This week marked the release of the latest expansion for Destiny 2, a video game in which players travel through space trying to buy enough shaders to please Bobby Kotick. In the past, Destiny’s expansions have followed a certain familiar rhythm. The Black Armory is very different.
Rather than release individually priced expansions in Destiny 2‘s second year, developer Bungie is selling an annual pass that will give you access to a regular stream of quests and other content.
Sometimes that’ll mean new activities and even new raids—one of those goes live on Friday—but what it won’t include is new story campaigns, the way that previous DLC expansions like Curse of Osiris and Warmind did. (Given Destiny’s reliance on replayable content and those campaigns’ lack of replayability, the move makes a lot of sense, especially considering their cost to make.)
Black Armory is the first of three planned updates, and if you’re under 600 power (like me, sitting pretty around 535), it won’t immediately offer you very much. The first and most visible quest will take you down to The Black Armory, an alien-looking new area of the tower where a robot named Ada-1 offers up some snark and then sends you off on a quest to unlock the first Lost Forge, a matchmade high-level activity and one of the main selling points in today’s update.
The quest to unlock this Forge—and you’ll have to excuse my language here—sucks royal arse. It is a series of time-wasting activities like “get 15 Hive multikills with a Power weapon” and “kill powerful enemies until they drop random items” that players have already found a way to get through as quickly as possible.
(Pro tip: as with so many previous grind-heavy quests, you’ll want to farm guards in the first raid, Leviathan.)
Once you get through that step, you’ll be greeted by a 610-power-minimum Forge, where you won’t even be able to do damage to the enemies if you’re anywhere close to my light level.
You might look around and see what else is in The Black Armory, only to find that the other quests currently available are also massive grind-fests, like the following:
Surely there will be more interesting quests in the weeks to come—players have already found a secret that will no doubt lead to something cool—but everything available today in The Black Armory is designed for hardcore, high-level Destiny 2 players who don’t mind the treadmill.
Bungie has boosted the Prime Engram rate for anyone who’s below 550, making levelling a little more palatable, but it’s still a very long road to 610, the minimum you’ll need to do the first Forge. (And word is the Forge gets more and more difficult as you go, and the boss is 630.)
It’s best not to think of The Black Armory as a new DLC in the traditional sense. Rather, it’s a collection of new reasons to keep grinding your way through Vanguard strikes and Gambit matches.
If you’re already enjoying Forsaken and you haven’t given up on the grind, you’ll find yourself with plenty of new stuff to do. But if you’re not invested already, The Black Armory probably won’t bring you back.
Comments
9 responses to “Destiny 2’s Newest DLC Embraces The Grind Even More”
So filthy. I couldnt even do the Forge at 600. I probably wont be able to for a couple of weeks.
FYI the quest in the last image isn’t a black armoury quest, that is part of season 5 and available to players whoe don’t even own forsaken
FYI as of this morning the forges minimum light was reduced to 600, giving a little more leeway to break into the content.
We did the quest to unlock the Forge last night. Using Thunderlord and doing the Escalation Protocol was a pretty effective way to get through it. Although, I swear the game was messing with me by not dropping much Power Weapon ammo. I kept running out and not having any more drop for what felt like ages.
Given the hysteria around reddit. I truly do question how many people buying games actual make informed purchases. Because all the complaining there is full of threads complaining it doesn’t have all manner of things, even though at every turn they never said it would have any of those things they wanted.
I still haven’t beaten the forge but I am glad for that. The DLC was advertised as an end game activity which is now 650, so I wasn’t expecting to just waltz through it. I am already 610 after one day.
Another predictable event in the long tale of(some) Desitny Community being their own worst enemy, so much so they make the constant Bungie clustersf- look postitively tame.
Im keen to know how you hit 610 so quickly. I believe you having seen ppl on at 620-odd. Im barely 603 and am running out of powerful engram missions. it doesnt help that Bungie seems to think my Warlock NEEDS 4 pairs of gauntlets ranging from 604 to 608. What is your strategy?
lot of those at like 620 were smart enough to bank a lot of completed milestones before the update but didnt claim them until after etc… personally I just got lucky, RNGesus took pity on me. Did all my milestones for the week, got quite a few prime engrams, and even lucked a new exotic (the blade barrage arms). Just thankfully, somehow, each drop i got was for a different slot, yeah unbelievable I know.
If only my luck was always that good.
Why is there so much press given to Destiny and very little to Warframe? I’ve just started playing WF again and it’s superior in almost every facet.
no it is just different, in so many ways. Sure it excels in some places but so does Destiny in others. And where the line is draw, depends on personal tastes. The more i play Warframe the more I would just rather play Destiny. I am not saying it is bad, nor is Destiny is flawless (as if hehe), just Warframe just leaves me totally empty.