Rise of Iron

Destiny: Wrath of the Machine – Hard Mode Coming Soon

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destiny-newsDestiny‘s latest challenge is just around the corner as Bungie reveals what Rise of Iron has in plan for the new Wrath of the Machine raid.

A ton of guardians have been busy playing Iron Banner this week, along with all of the other mass content released with Rise of Iron.  I’ve yet to play the new raid “Wrath of the Machine” as it’s suggested for light level 370 + and my clan has been leveling pretty slowly.  But a lot of guardians have been hammering the new raid with a ton of success and lots of sleepless nights with their clan mates.

10062016_heroic_modeAt this point in the game all the mysteries and mechanics of the raid have been conquered, as has one of its greatest secrets in the Outbreak Prime exotic pulse rifle. So naturally many fans are looking forward to the next challenge on the horizon, which is the Heroic Mode of Wrath of the Machine. That date has been revealed: The HARD MODE will launch on Tuesday, October 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Bungie hasn’t released any hints as to what the Heroic Mode will hold for the guardians. All that Bungie has said is that “the truest test of teamwork and cunning is yet to come.” Along with revives being disabled and higher level enemies one of the challenges we’ve always had is figuring out the new mechanics which I’m sure we’ll have some major hurdles to get over.

The first step for anyone wanting to run Heroic Mode will be getting that Light level up as high as possible. There are plenty of ways to get gear 385 including running the normal raid, Iron Banner this week, and Trials of Osiris on the weekends. Second, teams will want to be very familiar with the raid as it stands so they can be ready to take on an extra layer of difficulty during each challenge.

Until next time Guardians!

I’ll see you Starside

Destiny Lore: Rise of Iron – The Iron Lords

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Lord Saladin took center stage for the new Rise of Iron expansion and with that comes a whole host of new questions, and lore around the Iron Lords and a new mysterious guardian we get to meet in the Iron Banner!

With the Guardians well into the journey of the new Rise of Iron expansion I thought it fitting to stop and take a look at the Iron Lords and some background on them.

The Iron Lords & The Iron Wolves

If you’ve played Destiny then you have probably heard the names of the Iron Lords and didn’t realize that’s what they were.  The Iron Banner weapons and armor bear the names of the Iron Lords.

Efrideet – Once thought dead, she has returned as our newest Iron Banner vendor!  She is a Hunter who was a talented sniper. Of her it is said, “Every time she pulled the trigger, an enemy of the City died” and that her “keen eye never missed her mark.”
Felwinter – A Voidwalker Warlock, described as “he who stared into the Void.”
Gheleon – A Hunter, and he was called a true Guardian of the people.
Jolder – A Titan “whose mighty hammer taught the Darkness fear.”
Perun – A Hunter. “She who hunted the Darkness where it dwelt.”
Radegast – A Titan, and the leader of the Iron Lords — “He who was first among the peers of the Iron Banner.”
Similar – A Titan, called “he who was the Last City’s first wall.”
Skorri – A Warlock. “She who sang out the Iron Song” in honor of her lost companions.
Timur – A Warlock, recognized as “he whom the City’s enemies dreaded most.”
The Iron Lords are “ancient warriors from the City’s founding” who played a key role in the Battle of Six Fronts and the building of the Last City’s walls.

You may have not realized there is another group related to the Iron Lords called the Iron Wolves. Not much is known about these Guardians besides their names and the vague lore that “In our darkest hour, nine Iron Wolves emerged from the ruins” and “And beneath its branches, the Iron Wolves forged an unbreakable oath.” Here are their names, which should also be familiar:

Ashraven
Bretomart
Colovance
Deidris
Finnala
Haakon
Nirwen
Tormod
Weyloran

The Battle of Six Fronts

A great battle when the Last City first faced an overwhelming attack, and repelled it decisively. The Fallen marched on the Last City and led by four orders of Titans, the City’s defenses held back the enemy on six different fronts—”and not one front broke.”
Also present at the battle was Osiris, a Warlock who rose to the ranks of Vanguard Commander until it is said he went mad with obsession trying to discover the truth of the Vex and the Darkness.

 

The Greatest of Them All

Lord Saladin Forge runs the Iron Banner tournament, a way to test Guardians and find the strongest among them. The Iron Banner seeks great champions to lead the fight against the Darkness. It was born to honor the Iron Lords and their efforts in the earliest days of the City.”

Lord Saladin gained his fame at the Battle of the Twilight Gap, where he led the City’s defense against an army of Fallen. He’s not just an advisor in the Tower, but a battle-tested Guardian who’s legacy holds true to Guardians all over the galaxy, and he’s no longer alone!

 

The OWL Sector Returns – SIVA Sim ARG

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First we had The OWL Sector ARG hit the Destiny community a week or so before Rise of Iron launched.  A strange “Virus” was infecting the guardians, and once ROI hit it all seemed to go back to normal.  Now about a week after the launch of Rise of Iron, something new with the mysterious ARG has risen and has the community rushing to figure out it’s secrets.

This new ARG that everyone thought was over hit just the other day as fans noticed a new microsite on Bungie’s website which the OwlSector ARG site was updated and pointed fans to a new page with a very curious puzzle.

When this mysterious new link is clicked, it takes you to a page that shows a couple of lines of text, and a command prompt of sorts.  When you hit enter the page begins to scroll and ASCII art of the SIVA logo appears.  When just glancing at the codes that scroll across the screen it looks like a bowl of mush, but it didn’t take the Destiny community long to realize that different users were getting different codes and sequences, based on signing into their profiles on Bungie.net. .

This has the community jumping and hard at work to try and solve this new found mystery, which looks like a lot of the main work is being headed up by the Destiny subreddit.  As one Redditor put it, “So, to be clear, I’m pretty sure the ARG is ‘solved’. We just lack coordination/data. This is like raid-tier ARG.” Speaking of raids, this outside-the-game mystery is on top of players trying to discover all the mysteries of the new Wrath of the Machine raid. It appears that all the pieces of this ARG puzzle, being called “SIM,” are out there, and only need to be put together in the right way.

Rom what i’m hearing the majority of this puzzle has been solved and basically you have to decode the shapes, numbers, and sequences from the users who have logged into the ARG, there is a high level of coordination and matching of the data.  It’s a giant puzzle piece and each piece of code the users have has to be fit together in the correct order to figure out the puzzle.

All those who have been hard at work cracking this ARG code discovered some vital information as in directions of the code, and shapes that were being left out when people were copy and pasting information.  That being said the Destiny community guru’s figuring this information out created a Google Doc form which allows all those guardians to keep track of the information accurately.

The theory to this mystery is that all of the codes being deciphered will help unlock the final monitor in the Wrath of the Machine raid, which looks to be tied to the hidden raid chest and “Surprise” a quest for an exotic weapon.

I am excited to see where this mystery takes the Destiny community and what all the secrets reveal.

Until next time

Destiny: Rise of Iron – How We Advanced

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Today is happy Destiny day for all of us Guardians out there….yes it’s Rise of Iron release day and I’m sure most of you have already been grinding away to see all the new stuff.

Here’s a quick run down on some of the important things we are getting.

  • Felwinters Peak, the new Social Space with new vendors, a new Cryptarch, and it comes with wolves!
  • 5 main campaign Story ARC Missions, plus other Missions and Quests
  • The Plaguelands, which is the new open patrol area of the revamped snow covered Cosmodrome.
  • SIVA infected Fallen called Devil Splicers are here now
  • The Archon’s Forge, a new arena much like Prison / Challenge of Elders
  • We’ve got new STRIKES!!!
  • Wrath of the Machine, the new Raid, available September 23rd!
  • Yes we have a new PvP mode as well called Supremacy!
  • Iron Banner has been re-worked
  • 4 new Crucible maps
  • New artifacts that were created from scratch!
  • New Max Light Level
  • New Armor, Weapons, and a ton of new Rewards
  • You can now put Ornaments on exotic weapons, and armor, a skin that changes the look of the weapon

Big Light Level Jump

Bungie told us we would be getting a big light level jump but no one really knew what that meant.  Well here is what we got!

Rise of Iron Launch Light Level Increase to: 385

Once the hard mode of the RAID releases the light level will cap at 400

We have a new Record Book

Rise of Iron has a new free Record Book which tracks all activity in Rise of Iron account-wide. As you complete missions, quests, and other activities from the new expansion, you will gain percentage points of completion, and as with past Record Books will receive rewards at set intervals.

These rewards include:

  • Full Iron Lord armor for all Character Classes
  • Multiple new Emblems
  • New Shaders
  • The new Iron Song Ghost Shell
  • And More

Engram Boost

We’ve all been asking those questions of what will our engrams do when we decript them after ROI drops.  Well, Uncommon and Rare (Green and Blue) gear will drop at higher light levels (potentially up to 350 for Rare items). Most of mine were dropping and coming out around 330 for blues and 200 for greens.  Higher for Legendary / Exotics.

Strike Exclusive Gear and Skeleton Keys

Nightfalls and Strike Playlists are getting a new inventory item added to their Loot systems: The Skeleton Key, these keys, which will drop randomly at the end of missions, can be used in Strikes featuring exclusive items to get a guaranteed drop of one of those Exclusive by opening the “Strike Hoard” – a new chest that will be appearing upon completion of Strikes, even outside of the Weekly Playlists.

Weapons, & Armor

From new Iron Banner weapons reintroduced Year 1 guns, Rise of Iron is giving us a lot of new options.

  • Exotics
    • Year 1 weapons returning –
    • We already knew the Gjallarhorn was coming back! If you pre-ordered well then you got it in (Black) and it’s sexy!
    • We also have another Year 1 that was very popular but brought a lot of pain among the Guardians…. The THORN is coming back!  It will have it’s own Exotic quest so get ready.
    • For those of us already sporting Year 1 models, it’s not clear if the updated version will be immediately available through the kiosk or if we’ll have to work for it the same as everyone else.
    • A whole list of new weapons, but I’m saving that for you all to discover
    • One very familiar weapon that every Guardian has used is coming back.  The Khvostov 7G-0X which is the exotic version of this weapon.  This weapon will be the reward from an exotic weapon quest, but this one is different.  This weapon won’t have a single exotic perk that makes it stand out.  Instead, Bungie has added something brand new, a set of perk columns that allows us to turn this primary weapon into a custom killing machine.

New Armor Concept Drawings

The armor just speaks for itself as it’s amazing looking!!! We want it all!!!

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The game has a whole host of new features to discover and this is just a base list of some new items that have come in, so get out there Guardians and go become an Iron Lord

Destiny – Rise of Iron: The OWL Sector ARG

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Strange things are stirring in the Destiny realm as players began noticing a very odd colored swarm surrounding their heads a few nights ago.  What is this mystery, and where did it come from?

Clearly it has something to do with Destiny’s newest upcoming expansion, Rise of Iron, but is this thing harmful, helpful, what is really going on.  One very popular Twitch streamer, SayNoToRage, looks to be Patient Zero who was infected with this strange Destiny virus which has begun to spread through the player-base of Destiny by simply interacting with someone who already has one of the viruses. A number of ways have been confirmed so far, and players have reported a boost to reputation and experience once they have been infected. But what could these Owl Sector infections mean?

These viruses – Brilliance 3.2, Glory 2.1, Splendor 2.6, Magnificence 2.0, and Fortitude 3.1 – seem to be unlocking additional details to the lore of Destiny.  Owl Sector appeared as a subpage on Bungie’s website a couple nights ago shortly after SayNoToRage noticed he had contracted the virus.

You can checkout Bungie’s Owl Sector website which shows a world map with multiple colored nodes on it. Each of these nodes seem to represent a player’s location whose character has been infected by one of the viruses. These different colors correspond to the five different viruses previously mentioned. Ever since the initial outbreak with SayNoToRage, the website looks to have a real-time update and feed showing each infection across the globe.  This has also led to more information getting released through chat logs of the in game NPC’s, like Cayde-6, Ikora Rey, and Zavala who seem to be studying these viruses to determine for themselves what they are.

From what can be gathered from some parts of the chat logs, it looks like the viruses, along with SIVA, were developed on Mars in the Dust Palace by the exoscience group, Clovis Bray.  With Rise of Iron right around the corner and considering how this looks to be a very technologically advanced element of Destiny’s lore, it’s hard to think the SIVA tech wouldn’t be involved somehow.

Guardians look to have quite the adventure ahead of them as Rise of Iron plots a story about the lost SIVA plague, so these viruses we are seeing now could be a precursor to our next journey and potential dangers that are just around the corner.

As for the Owl Sector, it appears that they’re a reconnaissance group responsible for looking over these types of outbreaks. This would tie into the Owl Sector Twitch account’s message that was in SayNoToRage’s Twitch stream when he first contracted the virus. The message read “We’ve detected an unidentified foreign intrusion into your systems, Guardian. Stay calm, we will investigate.”

One question does come up and that is will we see these “Viruses” once the Rise of Iron content releases next week?  At least we won’t have to wait long to find out what is in store for the Destiny realm, and it’s Guardian protectors.

Be safe Guardians and I’ll see you next time.