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Gorf King

By Gorf King
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Lyrical Donut

Lyrical Donut

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Can you only get them from the ether chests?

You can receive keys from the Queen's reward packages. You can get it for completing her quests, and levelling your rank up (ala Cryptarch, Factions, etc). Keys aren't guaranteed from packages though. I handed one in and got 2 x 10 planetary materials.

Do like nightfalls and raids and run it through with another character

Yep. Just to clear any confusion. I did 32 on Titan, got an Exotic weapon and a Queen's Scout Rifle from the big treasure key chest. Ran it at 34 on my Titan and just received Motes and Strange Coins. Used another 2 keys at with the Warlock and the same thing happened. So save those keys unless you really need motes or coins. The game seems to be throwing them at you these days anyway.

Think we all used Gjallarhorn on that Cabal boss and he went down in about 20 seconds. Rotating shield? Pah.

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Gorf King

Gorf King

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Reading many of the comments above, I'm pretty sure I'll be in the minority here, but mini-review ahoy...

I don't think much of HoW overall. It's still early days - a couple of days after release - but it's kind of confirmed my worst fears. I didn't expect the DLC to be great, or mould-breaking, or anything better than more of the same, reusing many existing assets and putting in a few new ones. TDB did that, to much complaint, but I felt a lot of the complaints about lack of new content were a bit harsh - not exactly inaccurate (Crota wasn't a patch on VoG and the new story stuff was a bit bobbins) - but maybe people expected a bit too much; and I always thought Bungie would have a problem living up to VoG and where that seemed to be heading, so falling a bit short of that didn't condemn them in my eyes - they were still trying, after all.

But after completing PoE twice at baby level 28 and (only) once so far at level 32, I'm not sure they really are. The PvE end game is... ok. It *is* horde mode, nothing more or less. It might just be me, though, but it already feels quite shallow and repetitive. I can see level 34 being far more difficult, and therefore more challenging - I'm not denying there's a difficulty there, certainly I anticipate there will be at 35 - but it's all a bit obvious-shooty-shooty, if you know what I mean. There's no real depth to it - no cerebral content, no sense of adventure or exploration, of having to work out what to do and the best ways to do it. I remember our puzzling over VoG for what seemed session after session, trying to work out what it was about, then what exactly to do, then how to split up teams and roles differently, using different techniques and tactics. It felt like unlocking a series of puzzles. It required different skills across a 6-person team, lots of co-ordination, and seemed, well... mysterious. Like an adventure. Even the broken story, told mainly in the grimoire, hinted at deeper things. And the environment and design was strange, alien, vast and seemingly loaded with obscure secrets. VoG felt like it was the game finally opening up after the 'tutorial' of the story missions.

Sure, Crota was a very much lesser version of that, but there was still a sense of adventure, of uncovering secrets, and stuff like the bridge section forced us to think hard - at least for a while - for a solution to an unexplained problem. PoE, though - it's just a room where you have to kill everything. Instead of the mystery of the Oracles, you are told to defuse mines, a standard gaming cliché. It's spelt out by a timer, instruction text and a corny voiceover. Instead of woking out what that relic does, you're presented with a drop of the cannon - another online FPS cliché. You don't have to work together to build bridges, to engage in a one-on-one sword battle, to do anything much apart from anything you'd have done in an online shooter since the 90s. It feels like Unreal Tournament or something. And the stuff outside of PoE - the waiting, waiting, waiting, then hoping you'll get a key from one of those hundred Ether Chests you've been waiting for - is getting real old already, after less than a week. Sure, raid drops were RNG, but they were little moments of tension/expectation after working through enjoyable content. This really is a dull grind for keys by comparison - literally waiting for something to happen, and then shoot stuff that's easy to kill, over and over again.

I dunno. I have to admit my view is probably coloured by the fact that our usual team has sort of disintegrated - there are hardly any of them on for this, whereas a few months back the activity was frenetic and enthusiasm high. So if you're as enthusiastic about this as we were about previous content, you may be teaming up every night and maybe having a great time, whereas I haven't got all that much done really. But I can't really blame them for not being as keen to set time aside for this. I expect a few of them will be far keener on Trials of Osiris - which looks good if you're into PvP. In fact, I can see people doing that in preference to PoE and that bloody endless chest farming the surrounds getting the top rewards. (Or both, because of course they tie into each other in terms of rewards and levelling.)

But as standalone PvE content, already, just a couple of days in, this just feels like I've already seen and done everything. Not at the top level, admittedly, but that's just the same but harder, right? An arena shooter against over levelled enemies, with a boss. It's not the grand adventure, the unique collaborative shooter, that Bungie promised pre-release. It's not even the perhaps lesser product that came out last year, that started bitty and small but then opened out into that Vault of Glass and its hints at more complex and interesting adventure-raiding, unique in a FPS. It's a half-PvP, half-PvE arena shooter that does what many other arena shooters do, but adds in waiting for chests to drop several hours a week to get keys to unlock the rewards you get from beating the arena. I've never subscribed to the notion that they're the same thing, but... Borderlands did that better.

Anyway, yes. I'm not saying it's not fun, or I've not had any. It is and I have. But the game's moved further and further from its original promise, and takes place on a smaller and smaller scale, doing things that have all been done before by other games and eschewing the big, imaginative, difficult-to-design properties that embodied the best of the original release, in the process becoming more like any other shooter. I know that's plenty enjoyable for many - like PvP, which has a massive following - and that's fine. But I'm not sure it's the game for me any more. Well, not to the extent it used to be, demanding (and getting) such an insane time commitment because it felt worth it: two days in and the PvE end-game feels a bit played out already. Maybe it's time to move on.

tl;dr - The Witcher's out this week, why am I standing in this field all day waiting for a key to drop so I can play Unreal Tournament and open the chest at the end?

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Varnsen

Varnsen

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Good review and good points made Gorf.

I don't feel the same overall though as I feel like this DLC adds more variety to Destiny and fills a gap for people who can't easily and regularly put together a raid team to enjoy things like VoG and Crota. I'm aware of LFG but the couple of times I've used that it's been mainly full of humourless weirdos. Not everyone I know posts on here and has had the pleasure of doing VoG with Rmukkers so PoE seems like a good activity to add for people who have largely passed on the Raids.

the fact it offers a better chance to get the interesting items is a good thing too. I only recently got the two handcannons I'd been after for months and ignoring the euphoria of them dropping, actually playing the game with them is way way more fun, game changingly fun for me in fact. Any activity they can come up with to reduce the epic time it took for Hawkmoon etc to drop is a step in the right direction imo.

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BarryL85

BarryL85

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I honestly dont think the keys are important, i've had no luck getting any bar the 3 (one oer character) for completing the storyline.

It just seems to be an exotic drop which i'm not fussed about.

I have done Prison of Elders on 3 characters at 3 different levels, the guaranteed rewards were worth it alone.

From the treasure chest all I got was 3 duplicate exotic weapons which I scrapped as my real gripe about the DLC is about inventory space, yes it was increased before but with floods of new content its worse than before for me :/

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df0

df0

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You know, sometimes you are on a roll in PvP. Hand cannon headshots, well-placed grenades, supers that destroy all six opponents at once. I swear, if I had a button that plays the MLG air horn sound I'd be pressing it with my nose. Can't use my hands, need them for popping fools in the head.

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Marmite

Marmite

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Enjoyed the runs at level 28 and 32 with Capp and Mooseliser last night. Some hectic stuff in the boss battle on 32, legging it around the arena to stay alive!

Bit annoying that Bungie have managed to introduce a system that again confuses players and encourages farming for keys. I just want to be able to play the PoE and get the loot at the end. If it mean only being able to do each level once a week then so be it. I don't really see the need for another currency of sorts. My inventory is constantly full at the moment with crap I don't know what to do with (apart form bloody keys!).

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Lyrical Donut

Lyrical Donut

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Bit annoying that Bungie have managed to introduce a system that again confuses players and encourages farming for keys.

They haven't really - I went on a hunt for keys during the week and i'm full of special ammo packs I can't even scrap! Maybe Bungie did that as a deterrent. As Baz says, the keys aren't really that important - I got old exotics when I used mine.

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Nate Dogg III

Nate Dogg III

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Yeah they're not essential really, certainly not the be all and end all. Think I got a Patience and Time with mine last night. As gently deflating as it was to not get to open the big boy chest at the end of my level 32 run, I got an armour core from one of the tiddlers which got me something far more useful. For now anyway.

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dogsout

dogsout

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I've been away for ages. Since the last DLC dropped and left me completely disappointed. All of the guys I used to play with no longer play. I see this game still owns Donut's soul so I'm sure I'll have people to play with if I comeback. Could someone kindly make me a little list of what's what now? Like, what's new? I'm seeing a lot of crying about PvP being kind of important now, and I really hope that's true because I love it and didn't like that I was essentially forced to play so much more PvE content last time round. Also, I deleted all of my character's bar one because I don't want to get cracked out on this again and end up playing all of the weekly content 3 times each week.

I'm on the fence.

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