Yesterday, a group of six Destiny players beat the game’s first Raid. It took them 10 hours. Ten hours!
The Vault of Glass, which developer Bungie describes as the “most elaborate mission ever created by [them],” opened for the first time yesterday, and it sounds crazy. It’s a six-person adventure with Tomb Raider-ish puzzles, ambiguous objectives, and nails-tough boss battles. The first group to fight through the Vault died a total of 1,605 times (and killed thousands of enemies along the way). You can take breaks and come back where you left off, so that potential ten-hour completion time can be separated into chunks, though your progress will be reset after a week.
Though I haven’t had a chance to test out the raid for myself yet — I’m a paltry level 14, and this thing is designed for levels 26 and up — I’ve been watching videos and streams of people playing, and it looks way more interesting than any of Destiny‘s other missions (which usually follow the same pattern: deploy Ghost -> listen to stupid dialogue -> kill waves of enemies -> repeat).
To quote Kotaku‘s Kirk Hamilton, who I was just texting with about the raid: “it was like this crazy Indiana Jones cave with huge rooms and environmental puzzles and crazy bosses, like this one that kills you if it sees you, or places where it looked like if one person died the entire party died. It was like co-op FPS Dark Souls.”
Let’s take a look at some videos, shall we?
For starters, here’s IGN taking a glimpse at the beginning section of the Vault, which involves a rad environmental puzzle that you’ll have to figure out how to solve as a group:
Here’s a run-through of the Gorgon’s Labyrinth, a crazy maze full of invisible enemies:
Here’s a fun look at how much coordination and teamwork it takes to kill one of this raid’s bosses [Warning: lots of curses in this video]:
And here’s a team taking out the final boss:
If you see any other cool videos or walkthroughs, post’em below.
Comments
28 responses to “Destiny’s First Raid Looks Insane”
It’s going to be parts of the game like this where destiny’s fun really comes into play – this is partly why I can see them not wanting reviews and why so far everyone has been thinking – the content in the beta was the full entirety of the game, when it obviously was just the beta (or just the beginning). Interesting times ahead with Destiny as to where it will go – because Co-Op FPS Dark-souls sounds like my cup of tea 🙂
Am I the only one who thinks 10 hours to complete this raid puts you off? These guys are probably excellent at FPS games and Destiny and it still took them 10 hours. Are there check points? What if the internet disconnects or the game crashes 7 hours in?
I enjoyed my time in Destiny, but if this is the future of the game, I will play Crucible/Iron Banner for the rest of the month then i’m afraid it will go back on the shelf till the single player DLC comes out.
Edit: Missed the part in the article about taking breaks. Still 10 hours could potentially be another game/experience
It says in the article that you can leave and come back to where you were in the raid but your progress will reset after 1 week. Obviously 10 straight hours is a bit much.
Yea, glad I didn’t buy Destiny now. This is just a bit too “WOW”ish for me, there is no possible way I could coordinate 10 hours to play with my friends in one hit, or even within one week.
there are checkpoints you can. you can quit and come back.
you have 1 week to complete it (resets each tuesday).
Its only crazy long the first time, once you’ve figured out how ot do things it speeds up 3 fold.
example, my crew took 3 hours to get to the first boss on first play through
1 hour on next boss.
alot of hte time is trial and error figuring out what to do.
Remember, this is the ultimate level of challenge in the game, like, I have no life and poo in a bucket next to the lounge to get around not being able to pause…. These guys doing this are on a different level – the strikes in destiny usually take 30 minutes to an hour, and are some of the best fun I have had in an FPS ever – they are nasty hard but great fun and you have to work together to contemplate surviving. The guys doing this raid have spent a LOT of time playing….
I think the fireteam leader’s progress saves so you could stretch it out couple hours every night for a week, you’d want to plan ahead though to get 6 people to do that, would be gutting to not finish in a week and progress to restart.
The only game that comes to mind where you never could take a break against ‘raid’ bosses is none other than FFXI. If anyone can recall, there is a notorious monster known as Pandemonium Warden. This monster alone caused Square Enix to nerf it and its bestest bud, Absolute Virtue, so that they can be beaten in two hours (which is when they despawn). SE gave them the nerf after people gave up and accepted defeat after trying to beat the monster after 18 hours of fighting it (people were passing out or getting sick).
You will not complete it in 10 hours. These guys are pro gamers, probably raid veterans from EQ/WoW/etc’s top guilds/clans.
*You* will take *weeks*, in all likelihood.
Does it have matchmaking? Or you have to pre-organise with realy XBL/PS friends beforehan?
And also, say we get 1/2 way through and stop for the night, could we continue the last 1/2 with other ppl?
No matchmaking unfortunately. Something about requiring full teamwork, so will need to find 5 other friends (or make some Destiny friends) to give it a crack.
Fireteam leader has to be the same for progress to save, so not sure. I wonder if it’s the same fireteam leader with other people it still may work..
If anyone is keen to get a team together to give this a go at some stage and needs a team, feel free to add me on PS4 (westcoastricho). So far there’s myself and a friend from WA, but I think anyone in Aus will be fine.
I don’t know why they don’t enable matchmaking but no party chats only in-game chat so everyone can communicate as needed.
If they are making raids full on like they are in wow then there should be an option to extend your raid lockout past 1 week like there is in wow.
Probably needs some testing, but you probably could have two people stand inside a raid when the week resets and take turns logging in and out of the raid to save each others checkpoints?
it could be done but that’s a damn faff lol + does the game server do down at all for maintenance? cause it would probably reset then.
I was on for reset, no server shut down, you even had to log off to get your crucible/vanguard marks to reset. the same goes for the daily heroic resets sort of annoying.
@jackunit13, @blackdahlianz yeahhhhhh
Edit: username tag fail
Very keen, but I prob wont get on again for a decent amount of time this week, off to Melbourne for 4 days on Saturday. I have 1 possibly 2 maybe even 3 mates keen to give it a go.
Nice, I’m still level 20 I think so I need to get my grind on as well. Well if we get Jack Attack here as well we’ll have at least 4. I’ll hit you guys up again when I’m closer to 26 lol
I’m halfway through 23 now, but apart from Tuesday when the wife was out of town I haven’t had a chance to get back on, kinda took the piss a bit the first few days, I got one mate 24, the other is 18 and the other hasn’t even started yet but he is pretty dedicated gamer when he gets into something.
I was in a fireteam with two friends last night and someone in the tower invited me to a party and their fireteam. In most games I ignore this stuff, but in Destiny I joined.
Turns out a fireteam of three Americans were looking for people to try the raid. So even though neither of us had 6 people, we were able to find enough people to try it.
I was the highest level in the group at level 25, the rest were 24, and we gave up on the first section after attempting it for an hour. Just the first section requires co-ordination and constant communication. But to go with that, you need people at the right level with the right gear. Having weapons with the right damage type (Nova, Solar or Void) hasn’t been a definite necessity until now.
So while we were getting destroyed, I’m excited to keep attempting it to see what comes next.
yeahhhhhh naaaaaaaa 😐
Edit: Actually am really keen, but still only level 20. I’ll do some grinding on the weekend!
I’ll be grinding this week as well, hell be damned if I don’t get to do this three weeks from now!
Was watching a stream of this last night… two and a half hours to get the front door to open. I think I’ll wait until I’ve at least maxed out my subclasses, maybe not until I’ve reached 27.
10 hours is still a bit steep – even with checkpoints during the week, what’s the guarantee you have six people who are committed to playing the game regularly enough to not lose all of your progress? and with over one and a half [i]thousand[/i] deaths, I can see patience wearing thin… It’s all just a bit too drawn out.
10 hours is only the learning curve, with veteran players you can easily complete it in 3-4 hours, so time committal isn’t as stringent as it seems.
The biggest annoyance about this game at the moment is my lack of XBone-owning friends. Looks like it’s going to keep me out of a fair bit of content.
If anyone feels like friending me (Bondles) for raids and strikes, please go ahead!
I will…HatchDog….adding you now…
Add me back, bro 🙂
Me three! … Add me: Gump24601
i want to do this but its going to require a concerted effort.
i hope they add in some more interesting strikes and maybe even some good single player missions.
i did a destiny lan last weekend 3 of us basically went from lvl1-16 in a day great fun and i really enjoyed the strikes.
unfortunately those 2 friends are the extent of my xobx one owning friends in the area
Why do i have to read all this Destiny stuff in the PC platform when clearly it is not out on the platform?