Bungie site, the update makes a few tweaks to the game, including increasing players’ in-game vault space.

 

Update 1.1.2 will increase vault space for weapons from 20 slots to 36, but this required a compromise for PS3 and 360 versions of Destiny.

Update 1.1.2 will increase the vault dimensions for armors and item to 24 slots and for weapons to 36 slots. Prior to this, all vault item spaces were capped at 20 slots each. The expansion of the vault was limited by “memory constraints on older generation hardware,” which required a compromise to expand storage space. For Destiny players on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the item comparison feature will no longer function in the vault. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will remain unaffected.

PlayStation 4 owners are getting the 2.50 Yukimura update today, which introduces a Suspend and Resume function. While Suspend and Resume won’t immediately work with Destiny, the 1.1.2 Update will enable its function.

Patch 1.1.2 will be out in April, before the House of Wolves DLC hits. The update will also bring new audio options, a feature for colorblind players, and various gameplay fixes.

FIFA 15: Nightfall And Weekly Heroic Strike Reset

Bungie has once again reset the “Destiny” servers to provide gamers a fresh challenge for the week. The latest Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike is The Summoning Pits, which takes place on the Moon and sees gamers going up against Hive Ogre; Phogoth the Untamed.

The Nightfall changes things up a bit from last week too switching out a couple of modifiers. The “Destiny” subreddit indicates players can expect Epic, Nightfall, Acr Burn, Lightswitch and Angry modifiers on their journey. Epic throws large numbers of highly aggressive, shielded enemies at players, while Arc Bun multiplies damage taken from any source.

PlayStation Universe notes that the Heroic Strike also takes place in The Summoning Pits, with Arc Burn and Heroic modifiers, the latter meaning aggressive enemies appear in larger numbers. In order to emerge victorious, players must enter the Hive fortress, repel the waves of Hive minions, locate and enter the Summoning Pits and defeat Phogoth himself.

Besting Phogoth is no easy task though. Gamers can choose to wear him down from a distance using Rocket Launchers, or decide to take out the waves of Hive mobs that appear first, in order to battle him one on one. Once unchained, Guardians are advised to aim for the critical hit area on his chest to inflict the most damage. A video, hosted on the DestinyFollower YouTube channel provides a helpful guide on how to kill Phogoth.

As previously reported, the team at Bungie has recently outlined the features included in the 1.1.2 update. The update will focus on increasing Vault Space for guardians, giving players more space to collect items and gear gained on missions. Raid fixes will also be implemented as the team seeks to squash annoying bugs and make missions more fun. New audio and visual options are also on the docket, as are changes to the way ammo drops are handled during Crucible matches.

As part of 1.1.2, Bungie will also be making changes to strikes themselves. The team has gone over a lot of data which shows that some players complete certain missions far less than others, though the studio hasn’t shared what sorts of changes gamers can expect. Bungie warns that gamers will need to be patient, as 1.1.2 is still weeks away. Till then, gamers will have to be content with the Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike resets.

Bungie fights back against data miner from Destiny

Destiny’s success is based on a simple premise: keep people playing. The gameplay is good, the story is…not so much, but where Bungie Inc’s sci-fi shooter really excels is dangling the carrot of better gear in front of players’ noses in a manner similar to what MMO fans have called “the gear treadmill.”

While some players could grind for weeks or even months to gain certain items, the game has a built-in shortcut that a players can take advantage of to jump a few feet ahead on the gear treadmill. Every Friday, a vendor named Xûr appears somewhere in the game’s hub zone, the Tower. Xûr sells an assortment of rare items for incredibly cheap prices, Destiny power leveling to make upgrades easier and cheaper price, but he may not offer everything players want since his stock is random. Or at least, it is supposed to be.

Over the past month, Japanese-speaking Reddit user Megamanexe4 has accurately predicted not only the location where Xûr will show up each week, but also the specific items the vendor will have in stock. This undermines Bungie’s previous insistence that Xûr’s inventory and location are completely random.

The knowledge of what items will be sold by Xûr does not significantly affect  the game itself, but it does mean fewer players log in on Fridays when they already know that the vendor will not be selling any of the items they need. On the other hand, it also means some players will play more in the week leading up to the new items so that they can afford to by them when Xûr shows up. Apparently, that is enough to spur Bungie into changing the system so that Megamanexe4’s predictions no longer work.

According to his most recent Xûr prediction post on Reddit (with a rough translation by Reddit user balderm), Megamanexe4 is no longer able to query individual items from Xûr’s inventory, meaning that he cannot see what items will be in stock. He believes that Bungie may be stocking Xûr’s inventory manually to prevent the data from being mined and predicted.

Again, this seems to undermine Bungie’s previous stance that it could not affect Xûr’s items, which has some fans criticizing the studio for previously allowing the vendor to sell only items available to people who own the game’s DLC.

Destiny: Vault space and Raid fixes

In its weekly blog update about Destiny Patch 1.1.2, Bungie has said that it will be addressing a number of player concerns in the future update, including more Vault space and Raid fixes, to further improve the game.

Earlier this week, Bungie had released a 1.1.1.1 hotfix patch to Destiny that was meant only for back end improvements to help the game’s developers monitor the game. Bungie will be releasing the next patch, Destiny Patch 1.1.2 sometime in the next several weeks, ahead of the launch of The House of Wolves expansion pack.

In the latest blog update, design lead M.E. Chung has discussed how the team identifies the improvements and features that need to be added in their updates. After listening to their community feedback and brainstorming with the research team, Bungee follows a process for selecting and developing new features for its updates. Apparently, time constraints allow the developer to limit the number of features and fixes they can work on for the update.

Bungee has not provided any clear details on what can be expected in the Destiny 1.1.2 update, though it has listed these five features as a priority on its blog:

Vault Space – We know you need more space to collect all the treasures you gain from your missions, and more gear is on the way.

Raid Fixes – There are times when Atheon and Crota can be uncooperative, so we’re tackling their worst bugs.

Destiny: Iron Banner offers multiple buffs an Armour Shader

This week in Destiny marks the return of the fabled Iron Banner PvP playlist, which in turn brings with it a series of armour pieces and weapons that have Raid-level stats – a must-have for any player looking to expand their current inventory. What follows is a guide in order to avoid grinding your hours away, and tips on how to quickly reach Rank 5 to get the best gear.

Personal Destiny power leveling, plus some helpful tables from Reddit, suggest that the best way to complete the Iron Banner is to spread your hours of playtime evenly across the week in which it’s available. This piece of information is, of course, a no-brainer; but it’s the math behind it that’s interesting.

Destiny‘s Iron Banner offers multiple buffs – an Armour Shader, an Emblem, a Class-item, a purchasable ‘Tempered Buff’, and a multiplier for every day it’s available. Basically, if you equip all these and play later in the week, you’ll rack up experience faster than you will earlier. The trick is knowing when to play, and for how long.

Just as a start: The best method to achieve Rank 5 is to either play 1 hour per day for the whole week; or 2 hours per day over the last 4 days.

The following table, as provided by Reddit user GenericDeadHead, offers stats based on the following variables:

  • You play 6 matches per day
  • You have the Shader, Emblem, and Class-item equipped
  • You have the Tempered Buff
  • You win 50% of your matches
  • You turn in 3 Bounties per day

Although it may look confusing at first glance, the data shows that if you play roughly 6 games of Iron Banner per day, with all the buffs active while winning at least half of your games, you will achieve Rank 5 by the end of the week. The chart shows how much Rep you gain from handing in your Bounties and winning your games for each day, and shows how far along that gets you towards each rank.

If you aren’t available earlier in the week, or you need to catch up on lost time, there’s another chart to calculate how long you need for the last 4 days of the week.

The following table offers stats based on the following variables:

  • You play 10 matches per day
  • You have the Shader, Emblem Class-item equipped
  • You have the Tempered buff each day
  • You win 50% of your matches
  • You turn in 4 Bounties per day

 

This chart shows that, by starting on Friday, you only need to put in an extra 4 games per day on average, and you should be able to hit Rank 5 by the day before reset.

All of this information is based on the variables presented, and is certainly up for change depending on how many of the buffs you have, or how many games you win/lose. Ultimately, it provides a guide to how many games you should be playing per day, so as to avoid mindless grinding.

Bungie Has Been Doing What It Can To Prevent This Player’s Predictions From Destiny

The vendor’s name is Xûr, and if not for his paltry asking price-per-piece, many players wouldn’t have gotten their favorite guns yet — even now, half a year after the game released.

 Every week, the anticipation of Xûr’s stock creates high hopes, and — due simply to the limited shelf space available — dashes them to the ground. For the past month, one intrepid player has been data mining Destiny to reveal Xûr’s stock before it goes on sale.

The player, the Japanese-speaking Redditor Megamanexe4, has not revealed his specific system for data mining Destiny, but his results have been dead-on since he began revealing them around one month ago. Every week, he has been able to exactly predict not only what Xûr would sell, but the modifiers on the weekly events, as well as uncovered loads of info about the upcoming expansion House of Wolves. Aside from satiating the players’ curiosity, revealing Xûr’s stock has had huge implications on Bungie’s relationship with their game’s community.

By nature, a randomized list would mean Xûr’s stock often wouldn’t meet your desires, but the patterns the vendor has exhibited since release have frequently looked more like trolling than a random selection. He sold the worst exotic weapon in the game on Christmas, he has sold the exact same stock (three armor pieces, one weapon, and other assorted goodies) a handful of weeks apart, has sold a stock solely composed of items from the first DLC expansion more than once, and has had streaks of selling the same exact piece of gear over and over for weeks on end. These data points could all be coincidences, but that’s the point on which Destiny’s community sticks; Bungie has explicitly and repeatedly claimed that Xûr’s stock is both random and out of their control. Megamanexe4 seems to have proven otherwise.

The Redditor has not only predicted Xûr’s exact stock, the weekly event modifiers, and gear and maps from the upcoming expansion, but has also documented when Xûr’s stock has been manually changed, which again, is something Bungie vehemently claimed they could not do. Last week, Destiny received a tiny patch that installed tools to help Bungie better inspect and manage databases. Astute — or paranoid — members of the community immediately assumed it was to prevent gamers from being able to suss out upcoming content. Earlier today, Megamanexe4 posted an explainer on Reddit that seems to confirm those guesses of the astute and fears of the paranoid.

Since that tiny patch, the Redditor explains that there are now two versions of Xûr — an original copy that is still predictable, and a new, unpredictable copy that Bungie manually controls. If Megamanexe4’s observations are to be taken as true, then Bungie managed to fix their Xûr leak — though the weekly event and upcoming DLC data still seems to be running from a faucet. If Bungie does continually use what Megamenexe4 describes as a manually operated Xûr, then the developer figured out a way to beat dataminers. If Megamanexe4 is right and Bungie has been able to alter Xûr’s stock all along, then they’ve either been lying to Destiny’s community or at least intentionally misleading them.

You Need To Know About Xur Stock From Destiny

Over the last couple of months, Reddit user Megamanexe4 has managed to data-mine Destiny and successfully leak Xur’s stock over a number of weeks. This prediction fell flat a couple of times when Bungie changed Xur’s stock at the very last minute, right before he was due to arrive in the Tower. ‘How does this work?’, you may ask; Megaman has posted a Q&A to answer all your Xur-and-Destiny-related questions, revealing what really happens during those changeovers, and hinting at possible future stock.

In a previous post on Destiny‘s Xur, Megaman explained that the original stock he predicted for that weekend (15th of March) was altered, and that the weapon Red Death wasn’t present in the ‘original Xur’. He also suggests in this post, and his current Q&A, that Xur may sell Hard Light, Thunderlord, or MIDA Mult-Tool some time over the next few weeks, given that they’re the Exotics he is yet to offer – as a result, some of Destiny‘s rarest weapons.

To avoid explicitly stating the list, he remains cryptic, so as not to entice Bungie to change anything in Destiny this weekend.

“If this week’s Xur (3/20) is the Original Xur, then we can assume that everything I’ve leaked in the past is true. If you go through my past posts, you can see the Original Xur’s schedule for 3/20 and 3/27. Hint: you will probably be more excited about what he has to sell on 3/27 than 3/20.”

To avoid losing any information in translation, here is Megaman’s Q&A about Destiny, Xur, and Bungie, where he discusses exactly what happens when Bungie changes the stock and how this affects any future predictions.

Q: Were Xur’s goods changed on 3/15

A. Yes.

Q. Was Xur’s list changed?

A. This was a different Xur from the “normal” Xur, so I cannot confirm any changes at this point.

Q. What do you mean “different Xur?”

A. There are 2 types of Xur. One has a standard list of goods for sale that can only be changed by patches. The other is controlled by Bungie, who can upload his data directly to the game without patches. The Xur that appeared on 3/15 was the latter type, directly controlled by Bungie.

Q. Can you get the list of the Xur that is controlled by Bungie (the latter type of Xur as described above)?

A. No. This Xur has his data directly uploaded on the day of his appearance. It is impossible to obtain data about this Xur on any other day.

Q. How did you figure this out?

A. Because a very similar thing has happened before. On January 30, the “original” Xur was scheduled to sell No Land Beyond. However on that day the Xur ended up selling Dragon’s Breath.

I tried accessing Xur’s list that day, but all I could find was the goods actually sold on that day.

I then tried accessing the list using a different method, but my access was denied and I was unable to see anything. The following week I was successfully able to access the original list.

Also, the actual appearance of Xur is always directly controlled by Bungie.

From these facts I deduced that the Xur on January 30th was different from the original Xur, in other words a Xur whose goods are directly controlled by Bungie.

The Xur who brought Red Death on 3/15 responded the same way as the Xur on 1/30 when I tried to access his data. In other words, this Xur was directly controlled by Bungie.

Q. Will you be able to get the data for future Xur’s?

A. Yes, as long as it’s the original Xur. But not if it’s the Xur that Bungie controls directly. As long as the original Xur does not appear, all leakers (myself included) will not be able to see his data in advance. Obviously, in that case all data that I leaked about Xur would basically become garbage.

Q. Can you make any predictions about future Xur’s based on the data you’ve already gotten?

A. Yes. As of the release of 1.1.1.0 I have gotten all of the original Xur’s data thru May 15. None of that data changed with 1.1.1.1, so I can predict only the original Xur’s goods, thru May 15.

Q. Can you get data other than Xur?

A. Yes. There were no signs of any changes to the data with the releases of 1.1.1.1. All Nightfall data remains accesible.

Conclusion:

I don’t know why Bungie chose this timing to manually control Xur. Was it to squash me, maimonguy, and other leakers? Was it a one-time-only thing? Was there some other reason? All I can say is that only Bungie knows the true plan for Xur.

If they only use the manually controlled Xur from now on, then there is the possibility that Thunderlord, Hard Light, MIDA Multi-Tool, Obsidian Mind, and other items will not get sold. On the other hand, that also would mean there is a chance he will sell Gjallarhorn, Mask of the Third Man, Red Death, and other items not in the Original Xur’s list.

Destiny: Player soloing the Raid in just 16 minutes

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We’ve seen impressive Destiny Raid runs that combine solo attempts, no weapons, speed, and other factors. Another entry makes a mockery of Crota’s End, with a player soloing the Raid in just 16 minutes.

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On a good run for a full group the Raid would take roughy double that time at least, but The Legend Himself–the biggest name in Destiny feats–did it in just 16 minutes and 7 seconds by himself.

He only dies one time, but that death has the effect of speeding up Crota’s spawn to improve the overall time. It’s not hard mode, but I don’t think it will fail to impress anyone regardless. The Legend Himself uses a bunch of tricks you may recgonize, and some you may not, to fly through the Raid on his own. Enjoy in the video below, and if you think you can better his accomplishment, feel free to record your own attempt.

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A great recent run featured a player defeating Crota on his own without firing a single shot, which is ridiculous. He managed to figure out the perfect combination to succeed with a Warlock, and is well worth a watch. Prior to that a group had completed the whole Raid together with no weapons.

Bungie team looking at tackling Raid bugs

Bungie’s Destiny live team has outlined its hopes and priorities for the 1.1.2 update that is currently being coded.

The team cites increasing vault space as a key objective, meaning that players who accrue items won’t need to micro-manage their inventories so much. Writing on the Destiny blog, community manager David Dague also cites Raid bugs and Strike difficulty balances as goals for the next update.

Meanwhile, further in-game display and audio options will allow players to better customise the way Destiny looks and sounds.

The list of tweaks, as written by Dague, follows:

  • Vault Space: We know you need more space to collect all the treasures you gain from your missions, and more gear is on the way.
  • Raid Fixes: There are times when Atheon and Crota can be uncooperative, so we’re tackling their worst bugs.
  • Audio and Visual: Not everyone wants to see or hear a game the same way, which is why we’re looking at providing more options.
  • PVP Ammunition: The Crucible team wants to change the way ammo crates dictate the flow of a battle.

Strikes: The numbers tell us that there are some missions that are successfully completed far less than others, inspiring us to look at why people quit.

No timeline for the update was announced. Elsewhere in the Destiny blog update, Dague talks to some of the team about how they consider and plan updates. Read about that here.

Despite dividing critical opinion upon release, Destiny has accumulated numerous awards from the industry, the latest being the BAFTA Best Game Award.

Seeking Xur Location on March 13 From Destiny

How many times is Xur going to offer the Ice breaker? That’s the question that many Destiny players are scratching their heads about now, as we approach the Xur location on March 13 this week.

 The Agent of the Nine is a random chap and once again he has completely surprised everyone with the third appearance of the Icebreaker in recent weeks. Hopefully this week Xur will have something which is actually a surprise, by that we mean weapons such as the Hard Light, Thunderlord, Suros Regime or dare we say it – the Gjallarhorn. Either way, we’ll be one of the first to tell you where Xur spawns on March 13 and his full inventory once he appears.

What you need to know is that Xur will be in the tower at 9am UK time, 1am Pacific Time and 4am Eastern Time on Friday. It’s another new week for Destiny players, so hopefully Bungie’s RNG system will come up with the goods this time around. What exotic are you looking for, as we can imagine that most of you have tons of strange coins saved up right now – what figure are you currently on?

 Simply put – what does Xur need to offer to keep you happy?