Background

I started playing Destiny seriously in season of arrivals, as I was recommended to play with Zach, Alex, Brandon, Jon, Val, and Tej. I remember vividly running around underpowered on Io, as I thought since it was a higher difficulty area I would level up faster (This is NOT how it worked at all). My first introduction to the raid experience was Leviathan, where we spent a whole night learning until we eventually took down Calus. I remember exploring the underbelly finding the chests with the keys we earned, and getting my first pieces of exotic armor from that. But while that is what got me devoted to the game, I had actually played a bit of D1 and D2 beforehand. When I was signifigantly younger, there was a mission where you went into a light fading zone and hive thralls attacked you in the dark. Younger me was rightfully afraid, and I quit D1 at that point. My Brother pre-ordered D2 and I played a bit then, and even hopped back in for the laser tag weekend, which was neat. But back to arrivals, the game became my life and soul. I would wake up, grind, maybe eat and go back to sleep. While other games got mixed in, Destiny became the main focus even when it was not. While I did not participate in the DSC contest, after that point I began to engage in every new raid. While we took a stab at King’s Fall, the idea of having to beat the raid twice really was not appealing, so at that point I avoided the returning legacy raids, so they will not be included here (with King’s Fall as the exception).

What we are talking about here

Below shows a list of what races we are going to be talking about. The reason for this article is to reflect on what went wrong, and how we can improve for the future. One thing that you might notice is the team is not the same every single time.

  • Deep Stone Crypt
  • Vow of the Disciple
  • King’s Fall
  • Root of Nightmares
  • Salvation’s Edge
  • The Desert Perpetual

The Deep Stone Crypt

Team

  • None

I contemplated whether I should have added this section, since I didn’t enter into the raid at all. This was my first introduction to Day 1 raiding, so I wanted to add it. About 3/4 of the way through Arrivals, I was certain that I would be on the team for the raid. Finally, it came time to go, and I was told I was not on the team by Conner. While Conner can be a bit harsh, it is still on me to realize that I was acting entitled. I hadn’t proven anything yet, and while that team did not clear the raid, that would not have changed with me there. I was extremely upset at the time because of this, but in hindsight it was incredibly childish. What I also learned from the experience is how a team can fall apart, and some of the preperation that you have to do in order to be “ready” for it. The team that I had aspired to be on fell apart on Atraks, causing Alex to be terrified of the song Ah Guai Lo. The important thing that I recognized is that everyone has to have a voice, and everyone has to be commited. While it can drive you crazy to do the same thing over and over expecting a different result (the definition of insanity), it is important to recognize that there is growth on every run whether you think there is or not.

Vow of the Disciple

Team

  • Jackson
  • Caleb
  • Kevin
  • Gavin
  • Derek
  • Jared

Vow was the first raid race that I participated in, and to be quite honest I am still a bit salty. For those unaware, the servers were getting hit with a hammer and there were a variety of issues, which is now why the raid races are 48 hours instead of 24. Below is the review of the encounters

Acquisition

For first encounter, we had a understanding of what we were doing in about an hour. While we knew what to do, we were unfortunatly still dealing with the server issues and ended up getting booted halfway through the encounter for about 6 hours. Once we finally cleared, no loot dropped, which we were rightfully upset about. I don’t have many notes for this encounter, as we went through it fairly easily minus the server issues.

The Caretaker

The Caretaker is one of the most infuriating things that has happend in my life. After clearing first, we wiped on the jumping puzzle and were put right back at first encounter. I went to a friend named Shiv, and asked for his checkpoint for second encouter. He obliged and we carried on in the fight. After three hours, The Caretaker fell but something was wrong. The music never stopped, and the encounter didn’t drop any loot. While we were all confused, I decided to jump off the edge which started the wipe timer. With no revives left, we were sent back to the start of the encounter where we proceeded to spend 23 hours trying to kill him again. This encounter is weird to reflect on, as we managed to “clear” it fairly quickly. The issues arrived after the first kill sent us back, when morale dropped signifigantly. Kevin was struggling to kill the vandals on the side of the map, and with a tornado siren going off in the middle of the runs, it was hard to categorize the main issue other than morale itself, which leads back to having the drive to get it done.

Exhibition

At this point of the raid, we had a member have to quit. After finding a couple of LFGs who left immediatly, this is where we called it quits.

Review

Overall, morale and server issues were the culprit here. In a vaccum, I believe that with no server issues we would have cleared Vow on contest.

King’s Fall

Team

  • Jackson
  • Kevin
  • Derek
  • Jared
  • Gavin
  • Caleb

To be completely honest, there was no prep work done for this one. We kind of jumped in just for fun. Thus, I will keep it brief. Nobody had time to do this one, but we made it to Warpriest, which was kind of neat.

Root of Nightmares

Team

  • Jackson
  • Caleb
  • Kevin
  • Gavin
  • Derek
  • AJ

RoN was the first (and only) raid day 1 that we completed, but there were still signifigant issues that should be looked back on. There was prep done for this, including a spreadsheet, catalyst farming, the whole nine yards. We will go into some of the issues though on the encounter by encounter basis.

Cataclysm

The first encounter in this raid is quite easy, and we really had no issues with it.

Scission

The second encounter was easy like the first, although there were some communicaiton issues and a fundamental lack of knowledge of what was actually happening. I feel like we more stumbled into the win here, while only 1 - 2 people actually knew what was happening.

Macrocosm

At this point of the raid, some issues were starting to rear up. One member of the team had been dealing with some mental health issues, and hed not prepped or played. We had been somewhat led on by this member that everything was ok, but it started to show as the power delta grew and they started falling behind. In this encounter, I finally got an AH HA moment on Derek, when we used LMG’s for the damage and were able to clear, while Derek had said we would never use them for damage ever. I also want to note that mental health takes full priority over the game, and I harbor no anger or resentment against that teammate as I can understand that thigns happen. But this does lead back to the need for better communication, as if we had a understanding of what was occuring we could have handled this better.

Nezarec, Final God of Pain

This encounter was a wild ride. We ended up having to replace the teammate who fell behind. They were ok with this and understood. We ended up taking a pause on the encounter to get some rest, and came back and got the kill in a couple hours using Rat King. We only really had execution issues, there wasn’t many issues with communication or team composition.

Review

Overall, communication was the primary issue here. We did still clear the raid, and even though this was the easiest raid race, it was still a feat to clear.

Salvation’s Edge

Team

  • Jackson
  • Caleb
  • Kevin
  • Zach
  • Derek
  • Alex

Salvation’s Edge can be considered the most difficult raid by mechanics that has ever been released. It was what I would consider the penultimate test of skill, and we did not clear.

Substratum

For first encounter, we struggled for about 45 minutes on how to start the encounter. We had a lot of fun with this one, seeing the box for the first time was a fun time. We ran into encounter understanding issues, but we did end up clearing and there was not many issues on this otherwise.

Dissipation

The Herald of Finality was a major turning point for the team. We did not clear the this encounter, and this can be traced back to two primary issues:

  • Drive
  • Mechanical Skill

The major turning point in this instance was one player had not played in a while, and lacked the mechanical skill. The other player was not interested in clearing, and so essentially threw away the runs. This is a major issue, since we need all 6 players to be on the ball in order to complete a raid like this. While mechanical skill is something that we can make up for, lack of effort is not. Review Clearly, we need to change some things reggarding drive and motivation. While I am not confident we would have cleared this raid, I do feel we could have gone farther with effort.

The Desert Perpetual

Team

  • Jackson
  • Gavin
  • Kevin
  • Zach
  • Derek
  • Alex

The Desert Perpetual was one that we struggled on, mainly due to the absurd damage checks required in order to clear it. We cleared no encounters here, but there were still issues.

For one, Kevin had a bit too much to drink the night before and was barely functional. This, combined with his lack of drive led to runs falling apart. I do not think we would have cleared a single encounter in this raid though, due to the damage checks and half of the people being on console. Also no shade to you Kevin, enjoy your drinks and being a RA.

Reflections

After reviewing all of these instances, it is clear that motivation is the limiting factor. Kevin has opted into a backup role rather than a main member, so I am less worried that there will be a lack of effort, as the current team is all motivated and wanting to get it done.

Make sure to keep an eye out for twitch streams at ShellGoldfish0 for some of our prep content.

Thanks for reading!

Jackson