Literally Three Hours Doing A Raid

For the first time in ages, I had enough people around to have a party of six, including Spectre, our resident person who really really knows his Destiny 2 stuff. Spectre is the sort of person who will cheese a strike and nuke the boss with ease, leaving everyone else in the dust. And that poor bugger willingly decided to lead all five newbies through not one but two raids.

I think we all underestimated how long that would take.

Basically, it was hell.

Okay, the first raid wasn’t so bad. Leviathan, Eater of Worlds isn’t that complicated. It just needs communication and coordination. Mostly while you conga-line over a bunch of platforms. And then slip through a load of different corridors, through a massive engine shoot thing, out of a massive canon and then free-falling through various asteroids to face boss.

We managed to do this raid in about forty five minutes. There was quite a bit of restarting, but only during the bit with the mines. Having to coordinate and get the right skulls cooked in the right fire places is a tad confusing the first time you do it.

Most of Eater of Worlds was actually fine. I’d put it on the same level as Warframe’s Law of Retribution. Mostly just standing in the right place at the right time.

Then someone suggested we try Leviathan.

I mean, we were right there. And we had a full squad. It’d be fine, right? How bad could it be? We wouldn’t be there forever, right?

Wrong.

It took us about 3 hours to do the Leviathan raid. With someone experienced guiding us. Three hours of getting wiped and restarting.

You see, Leviathan comes in four parts. You need to complete three trials to gain access to the throne room so you can fight Emperor Calus. Each challenge is different and requires a to of coordination to get things right. And, in traditional raid style, there’s a TON of things that will wipe your team instantly.

Funnily enough though? Three quarters of the raid were fine. We actually got through the Bath area on our first try, and got through the mutant-dog killing part quite quickly as well. The navigating around the underbelly was long and tedious because of parkour but we managed that eventually. We also opened a bunch of chests too.

Even the final boss wasn’t that bad once we all properly coordinated and all knew our roles. Heck, most of our wipes during the final boss fight were because someone would accidentally go flying when in the void area, because they hit a ledge funny.

Basically, fuck the Gauntlet.

The Gauntlet is what took up most of our time. It took us about an hour and a half to get through it, compared to the same amount of time navigating a massive ship, killing a bunch of dogs, ruining someone’s bath time, running around opening chests and beating the final boss. Because trying to get a squad to coordinate and run through an obstacle course without accidentally body-blocking each other while carrying bombs with very unforgiving time limits, having to ration out the buffs that extend those timers, while also having a slow-ass retard like me on the team is a massive pain in the ass.

It’s also an insanely long segment. You have to keep on running through this round ring, calling out to team mates to shoot buttons to open gates so you can pass through. But at the same time, you also need to kill enemies that will create ghosts that will wipe the entire party.

Sounds simple in concept, but in practice, it’s a massive pain the ass with little room for failure. What makes this worse is that there’s no checkpoint in there. You have to start from the very beginning of the gauntlet every time you fuck up.

BUT THIS SEEMS TO BE THE STANDARD FIRST TIME EXPERIENCE.

I dunno, maybe I’m just not that well-versed in raids. After all, my raid experience is very limited. But everyone I spoke to seems to say the same thing: that the first time experience just takes fucking forever. That being said, this kinda doesn’t feel like a normal raid. It feels like a huge amount of jumping through hoops to get not very far. And the instant wipe mechanics just seem a bit shitty overall. Oh there’s magical

Not that it matters any more. the Leviathan raid and all the sub-raids attached to it are about to be removed when Beyond Light comes out. Despite Nessus and the Leviathan having nothing to do with the big black evil pyramids that are going to destroy the other planets.

It’s a shame, really.

When you’re not constantly dying, the Leviathan is a fucking amazing place. It’s an absolutely huge maze, a colossal location full of secrets and death. But it’s also pretty damn beautiful. You have this terrifying mixture of gilded extravagance and cold, hostile machinery and engines. Most of the time in Destiny 2, I don’t feel like these places are that big. They’re just long, narrow and tall paths leading to a destination. The Leviathan genuinely feels absolutely huge.

But it’s being deleted. Oh well.

Anyway, thank you Spectre for carrying our sorry asses through that. We all at least came away with an Exotic weapon, and I got the Huckleberry, the one weapon Spectre wanted me to get.